Law Commons^™

Unconscionable: Tax Delinquency Sales As A Form Of Dignity Taking, Andrew W. Kahrl

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

Dignity Takings And “Trailer Trash”: The Case Of Mobile Home Park Mass Evictions, Esther Sullivan

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Mobile homes are a primary source of shelter for America’s poor and working classes. A large share of the nation’s mobile home stock is found in mobile home parks where residents own their homes but lease the land under their homes from private landlords. Urban growth has put pressure on park landlords to sell and redevelop mobile home parks. When parks are redeveloped mobile home residents are evicted and entire communities are destroyed. Residents lose their homes and home equity as they struggle to relocate their homes to different parks or are forced to abandon them. Through two continuous years …

Damaged Bodies, Damaged Lives: Immigrant Worker Injuries As Dignity Takings, Rachel Nadas, Jayesh Rathod

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Government data consistently affirms that foreign-born workers in the U.S. experience high rates of on-the-job illness and injury. This article explores whether—and under what circumstances—these occupational harms suffered by immigrant workers constitute a dignity taking. The article argues that some injuries suffered by foreign-born workers are indirect takings by the state due to the government’s lackluster oversight and limited penalties for violations of occupational safety and health laws. Using a framework of the body as property, the article then explores when work-related injury constitutes an infringement upon a property right. The article contends that the government’s weak enforcement apparatus, coupled …

Convergence And Divergence In International Economic Law And Politics, Sungjoon Cho, Jürgen Kurtz

All Faculty Scholarship

This article explores the phenomena of convergence and divergence in international economic law. It argues that both international trade and investment law have been forced to overcome a structural (legal-institutional) prioritization of market goals via competing social regulatory concerns. It is at this stress point that we argue that a powerful set of converging and procedurally orientated hermeneutics can be identified in the jurisprudence that, properly employed, could significantly bolster the elasticity and durability of state commitment to international economic law constraints. There remain, however, continuing textual and systemic divergences at play, which opponents will often dismiss for reasons of …

Chasing Echos Of Obscenity Exceptionalism In Copyright: Recent Swarm Cases, James R. Alexander

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

Recent district court rulings regarding copyright violations using BitTorrent file-sharing protocols to illegally download pornographic films have been numerous and largely procedural. But some have casually included language challenging the established doctrine of content neutrality in copyright, noting that obscenity exceptionalism might still be within the court’s policy discretion. This article traces these recent rulings and finds little substantive argument on behalf of exceptionalism other than its long-time understanding under common law, now abandoned. It also examines the critical early nineteenth century common law rulings considered seminal in establishing content exceptionalism in copyright and finds that current court references to …

Patent Exhaustion Connects Common Law To Equity: Impression Products, Inc. V. Lexmark International, Inc., Kumiko Kitaoka

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Permission Impossible: An Exception-Based Legislative Solution For Digitizing Copyright-Protected Works, Connor J. Hansen

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

The Road To Marshall: Of Venue, Trolls, And The Eastern District Of Texas, Jesus Efren Cano

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Diluted Reality: The Intersection Of Augmented Reality And Trademark Dilution, Ariane Takano

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

European Parliament Resolution Of 9 July 2015 And Its Progeny: Why The Digital Age Demands A Single European Copyright Title, Kevin J. Cammiso

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Innovators Beat The Climate Change Heat With Humanitarian Licensing And Patent Pools, Andrea Nocito

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

May You Live In Interesting Times: Patent Law In The Supreme Court, Seth P. Waxman

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Complex Innovation And The Patent Office, Ryan Whalen

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

As the universe of available information becomes larger and innovation becomes more complex, the task of examining patent applications becomes increasingly difficult. This Article argues that the United States Patent Office has insufficiently responded to changes in the information universe and to innovation norms. This leaves the Patent Office less able to adequately assess patent applications, and more likely to grant bad patents. After first demonstrating how innovation has been responsive to contemporary innovation norms for hundreds of years, this Article uses information and data science methods to empirically demonstrate how innovation has drastically changed in recent decades. After empirically …

Derechos Fundamentales, Privacidad Y Aplicaciones Móviles Médicas, Lori Andrews

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

From Reparations To Dignity Restoration: The Story Of The Popela Community., Bernadette Atuahene, Sanele Sibanda

All Faculty Scholarship

In certain circumstances property takings are part of a larger strategy to further subjugate a certain group within the polity by denying their humanity or their capacity to reason. These takings involve more than the confiscation of property; they also involve the deprivation of dignity. In her book, We want what’s ours: Learning from South Africa’s land restitution program, Atuahene has called these dignity takings. The Popela people are a resource-poor, but culturally-rich African community from South Africa’s Limpopo region that the colonial and apartheid regimes subjected to dignity takings. The post-apartheid state was interested not only in providing compensation …

Stategraft, Bernadette Atuahene, Timothy Hodge

All Faculty Scholarship

Although sometimes difficult to detect, governmental power abuses can have detrimental impacts. Property tax assessments provide an effective lens to examine this phenomenon because, given the complexity of calculating property tax assessments, it is difficult for citizens to know when local government has exceeded its legitimate taxing authority and crossed into the realm of illegal extraction. Michigan is an ideal case study because it protects property owners by making assessment-related power abuses more visible through a unique state constitutional provision: property tax assessments cannot exceed 50 percent of a property’s market value. Abuses have persisted nevertheless. Between 2011 and 2015, …

Beyond Greed Is Good: Pop Culture In The Business Law Classroom, Felice Batlan, Joshua Bass

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Federalism Of Personal Finance: State & Federal Retirement Plans, William Birdthistle

All Faculty Scholarship

In this Article, I consider possible approaches that attempt to improve the plans through which millions of Americans tend to their life savings. I begin by considering the inadequacies of our current system of defined contribution accounts and then address two possible alternatives: the first being a federal account universally available to Americans based largely on the model of the Thrift Savings Plan; the second being a system of statebased retirement accounts like those that have already been developed in a handful of states. Though I conclude that a single, federal plan would be superior, either alternative approach would be …

Tactful Inattention: Erving Goffman, Privacy In The Digital Age, And The Virtue Of Averting One's Eyes, Elizabeth De Armond

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Scaffolding On Steroids: Meeting Your Students Where They Are Is Harder Than Ever ... And Easier Than You Think, Kari L. Aamot Johnson

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

When Is Hate Speech Wrongful? A Comment On Alexander Brown’S Hate Speech As Degradation And Humiliation, Steven Heyman

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Motive Power In Public Sector Collective Bargaining, Martin Malin

All Faculty Scholarship

In the private sector, George Taylor referred to the strike as providing the “motive power” in collective bargaining. A major reason behind the enactment of public employee collective bargaining laws is to reduce the interruption of public services from job actions. This was the case with the enactment of New York’s Taylor Law.This paper, written for a conference commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Taylor Law and published in a special issue of the Hofstra Labor and Employment Law Journal focused on the Taylor Law, examines what, in the absence of a right to strike, provides the motive power for …

Allocating Liability Among Multiple Responsible Causes: Principles, Rhetoric And Power - Chapter 2, Richard Wright

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Investors' Paradox, Anita Krug

All Faculty Scholarship

For the first time in an era, new investment products for smaller ("retail ") investors are emerging. These products are mutual funds that engage in the types of trading and investment activities that have long been the province of sophisticated investors. Accordingly, the new funds (called "alternative funds") promise to reduce the gulf between retail investors and their sophisticated counterparts, in terms of portfolio diversification and investment results.This Article describes the complex mix of factors that spawned alternative funds and critically evaluates the funds' potential, the first scholarly work to do so. It additionally unearths the paradox that impedes the …

Amending Patent Claims, Gregory Reilly

All Faculty Scholarship

Patent claims traditionally have been freely amendable to overcome a finding of unpatentability. For that reason, the Patent Office’s restrictive approach to amendments in new post-issuance review proceedings created by the America Invents Act provoked strident criticism; generated administrative, statutory, and constitutional challenges; and fractured the Federal Circuit. This Article supplies the comprehensive evaluation of the costs and benefits of patent claimamendments, both in examination and post-issuance, surprisingly missing in the literature.The results are mixed. Amendments in initial examination are less clearly warranted than commonly thought, with the costs – primarily problematic drafting incentives – often overlooked and the benefits …

How Much Should We Spend To Protect Privacy?: Data Breaches And The Need For Information We Do Not Have, Richard Warner, Robert Sloan

All Faculty Scholarship

A cost/benefit approach to privacy confronts two tradeoff issues. One is making appropriate tradeoffs between privacy and many goals served by the collection, distribution, and use of information. The other is making tradeoffs between investments in preventing unauthorized access to information and the variety of other goals that also make money, time, and effort demands. Much has been written about the first tradeoff. We focus on the second. The issue is critical. Data breaches occur at the rate of over three a day, and the aggregate social cost is extremely high. The puzzle is that security experts have long explained …

Flipping The Classroom To Teach Workplace Adr In An Intensive Environment, Martin H. Malin, Deborah Ginsberg

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Vol. 35, No. 1, By Anthony Michael Kreis

The Illinois Public Employee Relations Report

A Fresh Look at Title VII: Sexual Orientation Discrimination as Sex Discrimination, by Anthony Michael Kreis

Recent Developments

Brief For 72 Professors Of Intellectual Property Law As Amici Curiae In Support Of Respondents In Oil States Energy V. Greene's Energy, Gregory Reilly, Mark Lemley, Arti Rai

All Faculty Scholarship

This is a brief of 72 IP professors opposing the claim in Oil States that the IPR procedure is unconstitutional.Petitioner argues that only a court – indeed, only a jury – has the power to decide that the United States Patent and Trademark Office erred in granting a patent. That argument flies in the face of the history of patent law and this Court’s precedents.Patents are a creature of statute: as early as 1834, this Court specifically recognized that there is no “natural” or common law right to a patent. Rather, under its Article I power to establish a patent …

Symposium Preface, Kristen Barnes

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.