Law Commons^™

A True Fact Should Not Be Controversial: Analyzing The Zauderer Standard And Defining “Uncontroversial”, Edina Hartstein

Fordham Law Review

In Zauderer v. Office of Disciplinary Counsel, the U.S. Supreme Court recognized an exception to the compelled speech doctrine that allowed the government to regulate commercial speech if it was “purely factual and uncontroversial.” However, the Court failed to define what it meant for a disclosure to be “purely factual” or what it meant to be “uncontroversial.” This lack of clarity led to lower courts inconsistently applying the Zauderer standard. In 2018, the Supreme Court decided National Institute for Family Life & Advocates v. Becerra (NIFLA), which held that the Zauderer standard cannot apply when the disclosure …

Red, White-, And Blue-Collar Crime: Federal Sentencing Practices Among White-Collar And Blue-Collar Offenders, Henna Judge

Fordham Law Review

Under the current federal sentencing regime, district courts exercise immense amounts of discretion when sentencing. Though strict adherence to the U.S. Sentencing Commission Guidelines (the “Guidelines”) was once mandatory, courts must now use these Guidelines as an advisory starting point and make a series of fact-specific determinations when sentencing a defendant. Though judicial discretion in this realm aids in preventing undue reliance on Guidelines-range recommendations that can lack nuance, it also invites bias.

In recent years, scholars and courts alike have called attention to a potential disparity in the way blue-collar and white-collar offenders are sentenced. This Note examines relevant …

Settling On A Standard: Reviewing The Right To Self-Representation, Lauren Lipson

Fordham Law Review

Courts appoint counsel for indigent criminal defendants who cannot afford legal representation to uphold their Sixth Amendment rights. In its seminal waiver case, Faretta v. California, the U.S. Supreme Court elevated the corollary right—the right to self-representation—to constitutional status. In dicta, the Court created a standard by which defendants must waive their right to counsel “knowingly and intelligently” to proceed pro se. The Court subsequently sculpted the right to self-representation as it came to standby counsel and mental competency, but it never prescribed a precise waiver colloquy for district court judges to administer, causing the Faretta colloquy to look …

Sweat And Subjectivity Copyright Impulses, Danny Friedmann

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

Generative artificial intelligence (gAI) is generating vast vol- umes of content, including visual art with minimal human effort that competes directly with visual artists and threatens to dilute human culture in the process. In response, courts and copyright offices are quietly reintroducing two doctrines long considered incompatible with modern copyright: sweat of the brow, which rewards labor over originality, and aesthetic discrimination, which risks conditioning protection on perceived merit.

This article is the first to demonstrate how legal authorities are reintroducing these discredited doctrines under the guise of regulating AI-assisted outputs, thereby eroding the set of copyright doctrines accepted by …

Driving Together: The Necessity Of A Comprehensive Federal Response For The Success Of Autonomous Vehicles, Timothy Buff

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

Today’s world is full of promising yet controversial new technologies. Large Language Models (LLMs), such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, have both promised fantastic results and generated a range of critiques. Quantum computing claims to be able to complete computations that would take traditional computers, even supercomputers, longer than the lifespan of the universe to complete. With such advancements, the future dreamed of in science fiction stories of the twentieth century seems to be becoming reality. Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) are another notable technology, which promise to ultimately remove any human responsibility, and hence any human error, from the process of driving a …

How Ftc Data Security Cases Inform The Development Of Legally Accountable Software, Jeff Kosseff, Ellis Fenske, Christopher Brown, Daniel S. Roche

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

Over the past two decades, the Federal Trade Commission has brought dozens of enforcement actions against companies for failing to adequately secure customers’ personal information. The actions typically result in a consent decree, in which the company agrees to improve its data security practices and provide the FTC with oversight of those improvements. When the FTC first brought data security cases, its orders generally required the companies to adopt “reasonable” data security programs. But a 2018 Eleventh Circuit opinion, LabMD v. FTC, requires the orders to contain far more specific data security requirements. In this Article, we conduct an in-depth …

All Bets Are On: Addiction, Prediction, Regulation, And The Future Of Financial Gambling, Sharon Rabinovitz, Nizan G. Packin

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

This Article challenges traditional financial regulation by exploring how prediction markets—initially developed as sophisticated tools for collective forecasting—increasingly resemble gambling venues. These platforms, once designed to harness crowd wisdom, have transformed into high-stakes ecosystems where engage- ment-driven features blur the boundary between forecasting and betting. This evolution presents a dual challenge: on one hand, certain platforms, including regulated ones, offer innovative avenues for price discovery and risk hedging; on the other, their gamblified design exposes users to significant behavioral and financial risks.

Through comprehensive empirical analysis of gamblification and self-determination manipulation across five prediction market interfaces, this Article demonstrates how …

Where Did All The Genericide Cases Go? And Should They Be Gone For Good?, Daniela Camacho

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

Trademarks are all around us. It would be difficult to go an entire day without encountering a trademark—In fact, three-fourths of the words we use in our day-to-day conversations have been claimed as trademarks by various companies for various products. Often, we don’t even recognize all the marks we come across as trademarks. Words such as “aspirin,” “escalator,” and “trampoline” were all once trademarks. Over time, these words began to signify the product more than the producer; Because the marks could no longer identify the product’s source as trademarks are supposed to, the marks suffered “genericide” and were cancelled.

In …

Opening Remarks, Gideon Taylor

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Remarks, Ellen Germain

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Seeing The Humanity In Each Object: Finding Justice Amid The Law, Gideon Taylor, Ruth J. Weinberger

Fordham Law Review

The restitution of Nazi-looted cultural and religious property remains an important aspect of providing a measure of justice for Holocaust victims and their heirs. The United States has played a leading role, from early postwar restitution efforts to shaping international principles, such as the Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art (the “Washington Conference Principles”), the Terezin Declaration, and the recent Best Practices for the Washington Conference Principles. Yet restitution within the United States continues to rely largely on litigation, with varying outcomes and limited provenance research compared to some European countries. The following Essay examines America’s contributions and challenges and …

Oligarchy, State, And Cryptopia, Julie E. Cohen

Fordham Law Review

Theoretical accounts of power in networked digital environments typically do not give systematic attention to the phenomenon of oligarchy—to extreme concentrations of material wealth deployed to obtain and protect durable personal advantage. The biggest technology platform companies are dominated to a singular extent by a small group of very powerful and extremely wealthy men who have played uniquely influential roles in structuring technological development in particular ways that align with their personal beliefs and who now wield unprecedented informational, sociotechnical, and political power. Developing an account of oligarchy and, more specifically, of tech oligarchy within contemporary political economy therefore has …

It’S A Balancing Act: Analyzing The First Fair Use Factor, Taylor Gluckman

Fordham Law Review

Fair use has always been an important element of copyright law. The first fair use factor, “the purpose and character of the use,” has become especially important after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith. The “purpose and character” is typically analyzed by determining if a secondary work is “transformative,” but lower courts do not agree on what it means to be transformative. There is also disagreement on how to balance a secondary work’s transformative nature with its commercial nature when deciding whether the first factor favors fair use.

This …

The Native American Graves Protection And Repatriation Act As A Model Of Cultural Sovereignty For Protecting Indigenous Sacred Site, Michalyn Steele

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Remarks, Amassador Abubakar Jidda

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Defining “Cases” Or “Controversies”: A Fundamental Confusion In Article Iii Standing Doctrine And Its Consequences In Multi-Plaintiff Litigation, Dominic Signa

Fordham Law Review

The United States Supreme Court has addressed the absolute core requirements of standing under Article III of the U.S. Constitution on several occasions. However, the Court has not clearly articulated what purpose standing serves relative to Article III’s limitations on the exercise of judicial power to only “cases” or “controversies,” and this has led to major downstream effects in the realm of multi plaintiff litigation. Specifically, the Court has not explained whether standing is meant to ensure (1) that all potential plaintiffs demonstrate that they are properly parties to the same case or controversy before a federal court or (2) …

Remarks, The Honorable Michael Mukasey

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Cultural Property Protection As A National Security Enforcement Priority, Andrew C. Adams

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Corporeal Property And The Limits Of Nagpra, M. Alexander Pearl

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Hcpo Way: Resolving Claims Through Cooperation, Anna Rubin

Fordham Law Review

The Nazi regime systematically stripped Jews and other persecuted groups of property through a framework of laws that gave their spoliation a veneer of legality. Postwar restitution programs, though groundbreaking in their efforts to provide individual victims with either compensation or the return of their property, were hampered by strict legal limitations, inconsistent procedures, and the slow pace of resolution. Contemporary restitution efforts increasingly recognize that legal avenues alone cannot fully redress these injustices. This Essay examines the work of the Holocaust Claims Processing Office (HCPO) of the New York State Department of Financial Services, which has developed a model …

Recalibrating Risk Under Dobbs, Yvonne Lindgren, Michelle Oberman

Fordham Law Review

In response to mounting evidence of the devastating harms patients have experienced under abortion bans, abortion opponents and the Supreme Court of Texas have argued that the bans are clear but that doctors are willfully refusing to provide care. Instead of reforming the bans, they argue that doctors should be sued in medical malpractice for their failure to meet the standard of care. This Article interrogates that claim, investigating whether the crisis in reproductive healthcare that has resulted from delayed and denied care can be remedied by suing doctors. Specifically, can medical malpractice litigation provide guardrails against the erosion in …

Competition, Comity, And Confusion: Reconciling The Ftaia’S Import Exclusion With Its Direct Effects Provision, Elliot Lam

Fordham Law Review

The debate surrounding the Sherman Act’s extraterritorial scope represents a tension between two competing objectives: protecting the U.S. economy from foreign anticompetitive conduct on one hand and respecting the sovereign authority of other nation-states on the other. Applying U.S. law abroad risks undermining sovereign authority by regulating foreign economies, though such regulation appears necessary in some cases to protect U.S. consumers.

Congress’s attempt to square these objectives through enacting the Foreign Trade Antitrust Improvements Act of 1982 (FTAIA) failed to settle the matter. The statute left courts with two new questions: how to distinguish “import” from “nonimport” commerce, and how …

When The Taxpayers Are Not Innocent: The Need For Punitive Damages Against Municipalities Under The Fair Housing Act, Charlotte Saltzman

Fordham Law Review

Combatting housing discrimination by municipalities is a core function of the Fair Housing Act (FHA). Courts disagree, however, as to whether punitive damages can be awarded against municipal defendants. The purpose of this Note is twofold. First, it compares the Second Circuit’s recent decision in Gilead Community Services, Inc. v. Town of Cromwell, which held that punitive damages were appropriate against the Town of Cromwell, with the reasoning of district courts that came to the opposite conclusion in reliance on § 1983 precedent. Second, notwithstanding the sufficiency of the statutory analysis, it evaluates the public policy concerns of awarding …

The Roberts Court Paradox, John C. P. Goldberg, Benjamin C. Zipursky

Fordham Law Review

As perhaps the most conservative Supreme Court of the past century, the Roberts Court regularly touts its commitment to traditional ideals, including the rule of law. Yet Trump v. United States seems ready to place presidents entirely or largely above the law by granting them absolute or near absolute immunity from criminal prosecutions for official conduct. And Trump is not a one-off: from judicial recusal to qualified immunity to due process decisions, the Court frequently seems to display indifference to values of accountability and impartiality that have long been thought integral to the rule of law. What is going on? …

Emotionally Unstable: Addressing Emotional Distress As A Concrete Injury In Data Breach Cases Post-Transunion, Anna P. Cox

Fordham Law Review

Data breaches and data breach litigation are exponentially on the rise. Plaintiffs whose information is stolen in a data breach often claim emotional distress for fear of future harm the data breach may cause. However, plaintiffs who bring suit in federal court must show that they have suffered an injury in fact for purposes of Article III standing before a federal court will exercise jurisdiction. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez requires that plaintiffs who seek money damages under a theory of risk of future harm show that they have suffered a present concrete injury to …

Fixing The Fix: The Case For Unifying The Remedial Framework Of Apa Rulemaking Challenges, Dea Devlin

Fordham Law Review

Vacatur is the default remedy for successful administrative rulemaking challenges brought under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). Yet its broad and sweeping effects raise critical questions regarding its appropriateness as a one-size-fits-all remedy. Unlike injunctive relief, which is subject to a rigorous heightened standard, and remand without vacatur, which has a comparable standard of its own, vacatur is routinely awarded without similar scrutiny, leading to inconsistencies in the judicial application of remedies in APA challenges.

Although vacatur can provide a plaintiff with relief, its award conflicts with underlying principles of equity and proportionality. In rulemaking challenges, vacatur can create regulatory …

The Presumption Against Extraterritoriality And Wire Fraud, L. Jackson Howell Jr.

Fordham Law Review

As globalization and technology increasingly blur geographic boundaries, federal prosecutors have turned to the wire fraud statute as a powerful tool for targeting transnational misconduct. Despite its popularity in international fraud prosecution, the statute’s application to foreign conduct continues to raise unresolved and pressing questions under the presumption against extraterritoriality. Specifically, courts have struggled to identify when a domestic wire communication is sufficient to bring a largely foreign fraudulent scheme within the reach of U.S. law. With the U.S. Supreme Court silent on the wire fraud statute directly, and zigzagging in its extraterritoriality jurisprudence more generally, lower courts are split …

When The Screen Lies: Navigating Privacy And Publicity In An Ai World, Nancy M. Menagh

Fordham Law Review

A key issue of the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike was the use of generative AI in the entertainment industry and, more specifically, the creation of uncanny digital replicas of performers being used without their knowledge or consent. Since then, concerns have only intensified around the unauthorized creation and use of digital replicas and the ease with which they can be made and disseminated online. Currently, there is a patchwork of state laws that attempt to target these issues, but they have proven ineffective against the challenges presented by digital replicas.

This Note analyzes the problems digital replicas have raised in the …

Venturing Into Health, Rachel E. Sachs

Fordham Law Review

In recent years, the landscape of venture capital (VC) investment in healthcare technologies has been altered by the introduction of new types of VC firms: those that have emerged from hospital systems and health insurers. However, the legal literature has not yet analyzed these new VC firms, the role they may play in healthcare innovation, and how innovation law and policy ought to consider their involvement. Hospital system and health insurer VC firms operate very differently than traditional VC firms, even those that have historically developed healthcare specializations. Instead of simply investing capital into start-up firms, hospital system and health …

Is Your Data Good, Bad, Or Neutral?: Redefining Concreteness For Data Breach Harms, Jeeyoon Lim

Fordham Law Review

In recent years, the Supreme Court has tightened federal court standing requirements for intangible harms, including statutory harms. In TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, the Court held that a mere statutory violation, absent a common-law analogue, is not sufficiently concrete to grant standing. The Court did not provide clear guidance as to how stringent the common-law analogue analysis must be, other than that it does not require an “exact duplicate.” Because of the ever-evolving nature of digital data, data breach victims attempting to enforce their statutory right to privacy in federal court have struggled to rely on tradition and history …