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Full-Text Articles in Law

Confusion Isn't Everything, Mark Mckenna, William Mcgeveran Nov 2013

Confusion Isn't Everything, Mark Mckenna, William Mcgeveran

Journal Articles

The typical shorthand justification for trademark rights centers on avoiding consumer confusion. But in truth, this encapsulation mistakes a method for a purpose: confusion merely serves as an indicator of the underlying problems that trademark law seeks to prevent. Other areas of law accept confusion or mistake of all kinds, intervening only when those errors lead to more serious harms. Likewise, every theory of trademark rights considers confusion troubling solely because it threatens more fundamental values such as fair competition or informative communication. In other words, when it comes to the deep purposes of trademark law, confusion isn’t everything. Yet …


The Priority Of Persons Revisited, John Finnis Jun 2013

The Priority Of Persons Revisited, John Finnis

Journal Articles

This essay, in the context of a conference on justice, reviews and reaffirms the main theses of “The Priority of Persons” (2000), and supplements them with the benefit of hindsight in six theses. The wrongness of Roe v. Wade goes wider than was indicated. The secularist scientistic or naturalist dimension of the reigning contemporary ideology is inconsistent with the spiritual reality manifested in every word or gesture of its proponents. The temporal continuity of the existence of human persons and their communities is highly significant for the common good, which is the point and measure of social justice, properly understood. …


Statutes In Common Law Courts, Jeffrey Pojanowski Feb 2013

Statutes In Common Law Courts, Jeffrey Pojanowski

Journal Articles

The Supreme Court teaches that federal courts, unlike their counterparts in the states, are not general common law courts. Nevertheless, a perennial point of contention among federal law scholars is whether and how a court’s common law powers affect its treatment of statutes. Textualists point to federal courts’ lack of common law powers to reject purposivist statutory interpretation. Critics of textualism challenge this characterization of federal courts’ powers, leveraging a more robust notion of the judicial power to support purposivist or dynamic interpretation. This disagreement has become more important in recent years with the emergence of a refreshing movement in …


Carolene Products And Constitutional Structure, Barry Cushman Feb 2013

Carolene Products And Constitutional Structure, Barry Cushman

Journal Articles

Justice Harlan Fiske Stone's majority opinion in United States v. Carolene Products Co. is well-known for its statement of two principles. The first is that regulatory legislation affecting ordinary commercial transactions is to be afforded a strong presumption of constitutionality. The second principle, articulated in the famous Footnote Four, qualifies the first: such a strong presumption of constitutionality is not warranted when legislation appears on its face to violate a provision of the Bill of Rights, or restricts ordinary political processes, or is directed at discrete and insular minorities. At the time the decision was announced, however, the decision in …


The Confident Court, Jennifer Mason Mcaward Jan 2013

The Confident Court, Jennifer Mason Mcaward

Journal Articles

Despite longstanding rules regarding judicial deference, the Supreme Court’s decisions in its October 2012 Term show that a majority of the Court is increasingly willing to supplant both the prudential and legal judgments of various institutional actors, including Congress, federal agencies, and state universities. Whatever the motivation for such a shift, this Essay simply suggests that today’s Supreme Court is a confident one. A core group of justices has an increasingly self-assured view of the judiciary’s ability to conduct an independent assessment of both the legal and factual aspects of the cases that come before the Court. This piece discusses …


Foreclosure Echo: How Abandoned Foreclosures Are Re-Entering The Market Through Debt Buyers, Judy Fox Jan 2013

Foreclosure Echo: How Abandoned Foreclosures Are Re-Entering The Market Through Debt Buyers, Judy Fox

Journal Articles

It is common knowledge that mortgage defaults increased steadily from 2006 through 2011. In some situations, lenders moved swiftly after default to foreclose the property; but for other homeowners the foreclosure process began and then stalled or was completely abandoned by the lender. The result of these abandoned foreclosures has been devastating to cities and consumers throughout the country. This article explores what is happening to homeowners caught up in the strange world of bank walkaways as the economy is beginning to improve. This second wave of collection activity, an echo of the original foreclosure crisis, could easily throw thousands …


Settled Versus Right: Constitutional Method And The Path Of Precedent, Randy J. Kozel Jan 2013

Settled Versus Right: Constitutional Method And The Path Of Precedent, Randy J. Kozel

Journal Articles

Constitutional precedents give rise to a jurisprudential tug-of-war. On one side is the value of adhering to precedent and allowing the law to remain settled. On the other side is the value of departing from precedent and allowing the law to improve. In this Article, I contend that negotiating the tension depends on bridging the divide between constitutional precedent and interpretive method. My aim is to analyze the ways in which theories of precedent are, and are not, derivative of overarching methods of constitutional interpretation. I seek to demonstrate that although certain consequences of deviating from precedent can be studied …


Superiority As Unity, Jay Tidmarsh Jan 2013

Superiority As Unity, Jay Tidmarsh

Journal Articles

One of Professor Redish’s many important contributions to legal scholarship is his recent work on class actions. Grounding his argument in the theory of democratic accountability that has been at the centerpiece of all his work, Professor Redish suggests that, in nearly all instances, class actions violate the individual autonomy of litigants and should not be used by courts. This Essay, prepared for a festschrift in honor of Professor Redish, begins from the opposite premise: that class actions should be grounded in the notion of social utility rather than autonomy so that class actions should be used whenever they achieve …


Fiduciary Duties And Fiduciary Outs, Julian Velasco Jan 2013

Fiduciary Duties And Fiduciary Outs, Julian Velasco

Journal Articles

Fiduciary outs are virtually ubiquitous in acquisition agreements, but almost unheard of in other contexts. This is because the fiduciary out is an inherently problematic device. Although it is not intended to do so, it almost necessarily transforms an agreement into an option in the hands of one party. Nevertheless, fiduciary outs make sense in the context of acquisition agreements. This is because fiduciary outs are essentially contractual proxies for fiduciary duties. As such, they have the same purpose: to protect shareholders from abuse at the hands of directors. Fiduciary outs do this in the context of acquisition agreements by …


Precedent And Reliance, Randy J. Kozel Jan 2013

Precedent And Reliance, Randy J. Kozel

Journal Articles

Among the most prevalent justifications for deference to judicial precedent is the protection of reliance interests. The theory is that when judicial pronouncements have engendered significant reliance, there should be a meaningful presumption against adjudicative change. Yet there remains a fundamental question as to why reliance on precedent warrants judicial protection in the first place.

This Article explores the dynamics and implications of precedential reliance. It contends that the case for protecting reliance on precedent is uncertain. There are several reasons why reliance might potentially be worth protecting, but all are subject to serious limitations or challenges. To bolster the …


Restricting Testamentary Freedom: Ex Ante Versus Ex Post Justifications, Daniel B. Kelly Jan 2013

Restricting Testamentary Freedom: Ex Ante Versus Ex Post Justifications, Daniel B. Kelly

Journal Articles

The organizing principle of American succession law — testamentary freedom — gives decedents a nearly unrestricted right to dispose of property. After surveying the justifications for testamentary freedom, I examine the circumstances in which it may be socially beneficial for courts to alter wills, trusts, and other gratuitous transfers at death: imperfect information, negative externalities, and intergenerational equity. These justifications correspond with many existing limitations on the freedom of testation. Yet, disregarding donor intent to maximize the donees’ ex post interests, an increasingly common justification for intervention, is socially undesirable. Doing so ignores important ex ante considerations, including a donor’s …


Court-Packing And Compromise, Barry Cushman Jan 2013

Court-Packing And Compromise, Barry Cushman

Journal Articles

President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1937 Court-packing bill would have permitted him to appoint six additional justices to the Supreme Court, thereby expanding its membership to fifteen immediately. Throughout the ultimately unsuccessful campaign to enact the measure, Roosevelt was presented with numerous opportunities to compromise for a measure authorizing the appointment of fewer additional justices. The President rejected each of these proposals, and his refusal to compromise often has been attributed to stubbornness, overconfidence, or hubris. Yet an examination of the papers of Attorney General Homer S. Cummings reveals why FDR and his advisors believed that he required no fewer than …


Revisiting Mary Ann Glendon: Abortion, Divorce, Dependency, And Rights Talk In Western Law, Margaret F. Brinig, Linda C. Mcclain Jan 2013

Revisiting Mary Ann Glendon: Abortion, Divorce, Dependency, And Rights Talk In Western Law, Margaret F. Brinig, Linda C. Mcclain

Journal Articles

This essay revisits Mary Ann Glendon’s comparative law study, Abortion and Divorce in Western Law and her subsequent book, Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse. Glendon’s comparative study actually included a third topic: “forms of dependency which are connected with pregnancy, marriage, and child raising.” The topic of dependency has obvious relevance to consideration of intergenerational obligations and the interplay between family responsibility and societal responsibility for addressing dependency needs. A central claim Glendon made in both books is that the U.S. legal tradition is “libertarian,” views individuals as “lone rights bearers,” and exalts the “right to be …


Progress And Competition In Design, Mark Mckenna, Katherine J. Strandburg Jan 2013

Progress And Competition In Design, Mark Mckenna, Katherine J. Strandburg

Journal Articles

This Article argues that applying patent-like doctrine to design makes sense only if a design patent system is premised on a patent-like conception of cumulative progress that permits patent examiners and courts to assess whether a novel design reflects a nonobvious step beyond the prior art. If there is a meaningful way to speak of such an inventive step in design, then design patent doctrine should be based on that conception. If nonobviousness has no sensible meaning in design, then a patent system cannot work for design. At present, design patent doctrine is in disarray because it is unmoored from …


The Federal Reserve’S Use Of International Swap Lines, Colleen Baker Jan 2013

The Federal Reserve’S Use Of International Swap Lines, Colleen Baker

Journal Articles

This Article focuses on the U.S. Federal Reserve's controversial practice of loaning U.S. dollars to foreign central banks, which the foreign central banks then turn around and loan to institutions in their jurisdictions. The Federal Reserve does not know the identity of these recipient institutions. Nevertheless, these loans-termed "swap lines"-provide foreign financial institutions the type of financial stability that the U.S. Federal Reserve was created to provide for U.S. banks during times of crises. During the financial crisis, the U.S. Federal Reserve arranged swap lines with 14 foreign central banks for a total amount of $583 billion, making it the …


Collective Representation Of Workers In The United States: Evolution Of Legal Regimes Concerning Collective Autonomy And Freedom Of Association, Barbara Fick Jan 2013

Collective Representation Of Workers In The United States: Evolution Of Legal Regimes Concerning Collective Autonomy And Freedom Of Association, Barbara Fick

Journal Articles

The United States Constitution does not directly address the collective representation of workers. The First Amendment right to freedom of association has, however, been interpreted to protect the right of individuals to form and join trade unions. This Article discusses the evolution of legal regimes concerning collective autonomy and freedom of association within the United States.


The Convergence Of International Trade And Investment Arbitration, Roger P. Alford Jan 2013

The Convergence Of International Trade And Investment Arbitration, Roger P. Alford

Journal Articles

The World Trade Organization (“WTO”) and bilateral investment treaties (“BITs”) are among the most significant legal developments in the history of international economic law. Never before in the history of international relations has trade and investment been supported by such powerful legal guarantees and adjudicative processes. In less than two decades the WTO and BITs have permanently altered the legal landscape with reciprocal and mutually advantageous arrangements designed to reduce barriers to trade and investment and eliminate discriminatory treatment in international economic relations. In most respects the worlds of trade and investment are on parallel tracks headed in the same …


A Continuum In Remedies: Reconnecting Vacant Houses To The Market, James J. Kelly Jr. Jan 2013

A Continuum In Remedies: Reconnecting Vacant Houses To The Market, James J. Kelly Jr.

Journal Articles

For decades, America’s older, undercrowded cities have struggled with neighborhoods beset by vacant houses that seemingly have no connection with a functioning real estate market. A nationwide foreclosure crisis has brought even greater attention to the need for inner-city communities to address vacant house nuisances. This paper argues that recent developments in property theory help us understand and complete reforms of legal remedies that address this continuing national need.

Traditional, in personam code enforcement remedies emanate from a legal understanding of real estate ownership as the strongest of property-rule-protected entitlements. Local government authorities hold owners directly accountable for any failures …


Sharing The Wealth, James J. Kelly Jr. Jan 2013

Sharing The Wealth, James J. Kelly Jr.

Journal Articles

This review of the textbook, "Community Economic Development Law" (Aspen 2013), written by Susan Bennett, Brenda Bratton Blom, Louise Howells and Deborah Kenn, appeared in the Vol. 22, No.1 issue of the Journal of Affordable Housing and Community Economic Development Law.


Site-Specific Laws, John Copeland Nagle Jan 2013

Site-Specific Laws, John Copeland Nagle

Journal Articles

Congress often enacts statutes that only apply to a specific place. This essay identifies the instances in which site-specific legislation is appropriate. It recounts the uses of such legislation, the theoretical debate surrounding it, and the circumstances in which it is desirable. Site-specific legislation plays an important role in enabling Congress to prescribe its preferred policy even when agreement on broader legislation. My suggestion, therefore, is that general legislation should remain the default for congressional action, but site-specific legislation is appropriate when (a) there are convincing reasons for adopting special rules for a particular place, (b) there is no agreement …


Green Harms Of Green Projects, John Copeland Nagle Jan 2013

Green Harms Of Green Projects, John Copeland Nagle

Journal Articles

This article describes the recent development of renewable energy to examine environmental law’s three contrasting approaches to the green harms of green projects. Sometimes the law allows the green benefit regardless of the green harm. Sometimes the law prohibits the green harm regardless of the green benefit. And sometimes the law allows a balancing of all of the harms and benefits, green or not. Given these options, I argue that the law should not ignore or understate green harms even if they are caused by green projects. There are some types of green harms that no benefit can justify. But …


General Law In Federal Court, Bradford R. Clark, Anthony J. Bellia Jan 2013

General Law In Federal Court, Bradford R. Clark, Anthony J. Bellia

Journal Articles

Conventional wisdom maintains that the Supreme Court banished general law from federal courts in 1938 in Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins when the Court overruled Swift v. Tyson. The narrative asserts that Swift viewed the common law as a “brooding omnipresence,” and authorized federal courts to disregard state common law in favor of general common law of their own choosing. The narrative continues that Erie constrained such judicial lawmaking by banishing general law from federal courts. Contrary to this account, Swift and Erie represent compatible conceptions of federal judicial power when each decision is understood in historical context. At the …


A Response To Harel, Hope, And Schwartz, John Finnis Jan 2013

A Response To Harel, Hope, And Schwartz, John Finnis

Journal Articles

A seminar held in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in December 2012 discussed critical comments by Alon Harel, Simon Hope, and Daniel Schwartz on themes and theses in Human Rights and Common Good, volume III of Collected Essays of John Finnis (Oxford University Press, 2011). Revised versions of these comments, and of the response I gave at this seminar, are now published in the Jerusalem Review of Legal Studies. The Response retains the informal and engaged character of this very good academic occasion. Section I considers Harel’s thesis that judicial review of legislation can be defended because my “in-authenticity” …


Overcoming Overcriminalization, Stephen Smith Jan 2013

Overcoming Overcriminalization, Stephen Smith

Journal Articles

The literature treats overcriminalization (and, at the federal level, the federalization of crime) as a quantitative problem. Legislatures, on this view, have simply enacted too many crimes, and those crimes are far too broad in scope. This Article uses federal criminal law as a basis for challenging this way of conceptualizing the overcriminalization problem. The real problem with overcriminalization is qualitative, not quantitative: federal crimes are poorly defined, and courts all too often expansively construe poorly defined crimes. Courts thus are not passive victims in the vicious cycle of overcriminalization. Rather, by repeatedly interpreting criminal statutes broadly, courts have taken …


Neutrality And The Good Of Religious Freedom: An Appreciative Response To Professor Koppelman, Richard W. Garnett Jan 2013

Neutrality And The Good Of Religious Freedom: An Appreciative Response To Professor Koppelman, Richard W. Garnett

Journal Articles

This paper is a short response to an address, “And I Don’t Care What It Is: Religious Neutrality in American Law,” delivered by Prof. Andrew Koppelman at a conference, “The Competing Claims of Law and Religion: Who Should Influence Whom?”, which was held at Pepperdine University in February of 2012. In this response, it is suggested – among other things – that “American religious neutrality” is, as Koppelman argues, “coherent and attractive” because and to the extent that it is not neutral with respect to the goal and good of religious freedom.

Religious freedom, in the American tradition, is not …


The Federal Reserve's Supporting Role Behind Dodd-Frank's Clearinghouse Reforms, Colleen M. Baker Jan 2013

The Federal Reserve's Supporting Role Behind Dodd-Frank's Clearinghouse Reforms, Colleen M. Baker

Journal Articles

This Article analyzes the Federal Reserve’s expanded role in payment, clearing, and settlement systems, particularly in connection with certain clearinghouses that have been designated by the newly created Financial Stability Oversight Council as “systemically significant.” The Federal Reserve’s expanded role is a little understood, but critical supporting component of domestic and international regulatory reforms to the $639 trillion over-the-counter (OTC) derivative markets. These reforms mandate the increased use of clearinghouses in OTC derivative markets. Due to critical reforms in Title VIII of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, the Federal Reserve is now positioned to …


Good Faith And Narrow Tailoring In Fisher, Jennifer Mason Mcaward Jan 2013

Good Faith And Narrow Tailoring In Fisher, Jennifer Mason Mcaward

Journal Articles

This piece considers three issues relating to the Supreme Court’s upcoming decision in Fisher v. University of Texas: First, how should the Court perform the narrow tailoring inquiry? Is any deference due the University with respect to its choice of means by which it seeks to diversify its class? Second, how should the relatively modest impact of the university’s racial preference impact the Court’s assessment of narrow tailoring? Third, what is the constitutional relevance of Texas’s Top Ten Percent Program? Does the relative success of the program make it a workable race-neutral alternative that constitutionally precludes the school from adding …


Living In Cafa's World, Jay Tidmarsh Jan 2013

Living In Cafa's World, Jay Tidmarsh

Journal Articles

This Article, prepared for a conference on the Class Action Fairness Act, examines the effect of CAFA on our understanding about the benefits and drawbacks of class actions. The Article describes the vision of class actions that imbues CAFA, and demonstrates how many subsequent developments in the law of class actions — including the Supreme Court’s decisions in Wal-Mart v. Dukes, AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion, and Shady Grove Orthopedics v. Allstate Insurance — have advanced CAFA’s restrictive vision about the role of class actions in modern American litigation. The Article demonstrates that competing visions about the role of class actions …


Mcculloch And The Thirteenth Amendment, Jennifer Mason Mcaward Jan 2013

Mcculloch And The Thirteenth Amendment, Jennifer Mason Mcaward

Journal Articles

Section 2 of the Thirteenth Amendment gives Congress the “power to enforce” the ban on slavery and involuntary servitude “by appropriate legislation.” The conventional view of Section 2 regards this language as an allusion to McCulloch v. Maryland’s explication of Congress’s executory powers, and holds that Congress has substantial, and largely unreviewable, power to determine both the ends and the means of Section 2 legislation. This Essay argues that the conventional view departs from the original meaning of Section 2. It demonstrates that McCulloch preserved a role for judicial review with respect to both the ends and means of federal …


A Room Of One's Own? Accessory Dwelling Unit Reforms And Local Parochialism, Margaret F. Brinig, Nicole Stelle Garnett Jan 2013

A Room Of One's Own? Accessory Dwelling Unit Reforms And Local Parochialism, Margaret F. Brinig, Nicole Stelle Garnett

Journal Articles

Over the past decade, a number of state and local governments have amended land use regulations to permit the accessory dwelling units (“ADUs”) on single-family lots. Measured by raw numbers of reforms, the campaign to secure legal reforms permitting ADUs appears to be a tremendous success. The question remains, however, whether these reforms overcome the well-documented land-use parochialism that has, for decades, represented a primary obstacle to increasing the supply of affordable housing. In order to understand more about their actual effects, this Article examines ADU reforms in a context which ought to predict a minimal level of local parochialism. …