Law Commons^™

Accelerated Civil Rights Settlements In The Shadow Of Section 1983, Katherine A. Macfarlane

Utah Law Review

The families of Eric Garner, Laquan McDonald, Freddie Gray, and Walter Scott have obtained multimillion dollar settlements from the cities in which their family members lost their lives. This Article identifies and labels these settlements as a legal response unique to high-profile policeinvolved deaths: accelerated civil rights settlement. It defines accelerated civil rights settlement as a resolution strategy that uses the threat of 42 U.S.C. Section 1983 litigation rather than litigation itself to compensate police-involved shooting victims’ family members. This Article explains how accelerated civil rights settlement involves no complaint or case—nothing is filed. Also, the goal of accelerated civil …

Making "Meaningful Access" Meaningful: Equitable Healthcare For Divisive Times, Leslie Francis

Center for Law and Biomedical Sciences (LABS)

Another anniversary of President Bush’s signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is coming up in late July, yet the nation remains far from offering even a semblance of equitable societal opportunity to most individuals with disabilities.

For them, full social participation is dismissed as merely an idealistic dream. With its focus on restoration of full functioning for patients, the health care delivery system might be supposed an exception, but a closer look shows the opposite is true.

Physicians’ offices, clinics, and hospitals too often have not been made accessible. Too frequently, these facilities have diagnostic or treatment equipment …

Toward A National Conservation Network Act: Transforming Landscape Conservation On The Public Lands Into Law, Robert B. Keiter

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

The United States has made a remarkable commitment to nature conservation on the federal public lands. The country’s existing array of national parks, wilderness areas, national monuments, wildlife refuges, and other protective designations encompasses roughly 150 million acres, or nearly 40 percent of the “lower 48” federal estate. A robust land trust movement has protected another 56 million acres of privately owned lands. Advances in scientific knowledge reveal that these protected enclaves, standing alone, are insufficient to protect native ecosystems and at-risk wildlife from climate change impacts and unrelenting development pressures. Abetted by existing law, conservation policy is now focusing …

Considerations Regarding A Canadian Patent Collective, Jorge L. Contreras

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

In its 2018 budget, the Government of Canada pledged CDN$85.3 million over five years to support an ambitious new intellectual property (IP) strategy, including CDN$30 million for the formation of a Canadian “Patent Collective.” This paper explores the possible structure and goals of such a collective, as well as potential risks and challenges of each. It concludes that appreciable technology development by Canadian firms is not likely to be achieved through the proposed patent collective, but that such a collective could assist Canadian firms by facilitating their participation in existing international defensive patent networks. The paper recommends that the proposed …

Congressional Power And Sovereignty In Indian Affairs, Michalyn Steele

Utah Law Review

The doctrine of inherent tribal sovereignty—that tribes retain aboriginal sovereign governing power over people and territory—is under perpetual assault. Despite two centuries of precedential foundation, the doctrine must be defended afresh with each attack. Opponents of the doctrine of tribal sovereignty express skepticism of the doctrine, suggesting that tribal sovereignty is a nullity because it is not unfettered. Some pay lip service to the doctrine while undermining tribes in their exercise of inherent sovereignty. Underlying many of these legal fights is confusion about both the nature of tribal sovereignty and the justifications for its continuing existence. Under current federal law, …

Playing With Fire? Testing Moral Hazard In Homeowners Insurance Valued Policies, Peter Molk

Utah Law Review

Insurance policy design and regulation continually grapples with moral hazard concerns. Yet these concerns rest largely on theory-based assumptions about how rational economic actors will respond to financial incentives. Advances in behavioral economics call these assumptions into question.

This Article conducts an empirical test of moral hazard in homeowners insurance markets. Eighteen states’ “valued policy” laws require more generous compensation by insurers for certain total house losses. I test the moral hazard prediction that fire rates will consequently be higher in these states than in others. Using a private insurance database on the cause of loss for over four million …

Game Of Drones: Rolling The Dice With Unmanned Aerial Vehicles And Privacy, Rebecca L. Scharf

Utah Law Review

The advances in technology that have resulted in the increase in the prediction as to the number of drones that may soon be in our skies—as many as seven million in 2020 alone—serve as a call to action. It serves as a call to action for those concerned with protecting individuals’ privacy without imprudently inhibiting the ability of law enforcement. It also serves as a call to action for those concerned with the Supreme Court’s Fourth Amendment jurisprudence focusing on the “reasonable expectation of privacy” standard. If the Federal Aviation Administration itself predicted six years ago that there would be …

Up For Grabs: The State Of Fossils Protection In (Recently) Unprotected National Monuments, John C. Ruple, Michael Henderson, Caitlin Ceci

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

On December 4, 2017, President Trump removed 2 million acres of land from the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments. President Trump justified the reductions in part by claiming that many of the objects contained in the original monuments were already protected by other federal laws, and that the protections previously afforded to sixty-three percent of the land in the two original monuments were “unnecessary for the care and management of the objects to be protected within the monument[s].” This article explains why, contrary to the President’s assertions, plant and invertebrate fossils on the more than two million acres …

Law Professor Amicus Brief In Massachusetts Lobstermen's Association V. Ross Regarding The Legality Of The Northeast Canyons And Seamounts Marine National Monument, Robin Kundis Craig

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

This amicus brief discusses how, under domestic law, the President can establish national monuments, pursuant to the Antiquities Act, in the ocean. It focuses on the seabed's status as "land owned or controlled by the federal government" under U.S. law, as the Antiquities Act requires, and on the President's authority to regulate fishing within marine national monuments.

Employment Discrimination And The Domino Effect, Laura T. Kessler

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Employment discrimination is a multidimensional problem. In many instances, some combination of employer bias, the organization of work, and employees’ responses to these conditions, leads to worker inequality. Title VII does not sufficiently account for these dynamics in two significant respects. First, Title VII’s major proof structures divide employment discrimination into discrete categories, for example, disparate treatment, disparate impact, and sexual harassment. This compartmentalization does not account for the fact that protected employees often concurrently experience more than one form of discriminatory exclusion. The various types of exclusion often add up to significant inequalities, even though seemingly insignificant when considered …

The History Of Misdemeanor Bail, Shima Baughman

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Bail is one of the most consequential decisions in criminal justice. The ability to secure bail often makes the difference between guilt and innocence, retaining employment and family obligations, and keeping a place to live. These implications affect those charged with felonies and this has been the focus for many years, but it affects even more so those charged with misdemeanors. A misdemeanor is theoretically a less serious crime with less serious consequences, but the effects on a defendant’s life are just as serious in the short term. There is a growing body of important empirical work that demonstrates the …

A Social Welfare Theory Of Inheritance Regulation, Mark Glover

Utah Law Review

The law of succession grants donors broad freedom to decide how to distribute their property upon death. It does so in hopes of increasing social welfare in two general ways. First, freedom of disposition generates socially beneficial estate planning decisions. In particular, donors are in the best position to evaluate their own specific circumstances and to make decisions that, on the whole, produce the greatest utility from the transfer of their estates. Second, the donor’s autonomy over estate planning decisions incentivizes socially beneficial behavior, such as productivity during the life of the donor. Because the law views freedom of disposition …

The Battlefield Of Tomorrow, Today: Can A Cyberattack Ever Rise To An “Act Of War?”, Christopher M. Sanders

Utah Law Review

In a sense, war has not changed. The end results will always remain the same: death and destruction; even if that destruction is not fully tangible. The results may be instantaneous, or they may be delayed. It is only the means implemented to achieve these destructive ends that evolve. Cyberwarfare is a product of that evolution. Most importantly, we must always remain abreast of evolution and the changes in warfare in order to effectively and efficiently respond to new attacks, and to prevent them as well.

This Note sheds light on recent evolution in warfare. It enlightens the reader of …

Corporate Social Responsibility And Social Media Corporations: Incorporating Human Rights Through Rankings, Self-Regulation And Shareholder Resolutions, Erika George

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

This article examines the emergence and evolution of selected ranking and reporting frameworks in the expanding realm of business and human rights advocacy. It explores how indicators in the form of rankings and reports evaluating the conduct of transnational corporate actors can serve as regulatory tools with potential to bridge a global governance gap that often places human rights at risk. This article examines the relationship of transnational corporations in the Internet communications technology sector (ICT sector) to human rights and the risks presented to the right to freedom of expression and the right to privacy when ICT sector companies …

The Control Of Methane And Voc Emissions From Oil And Gas Operations In The Western United States, Arnold W. Reitze Jr.

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

This article discusses the regulation of hydrocarbon emissions, including the emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from the oil and gas industry in the western United States. It covers the regulations of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Bureau of Land Management, and other Federal agencies. It also discusses the state laws of the major oil and gas producing western states: California, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming. It covers operations on public, state, and private lands, but it does not cover oil and gas operations on Indian lands that are the subject of the author’s previous article.

Inciting Terrorism On The Internet: The Limits Of Tolerating Intolerance, Amos N. Guiora

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

The Internet is a limitless platform for information and data sharing. It is, in addition, however, a low-cost, high-speed dissemination mechanism that facilitates the spreading of hate speech, including violent and virtual threats. Indictment and prosecution for social media posts that transgress from opinion to incitable hate speech are appropriate in limited circumstances. Several real-world examples discussed here help to explore when limitations on Internet-based hate speech are appropriate.

In October 2015, twenty thousand Israelis joined a civil lawsuit filed against Facebook in the Supreme Court for the State of New York. Led by the civil rights organization Shurat HaDin, …

Harvest The Wind, Harvest Your Dinner: Using Law To Encourage An Offshore Energy-Food Multiple-Use Nexus, Robin Kundis Craig

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Most scholars discuss the food-water-energy-climate nexus as it emerges on land. Less attention has been paid to the food-water-energy-climate nexus as it exists in the ocean, but that nexus exists—and it is beginning to be strained. This Article, a companion piece to the forthcoming “It’s Not Just an Offshore Wind Farm,” explores the international drive to combine offshore wind facilities with marine aquaculture, an emerging example of the water-energy-food nexus in the marine environment. Many nations are becoming increasingly interested in both offshore wind farms and open ocean marine aquaculture, but both enterprises take up considerable space in the marine …

Drought And Public Necessity: Can A Common-Law “Stick” Increase Flexibility In Western Water Law?, Robin Kundis Craig

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Drought is a recurring—and likely increasing—challenge to water rights administration in western states under the prior appropriation doctrine, where “first in time” senior rights are often allocated to non-survival uses such as commercial agriculture rather than to drinking water supply for cities. While states and localities facing severe drought have used a variety of voluntary programs to re-allocate water, these programs by their very nature cannot guarantee that water will in fact be redistributed to the uses that best promote public health and community survival.

Using the example of the Brazos River drought of 2010 to 2013, this Article explores …

Felix V. Sero : Brief Of Petitioner On Writ Of Certiorari To The Utah Supreme Court, Jennifer Joslin, Brandon Fuller

Utah Law Student Scholarship

Best Brief in the 2018 Traynor Moot Court Competition. Drafted by Jen Joslin and Brandon Fuller, S.J. Quinney College of Law.

This case turns on the great import of protecting and preserving the best interests of children. There are two questions for this Court to determine: (1) the extent to which a parent’s right to travel should influence a custody determination, and (2) the extent to which one parent may avoid paying a share of childcare expenses by asserting an equitable defense of laches. Though both questions implicate the rights and interests of the parents, this Court’s holding should come …

Natural Resources And Natural Law Part I: Prior Appropriation, Robert W. Adler

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

In recent years there has been a resurgence of civil disobedience over public land policy in the West, sometimes characterized by armed confrontations between ranchers and federal officials. This trend reflects renewed assertions that applicable positive law violates the natural rights (sometimes of purportedly divine origin) of ranchers and other land users, particularly under the prior appropriation doctrine and grounded in Lockean theories of property. At the same time, Native Americans and environmental activists on the opposite side of the political-environmental spectrum have also relied on civil disobedience to assert natural rights to a healthy environment, based on public trust …

Non-Discrimination And Frand Commitments, Jorge L. Contreras

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

A pledge to license standard essential patents (SEPs) on a non- discriminatory basis is a common element of SDO IPR Policies, part of the larger commitment to license on Fair, Reasonable, and Non- Discriminatory (FRAND) terms. In this chapter we consider what non-discrimination pledges imply for SDO member conduct. We review the basic variants of such pledges, how they may be informed by broader legal and economic defi nitions of discrimination, and recent cases and agency guidance interpreting such commitments. We conclude with open questions regarding the legal implications of non-discriminatory licensing pledges.

What Caused The 2016 Chicago Homicide Spike? An Empirical Examination Of The 'Aclu Effect' And The Role Of Stop And Frisks In Preventing Gun Violence, Paul Cassell, Richard Fowles

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Homicides increased dramatically in Chicago in 2016. In 2015, 480 Chicago residents were killed. The next year, 754 were killed–274 more homicide victims, tragically producing an extraordinary 58% increase in a single year. This article attempts to unravel what happened.

This article provides empirical evidence that the reduction in stop and frisks by the Chicago Police Department beginning around December 2015 was responsible for the homicide spike that started immediately thereafter. The sharp decline in the number of stop and frisks is a strong candidate for the causal factor, particularly since the timing of the homicide spike so perfectly coincides …

Intellectual Property Policies For Solar Engineering, Jesse L. Reynolds, Jorge L. Contreras, Joshua D. Sarnoff

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Governance of solar geoengineering is important and challenging, with particular concern arising from commercial actors’ involvement. Policies relating to intellectual property, including patents and trade secrets, and to data access will shape private actors’ behavior and regulate access to data and technologies. There has been little careful consideration of the possible roles of and interrelationships among commercial actors, intellectual property, and intellectual property policy. Despite the current low level of commercial activity and intellectual property rights in this domain, we expect both to grow as research and development continue. Given the public good nature of solar geoengineering, the relationship between …

Beyond The Pipeline Wars: Reforming Environmental Assessment Of Energy Transport Infrastructure, James W. Coleman

Utah Law Review

In recent years, the role of transport infrastructure in energy markets has become a flashpoint for legal conflict. On one hand, the world is experiencing an unprecedented buildout of all kinds of energy transport: oil and gas pipelines, liquefied natural gas projects, power transmission, and port facilities for coal and oil. On the other hand, environmental advocates have increasingly insisted that pipelines and other transport projects should not be built if they would encourage fossil fuel production in markets “upstream” and fossil fuel consumption in markets “downstream” of these projects.

Governments have struggled with how to respond. President Obama famously …

Guest Species: Rethinking Our Approach To Biodiversity In The Anthropocene, Karrigan Börk

Utah Law Review

Western environmental law rests on an outdated philosophy that only fully “natural” places, species, and ecosystems should receive full protection, while human influenced places, species, and ecosystems are lesser habitats not worthy of full-throated protection. As we move into the Anthropocene—a dawning geologic age marked by the emergence of humanity as the dominant force shaping the natural world—this simplistic view loses its power to guide our decisionmaking. In a world where more than 75% of ice free land shows evidence of human alteration, if anthropogenic species, places, or ecosystems are not worth protecting, then there simply is not enough left …

Backyard Beekeeping In The Beehive State: Salt Lake City’S Beekeeping Regulations, Nuisance Concerns, And The Legal Status Of Honey Bees, Robert T. Moriarty

Utah Law Review

Recognizing the increasing popularity of urban beekeeping and the vital role that bees play in the ecosystem, the Salt Lake City Council has acted to allow keeping bees within city limits. To ensure that bees would not present a significant nuisance, the council implemented a simple set of guidelines to regulate the practice. While the Ordinance is an excellent first step that effectively addresses most of the sources of nuisance associated with honey bees, it would be wise to reassess its provisions now that it has been in place for nearly eight years. Perhaps a survey of complaints about urban …

Cholera And Climate Change: Pursuing Public Health Adaptation Strategies In The Face Of Scientific Debate, Robin Kundis Craig

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Climate change will affect the prevalence, distribution, and lethality of many diseases, from mosquito-borne diseases like malaria and dengue fever to directly infectious diseases like influenza to water-borne diseases like cholera and cryptosporidia. This Article focuses on one of the current scientific debates surrounding cholera and the implications of that debate for public health-related climate change adaptation strategies.

Since the 1970s, Rita Colwell and her co-researchers have been arguing a local reservoir hypothesis for cholera, emphasizing that river, estuarine, and coastal waters often contain more dormant forms of cholera attached to copepods, a form of zooplankton. Under this hypothesis, climatically …

Assessing The Effectiveness Of The Eco-Patent Commons: A Post-Mortem Analysis, Jorge L. Contreras, Bronwyn H. Hall, Christian Helmers

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

The authors revisit the effect of the “Eco-Patent Commons” (EcoPC) on the diffusion of patented environmentally friendly technologies following its discontinuation in 2016. Established in January 2008 by several large multinational companies, the not-for-profit initiative provided royalty-free access to 248 patents covering 94 “green” inventions. In previous work, Bronwyn Hall and Christian Helmers (2013) suggested that the patents pledged to the commons had the potential to encourage the diffusion of valuable environmentally friendly technologies. The updated results in this paper now show that the commons did not increase the diffusion of pledged inventions, and that the EcoPC suffered from a …

The Global Standards Wars: Patent And Competition Disputes In North America, Europe And Asia, Jorge L. Contreras

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Over the past decade there has been an increasing number of disputes concerning the enforcement and licensing of patents covering technical standards. These disputes have taken on a global character and often involve litigation in North America, Europe and Asia. And while many of the parties are the same in actions around the world, courts and governmental agencies in different jurisdictions have begun to develop distinctive approaches to some of these issues. Thus, while areas of convergence exist, national laws differ on important issues including the availability of injunctive relief for FRAND-encumbered SEPs, the appropriate method for calculating FRAND royalties, …

The Flip Side Of Michigan V. Epa: Are Cumulative Impacts Centrally Relevant?, Sanne H. Knudsen

Utah Law Review

This Article explores the flipside of Michigan - v. EPA - where the Court’s logic can just as well support agencies in their public health and environmental protection efforts. In particular, taking Michigan as a blueprint, this Article argues that cumulative impacts are centrally relevant to environmental regulation and—like cost—deserve a systemic and meaningful role in agency decisionmaking, including in the threshold decision of when to regulate. In doing so, this Article serves as a counterbalance to the weight of cost benefit rhetoric that would reduce environmental law off to a line item in a strained budget.