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Full-Text Articles in Law

Parsing The Impact Of Alice And The Peg, Colleen Chien, Nicholas Halkowski, Maria He, Rodney Swartz Nov 2020

Parsing The Impact Of Alice And The Peg, Colleen Chien, Nicholas Halkowski, Maria He, Rodney Swartz

Faculty Publications

Almost two years have passed since the USPTO issued its January 2019 Patent Eligibility Guidance (PEG), itself a response to the Supreme Court’s Alice decision, and what many perceived as its destabilizing impact on the certainty of patent prosecutions. Leveraging new data releases, we report on trends in prosecution following the USPTO’s PEG and the Guidance on 112, finding 1) a decline in subject matter rejections and stabilization of subject matter appeals, 2) no discernable increase in 112 rejections, 3) no evidence that small entities were being left behind in Alice-impacted art units by forum shopping by large entities, …


Reputation Systems Bias In The Platform Workplace, E. Gary Spitko Aug 2020

Reputation Systems Bias In The Platform Workplace, E. Gary Spitko

Faculty Publications

Online reputation systems enable the providers and consumers of a product or service to rate one another and allow others to rely upon those reputation scores in deciding whether to engage with a particular provider or consumer. Reputation systems are an intrinsic feature of the platform workplace, in which a platform operator, such as Uber or TaskRabbit, intermediates between the provider of a service and the consumer of that service. Operators typically rely upon consumer ratings of providers in rewarding and penalizing providers. Thus, these reputation systems allow an operator to achieve enormous scale while maintaining quality control and user …


How Should Non-Probate Transfers Matter In Intestacy?, Mary Louise Fellows, E. Gary Spitko Jun 2020

How Should Non-Probate Transfers Matter In Intestacy?, Mary Louise Fellows, E. Gary Spitko

Faculty Publications

Current intestacy laws inadequately meet the needs of intestates. This study demonstrates that the new heir reform increases the likelihood of promoting intestates’ donative intent in a growing number of twenty-first century familial situations.


The Right To A Public Trial In The Time Of Covid-19, Stephen E. Smith May 2020

The Right To A Public Trial In The Time Of Covid-19, Stephen E. Smith

Faculty Publications

Maintaining social distance in the time of COVID-19 is a public health priority. A crowded courtroom is an environment at odds with public health needs. Accordingly, until science determines otherwise, it will be necessary for judges to manage courtroom attendance and exclude the public from trials, wholly or in part. Courtrooms may be closed to the public, despite the Sixth Amendment’s right to a public trial, when the closure is justified by a strong government interest and is narrowly tailored to further that interest. Typically, this heightened scrutiny is applied on a case-by-case basis and turns on a case’s specific …


The Washington State Second Chance Expungement Gap, Colleen Chien, Zuyan Huang, Jacob Kuykendall, Katie Rabago Jan 2020

The Washington State Second Chance Expungement Gap, Colleen Chien, Zuyan Huang, Jacob Kuykendall, Katie Rabago

Faculty Publications

Every time a person is convicted of a crime, this event is memorialized in the person’s criminal record in perpetuity, setting off thousands of potential collateral consequences, including being penalized in searches for employment, housing and volunteer opportunities. To remove these harmful consequences, Washington law allows people whose criminal records meet certain conditions to vacate their records. However, the Second Chance Gap in Washington “expungements” - the share of people who aren’t accessing the vacation remedy because of hurdles in the petition process - we suspect is large. To estimate it, we used research and practice expertise to approximately model …


Asking Too Much: The Ninth Circuit’S Erroneous Review Of Social Security Disability Determinations, Stephen E. Smith Jan 2020

Asking Too Much: The Ninth Circuit’S Erroneous Review Of Social Security Disability Determinations, Stephen E. Smith

Faculty Publications

Disability determinations made by the Social Security Administration’s administrative law judges are subject to judicial review by Article III courts. By statute, these courts apply the “substantial evidence” standard of review on appeal from the agency. The substantial evidence standard is a forgiving one that defers to the findings of the agency. But the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has modified this standard. It now reviews certain categories of SSA findings not only for substantial evidence, but for support by “clear and convincing reasons.” This heightened standard of review is facially at odds with the statutorily mandated substantial evidence standard. …


The Engagement Of U.S. Courts With International Law, David Sloss Jan 2020

The Engagement Of U.S. Courts With International Law, David Sloss

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.


Section 230 And The Duty To Prevent Mass Atrocities, David L. Sloss Jan 2020

Section 230 And The Duty To Prevent Mass Atrocities, David L. Sloss

Faculty Publications

Of course, any proposal to create a statutory exception to section 230 immunity raises a set of complex questions about the proper scope of such an exception. This article identifies the key issues that would need to be resolved if Congress decided to create an exception along these lines. The remainder of this article consists of three parts. The first part explains why removal of immunity from civil liability is an appropriate mechanism to help prevent use of social media to incite or induce commission of mass atrocity crimes. The second part contends that the exception to section 230 immunity …


Domestic Application Of Treaties, David L. Sloss Jan 2020

Domestic Application Of Treaties, David L. Sloss

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.


Constitution-Making And Transnational Legal Order, David L. Sloss Jan 2020

Constitution-Making And Transnational Legal Order, David L. Sloss

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.