Law Commons^™

Crashing Into The Unknown: An Examination Of Crash Optimization Algorithms Through The Two Lanes Of Ethics And Law, Jeffrey K. Gurney

Jeffrey K Gurney

Autonomous vehicles will encounter situations where an accident is truly unavoidable, requiring the vehicle to decide whom or what to hit. In such situations, the vehicle will make difficult ethical decisions based upon its programming — more specifically, how its crash-optimization algorithm is programmed.This Article examines crash-optimization algorithms from an ethical and legal standpoint through the lenses of six moral dilemmas. Ethically, the Article focuses specifically on utilitarian and Kantian ethics. Legally, the Article considers the tort and criminal law implications of crash-optimization algorithms.In addition, the Article discusses whether autonomous vehicles should even make ethical decisions. Concluding that they should …

Military Professionals As Guardians Of The Republic: The Hidden Promise Of Huntington’S The Soldier And The State, Robert E. Atkinson Jr.

Robert E. Atkinson Jr.

This paper is the first step in developing a neo-classical theory of the military officer corps as a functionalist profession. It unpacks the central paradox of Samuel P. Huntington’s The Soldier and the State: Why does an account that begins with a call for a highly professionalized officer corps to obey the orders of any legally legitimate civilian regime end with the promise that humanity can achieve both security and redemption if all the nations of the world adopt core military values? How can “militarize the military,” Huntington’s solution to the classical question of civilian/ military relations – Plato’s …

Solving The Problem Of Organ Donation Shortage, Samuel Hodge, Nicole Saitta-Gill

Samuel D. Hodge Jr.

Organ donation, a medically perfected procedure, affords a second chance at life for many people. Unfortunately, organ transplantation demonstrates the stark reality of supply and demand. Thousands of individuals are added to the transplant list each day but many more die during the same time frame waiting for new organs. The solution to this dilemma seems simple: increase the supply. This article will discuss several ways to achieve this goal. First, through the HIV Organ Policy Equity Act, which allows for HIV-positive-to-HIV-positive transplants, more transplantable organs will hopefully be available in the future. Second, the supply of organs may increase …

Virtuous Billing, Nancy B. Rapoport, Randy D. Gordon

Nancy B. Rapoport

Aristotle tells us, in his Nicomachean Ethics, that we become ethical by building good habits and we become unethical by building bad habits: “excellence of character results from habit, whence it has acquired its name (êthikê) by a slight modification of the word ethos (habit).” Excellence of character comes from following the right habits. Thinking of ethics as habit-forming may sound unusual to the modern mind, but not to Aristotle or the medieval thinkers who grew up in his long shadow. “Habit” in Greek is “ethos,” from which we get our modern word, “ethical.” In Latin, habits are moralis, which …

En Torno A La Relevancia Jurídica De Una Estrategia Empresarial Consolidada Y Subyacente: La Obsolescencia Programada (About The Juridical Relevance Of An Underlying And Consolidated Business Strategy: The Planned Obsolescence), Jesús A. Soto

Jesús Alfonso Soto Pineda

El artículo presenta la obsolescencia programada, como estrategia empresarial, basada en el diseño, planificación, proyección y control de la vida útil de los productos, con el objetivo de dinamizar la demanda y estimular el consumo; impulsando a los particulares a adquirir tras la pérdida de funcionalidad de sus bienes o su caducidad. Exponiendo igualmente los casos de mayor trascendencia que han llevado tal estrategia hasta nuestros días, haciendo hincapié en el sector tecnológico y en uno de sus exponentes de más notoriedad, la empresa multinacional norteamericana Apple. Deslindando a su vez, los caracteres que le otorgan relevancia ética a la …

Religious Freedom & Closely Held Corporations: The Hobby Lobby Case & Its Ethical Implications, Corey A. Ciocchetti

Corey A Ciocchetti

Hobby Lobby and its quest for religious freedom captured the attention of a nation for a few moments in late June 2014. The country homed in on the Supreme Court as the justices weighed the rights of an incorporated, profit-making entity run by devout individuals that objected to particular entitlements granted to women under the Affordable Care Act. The case raised important legal issues such as whether the law allows for-profit corporations to exercise religion (yes!) and whether protection for religious freedom trumps the rights of third parties to cost free preventive care (sort of!). The Supreme Court’s decision also …

Corporate Boardroom Diversity: Why Are We Still Talking About This?, Lawrence J. Trautman

Lawrence J. Trautman Sr.

What exactly is board diversity and why does it matter? How does diversity fit in an attempt to build the best board for any organization? What attributes and skills are required by law and what mix of experiences and talents provide the best corporate governance? Even though most companies say they are looking for diversity, why has there been such little progress? Are required director attributes, which are a must for all boards, consistent with future diversity gains and aligned with achieving high performance and optimal board composition? My goal is to provide answers to these questions, and to discuss …

Bullshit And The Tribal Client, Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

No abstract provided.

The Ethics Of Effective Advocacy For Children In Abuse And Neglect Proceedings, Suparna Malempati

Suparna Malempati

This article addresses ethical dilemmas lawyers face when representing children in abuse and neglect proceedings in juvenile court. Children in such cases need traditional advocacy in order to protect their legal rights and effectuate just outcomes. Lawyers who represent children have an ethical obligation to perform this function as advocates for their clients and not merely as guardians ad litem who make paternalistic recommendations about the best interests of children. The requirement that lawyers disregard their role as advocates for the role of guardians ad litem circumvents the ethical rules that govern lawyers and fails to adequately and effectively safeguard …

A Free Lunch In Chicago, Curtis E.A. Karnow

Curtis E.A. Karnow

A discussion of the ethical issues implicated by judges’ acceptance of travel and related expenses when attending privately sponsored judicial education, including seminars offered by educational institutions.

Ebola And Bioterrorism, Joshua P. Monroe

Joshua P Monroe

This paper will be a comparison of the United States government’s reaction to the recent outbreak of Ebola and will compare this response with the potential response by the United States government toward an act of biological or chemical warfare. The paper will analyze these responses from a cultural, political, legal, and policy standpoint

Ethical Frameworks, Corey A. Ciocchetti

Corey A Ciocchetti

This article discusses the three prominent business ethics theories of Utilitarianism, Deontology and Virtue Ethics. This is a short primer on these theories.

Location Data, Purpose Binding And Contextual Integrity: What's The Message, Mireille Hildebrandt

Mireille Hildebrandt

This chapter investigates the issue of the proliferation of location data in the light of the ethical concept of contextual integrity and the legal concept of purpose binding. This involves an investigation of both concepts as side constraints on the free flow of information, entailing a balancing act between the civil liberties of individual citizens and the free flow of information. To tackle the issue the chapter starts from Floridi’s proposition that ‘communication means exchanging messages. So even the most elementary act of communication involves four elements: a sender, a receiver, a message, and a referent of the message’ and …

What Do We Worry About When We Worry About Price Discrimination? The Law And Ethics Of Using Personal Information For Pricing, Akiva A. Miller

Akiva A Miller

New information technologies have dramatically increased sellers’ ability to engage in retail price discrimination. Debates over using personal information for price discrimination frequently treat it as a single problem, and are not sufficiently sensitive to the variety of price discrimination practices, the different kinds of information they require in order to succeed, and the different ethical concerns they raise. This paper explores the ethical and legal debate over regulating price discrimination facilitated by consumers’ personal information. Various kinds of “privacy remedies”—self-regulation, technological fixes, state regulation, and legislating private causes of legal action—each have their place. By drawing distinctions between various …

Teaching U.S. V. Windsor: The Defense Of Marriage Act And Its Constitutional Implications, Corey A. Ciocchetti

Corey A Ciocchetti

Students are captivated by contemporary, high-profile Supreme Court cases. They recognize the litigants featured on the news, they debate the public policy, sociological and other real world implications of the arguments in school and their peers and parents prod them to discuss their opinions outside of class. I incorporate very recent and noteworthy Supreme Court cases in my legal studies courses with great success. My students are more engaged and prepared than when I assign a textbook chapter (students would rather track the law as it develops in real time). They tend to recall the arguments and legal theories well …

Tricky Business: A Decision-Making Framework For Legally Sound, Ethically Suspect Business Tactics, Corey A. Ciocchetti

Corey A Ciocchetti

TRICK: “a crafty or underhanded device, maneuver, stratagem, or the like, intended to deceive or cheat.” Tricks are designed to outwit others in a cunning and skillful manner. Despite well-written, philosophically sound codes of ethics and core values, businesses are not above employing tricky tactics to suit their pecuniary interests. These strategies often involve the legal system as the outwitted ask courts to vindicate their rights. However, the most successful tricks are skillfully crafted to survive legal scrutiny. This article evaluates three tricky business tactics found lawful by United States Supreme Court during its most recent term. The story begins …

Student, Esquire?: The Practice Of Law In The Collaborative Classroom, Nantiya Ruan

Nantiya Ruan

Law faculty and non-profit lawyers are working together in a variety of partnerships to offer students exposure to “real life” clients in the first year of law school, as well as in advanced courses in substantive areas. Teachers engaged in client-centered advocacy through experiential frameworks have broken out of their isolated silos in the law school (e.g., legal writing, clinical, externship, and doctrinal) and begun to work together. To help students develop a sense of professional identity, cultivate professional values, and tap into key intrinsic motivations for lawyering, such as serving the public good, collaborative classrooms have an important role …

An Appeal To Aesthetics, Dorothy M. Hong

Dorothy M Hong

Aesthetics in modern time that broadens tolerance yet maintains the same criteria for beauty that casts doubts on First Amendment at times.

Between Law And Markets: Is There A Role For Culture And Ethics In Financial Regulation, Robert David, Daniel Awrey, |William Blair

robert david

The limits of markets as mechanisms for constraining socially suboptimal behavior are well documented. Simultaneously, conventional approaches toward the law and regulation are often crude and ineffective mechanisms for containing the social costs of market failure. So where do we turn when both law and markets fail to live up to their social promise? Two possible answers are culture and ethics. In theory, both can help constrain socially undesirable behavior in the vacuum between law and markets. In practice, however, both exhibit manifest shortcomings.

To many, this analysis may portend the end of the story. From our perspective, however, it …

Why Civility Matters, Gregory T. Holtz

Gregory T. Holtz

An essay on professionalism "Why Civility Matters" considers why civility is a key and fundamental component of sound and effective lawyering. The essay suggests and creates a civility framework as a means and strategy of incorporating civility into one's daily practice.

Teaching Ethics In Criminal Justice To First Year Law Students: Or Efforts To Dislodge The Csi Effect, Susan Rutberg

Susan Rutberg

Teaching Ethics in Criminal Justice to First Year Law Students:

Or Efforts to Dislodge the CSI Effect[1]

Susan Rutberg[2]

ABSTRACT

This article discusses the implementation of an innovative first year course at Golden Gate University School of Law entitled “Lawyering Skills: Ethics in Criminal Justice.” The course, offered for the first time in the spring of 2011, was the product of curricular reform set in motion by the 2007 Carnegie Foundation Report, Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law. Golden Gate University has had a longtime focus both on practical legal education and ethical training. We devote a substantial …

Pitfalls And Promises Of Social Media And Mobile Lawyering, Jonathan I. Ezor

Jonathan I. Ezor

No abstract provided.

Could You Repeat That Please? Forty-Five Years Of Pesticide Experiments On People, Barbara R. Leiterman Esq.

Barbara R. Leiterman Esq.

Little has been published in the literature about pesticide experiments conducted on human subjects. Yet there were at least twenty-two tests between 1967 and 2011 in which people were intentionally exposed to specific doses of pesticides. Almost all of these experiments violated scientific ethics and human rights. This article aims to describe those tests and their shortcomings, and explore the laws and regulations that incentivize such human experimentation. Ironically, as the public desire for pesticide safety increases, so does the industry’s motivation to test pesticides on people. Bringing these pesticide experiments to light, expanding the public discourse on the subject …

The Duty To Advise The Lorax: Environmental Advocacy And The Risk Of Reform, Keith Rizzardi

Keith Rizzardi

Lawyers have an ethical duty to advise their clients on moral, economic, social and political matters. When applied to the changing field of environmental law, this abstract notion becomes provocative. Lawyers should advise their environmental advocacy clients of the possibility that their efforts to apply statutes or rules might initially succeed, but subsequent legislative reactions might defund, reform or repeal the laws the client’s case relied upon. As a client’s sophistication decreases, or as the risk of adverse reactions to the client’s environmental advocacy increases, the lawyer’s duty to advise the client of these risks can shift from discretionary to …

The Constitutional Right Not To Kill, Mark L. Rienzi

Mark L Rienzi

Federal and state governments participate in and/or permit a variety of different types of killings. These include military operations, capital punishment, assisted suicide, abortion and self-defense or defense of others. In a pluralistic society, it is no surprise that there will be some members of the population who refuse to participate in some or all of these types of killings.

The question of how governments should treat such refusals is older than the Republic itself. Since colonial times, the answer to this question has been driven largely by statutory protections, with the Constitution playing a smaller role, particularly since the …

Neoclassical Professionalism In Law And Business, Robert E. Atkinson Jr.

Robert E. Atkinson Jr.

This paper offers a neo-classical approach to corporate reform: Remodeling the private practice of corporate law and the management of for-profit business to make both occupations better serve, together, their proper public functions. Without dismissing the recent focus of reform on external regulation of corporations or internal restructuring of corporate governance, this paper seeks the foundation for a different approach, encouraging corporate managers and lawyers as professionals to serve their occupation’s correlate values: prosperity and justice. This focus on the primary agents of modern capitalism, corporate managers and lawyers, responds both to early management reformers like Brandeis in the U.S. …

Ethics In Intellectual Property Negotiations: Issues And Illustrations, Lisa A. Dolak

Lisa A Dolak

Negotiating – formally or informally – is a characteristic aspect of law practice. The requisite skills are acquired “on the job” and, for some, via the formal study of negotiation processes and attributes. The negotiator has much to consider, including the client’s goals and interests, likely litigation outcomes should negotiations fail or any ultimate agreement be breached, and what the counterparty is likely seeking to accomplish.

The challenges include negotiating within the limits imposed by the ethics rules. This paper identifies key authorities relevant to negotiation ethics and illustrates their operation in the context of hypotheticals based on intellectual property …

Navigating The Uncharted Waters Of Teaching Law With Online Simulations, Ira Steven Nathenson

Ira Steven Nathenson

The Internet is more than a place where the Millennial Generation communicates, plays, and shops. It is also a medium that raises issues central to nearly every existing field of legal doctrine, whether basic (such as Torts, Property, or Contracts) or advanced (such as Intellectual Property, Criminal Procedure, or Securities Regulation). This creates tremendous opportunities for legal educators interested in using the live Internet for experiential education. This Article examines how live websites can be used to create engaging and holistic simulations that tie together doctrine, theory, skills, and values in ways impossible to achieve with the case method. In …

Best Practices For The Law Of The Horse: Teaching Cyberlaw And Illuminating Law Through Online Simulations, Ira Steven Nathenson

Ira Steven Nathenson

In an influential 1996 article entitled "Cyberspace and the Law of the Horse," Judge Frank Easterbrook mocked cyberlaw as a subject lacking in cohesion and therefore unworthy of inclusion in the law school curriculum. Responses to Easterbrook, most notably that of Lawrence Lessig in his 1999 article "The Law of the Horse: What Cyberlaw Might Teach," have taken a theoretical approach. However, this Article—also appropriating the “Law of the Horse” moniker—concludes that Easterbrook’s challenge is primarily pedagogical, requiring a response keyed to whether cyberlaw ought to be taught in law schools. The Article concludes that despite Easterbrook’s concerns, cyberlaw presents …

Privacy And Data Protection In Business: Laws And Practices (Sample Chapters), Jonathan I. Ezor

Jonathan I. Ezor

In the fields of digital privacy and data protection in the business world, effective compliance and risk management require not only knowledge of applicable laws and regulations, but at least a basic understanding of relevant technologies and the processes of the company or other organization that is collecting and/or using the personal information or monitoring behavior. This book is structured to provide a framework for law and other students to both learn the law and place it in the necessary technological and practical context, divided into topic areas such as children’s privacy, health information, governmental requirements, employee data and more. …