Law Commons^™

Recovery Of Damages For Lost Profits: The Historical Development, Robert M. Lloyd, Nicholas J. Chase

Robert M Lloyd

ABSTRACT Recovery of Damages for Lost Profits: The Historical Development The rule of Hadley v. Baxendale is widely considered the most important rule of contract damages. In fact, however, the rule that damages must be proven with reasonable certainty is far more important in the modern practice of law. The reasonable certainty rule originated in Roman law and came to the common law through the civil law of Western Europe, developing first in the United States and spreading from the United States to England. The rule of Hadley v. Baxendale developed much in the same way, and, contrary to popular …

Trademark Law And The Prickly Ambivalence Of Post-Parodies, Charles E. Colman

Charles E. Colman

This Essay examines what I call "post-parodies" in apparel. This emerging genre of do-it-yourself fashion is characterized by the appropriation and modification of third-party trademarks — not for the sake of dismissively mocking or zealously glorifying luxury fashion, but rather to engage in more complex forms of expression. I examine the cultural circumstances and psychological factors giving rise to post-parodic fashion, and conclude that the sensibility causing its proliferation is one grounded in ambivalence. Unfortunately, current doctrine governing trademark parodies cannot begin to make sense of post-parodic goods; among other shortcomings, that doctrine suffers from crude analytical tools and a …

The Federal Government’S History In Public Education: Massive Reform Efforts For Political And Corporate Enhancement, Brett A. Geier

Brett A Geier

The role of the federal government in public education was purposefully absent in the formation of the United States Constitution. The Tenth Amendment delegated the power of educating the citizenry to each individual state. Therefore, each state in the nation has its own distinctive clause governing public education. The federal government's role was periphery at best. In 1965, President Johnson sought to mitigate poverty with an infusion of federal dollars for the nation's neediest students. As more funds were allocated by the federal government, the more restrictions and requirements were placed on schools. This accountability paradigm opened the door for …

The Commons, Capitalism, And The Constitution, George Skouras

George Skouras

Thesis Summary: the erosion of the Commons in the United States has contributed to the deterioration of community and uprooting of people in order to meet the dynamic demands of capitalism. This article suggests countervailing measures to help remedy the situation.

Rediscovering Cumulative Creativity From The Oral Formulaic Tradition To Digital Remix: Can I Get A Witness?, Giancarlo Francesco Frosio

Giancarlo Francesco Frosio

For most of human history the essential nature of creativity was understood to be cumulative and collective. This notion has been largely forgotten by modern policies regulating creativity and speech. As hard as it may be to believe, the most valuable components of our immortal culture were created under a fully open regime with regard to access to pre-existing expressions and reuse. From the Platonic mimēsis to the Roman imitatio, from Macrobius’ Saturnalia to the imitatio Vergili, from medieval auctoritas and Chaucer the compilator to Anon the singer and social textuality, from Chrétien’s art of rewriting to Shakespeare’s “borrowed feathers,” …

At&T V. Concepcion: The Problem Of A False Majority, Lisa Tripp, Evan R. Hanson

Lisa Tripp

The Supreme Court’s 2011 decision in AT&T v. Concepcion is the first case where the Supreme Court explores the interplay between state law unconscionability doctrine and the vast preemptive power of the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA). Although it is considered by many to be a landmark decision which has the potential for greatly expanding the already impressive preemptive power of the FAA, something is amiss with Concepcion.

AT&T v. Concepcion is ostensibly a 5-4 majority decision with a concurring opinion. However, the differences in the majority and concurring opinions are so profound that it appears that Justice Thomas actually …

La Lex Mercatoria Contextualisée: Tracer Son Parcours Intellectuel, Dave De Ruysscher

Dave De ruysscher

Lex mercatoria is, as a label for contemporary transnational commercial law, well known from legal literature regarding international markets . Some arguments with respect to that concept have historical implications: a medieval body of commercial law is often considered as the predecessor of the lex mercatoria of today. Yet, legal historians have recently questioned whether a medieval commercial law existed in a uniform sense in different locations. As a result, the intellectual history of the concept of lex mercatoria is the more interesting. In this article, it is demonstrated that this notion was introduced in legal literature on international markets …

Slideshow: Bank Monopoly Power In The Usa, Symphony Music

Symphony Music

Slideshow about US bank monopoly power. A distilled history of banking evolution to what it is today and the shift away from the Public Trust. Includes the bank's tactical response strategy.

Nulidad Y Forma En El Proceso Civil - Perspectiva Histórica De La Función De La Nulidad Procesal En Su Camino Hacia El Modelo De La Finalidad, Renzo Cavani

Renzo Cavani

This essay intends to build an historical-legal analysis about the evolution of the nullity in civil procedure law, showing a progressive flexibilization of the legal formalism. The investigation covers Roman Law, Middle Age, the most important codifications of 19th Century, and finally arriving in the model adopted by the italian Code of Civil Procedure, which severely influenced the regulation of the nullity in the peruvian Code.

Getting Away With Murder (Most Of The Time): A Sesquicentennial Analysis Of Civil War Era Homicide Cases In Boone County, Missouri, Frank O. Bowman Iii

Frank O. Bowman III

In the quarter century centered on the Civil War, 1850-1875, fifty-three homicide cases came before the courts of Boone County, Missouri, of which Columbia, home of the University of Missouri, is the county seat. To remarkable degree, the story of these killings, told in this article, is a chronicle of the place and period.

The article’s method might be described as “murder as social history.” Its narrative thread is an effort to explain the remarkable fact that only twelve of the fifty-three defendants charged with murder were ever convicted of any form of criminal homicide. The explanation requires an introduction …

A Brief History Of Fruit And Vegetable Juice Regulation In The United States, Ryan A. Ward

Ryan A Ward

This Paper chronicles the interesting history behind fruit and vegetable juice regulation in the United States. Part I discusses the use of tariffs and standards of identity to regulate juice from the early 1900s until the 1970s. Part II traces the history of labeling regulations for both 100 percent juices and diluted juice beverages — focusing on the 1974 diluted-juice proposal that was stalled for nearly fifteen years. Part III briefly describes the current label-focused approach adopted by the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. Part IV concludes.

Internet History, Raphael Cohen-Almagor

raphael cohen-almagor

This paper outlines and analyzes milestones in the history of the Internet. As technology advances, it presents new societal and ethical challenges. The early Internet was devised and implemented in American research units, universities, and telecommunication companies that had vision and interest in cutting-edge research. The Internet then entered into the commercial phase (1984-1989). It was facilitated by the upgrading of backbone links, the writing of new software programs, and the growing number of interconnected international networks. The author examines the massive expansion of the Internet into a global network during the 1990s when business and personal computers with different …

The Changing Face Of Liberalism In Workplace Democracy: The Shift From Collective To Individual Rights, Emily Eschenbach Barker

Emily Eschenbach Barker

The 1960s and 1970s saw a drastic change in the liberal conception of workplace equality. Post-war liberals defined equality in terms of collective rights, with labor law and unions epitomizing this conception. The civil rights generation, on the other hand, thought equality to be based in the rights of the individual. As new laws upholding individual civil rights proliferated, employers found themselves increasingly bound by incompatible legal duties under the two parallel systems governing labor rights.

Through their union agreements, employers were bound to treat all employees identically; administering vacations, bonuses, and promotions according to seniority as outlined in the …

How Securities Regulation Really Works: A Comparative Study Of The Regulatory, Principled, And Normative Reputational Approaches To Securities Regulation, Amy Aiq

Amy Wall

This paper compares international securities regulation through the lens of a structural and historical analysis. The regulatory, principled and normative reputational models of securities regulation as exemplified by the U.S., U.K. and China are discussed. A discussion of the foundations of securities markets lays the groundwork for understanding different underlying purposes of securities regulation. The paper follows the development of securities markets from the roots of the 17th century European trading companies, through the statist polices that created the bond markets, to the transatlantic crossing and the development of the investment banking system and creation of governmental agencies enforcing securities …

Why Is Small Business The Chief Business Of Congress?, Mirit Eyal-Cohen

Mirit Eyal-Cohen

Small business is a sacred cow in America. In 1958, Congress created the Small Business Investment Company ("SBIC"), a unique public-private program that provides long-term capital to small entrepreneurs. From its inception, however, the SBIC has been plagued by inefficiency and failure. Yet, Congress continues to pour millions of dollars into the SBIC program, with no end in sight. What explains this failed policy course?

This article argues that the SBIC program exemplifies the pitfalls of legal and political institutional path dependency and should be replaced by private institutional lending system. Pursuant to this account, past decisions can influence future …

The Splendid Isolation Revisited: Lessons From The History Of Veterans Benefits Before Judicial Review, James D. Ridgway

James D. Ridgway

The history of warfare is grittier and more complex than that portrayed by the jingoistic news reels of old. So too, the history of veterans benefits is much more checkered and conflicted than might be suggested by slogans welcoming home the nation’s heroes. Understanding the history and origins of a complex administrative area such as veterans law is vitally important to good practice and thoughtful scholarship. However, because attorneys were not involved in the system for generations while it evolved during two centuries without the oversight of judicial review, very few practitioners or scholars today have any direct experience with …

Our Unsettled Ninth Amendment: An Essay On Unenumerated Rights And The Impossibility Of Textualism, Louis Michael Seidman

Louis Michael Seidman

The Ninth Amendment – our resident anarchic and sarcastic “constitutional jester” – mocks the effort of scholars and judges alike to tame and normalize constitutional law. It is not as if the stern disciplinarians haven’t tried. We now have two generations worth of painstaking, erudite, and occasionally brilliant scholarship that attempts to rein it in. Yet the amendment stubbornly resists control. It stands as a paradoxical, textual monument to the impossibility of textualism, an entrenched, settled instantiation of the inevitability of unsettlement. If it did not exist,

This essay has two parts. In Part I, I present a new and, …

Presidential Ambitions Of U.S. Supreme Court Justices: A History And An Ethical Warning, William G. Ross

William G. Ross

A remarkably large number of U.S. Supreme Court justices have had presidential aspirations while serving on the Court. Several have conducted covert presidential campaigns, and a few nineteenth century justices even campaigned openly from the bench. In at least three quarters of the elections between 1832 and 1956, one or more justices attempted to obtain a presidential or vice presidential nomination or were prominently mentioned as possible candidates. During the past half century, no Supreme Court justice appears to have entertained serious presidential ambitions, probably because no justice who has been appointed during the past fifty years has held any …

Jesus Follows The Socratic Method, Kristopher Eugene Nichols

Kristopher Eugene Nichols

This article, Jesus Follow the Socratic Method, is a detailed analysis and comparison of the trials of Socrates and Jesus of Nazareth. An investigation of these men and trials, two of the most famous in Western history, uncovers truths about human nature, the justice systems of these two ancient societies, and the power and danger of the spoken word to a vocal critical thinker in his own society. This article is twenty-two pages long, contains footnotes and follows the Bluebook format.

Radicals In Their Own Time: Four Hundred Years Of Struggle For Liberty And Equal Justice In America [Introduction & Selected Chapter Extracts], Michael Anthony Lawrence

Michael Anthony Lawrence

This book explores the lives of five individuals whose lifetimes, laid beginning to end, together form a nearly-continuous sweep of four hundred years of American history: Roger Williams (1603-1683), Thomas Paine (1737-1809), Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902); W.E.B Du Bois (1868-1963); and Vine Deloria (1933-2005). Radicals all, each did more than anyone during their respective eras to challenge and ultimately force government to honor Americans’ natural birthright of individual liberty and equal justice. Each, has had a profound impact on American history.

In discussing Williams, Paine, Stanton, Du Bois and Deloria, this book makes two important observations. First, each argued in …

Rights, Race, And Manhood: The Spanish American War And Soldiers’ Quests For First Class American Citizenship, Julie Novkov

Julie Novkov

Unlike the Civil War and Reconstruction, the Spanish American War and the Philippine Resistance were not accompanied by significant rights advances for people of color. Rather, rights continued to flow in retrograde, with increased political and cultural repression. Men of color contributed substantially and formally to the war effort, with companies of black and Filipino soldiers serving in combat and many individual Latinos, Native Americans, and Asian men and male descendants of Asians serving as well. Nonetheless, they were unable to leverage service into successful claims to the rights of manhood. This paper explores these dynamics in the context of …

Keepers Of The New Covenant: The Puritan Legacy In American Constitutional Law, Daniel F. Piar

Daniel F. Piar

No abstract provided.

Sacrifice And Civic Membership: The Case Of World War I, Julie Novkov

Julie Novkov

In the Civil War and World War II, many men of color gained rights while women's rights were in retrograde. While World War I is not a perfect mirror image of the Civil War and World War II, it may make sense to think of World War I as reversing the polarities that were in operation in the two other major conflicts. To understand this dynamic, this paper will explore the kinds of claims that men of color and women made for rights based in forms of civic service and sacrifice, how those claims were met by various state actors, …

Keepers Of The New Covenant: The Puritan Legacy In American Constitutional Law, Daniel F. Piar

Daniel F. Piar

No abstract provided.

Keepers Of The New Covenant: The Puritan Legacy In American Constitutional Law, Daniel F. Piar

Daniel F. Piar

The thesis of the article is that the modern Supreme Court has come to use law just as the American Puritans did: as a tool for regulating and safeguarding the internal, spiritual needs of the populace. Through close readings of landmark civil rights cases, and of primary Puritan texts, I demonstrate that just as the Puritans were concerned with using civil authority to safeguard the soul’s progress to salvation, so does the modern Supreme Court use law to ensure what it sees as the proper conditions for spiritual development. I then remark on several implications of this parallel, including the …

Negro Blood In His Veins: The Development And Disappearance Of The Doctrine Of Defamation Per Se By Racial Misidentification In The American South, Samuel L. Brenner

Samuel L Brenner

Between the late eighteenth century and the middle of the twentieth century, a number of states in the American South and West (and at least one in the North) recognized some form of the doctrine of defamation per se by racial misidentification (DPSRM). By making a claim under this doctrine, white plaintiffs could recover from defendants who had falsely or mistakenly identified the plaintiffs as “colored,” “negro,” or the like, even absent proof of damages. By the early twentieth century, the doctrine appeared both powerful and monolithic in the Southern states, with courts routinely applying what appeared to be the …

Article 53(B) Epc: A Challenge To The Novartis Theory Of European Patent History, Justine Pila

Justine Pila

In this article the authoritative ('Novartis/transgenic plant systems') interpretation of the Article 53(b) EPC exclusion from European patentability of plant and animal varieties, and essentially biological processes for the creation of plants and animals, is considered, and its significance for the trend of EPO jurisprudence and legitimacy of the EC Biotechnology Patenting Directive noted. The Enlarged Board of Appeal's justification for that interpretation in 'Novartis' with reference to the exclusion's legislative history is challenged, and an alternative theory of that history proposed, based on a thorough analysis of the unpublished 'travaux preparatoires' for the Strasbourg and European Patent Conventions. In …

Chemical Products And Proportionate Patents Before And After Generics V Lundbeck, Justine Pila

Justine Pila

In Generics Ltd v Lundbeck A/S (2009) UKHL 12, the House of Lords affirmed the validity of a patent for a chemical product - an isolated stereoisomer - supported by a method of producing the product, but protecting the chemical product as such independent of the method by which it was made. In so doing, it appears to have resolved a longstanding tension between granting patents for chemical products and requiring that the scope of monopoly rights equiperate with the disclosure in the specification. It also appears to have rejected the Biogen Inc v Medeva plc (1997) RPC 1 (HL) …

People As Crops, Evelyn L. Wilson

Evelyn L. Wilson

In 1807, Congress passed a law prohibiting the importation of slaves. The South began to feel the effect of labor shortages and prices escalated. To meet this demand, farmers in the upper south states, especially Virginia, began the systematic breeding of slaves for sale to the southwest. Through the use of statements from Virginia statesmen and from some of Virginia’s former slaves, my paper discusses slave breeding, first as a consequence of slavery, as an added benefit to the labor obtained from the slave.

My father was born in Virginia, as was his father, as was his father, as was …

Gender And The Chinese Legal Profession In Historical Perspective: From Heaven And Earth To Rule Of Woman?, Mary Szto

Mary Szto

This article first discusses the current phenomenon of women judges and male lawyers in China. Many women have joined the ranks of the Chinese judiciary because this is considered a stable job conducive to caring for one’s family, as opposed to being a lawyer, which requires business travel and heavy client entertaining. I then trace this phenomenon to ancient views of Heaven, earth, gender and law in China. In this yin/yang framework, men had primary responsibility for providing sustenance for both this life and the life to come and women were relegated to the “inner chambers”. Also, law was secondary …