Law Commons^™

Information Age Technology, Industrial Age Laws, Elizabeth I. Winston

Scholarly Articles

The United States patent system was born during the Industrial Age — at a time where the focus was on promoting innovation in machines, and tangible means of changing the world. With the dawn of the Information Age, innovation is increasingly intangible. The industrial age laws, as currently interpreted, are not well-suited for the changing and evolving technological world. Information age innovators face challenges at the United States Patent and Trademark Office, through the judicial system and at the United States International Trade Commission. It is time for a change in the system to reflect the realities of modern technology. …

Reconstructing Malice In The Law Of Punitive Damages, Marc O. Degirolami

Scholarly Articles

Punitive damages present two related puzzles. One concerns their object. If they are punitive, their object is to punish tortfeasors. If they are damages, their object is to compensate tort victims. If they are both, the problem is to reconcile these different objects in applying them. A second puzzle involves their subject. Punitive damages are awarded for egregious wrongdoing. But the nature of that egregiousness is nebulous and contested, implicating many poorly understood terms. The two puzzles are connected, because the subject of punitive damages will inform their object. Once we know the type of wrongfulness that punitive damages deal …

Bargaining For Innovation, Elizabeth I. Winston

Scholarly Articles

Reward drives innovation. For this reason, Congress has enacted a system of patents, trademarks, and copyrights to incentivize innovation. Such publicly ordered intellectual property regulation supports public and private interests—mandating disclosure of the innovation while legislating protection of that disclosure. Increasingly, though, the legislated incentives are proving insufficient for innovation, and innovators are relying on private incentives, undermining the fundamental balance of our legal framework and maximizing the reward to innovators at the cost of the public’s interest. Enforcement of contracts that supplant legislation rather than supplement it contravenes public policy and vitiates the public’s interest. It is time to …

The End Of The Affair, Marc O. Degirolami

Scholarly Articles

Religion and liberalism have reached a complicated entente in the law of American and European democracies. At times the relationship has been diffi- dently cordial; at others something that appeared warmer. This period marked a change from previous eras of far more open mutual hostility. Liberalism and the traditional, historically rich and influential religions—particularly Christianity— never have been allies. To the contrary, liberalism was designed in part expressly to neuter the communal and political power of religion—again, especially Christianity—and to separate law from religion for the purpose of weakening the latter. The current rapprochement has endured for more than a …

Fintech: New Battle Lines In The Patent Wars?, Megan M. La Belle, Heidi Mandanis Schooner

Scholarly Articles

Historically, financial institutions have relied on trade secrets and first-mover advantages, rather than patents, to protect their inventions. For the few financial patents that were issued, conventional wisdom was that they weren’t terribly interesting or important. In our 2014 study on financial patents, we showed that banks were breaking from past patterns and increasingly seeking patent protection. We explained that financial institutions were primarily building their patent portfolios as a defensive measure—i.e., to protect themselves from infringement suits. Indeed, the finance industry successfully lobbied Congress to include provisions in the America Invents Act of 2011 that made it easier to …

Looking Beyond The Profit And Into The Light: Consumer Financial Protection And The Common Good, Veryl Victoria Miles

Scholarly Articles

The intention of this Article is to review the various statements of Catholic Social Teaching that are fundamental in describing economic justice and that are most pertinent to any consideration of consumer financial protection as essential to the common good. This review will begin with Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum and other encyclicals that followed Rerum Novarum as a continuum of Church teaching regarding social and economic justice; the pastoral letter from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops entitled Economic Justice for All (1986); and the Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace's handbook on the Vocation of …

Dobbs And The Fate Of The Conservative Legal Movement, J. Joel Alicea

Scholarly Articles

The conservative legal movement finds itself at its most precarious point since its inception in the early 1970s. That might sound implausible. The last four years saw the appointment of three Supreme Court justices, dozens of appellate judges, and nearly 200 district court judges—almost all coming from within the ranks of the conservative legal movement. Conservatives on the Supreme Court now (ostensibly) hold a 6–3 majority, making it, in all likelihood, the most conservative Court we will see in our lifetimes. It would thus be easy to conclude that the conservative legal movement is at its apogee.

But it is …

Liberalism And Disagreement In American Constitutional Theory, J. Joel Alicea

Scholarly Articles

For forty years, American constitutional theory has been viewed as a clash between originalists and non-originalists. This depiction misunderstands and oversimplifies the nature of the debate within constitutional theory. Although originalism and non-originalism describe important differences between families of constitutional methodologies, the foundations of the disagreement among theorists are the justifications that they offer for those methodologies, not the methodologies themselves. Once the debate is refocused on the justifications that theorists offer for their constitutional methodologies, it becomes clear that the debate within constitutional theory is ultimately a debate about liberalism as a political theory. Specifically, it is a debate …

Statutory Jurisdiction And Constitutional Orthodoxy In Mcculloch, Cohens, And Osborn, Kevin C. Walsh

Scholarly Articles

This essay examines the underappreciated element of statutory jurisdiction in McCulloch v. Maryland, Cohens v. Virginia, and Osborn v. Bank of the United States. One objective is to identify more precisely the Marshall Court’s jurisdictional innovations in these three foundational decisions. A close look at the question of statutory jurisdiction in the trio of McCulloch, Cohens, and Osborn reveals a kind of constitutional magnetism at work. In constitutional avoidance, a court adopts an interpretation in order to stay away from a constitutional problem. In contrast, the Marshall Court in Cohens and Osborn expanded the jurisdictional statutes at issue in order …

Who Determines Majorness?, Chad Squitieri

Scholarly Articles

The major questions doctrine is said to assist courts in identifying whether Congress has delegated authority to administrative agencies. A closer look at the doctrine, however, reveals that it has been used by courts to tell Congress how it can delegate authority. What is more, some textualists have proposed strengthening the major questions doctrine into a revived nondelegation doctrine, which speaks to whether Congress can delegate authority. This Article argues that the major questions doctrine, particularly in its strengthened form, runs afoul of key commitments of textualism.

Federalism In The Algorithmic Age, Chad Squitieri

Scholarly Articles

The robots will not be pleased with Frank Pasquale. In New Laws of Robotics, the Brooklyn Law professor outlines two possible futures that can emerge from a growing conflict between human and robotic thought. The first is a future of robotic dominance. In that future, decisions traditionally made by human professionals (e.g., who goes to jail, what medicines are prescribed, and what news gets published) are decided by robots powered by artificially intelligent algorithms. The second future offers robots a less-favored role in the ordering of human affairs. Pasquale earns the displeasure of our would-be robotic overlords by outlining the …

Child Support And Joint Physical Custody, Raymond C. O'Brien

Scholarly Articles

Child custody has evolved to the point where, at a minimum, states provide a mediated process by which parents may formulate parenting plans with court-appointed assistance. At a maximum state legislatures and courts increasingly consider joint physical custody awards. While joint physical custody safeguards the fundamental rights of parents, it nonetheless prompts practical concerns in awarding child support. Today, child support begins with state statutory guidelines, but the guidelines often fail to adequately address the economic consequences of two complete residences, one supported by a parent with fewer economic resources, and the fact that oftentimes the child drifts from one …

The Miller Trilogy And The Persistence Of Extreme Juvenile Sentences, Cara H. Drinan

Scholarly Articles

In a series of Eighth Amendment cases referred to as the Miller trilogy, the Supreme Court significantly limited the extent to which minors may be exposed to extreme sentences. Specifically, in this line of cases the Court abolished capital punishment for minors and narrowed the instances when minors may be sentenced to life without parole. Only minors convicted of homicide who are found to be “in-corrigible” may now be subject to a death-in-custody sentence. In limiting extreme sentences for youth in these ways, the Supreme Court relied upon the social and medical science that demonstrates youth are simultaneously less culpable …

A "Directed Trust" Approach To Intergenerational Solidarity In American Environmental Law And Policy: A Modest Proposal, Lucia A. Silecchia

Scholarly Articles

In recent years, much has been written about trust principles as a useful lens through which to view environmental obligations – particularly with respect to the obligations of the present generation to those who will live in the generations to come.
Underlying much of this discussion is the ancient principle of the public trust doctrine as a vehicle for meeting that intergenerational responsibility. However, while trust theory enjoys an impressive legal pedigree, it has not gained as much traction in American environmental law as might be effective for addressing contemporary environmental issues.
One reason that the trust model is not …