Law Commons^™

Combatting The Uyghur Genocide Via The Wto’S Public Morals Exception, Connor Stanford Moldo

UC Law SF International Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Ethics Gap: Mdl Leadership Versus The Attorney-Client Relationship, Lauren E. Godshall

UC Law Journal

Mass torts cases take up a massive swath of the nation’s federal court docket yet are governed by little to no substantive procedural laws. Instead, a host of regular practices for multidistrict litigation (“MDL”) management have emerged through repetition. One such practice is the selection of a plaintiff steering committee (“PSC”): a small group of experienced plaintiffs’ attorneys that control and direct the litigation from initiation through settlement or other resolution. The PSC is extremely important—determining which experts to use, which injuries to focus on, and so forth. Yet there are no set rules dictating PSC management of the litigation, …

Preserving Constitutional Integrity In The Age Of Cyberwarfare: A Paper Tiger, Or Death By A Thousand Cuts?, Darren Singh

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

The Constitution is meant to serve as a necessary constraint on unilateral Executive military actions. Today, nation-states and non-state actors can launch devastating cyberattacks on the infrastructure, economy, military, and democratic systems of the United States. These attacks do not fall within the realm of “hostile actions” necessary to constitute war. Cyberattacks from adversaries are best deterred with offensive cyberattacks of our own. The President is the best actor to superintend and direct this active defense. Neither the Constitution nor the War Powers Resolution, however, offer a framework for how the United States may respond to these threats while also …

The Constitutionality Of Brain Searches, Wayne Unger

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

If technology could read your mind and capture your thoughts as storable and processable data, would that frighten you? Recent advancements in brain-computer interfaces will likely make mind-reading a reality, and if it does, it presents the last stand or final frontier in the battle for privacy protections. It is well established that an individual must be able to retreat into their home and be free from government intrusion. But if an individual cannot retreat into their own mind free from government intrusion, then true solitude will become extinct. In a future state where braincomputer interfaces can actively decode an …

Masthead

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

No abstract provided.

The Imagination Unbound: On The New Anti-Rights Trajectory Of The U.S. Supreme Court, Joshua J. Schroeder

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

In the summer of 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court overruled an individual right for the first time in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Org. The Dobbs Court also suggested that several rights-affirming decisions including Loving v. Virginia, Griswold v. Connecticut, and Obergefell v. Hodges should be systematically reviewed to similarly determine their lasting effect, if any. The idea that decades-old precedent should be systematically reviewed by the Court to decide whether it should be overruled under the new Janus v. AFSCME balancing test is uncharted territory.

Using an ad hoc balancing test to systematize the overruling of longstanding decisions is …

A Critical And Historical Analysis Of Ohio’S Post-Millennium Regression To Major-Party Monopoly, Mark R. Brown

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Masthead

UC Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Debt As Corporate Governance, Tomer S. Stein

UC Law Journal

Corporate law is dominated by an equity-only view of corporate governance that centers on management-shareholder dynamics. This Article expands the management-shareholder paradigm by developing a novel integrated theory of corporate governance that fully accounts for the firm’s debt. To that end, the Article carries out a comprehensive analysis of debtholders’ influence on how the firm runs its affairs. This analysis reveals that debt does not merely function as a discipliner. Rather, debt forms an integral part of the ownership and governance structure of the firm through the covenants that debtholders routinely contract for. These covenants create poison pills and other …

Ethics By Appointment: An Empirical Account Of Obscured Sanctioning In Mdl Cases, Roger Michalski

UC Law Journal

Ethical norms in litigation are policed through overlapping regulatory regimes. One of these regimes is internal to litigation and split into different components, including Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 11, 26(g), and 37; Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 38; 28 U.S.C. §§ 1927 and 1447(c); as well as courts’ inherent authority to sanction litigants and attorneys. In the standard narrative, these tools provide immediate corrections to unethical conduct, unlike bar sanctions or derivative malpractice actions that are delayed and uncertain. Together, these tools aim to effectuate the goal of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 1: to make sure parties cooperate …

Local Restrictions On Renewable Energy Siting In The United States, Jesse Honig

UC Law Journal

Climate change has arrived. The next decade will provide critical opportunities to avoid the most devastating impacts of climate change. The decisions we take over the next ten years will be the difference between moderate levels of warming and warming that will cause catastrophic changes to the planet. To avoid the most devastating impacts of climate change, the United States must rapidly transition the energy sector to almost entirely renewable energy. Notwithstanding the rapid growth of renewable energy over the past decade, the United States must add renewable capacity at an unprecedented rate. To meet this challenge, many states have …

Ai Proctoring: Academic Integrity Vs. Student Rights, Samantha Mita

UC Law Journal

Advancements in artificial intelligence (“AI”) and machine learning have found their way into the classroom. The use of artificial intelligence proctoring services (“AIPS”) has risen over the past few years with little consideration for the legal and ethical consequences of their implementation. Issues such as invasion of privacy and bias often get overlooked in favor of preconceived notions of fairness and infallibility associated with the concepts of AI and machine learning. These ethical concerns are especially magnified if AIPS are used in a K-12 setting. This Note, through a lens of AI ethics, recommends a two-pronged approach that creates an …

Foreword: Fifty Years Later, An Editor Looks Back, Alan Charles Dell'ario

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Misapplication Of Inverse Condemnation Liability: A Legal Analysis Of The Application Of Inverse Condemnation Liability On Electrical Utilities, Nadra Mamou

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

No abstract provided.

The Ethics Of Defense Counsel’S Communications With Absent Class Members Before Class Certification, Candice Enders, Joshua P. Davis

UC Law Journal

Attention to how courts address the ethics of defense counsel’s communications with absent class members before class certification is valuable for two primary reasons. First, it provides insight into how courts approach ethics in class actions generally. In the class action context, courts tend to pay more attention to the relevant procedural rules—particularly to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23—than they do to codes of professional responsibility. Relatedly, they also seek to promote the policy goals that animate Rule 23 rather than to emphasize formalistic distinctions, such as when class counsel begin to represent absent class members or whether class …

Where Neutrality Stops And Reality Begins: Why Considering Identity Is Vital To Lead And Class Counsel Selection, Melissa Mortazavi

UC Law Journal

When courts consider a choice of class or lead counsel in multidistrict litigation (“MDL”) or class action suits, they often follow the idea of a neutral partisan model. Such a model idealizes lawyer conduct as a blank conduit for client interests. In theory, lawyers should be able to bring their legal expertise absent any personal experiences, individualized identity, and morality outside of practice. But the reality is that neither lawyers nor their clients can fully divorce their identities or moral viewpoints from the legal system.

This Essay argues that an identity-blind choice of class or lead counsel, grounded in a …

Class Actions’ Ethical “Kiss”: The Class Action Lawyer’S Client Is The Class, Eli Wald

UC Law Journal

The legal ethics of class actions is a mess, with many lingering, unresolved questions and conflicting answers. The culprit is a fundamental lack of agreement regarding the identity of the client, without which it is impossible to consistently resolve concerns about conflicts of interest and determine the scope of lawyers’ duties of competence and communication to the class, class representative, and class members. This Essay offers a simple solution to this disagreement: the class lawyer represents the class as an entity, not the class representatives and members, who are constituents of the class client. While conceptually simple, treating the class …

Complex Litigation Funding: Ethical Problem Or Ethical Solution?, W. Bradley Wendel, Joshua P. Davis

UC Law Journal

Commentators have worried that third-party funding, particularly in complex litigation, may give rise to ethical concerns. In this Essay, we explore an alternative possibility: third-party funding may solve ethical problems rather than cause them.

We explain why third-party funding can comply with the letter and spirit of the relevant ethical rules and why whether it causes or cures ethical problems depends on the setting. We note that if third-party funding agreements are properly structured—protecting, for example, lawyers’ independent judgment—they should not pose ethical problems. On the contrary, in some contexts third-party litigation funding may ameliorate tensions between clients and counsel. …

The Role Of Constitutional Provisions In Protecting Artificial Reproductive Technology: A Comparative Analysis Of The United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, And The United States, Gabrielle Kleyner

UC Law Science and Technology Journal

Artificial reproductive technology (ART) is a common medical treatment for individuals struggling with infertility. However, accessibility depends largely on social, economic, and legal factors. This article will examine the role constitutional provisions play in protecting access to ART, comparing countries with constitutional provisions protecting the right to health like the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Italy, with the United States, which lacks such safeguards. This article will begin by comparing the constitutional provisions protecting the right to health broadly and then explore the specific guidelines governing ART. The article ultimately finds a relationship between constitutional health protections and access to …

Litigation Takes The Stage: Using Litigation To Solve Performances In Privacy Law, Stephanie Don

UC Law Science and Technology Journal

Technology’s constant and continuous development is many steps ahead of United States’ privacy laws. This Note asserts that current domestic privacy law is years behind what technology is capable of and is merely performative. That is, privacy law claims to protect us but simply does not. Ari Ezra Waldman’s book, Industry Unbound, exemplifies how consumers and privacy professionals alike are under the false impression that the privacy profession protects consumer data. To attempt to catch up with technology’s fast-paced development—specifically in the social media space—and to create truly protective privacy law, this Note proposes that litigation be used to advance …

Ai Ethical Compliance Is Undecidable, Lorin Brennan

UC Law Science and Technology Journal

One response to concerns about AI systems has been to espouse “ethical AI,” that is, to elucidate ethical norms and then impose a legal requirement that AI systems comport with these norms. But will it work? More precisely, does there exist an effective procedure by which an AI system developer, or regulator, can determine in advance whether an AI system, once put into operation, will consistently generate output that conforms to a desired ethical norm? This paper argues “no.” The Halting Problem shows that there is no algorithm that can reliably do so for all AI systems running any allowed …

Masthead

UC Law Science and Technology Journal

No abstract provided.

Gonzalez V. Google: Testing The Boundaries Of Section 230, Ohona Chowdhury

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

No abstract provided.

On Electric Vehicles And Environmental Policies For Innovation, Shi-Ling Hsu

UC Law Science and Technology Journal

Electric vehicles have been in existence for over a century. Impetus and progress towards commercialization have been uneven. For the most part, government policy on electric vehicle development has consisted of government funding and other support for research and development. The long, meandering path that has now resulted in the emergence of Tesla as an industry leader has been documented carefully in John Graham’s The Global Rise of the Modern Plug-in Electric Vehicle. Graham’s account is remarkably broad and thorough, leaving few stones unturned, and comprehensively detailing the history of electric vehicle policy in a number of countries, and often …

Masthead

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

No abstract provided.

Free Expression In Private Stadia: The Public-Private Nexus And The Reclamation Of Free Expression In Sport, Michael K. Park

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

This Article examines how the degree of government and military entwinement with the private enterprise of sport may provide a sufficient nexus for state action, arming athletes with First Amendment protection they would otherwise not possess against private entities. It reviews sport’s historical and cultural ties to militarism and its venerated symbols before exploring the applicability of the theories of state action within the context of private stadia. Anchored by the symbiotic relationship theory, this Article analyzes how the interdependent relationship between the government/military and private sport enterprise may provide the mutual benefits necessary to establish a sports franchise as …

Border Search Rationales Ripe For Abuse, With Journalists Particularly At Risk, Bryan Sykes

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

No abstract provided.

The Collapse Of Alice’S Wonderland: Mayo’S Faulty Two-Step Framework And A Possible Solution To Patent-Eligibility Jurisprudence, Philip Hawkyard

UC Law Journal

In Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories, Inc., the Supreme Court established a two-step framework to determine whether a supposed invention that involves a “natural law” can be a patent-eligible subject matter. Two years later, the Supreme Court extended this framework in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International to “abstract ideas,” and cemented the framework as the test to determine patent-eligible subject matter. Recent cases demonstrate that this framework has collapsed from a two-step inquiry into a one-step inquiry, leading to bizarre results and legal uncertainty. This Note examines why the Mayo framework should never have been extended to abstract …

Masthead

UC Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Compelling Trade Secret Sharing, David S. Levine, Joshua D. Sarnoff

UC Law Journal

The unprecedented COVID-19 virus has brought to the forefront many challenges associated with exclusive rights in information, data, and know-how, all of which may constitute protected trade secrets. While patents have received more attention, trade secret information has limited the ability to perform research, develop, test, gain regulatory approval for, manufacture, and distribute globally and at sufficient scale and affordable prices the needed vaccines, therapeutics, diagnostics, medical devices, and personal protective equipment. Voluntary licensing efforts have proven inadequate to supply pandemic needs. Thus, compelling the sharing or licensing of trade secrets is needed not only to properly address COVID-19, but …