Law Commons^™

A Tale Of Two Jurisdictions, Alan M. Trammell

Scholarly Articles

The Supreme Court has recently clarified one corner of personal jurisdiction—a court’s power to hale a defendant into court—and pointed the way toward a coherent theory of the rest of the doctrine. For nearly seventy years, the Court has embraced two theories of when jurisdiction over a defendant is permissible. The traditional theory, general jurisdiction, authorizes jurisdiction when there is a tight connection between the defendant and the forum. The modern theory, specific jurisdiction, focuses more on the connection between the lawsuit itself and the forum. Although the two theories should have developed in tandem, the doctrine has become a …

The Intended Parent: The Power And Problems Inherent In Designating And Determining Intent In The Context Of Parental Rights, Heather Kolinsky

Scholarly Articles

This Article seeks to consider and discuss the intent to parent and, particularly, the use of the words intent and intentional in the context of assigning legal parental rights. Problems and preferences have arisen from the use of this paradigm and the notion that intent can be fixed at any one point in time. This Article discusses how this historical use of intent and intentional parenthood may impact the evolving field of parental form, considering whether we will carry forward some of the same problems and preferences into newer forms of the assignment of legal parental rights.

The Article first …

"Was The Deal Worth It?": The Dilemma Of States With Ineffective Economic Incentives Programs, Randle B. Pollard

Scholarly Articles

Federal subsidies to state and local governments have been substantially reduced due to public opinion prioritizing the reduction of the federal deficit, the recent "fiscal cliff" legislation, and the federal budget "sequester cuts." In addition, in many states, revenue collection from individual and corporate income tax is below prerecession levels. To address the reduction in federal funding and reduced revenue collections, state and local governments will increasingly rely on economic incentive programs to grow their economies through increased job creation and private capital investment within their jurisdictions. These economic incentive programs are no longer comprised of simple tax reductions for …

Feeling Insecure—A State View Of Whether Investors In Municipal General Obligation Bonds Have A Mere Promise To Pay Or A Binding Obligation, Randle B. Pollard

Scholarly Articles

The City of Detroit's filing for municipal bankruptcy in July, 2013, has added to a continuing controversy of whether general obligation bondholders have a secured lien. The City of Detroit claimed its general obligation bondholders did not have a fully secured lien because the law of the state of Michigan did not create a statutory lien. Without the creation of a lien by state law, during the insolvency or bankruptcy of municipalities, general obligation bondholders will potentially have a mere promise to pay versus a binding obligation to pay, and therefore, will not have a secured lien. Treating otherwise secured …

Isolating Litigants: A Response To Pamela Bookman, Alan M. Trammell

Scholarly Articles

In a recent article, Litigation Isolationism, Pamela Bookman identifies a phenomenon that similarly changes hue depending on one’s perspective or disposition. Bookman argues that four doctrines (personal jurisdiction, forum non conveniens, abstention comity, and the presumption against extraterritoriality) conspire to make U.S. courts significantly less hospitable to transnational litigation. In Bookman’s assessment, such isolationism is counterproductive because the doctrines often fail to vindicate their stated goals of respecting the separation of powers, international comity, and defendants’ interests. The article is crisp and elegant. It synthesizes disparate areas of law to elucidate a broader development in civil litigation. And it makes …

Reforming The Global Value Chain Through Transnational Private Regulation, Kishanthi Parella

Scholarly Articles

In many industries, corporations have changed the organization of their production from a vertically integrated model to a model that is often characterized by outsourcing-shifting business activities to external parties -and offshoring, where production occurs at sites overseas. The global value chain (GVC) for an American corporation often involves several tiers of suppliers. One end of the GVC is often occupied by a multinational buyer (MNB), such as a large brand name corporation. At the opposite end of the value chain are the factories, farms, and other production sites that supply multinational corporations with their goods. This organization of production …

Lessons From Institutional Shareholder Services: Governing Benefit Corporations' Third-Party Standard, Tammi S. Etheridge

Scholarly Articles

Third-party standard providers for benefit corporations will likely acquire the same level of success as Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS). Consequently, the public should be leery of encountering the same concerns, specifically, a lack of transparency, including undefined analytic models, inaccurate and incomplete information, and conflicts of interest. Going forward, the public should also be especially mindful of standard-providing organizations that also sell consulting services. As more states pass benefit corporation legislation, it is imperative that these issues be addressed and that solutions be proposed. Lax and uneven implementation of the third-party standard could mean that benefit corporation regulation, despite being …

Professors Do Not Provide Childs Support, Gregg D. Polsky, Brant J. Hellwig

Scholarly Articles

In "Structuring Legal Fees Without Annuities: Offspring of Childs," Tax Notes, July 20, 2015, p. 341 , Robert W. Wood argues that Childs v. Commissioner, 103 T.C. 634 (1994), provides tremendous investment flexibility for plaintiffs' lawyers who choose to invest their contingent fees in tax-favored structured attorney fee products. Likewise, Gerald Nowotny has recently noted that the Childs case allows those lawyers to invest their contingent fees in private placement variable annuities.

We agree with Wood and Nowotny. In fact, the reasoning of Childs would allow any taxpayer in any industry to use similar vehicles to invest items of …

Stepping Beyond Nuremberg’S Halo: The Legacy Of The Supreme National Tribunal Of Poland, Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

The Supreme National Tribunal of Poland (Najwyzszy Trybunal Narodowy (Tribunal)) operated from 1946 to 1948. It implemented the 1943 Moscow Declaration in the case of suspected Nazi war criminals. This article unpacks two of the Tribunal’s trials, that of Rudolph Hoess (Kommandant of Auschwitz (Oswiecim) and Amon Goeth (commander of the Krakow-Plaszow labour camp). Following an introduction, the article proceeds in four sections. Section 2 sets out the Tribunal’s provenance and background, offering a flavour of the politics and pressures that contoured (and co-opted) its activities so as to recover its place within the imagined spaces of international criminal accountability. …

Children's Rights In The Midst Of Marriage Equality: Amicus Brief In Obergefell V. Hodges By Scholars Of The Constitutional Rights Of Children, Tanya Washington, Susannah Pollvogt, Catherine Smith, Lauren Fontana

Scholarly Articles

Many scholars have called for the acknowledgement and treatment of children's rights as constitutionally protected and enforceable, and Supreme Court precedent establishes that the government may not punish children for matters beyond children's control. Same-sex marriage bans and non-recognition laws, which are collectively referred to as marriage bans, impose prohibited punishment on children for being born into, or parented by, same-sex families. States argue that marriage is the optimal familial environment for children, yet marriage bans categorically exclude an entire class of children -- children in same-sex families -- from the legal, economic, and social benefits of marriage. In response …

Speech And The Truth-Seeking Value, Brian C. Murchison

Scholarly Articles

Courts in First Amendment cases long have invoked the truth-seeking value of speech, but they rarely probe its meaning or significance, and some ignore it altogether. As new cases implicate questions of truth and falsity, thorough assessment of the value is needed. This Article fills the gap by making three claims. First, interest in truth-seeking has resurfaced in journalism, politics, philosophy, and fiction, converging on a concept of provisional or “functional” truth. Second, the appeal of functional truth for the law may be that it clarifies thinking about a range of human priorities—survival, progress, and character—without insisting on truth in …

La Determinación Obligatoria Del Objeto Social: Una Regla Anacrónica, Alfonso Montoya Stahl, Fernando Loayza Jordán

Scholarly Articles

En el presente artículo, los autores discuten la presunta utilidad como inconvenientes de la obligación de determinar el objeto social. En ese sentido, se analiza las características exigidas al objeto social, como los supuestos beneficios que traería su regulación. Los autores proponen la eliminación de la obligación de determinar el objeto social a fin de permitir a las sociedades configurar libremente su actividad, sin verse limitadas por una norma rígida.

The authors discuss the alleged utility as well as the drawbacks of the mandatory determination of corporate purpose. They analyze and criticize the required characteristics of the corporate purpose by …

Brief Of Thirty-Four Law Professors As Amici Curiae In Support Of Appellants: Altera Corp. V. Papst Licensing Gmbh, Christopher B. Seaman

Scholarly Articles

The amici curiae are law professors who teach and write on civil procedure and/or patent law and policy. As such, amici are interested in the effective functioning of the courts and the patent system in general. Amici believe that this Court’s rigid rule restricting personal jurisdiction in patent declaratory judgment actions both flouts Supreme Court precedent and frustrates the public policy of clearing invalid patents. Although amici hold different views on other aspects of modern patent law and policy, they are united in their professional opinion that this Court should overturn its inflexible jurisdictional rule.

Brief Amicus Curiae Of Intellectual Property Professors In Support Of Neither Party: Halo Elecs. Inc. V. Pulse Elecs. Inc. And Stryker Corp. V. Zimmer, Inc., Christopher B. Seaman, Jason Rantanen

Scholarly Articles

This amicus brief was filed on behalf of several intellectual property law professors in Halo v. Pulse and Stryker v. Zimmer regarding the appropriate standard for enhancing (increasing) damages under section 284 of the Patent Act, 35 U.S.C. § 284. It advances three primary arguments. First, it asserts that in light of the history of the statutory text and judicial precedent, willful infringement is the appropriate standard (and thus the only valid basis) for awarding enhanced damages under § 284. Second, it contends that Federal Circuit’s two-part, objective/subjective test for determining willfulness articulated in In re Seagate Technology, LLC, …

The Prior Convictions Exception: Examining The Continuing Viability Of Almendarez-Torres Under Alleyne, Meg E. Sawyer

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Taking Pedophilia Seriously, Margo Kaplan

Washington and Lee Law Review

This Article pushes lawmakers, courts, and scholars to reexamine the concept of pedophilia in favor of a more thoughtful and coherent approach. Legal scholarship lacks a thorough and reasoned analysis of pedophilia. Its failure to carefully consider how the law should conceptualize sexual attraction to children undermines efforts to address the myriad of criminal, public health, and other legal concerns pedophilia raises. The result is an inconsistent mix of laws and policies based on dubious presumptions. These laws also increase risk of sexual abuse by isolating people living with pedophilia from treatment.

The Article makes two central arguments: (1) although …

Administrative Federalism As Separation Of Powers, David S. Rubenstein

Washington and Lee Law Review

Federal agencies are key players in our federalist system: they make front-line decisions about the scope of federal policy and whether such policy should preempt state law. How agencies perform these functions, and how they might fulfill them better, are questions at the heart of “administrative federalism.” Some academic proposals for administrative federalism work to enhance states’ ability to participate in federal agency decisionmaking. Other proposals work to protect state autonomy through adjustments to the Supreme Court’s administrative preemption doctrine. As jurists and scholars debate what these proposals entail for federalism, this Article doubles-down with a twist: it examines what …

Asset Preservation And The Evolving Role Of Trusts In The Twenty-First Century, Jay A. Soled, Mitchell M. Gans

Washington and Lee Law Review

For the vast majority of the twentieth century, trusts served two pivotal roles. The first was as a vehicle to help mitigate federal and state estate tax burdens, the rates of which could be quite significant. The second was to assist in asset preservation, safeguarding trust beneficiaries from their profligacy, former spouses, creditors, and the like.

At the start of the twenty-first century, Congress passed legislation that curtailed the impact of the federal estate tax, and many state legislatures have followed suit, either eliminating or significantly reducing their estate taxes. As a result of these legislative changes, trust instrument reliance …

Frank Miller’S Sin City College Football: A Game To Die For And Other Lessons About The Right Of Publicity And Video Games, Jordan M. Blanke

Washington and Lee Law Review

The challenge of finding a workable solution for applying the right of publicity is a formidable one because it implicates not only a delicate balance between First Amendment rights and the rights of publicity, but also the complications of varying state laws. The best of the tests developed by the courts so far—the transformative use test—was borrowed from copyright law and itself reflects a careful balance between First Amendment and copyright interests. Additionally, because of dramatic progress in technology, it is likely that in the near future this balancing will often involve not only the rights of publicity and the …

“Groove Is In The Hart”: A Workable Solution For Applying The Right Of Publicity To Video Games, R. Garrett Rice

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Comment On The Prior Convictions Exception: Examining The Continuing Viability Of Almendarez-Torres Under Alleyne, Kevin Flynn

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Proceedings Of The Ninth International Humanitarian Law Dialogs, International Criminal Law: Year In Review 2014–2015, Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

This publication is based on Professor Drumbl's remarks on September 1, 2015, at the Ninth International Humanitarian Law Dialogs held in Chautauqua, New York.

What I do not want to do is review and repeat what has already been said about the international arena. I thought what I would do is boil it down to a couple observations that I have about the activities at the international institutions over the past year, and discuss four elements that have emerged.

One is transition. What I mean by this is that the work of a number of the international institutions is winding …

Comment On “Groove Is In The Hart”: A Workable Solution For Applying The Right Of Publicity To Video Games, Christopher B. Seaman

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Irrelevance Of Prisoner Fault For Excessively Delayed Executions, Russell L. Christopher

Washington and Lee Law Review

Are decades-long delays between sentencing and execution immune from Eighth Amendment violation because they are self-inflicted by prisoners, or is such prisoner fault for delays simply irrelevant to whether a state-imposed punishment is cruel and unusual? Typically finding delay to be the state’s responsibility, Justices Breyer and Stevens argue that execution following upwards of forty years of death row incarceration is unconstitutional. Nearly every lower court disagrees, reasoning that prisoners have the choice of pursuing appellate and collateral review (with the delay that entails) or crafting the perfect remedy to any delay by submitting, as Justice Thomas has invited complaining …

The Prior Convictions Exception—A Comment, Matthew Engle

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

When Helpers Hurt: Protecting Taxpayers From Preparers, Michelle Lyon Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

In this article, Drumbl explores return preparer regulation as a policy matter and questions what would be gained by applying Circular 230 to return preparers.

Foreign Investments And The Market For Law, Erin O'Hara O'Connor, Susan D. Franck

Scholarly Articles

In this Article, Professors O’Hara O’Connor and Franck adapt and extend Larry Ribstein’s positive framework for analyzing the role of jurisdictional competition in the law market. Specifically, the authors provide an institutional framework focused on interest group representation that can be used to balance the tensions underlying foreign investment law, including the desire to compete to attract investments and countervailing preferences to retain domestic policymaking discretion. The framework has implications for the respective roles of BITs and investment contracts as well as the inclusion and interpretation of various foreign investment provisions.

The Role Of The Courts In Time Of War, William C. Banks

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

The role of the courts in judging the actions of government in wartime has ranged from extreme deference to careful probing of alleged government excesses over more than two centuries. The courts’ record has reflected the nature of the armed conflicts the United States has engaged in and the legal bases for the actions at issue. In the aggregate, the courts have served as a necessary counterweight to government overreaching in times of national security crisis. It is easy to underestimate the institutional problems confronting judges who are asked to make momentous decisions in times of national crisis—difficulties of fact-finding …

Contents May Have Shifted: Disentangling The Best Evidence Rule From The Rule Against Hearsay, Colin Miller

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

The rule against hearsay covers a statement offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted but does not cover a statement offered for another purpose. Meanwhile, the Best Evidence Rule states that a party seeking to prove the content of a writing, recording, or photograph must produce the original or account for its nonproduction. Does this mean that the Rule is inapplicable when a party seeks to prove something other than the truth of the matter asserted in a writing, recording or photograph? Most courts have answered this question in the affirmative. This essay argues these courts are wrong.

The Still-Dwindled Revlon, Lyman P.Q. Johnson, Robert Ricca

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

This is a brief Response to Professor Mohsen Manesh’s extensive response to our original article, The Dwindling of Revlon. Our thesis is that today the iconic Revlon doctrine is, remedially, quite substantially diminished. Although Professor Manesh sets out to establish what he calls “the limits of Johnson’s and Ricca’s thesis,” we here maintain, as before, that there is little remedial clout to Revlon unless directors or others very significantly misbehave. We also criticize Delaware’s continuing use of the standard-of-conduct/standard-of-review construct in the fiduciary duty area. This rubric is unhelpful generally and strikingly so in the Revlon setting, as we …