Law Commons^™

Creating Land With Artificial Oyster Rings: Legal Challenges From State Owned Bottom Land To Living Shorelines, Faith Parker, Will Reach

Virginia Coastal Policy Center

The Virginia Sea Grant program approached VCPC to conduct research in partnership with the William & Mary Public Policy Program and a James Madison University (JMU) architecture professor, Jori Erdman. Professor Erdman is researching the viability of creating land with artificial oyster rings based on similar projects seen in Louisiana. Professor Erdman has provided the diagrams of the project used throughout this paper. Ultimately, this paper examines some legal issues raised by the use of these rings to prevent coastal erosion or act as a flooding buffer for commercial or residential buildings. With this goal in mind, this paper addresses …

On The Danger Of Not Understanding Technology, Fredric I. Lederer

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Spac Mergers, Ipos, And The Pslra's Safe Harbor: Unpacking Claims Of Regulatory Arbitrage, Amanda M. Rose

William & Mary Law Review

Communications in connection with an initial public offering (IPO) are excluded from the safe harbor for forward-looking statements contained in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (PSLRA). Unsurprisingly, IPO issuers do not share projections publicly—the liability risk is too great. By contrast, communications in connection with a merger are not excluded from the safe harbor, and special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) routinely share their merger targets’ projections publicly. Does the divergent application of the PSLRA’s safe harbor in traditional IPOs and SPAC mergers create an opportunity for “regulatory arbitrage” and, if so, what should be done about it? …

Which Came First: The Chicken Or The Chick'n? An Fda Amendment Proposal To Reconcile Conflicting Interests In Plant-Based Meat Labeling, Katie Justison

William & Mary Law Review

“The issue is, what is chicken?” As the market for plant-based meats grows, state legislators are left with the question of what the words “chicken” and “burger” mean on food labels. In response to lobbying from the traditional meat industries, states followed suit with the dairy industry and created regulations and restrictions that carve out a meat industry monopoly on meat-related terms. Commercial speech restrictions such as these are guided by the Central Hudson test. Using that test, this Note will argue that while certain state regulations pass constitutional muster, others impose unconstitutional speech restrictions. This Note will draw particularly …

Monopolizing Digital Commerce, Herbert Hovenkamp

William & Mary Law Review

Section 2 of the Sherman Act condemns firms who “monopolize,” “attempt to monopolize,” or “combine or conspire” to monopolize—all without explanation. Section 2 is the antitrust law’s only provision that reaches entirely unilateral conduct, although it has often been used to reach collaborative conduct as well. In general, § 2 requires greater amounts of individually held market power than do the other antitrust statutes, but it is less categorical about conduct. With one exception, however, the statute reads so broadly that criticisms of the nature that it is outdated cannot be based on faithful readings of the text.

The one …

There's No Such Thing As Independent Creation, And It's A Good Thing, Too, Christopher Buccafusco

William & Mary Law Review

Independent creation is the foundation of U.S. copyright law. A work is only original and, thus, copyrightable to the extent that it is independently created by its author and not copied from another source. And a work can be deemed infringing only if it is not independently created. Moreover, independent creation provides the grounding for all major theoretical justifications for copyright law. Unfortunately, the doctrine cannot bear the substantial weight that has been foisted upon it. This Article argues that copyright law’s independent creation doctrine rests on a set of discarded psychological assumptions about memory, copying, and creativity. When those …

Making Waves: How Mandated Arbitration Could Better Address Cultural Heritage And Bring Treasure Salvage Law Into The Twenty-First Century, Megan C. Bodenhamer

William & Mary Law Review

This Note argues that American treasure salvage law should implement the modern legal techniques of Alternative Dispute Resolution—specifically arbitration—to address the modern problems surrounding treasure salvage law. Part I of this Note provides an overview of the law governing treasure salvage law. This includes common law principles called the law of finds and the law of salvage as well as the governing United States law and international treaties. Part II will outline the problems with the current standing of treasure salvage law, particularly how it fails to address modern cultural heritage considerations such as scientific advancement and the proliferation of …

Direct-To-Consumer Advertising Of Prescription Drugs: Constitutionally Protected Speech Or Misinformation?, Matthew Griffin

William & Mary Law Review Online

This Note will argue that the United States can and should regulate direct-to-consumer (DTC) prescription drug advertisements on television more strictly—preferably by proscribing them altogether. In Part I, this Note will discuss the issues of soaring drug prices, disappointing health care outcomes, a glut of misleading drug advertisements affecting the doctor-patient relationship and personal health, and the problem with the current approach to prescription drug advertising. Part I will also discuss the misleading nature of DTC prescription drug advertisements and some examples of the harm they have caused. Additionally, Part I will propose a solution that focuses on limiting the …

Legal Scholars Weigh In On The Lasting Significance Of Dominion V. Fox, Samantha Barbas, Martin Garbus, Lyrissa Lidsky, Timothy Zick, Sandra Baron

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Q&A: W&M Law Professor Jeffrey Bellin On 'Mass Incarceration Nation', W&M Law School Staff, Jeffrey Bellin

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Brief Of Law Professors As Amici Curiae In Support Of Plaintiff-Appellee, Evan J. Criddle

Briefs

No abstract provided.

What Trump's Business Fraud Charges Mean -- A Former Prosecutor Explains The 34 Felony Counts And Obstacles Ahead For Manhattan's Da, Jeffrey Bellin

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Discovering Ebay's Impact On Copyright Injunctions Through Empirical Evidence, Matthew Sag, Pamela Samuelson

William & Mary Law Review

This Article reports on new empirical evidence discrediting the widely held view that judges have resisted applying the Supreme Court’s teachings in eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C. about injunctive relief in copyright cases. That 2006 patent law decision ruled that courts should not automatically issue injunctions upon a finding of infringement; instead, plaintiffs must prove their entitlement to injunctive relief. eBay had a seismic impact on patent litigation and greatly reduced the threat that small infringements could be leveraged into billion-dollar settlements. Yet prior empirical work, at least one major copyright law treatise, and many articles assert that eBay had …

Optimizing Cybersecurity Risk In Medical Cyber-Physical Devices, Christopher S. Yoo, Bethany C. Lee

William & Mary Law Review

Medical devices are increasingly connected, both to cyber networks and to sensors collecting data from physical stimuli. These cyber-physical systems pose a new host of deadly security risks that traditional notions of cybersecurity struggle to take into account. Previously, we could predict how algorithms would function as they drew on defined inputs. But cyber-physical systems draw on unbounded inputs from the real world. Moreover, with wide networks of cyber-physical medical devices, a single cybersecurity breach could pose lethal dangers to masses of patients.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is tasked with regulating medical devices to ensure safety and …

Promoting Healing And Avoiding Retraumatization: A Proposal To Improve Mental Health Care For Detained Unaccompanied Minors Through A Best Interests Of The Child Standard, Francesca J. Babetski

William & Mary Law Review

Part I of this Note will describe the circuit split. It will provide background on the A.M. [A.M. v. Luzerne County Juvenile Detention Center] and Doe 4 cases, including an explanation of the major precedents on which the Third and Fourth Circuits based their respective decisions. Then, Part II will argue that A.M. and its deliberate indifference standard cannot appropriately be applied in cases involving detained unaccompanied minors, also called Unaccompanied Alien Children (UACs). This almost twenty-year-old standard does not consider the latest information about immigration policy and the unique mental health needs of UACs such as Doe …

Smart Wearables: The Overlooked And Underrated Essential Worker, Rebekah Hill

William & Mary Law Review

This Note argues that the FDA should revamp its criteria for regulating medical devices to unambiguously include smart wearables. Specifically, this Note calls for the FDA to amend its definition of “medical device” to focus on what a device is technologically capable of rather than its intended use.

Part I will examine the established legislation regarding medical devices; in particular, it will examine the relationship between FDA regulations and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Rule and argue that when taken together, HIPAA creates a strong presumption that smart wearables should be regulated by the FDA. This …

Securities And Exchange Commission Vs. Kim Kardashian, Cryptocurrencies And The "Major Questions Doctrine", Jerry W. Markham

William & Mary Business Law Review

The SEC has brought some highly publicized enforcement actions against Kim Kardashian and other celebrity social media influencers who received undisclosed payments for their endorsement of cryptocurrencies. This Article describes those cases and analyzes whether the SEC exceeds its authority under the Constitutional “major questions doctrine” recently applied by the Supreme Court in West Virginia v. EPA. That doctrine prohibits a federal agency from regulating activities that raise a major question that Congress, rather than the agency, must resolve. Such a question is one in which there is major political and economic interest and over which the agency has …

Impediments To Renewed And Reinvigorated Antitrust Enforcement, Edward D. Cavanagh

William & Mary Business Law Review

Antitrust Division head Jonathan Kanter recently proclaimed that “the era of lax enforcement is over, and the new era of vigorous and effective antitrust law enforcement has begun.” Federal enforcers have indeed been active; the DOJ has sued Google in two separate actions, and the FTC has brought an action against Facebook.

While bringing these cases is an important first step to achieving a more robust antitrust enforcement regime, a significant obstacle to an antitrust renaissance remains—overcoming the strong gravitational pull of Chicago School theory that has dominated antitrust thought for the past half-century. Chicago School principles have not kept …

Disability And Transnational Arbitration: Human Rights Linkages And Reasonable Accommodations, Ilias Bantekas

William & Mary Business Law Review

Disability intersects with arbitration as regards the mental capacity of a party to enter into an arbitration agreement, the appointment of arbitrators with disability and grounds for removal thereof, accommodations during arbitral proceedings for arbitrators and counsel with disabilities, as well as the costs for all appropriate accommodations. This Article demonstrates that the right to a fair trial, which is universally recognized in arbitration, dictates that parties and arbitral institutions be free to select arbitrators of their choice, and no impediments may be imposed against arbitrators with disabilities other than that they are able to fulfill the functions of their …

The Future Of China's U.S.-Listed Firms: Legal And Political Perspectives On Possible Decoupling, Rebecca Parry, Qingxiu Bu

William & Mary Business Law Review

There is a long history of Chinese firms raising capital on leading U.S. exchanges. These shares have proved attractive and are estimated at $1 trillion value, in spite of deep mismatches between Chinese internal approaches to corporate governance and those taken under U.S. securities regulations. Chinese listings of nonstate firms, particularly in the technology sector, had depended on a largely laissez-faire initial approach to the expansion through foreign listings, including tolerance of the opaque Variable Interest Entity (VIE) structures adopted as a means to bypass Chinese restrictions on foreign ownership. Concerns regarding data security had, however, prevented compliance by Chinese …

No Equitable Relief: The Failings Of The Case Act To Protect Middle-Class Creatives From Copyright Infringement, Eliza James Unrein

William & Mary Business Law Review

Copyright law in the United States incentivizes creative activity for the public benefit by granting creators an exclusive right to control their original works. Many individuals and small businesses rely on this right and the protection of copyright law to build their reputations as artists, create a market for their work, and secure a livelihood for themselves and their families. When someone violates this right and infringes on these individuals’ and small businesses’ copyrights, the forum for seeking redress and preventing future infringement is a lawsuit in federal court. But bringing a copyright infringement claim in federal court is expensive. …

The Ai Quid Pro Quo Problem: Suggesting A Framework For Patents Involving Artificial Intelligence-Assisted Or -Created Inventions, Daniel Wicklund

William & Mary Business Law Review

Innovation involving artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly expanding and diffusing into other areas of technology. Additionally, inventors have been using AI to assist in new technology for quite a while and have likely received patents from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO or “Office”) for their inventions without disclosing the AI involved in the patentable subject matter. As AI has become increasingly present in the implementation of new technology, the question of whether an AI can be an inventor has arisen. In Thaler v. Iancu and on appeal, the courts have affirmatively said no. However, this decision implicates …

Legal Order At The Border, Evan J. Criddle

Faculty Publications

For generations, the United States has grappled with high levels of illegal immigration across the U.S.-Mexico border. This Article offers a novel theoretical framework to explain why legal order remains elusive at the border. Drawing inspiration from Lon Fuller’s “interactional view of law,” I argue that immigration law cannot attract compliance unless it is general, public, prospective, clear, consistent, and stable; obedience with its rules is feasible; and the law’s enforcement is congruent with the rules as enacted. The flagrant violation of any one of these principles could frustrate the development of a functional legal order. Remarkably, U.S. immigration law …

The Article Iii "Party" And The Originalist Case Against Corporate Diversity Jurisdiction, Mark Moller, Lawrence B. Solum

William & Mary Law Review

Federal courts control an outsize share of big-ticket corporate litigation. And that control rests, to a significant degree, on the Supreme Court’s extension of Article III’s Diversity of Citizenship Clause to corporations. Yet, critics have questioned the constitutionality of corporate diversity jurisdiction from the beginning.

In this Article and a previous one, we develop the first sustained critique of corporate diversity jurisdiction.

Our previous article demonstrated that corporations are not “citizens” given the original meaning of that word. But we noted this finding alone doesn’t sink general corporate diversity jurisdiction. The ranks of corporate shareholders include many undoubted “citizens.” And …

The Trump Impeachments: Lessons For The Constitution, Presidents, Congress, Justice, Lawyers, And The Public, Michael J. Gerhardt

William & Mary Law Review

The conventional wisdom is that the two impeachments of Donald Trump demonstrated the ineffectiveness of impeachment as a remedy for serious presidential misconduct. Meeting the constitutional threshold for conviction and removal requiring at least two-thirds approval of the Senate is practically impossible so long as the members of the President’s party in Congress control at least a third of the seats in the Senate and are united in opposition to his impeachment and conviction. This Article challenges this conventional wisdom and argues instead that the two Trump impeachments have enduring effects on Trump’s political future and legacy, especially in light …

Trump's Indictment Stretches Us Legal System In New Ways -- A Former Prosecutor Explains 4 Key Points To Understand, Jeffrey Bellin

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Justices Search For A Clear Rule For Confessions In Joint Trials, Jeffrey Bellin

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

The Evidentiary Challenges Of Confessions In Co-Defendant Trials, Jeffrey Bellin

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Core And Periphery In Constitutional Law, R. George Wright

William & Mary Law Review Online

This paper embarks on an excursion through a number of the most vital constitutional rights cases, and other contexts as well, and seeks to show that the recurring judicial attempts to distinguish between core and peripheral areas within any given broad constitutional right are unnecessary and distracting. Intriguingly, the case for this conclusion varies significantly depending upon the nature of the general constitutional right in question. But the overall lesson is that courts should abandon their attempts to distinguish between core and peripheral areas of any given broad constitutional right. Courts should instead focus—directly or indirectly—on their best assessment of …

Fraud-On-The-Market Liability In The Esg Era, Kevin S. Haeberle

Popular Media

No abstract provided.