Law Commons^™

Factors In Fairness And Emotion In Online Case Resolution Systems, Youyang Hou, Cliff Lampe, Maximilian Bulinski, J. J. Prescott

Articles

Courts are increasingly adopting online information and communication technology, creating a need to consider the potential consequences of these tools for the justice system. Using survey responses from 209 litigants who had recently used an online case resolution system, we investigate factors that influenced litigants’ experiences of fairness and emotional feelings toward court officials. Our results show that ease of using the online case resolution system, the outcome of the case, and a litigant’s perceptions of procedural justice are positively associated both with whether the litigant views the process as fair and whether the litigant ultimately feels positive emotions toward …

Update Your Bookmarks! Great Sites For Effective Research, Nancy E. Vettorello

Articles

There are more than one billion websites available online. Many are useful tools for attorneys, so it makes sense to review and refresh your favorite bookmarks regularly. While none of the many free sites offer the sophisticated search abilities of fee-based research services, a few minutes spent exploring free sites can help researchers significantly narrow their searches once they turn to a fee-based system. Remember to always take advantage of the advancesearch option when available on a free site. Free sites are offering increasingly sophisticated search options, such as Boolean and proximity searches, which were previously exclusive to paid services.

At The Fontier Of The Younger Doctrine: Reflections On Google V. Hood, Gil Seinfeld

Articles

On December 19, 2014, long-simmering tensions between Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood and the search engine giant Google boiled over into federal court when Google filed suit against the Attorney General to enjoin him from bringing civil or criminal charges against it for alleged violations of the Mississippi Consumer Protection Act. Hood had been investigating and threatening legal action against Google for over a year for its alleged failure to do enough to prevent its search engine, advertisements, and YouTube website from facilitating public access to illegal, dangerous, or copyright protected goods. The case has garnered a great deal of …

After Search Neutrality: Drawing A Line Between Promotion And Demotion, Daniel A. Crane

Articles

The Federal Trade Commission's (“FTC” or “the commission”) January 3, 2013 decision to close its longstanding investigation of Google1 brings to a close a flurry of discussion over the possibility that Google could become subject to a “search neutrality” principle in the United States. Although the Commission found against Google on several grounds, it rejected petitions from Google's critics to create a search neutrality principle as a matter of antitrust law. This essay briefly analyzes what remains of U.S. antitrust scrutiny of Internet search bias after the Google settlement. In particular, it suggests that a sensible line can be drawn …

Antibiotic Resistance, Jessica D. Litman

Articles

Ten years ago, when I wrote War Stories,' copyright lawyers were fighting over the question whether unlicensed personal, noncommercial copying, performance or display would be deemed copyright infringement. I described three strategies that lawyers for book publishers, record labels, and movie studios had deployed to try to assure that the question was answered the way they wanted it to be. First, copyright owners were labeling all unlicensed uses as "piracy" on the ground that any unlicensed use might undermine copyright owners' control. That epithet helped to obscure the difference between unlicensed uses that invaded defined statutory exclusive rights and other …

Relative Access To Corrective Speech: A New Test For Requiring Actual Malice, Aaron Perzanowski

Articles

This Article reexamines the First Amendment protections provided by the public figure doctrine. It suggests that the doctrine is rooted in a set of out-dated assumptions regarding the media landscape and, as a result, has failed to adapt in a manner that accounts for our changing communications environment.

The public figure doctrine, which imposes the more rigorous actual malice standard of fault on defamation plaintiffs who enjoy greater access to mass media, was constructed in an era defined by one-to-many communications media. Newspapers, broadcasters, and traditional publishers exhausted the Court's understanding of the means of communicating with mass audiences. As …