Law Commons^™

The Integrity Of Our Convictions: Holding Stakeholders Accountable In An Era Of Criminal Justice Reform, Barry Scheck

Articles

The article argues for the implementation of systemic mechanisms to ensure accountability and transparency among criminal justice stakeholders to move away from a "win-at-all-costs" mentality. It proposes a transition toward a "just culture" that prioritizes learning from error and forward-looking accountability through structural reforms in discovery, misconduct tracking, and indigent defense.

Permitted Incentives For Workplace Wellness Plans Under The Ada And Gina: The Regulatory Gap, Elizabeth Pendo

Articles

Although workplace wellness plans have been around for decades, they have flourished under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“PPACA”) into a $6 billion-dollar industry. Under PPACA, a “wellness plan” is a program of health promotion or disease prevention offered by an employer that is designed to promote health or prevent disease and which meets the other applicable requirements of that subsection. Employers look to these programs to promote healthy lifestyles, improve the overall health of employees and beneficiaries, and reduce rising healthcare costs.

PPACA’s amendments to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (“HIPAA”) permit employers to offer …

Peace And Subjectivity, Louis E. Wolcher

Articles

So long as there is law there can be no universal human right to peace. This is because legalized violence, whether in threat or in deed, constitutes the very antithesis of peaceful relations from the point of view of those whom law represses. Law cannot define peace as the absence of all violence—and still less as the absence of all legalized suffering—without gainsaying justice, for as Pascal says, “Justice without might is helpless; might without justice is tyrannical.” Although legal outcomes, like falling boulders and pouncing lions, can always be imputed to historical causes, experience teaches that legal actors generally …

Regulating Bot Speech, Madeline Lamo, Ryan Calo

Articles

We live in a world of artificial speakers with real impact. So-called “bots” foment political strife, skew online discourse, and manipulate the marketplace. Concerns over bot speech have led prominent figures in the world of technology to call for regulations in response to the unique threats bots pose. Recently, legislators have begun to heed these calls, drafting laws that would require online bots to clearly indicate that they are not human.

This work is the first to consider how efforts to regulate bots might run afoul of the First Amendment. At first blush, requiring a bot to self-disclose raises little …

Woke Capital: The Role Of Corporations In Social Movements, Jennifer S. Fan

Articles

Iconic companies such as Apple, BlackRock, Delta, Google (now Alphabet), Lyft, Salesforce, and Starbucks, have recently taken very public stances on various social issues. In the past, corporations were largely silent in the face of them. Now the opposite is true—corporations play an increasingly visible role in social movements and there are times when corporations have led the discussion, particularly in areas where they have a self-interest or public opinion supports it. The enormous influence corporations wield on both the economic and social fabric of our society due to the legal framework and norms under which they operate make them …

The Chevronization Of Auer, Kristin Hickman, Mark R. Thomson

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No abstract provided.

Discrimination By Design?, June Carbone, Naomi Cahn, Nancy Levit

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No abstract provided.

The Duty Of Data Security, William Mcgeveran

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No abstract provided.

Blackstonian Marriage, Gender, And Cohabitation, June Carbone

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No abstract provided.

Polarized Justice? Changing Patterns Of Decision-Making In The Federal Courts, Herbert M. Kritzer

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No abstract provided.

Demystifying Patent Holdup, Tom Cotter

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No abstract provided.

On Public Employees And Judicial Buck-Passing: The Respective Roles Of Statutory And Constitutional Protections For Government Whistleblowers, Heidi Kitrosser

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No abstract provided.

Women, Rule-Breaking, And The Triple Bind, June Carbone

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No abstract provided.

The Failure Of Youth Sports Concussion Laws And The Limits Of Legislating Health Education, Francis Shen

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No abstract provided.

What Exactly Is The Rule Of Law?, Robert Stein

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No abstract provided.

Wicked Crypto, Alan Rozenshtein

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No abstract provided.

The Orphan Drug Act At 35: Observations And An Outlook For The Twenty-First Century, Nicholas Bagley, Benjamin Berger, Amitabh Chandra, Craig Garthwaite

Articles

On the thirty-fifth anniversary of the adoption of the Orphan Drug Act (ODA), we describe the enormous changes in the markets for therapies for rare diseases that have emerged over recent decades. The most prominent example is the fact that the profit-maximizing price of new orphan drugs appears to be greater today than it was in 1983. All else equal, this should reduce the threshold for research and development (R&D) investment in an economically viable product. Further, the small size of patient populations for orphan drugs, together with the increasing prevalence of biologics among orphan drugs, have created a set …

There Is No Work-Life Balance, Bridget M. Mccormack, Leonard M. Niehoff

Articles

We often find ourselves speaking to audiences of law students and new lawyers who are trying to figure out what their future as practicing attorneys will look like. At some point, typically toward the end of our remarks, a hand goes up and a dreaded question - as reliable as the law of gravity - lands with a thud: "Do you have any advice as to how to achieve the right work-life balance?"

Fifteenth Annual Brigham-Kanner Prize Presentation Dinner Award Recipient Speech, Stewart E. Sterk

Articles

The article presents the speech of Stewart Sterk, recipient of the Brigham-Kanner Prize, reflecting on his academic career, contributions to property law, and the significance of the Penn Central case. Sterk emphasizes the importance of property law in understanding societal systems and highlights his comprehensive approach to teaching and scholarship. He also discusses how Penn Central shaped his career and the evolution of takings law, while underscoring the value of interdisciplinary collaboration and generosity in academic and professional endeavors.

Comparing Wayfair And Wynne: Lessons For The Future Of The Dormant Commerce Clause, Edward A. Zelinsky

Articles

A comparison of South Dakota v. Wayfair with Comptroller of the Treasury of Maryland v. Wynne indicates that the prospect of the Supreme Court jettisoning the dormant Commerce Clause altogether is unlikely. However, the justices who would abandon the dormant Commerce Clause can exercise decisive influence in particular cases as they did in Wayfair. The current Court’s dormant Commerce Clause skeptics – Justices Thomas and Gorsuch –provided the crucial fourth and fifth votes in Wayfair to overturn Quill.

It will continue to be rare for the Court to reverse its own dormant Commerce Clause decisions. Far from opening …

Binaries: Remarks On Chaim N. Saiman's "Halakhah", Richard Weisberg

Articles

Binaries are helpful but deceptive, and this may be particularly true of simplistic theological dichotomies purporting to show that the Talmud is "Nitpicking" and Christian Biblical understandings "Expansive", or that Jews believe in the "letter" and Christians in the "spirit", Jews in strict Justice and Christians in "mercy", etc. This essay, which focuses on the character of Shylock and the legalistic cruelty inflicted upon him by Venice's Christians, dissolves such Binaries, leaving in their wake greater clarity about the contrary need to "re-binarize" the falsely unified hyphenated adjective "Judaeo-Christian".

Measuring Selection Bias In Publicly Available Judicial Opinions, Alexander A. Reinert

Articles

To have an informed discussion about judicial performance and efficiency, we will sometimes want to explore what judges actually do on an everyday level. But in many ways, courts have not always been paragons of transparency. Often the parties are the only people who are aware of what action a court has taken in a case.

This paper explores that dynamic, in the context of decisions made by federal trial courts at one particular procedural stage--decisions made on motions to dismiss for failure to state a claim--Rule 12(b)(6) motions. There is growing interest in the work of federal trial courts, …

When Ais Outperform Doctors: Confronting The Challenges Of A Tort-Induced Over-Reliance On Machine Learning, A. Michael Froomkin, Ian Kerr, Joelle Pineau

Articles

Someday, perhaps soon, diagnostics generated by machine learning (ML) will have demonstrably better success rates than those generated by human doctors. What will the dominance of ML diagnostics mean for medical malpractice law, for the future of medical service provision, for the demand for certain kinds of doctors, and in the long run for the quality of medical diagnostics itself?

This Article argues that once ML diagnosticians, such as those based on neural networks, are shown to be superior, existing medical malpractice law will require superior ML-generated medical diagnostics as the standard of care in clinical settings. Further, unless implemented …

Black, Poor, And Gone: Civil Rights Law’S Inner-City Crisis, Anthony V. Alfieri

Articles

In recent years, academics committed to a new law and sociology of poverty and inequality have sounded a call to revisit the inner city as a site of cultural and socio-legal research. Both advocates in anti-poverty and civil rights organizations, and scholars in law school clinical and university social policy programs, have echoed this call. Together they have embraced the inner city as a context for experiential learning, qualitative research, and legal-political advocacy regarding concentrated poverty, neighborhood disadvantage, residential segregation, and mass incarceration. Indeed, for academics, advocates, and activists alike, the inner city stands out as a focal point of …

The Casualty Of Investor Protection In Times Of Economic Crisis, Kathleen Claussen

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No abstract provided.

How Neuroscience Technology Is Changing Our Understanding Of Brain Injury, Vegetative States And The Law, Glenn R. Butterton

Articles

The author examines clinical studies that use neuroscience technology to study patients in Vegetative States. The studies indicate that some of the patients are, in fact, conscious. The author suggests that this finding is a matter of considerable practical importance for the drafting and execution of end-of-life protocols such as Advance Directives and Living Wills. He recommends that statutes, and other guidance used by patients, caregivers, medical institutions, family members and others to draft and interpret such Directives and Wills, be revised or amended to take account of these results.

The Rule Of Law Collaborative: A Center Of Practical, Interdisciplinary Research, And Engagement On Pressing Rule Of Law Issues Around The World, Joel H. Samuels

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No abstract provided.

Drawing Trump Naked: Curbing The Right Of Publicity To Protect Public Discourse, Thomas E. Kadri

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From Donald Trump to Lindsay Lohan to Manuel Noriega, real people who are portrayed in expressive works are increasingly targeting creators of those works for allegedly violating their "right of publicity "-a state-law tort that prohibits the unauthorized use of a person's name, likeness, and other identifying characteristics. Intuitively, we might feel confident that Mark Zuckerberg should not be able to block his portrayal in The Social Network movie, that Marilyn Monroe could not have stopped Andy Warhol from exhibiting his vibrant paintings, that O.J. Simpson could not have demanded money from FX to air the American Crime Story docudrama. …

The International Law Commission's First Draft Convention On Crimes Against Humanity, Charles C. Jalloh

Articles

The UN General Assembly established the International Law Commission ("ILC") in 1947 to assist States with the promotion of 1) the progressive development of international law and 2) its codification. The ILC's first assignment from the General Assembly was to formulate the Nuremberg Principles, which affirmed the then radical idea that individuals can be held liable for certain international crimes at the international level. Since then, the ILC has played a seminal role in the development of modern international criminal law. In 2017, the ILC adopted on first reading a draft convention aimed at the prevention and punishment of crimes …

The Case Against Expanding Defamation Law, Yonathan A. Arbel, Murat Mungan

Articles

It is considered axiomatic that defamation law protects reputation. This proposition--commonsensical, pervasive, and influential-- is faulty. Underlying this fallacy is the failure to appreciate audience effects: the interaction between defamation law and members of the audience.

Defamation law seeks to affect the behavior of speakers by making them bear a cost for spreading untruthful information. Invariably, however, the law will also affect members of the audience, as statements made in a highly regulated environment tend to appear more reliable than statements made without accountability. Strict defamation law would tend to increase the perceived reliability of statements, which in some cases …