Law Commons^™

Scènes À Faire As Identity Trait Stereotyping, Jasmine C. Abdel-Khalik

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Judge Learned Hand's decision in Nichols v. Universal Pictures is unquestionably seminal in the development of copyright law. For the first time, a court articulated that stock characters, a form of scènes à faire, are so fundamental that all should have access. Therefore, a stock character, like one defined simply as a butcher with a cleaver and in a white coat, is not copyright protectable material.

However, the specific stock characters identified by Judge Hand raise some previously unexplored questions. The decision identifies two stock characters: "the low comedy Jew and Irishman." What exactly is “the low comedy Jew and …

Gender Nonconforming Expression And Binary Thinking: Understanding How Implicit Bias Becomes Explicit In The Legal System, Considering The Shooting Death Of Philando Castile, Patrick C. Brayer

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Theorists, poets, and artists are taking the lead in advancing the conversation about gender fluidity and the plight of people with non-binary gender identities. This essay is about what practitioners who combat implicit bias in the legal profession can learn from artists and thinkers on the cutting edge of gender non-conforming expression. Understanding how individuals stigmatize, and at times discriminate against, gender fluid people by limited and binary thinking is an important progression in comprehending how implicit bias (specifically against people of color) becomes explicit and influences legal actors including law enforcement and jurors. The tragic shooting of Philando Castile …

The Green Economy: Strategic Planning For A Future?, Irma S. Russell

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While the green economy is uniquely dependent on imagination, it is not imaginary. While it needs ideas to grow, it is not necessarily ideological. The term “green economy” brings to mind for many people wind turbines and solar energy installations, and, perhaps, organic produce and free-range chickens as well. All these usages convey the sense of “sustainability.” The use of the term “green” -- long associated with growth and life -- is in keeping with the term “sustainability” as articulated in the 1987 United Nation Brundtland Report, entitled Our Common Future. The report defines the term “sustainability” as “meeting the …

Vanda V. West-Ward Pharmaceuticals: Good News For The Patent Eligibility Of Diagnostics And Personalized Medicine, With Some Important Caveats, Christopher M. Holman

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In Mayo v. Prometheus, decided in 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated patent claims directed towards diagnostic methods useful in the optimization of drug dosage for the needs of an individual patient, i.e., an example of personalized medicine, based on the Court’s determination that the claims were directed towards a patent ineligible law of nature. Notably, the claims in Mayo did not recite a step of applying the information generated by the test, e.g., a step of administering the drug to a patient at the optimized dosage. Some, including this author, have speculated that inclusion of such a step might …

Externship Assessment Project: An Empirical Study Of Supervisor Evaluations Of Extern Work Performance, Margaret Reuter

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Field supervisors’ evaluations of their student externs are packed with lively stories. They deliver a fly-on-the-wall perspective, giving us color about the work entrusted to our students, the behaviors our students exhibited, and the enjoyment the attorneys reaped. The authors decided the evaluations were so fertile that they should be systematically scrutinized to seek meaningful, reliable insights about the extern experience, especially regarding the variety, complexity, and responsibility levels of their work. We also saw a prime opportunity to assess an externship program and find ways to improve it. Thus, the Externship Assessment Project was born. We deployed qualitative data …

Congress Considering Legislation Intended To Reverse The Recent Trend Toward Devaluation Of The Us Patent Right, Christopher M. Holman

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Decisions of the United States Supreme Court spanning the last quarter of a century that have, in the aggregate, substantially devalued the patent right. The Court’s four decisions reinvigorating and substantially raising the patent eligibility bar have probably resulted in the most critical commentary, but a host of other decisions have also served to erode the patent right in multiple dimensions, including the scope of potentially patent-able subject matter as well as the strength and enforce-ability of issued patents. In 2011 Congress joined in when it enacted the America Invents Act (AIA), which includes multiple provisions tending to devalue patents, …

Picturing Professionals: The Emergence Of Lawyer's Identity, Barbara Glesner Fines

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No abstract provided.

The Highly Sensitive Person's Redress For Intentional Infliction Of Emotional Distress: Utilizing Experts In The Courtroom, Sean O'Brien

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No abstract provided.

Time Immemorial: Aboriginal Rights In The Valles Caldera, The Public Trust, And The Quest For Constitutional Sustainability, John W. Ragsdale Jr

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No abstract provided.

An American Tune: Refugee Children In U.S. Public Schools, Daniel B. Weddle

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No abstract provided.

Assisted Reproductive Technologies: An Annotated Bibliography, 2013-2018, Nancy Levit, Allen Rostron

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No abstract provided.

The Role Of Objective Indicia In Assessing The Nonobviousness Of Pharmaceutical Inventions, Christopher M. Holman

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No abstract provided.

Style, Substance, And The Right To Keep And Bear Assault Weapons, Allen K. Rostron

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No abstract provided.

Entertainment As Crime Prevention: Evidence From Chicago Sports Games., Hannah S. Lacqueur, Ryan W. Copus

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The concern that mass media may be responsible for aggressive and criminal behavior is widespread. Comparatively little consideration has been given to its potential diversionary function. This paper contributes to the emerging body of literature on entertainment as a determinant of crime by analyzing Chicago by-the-minute crime reports during major sporting events. Sports provide an exogenous infusion of TV diversion that we leverage to test the effect of entertainment on crime. Because the scheduling of a sporting event should be random with respect to crime within a given month, day of the week, and time, we use month-time-day-of-week fixed effects …

Uniform Enforcement Or Personalized Law? A Preliminary Examination Of Parking Ticket Appeals In Chicago, Randall K. Johnson

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This article is one in a series of papers that sets the record straight about the type, quality and quantity of information that U.S. cities may employ, in order to make more informed policy decisions. It does so, specifically, by examining information that is collected by the City of Chicago. The goal is to gauge the uniformity, as well as the relative cost-effectiveness, of the parking ticket appeals process. The article has six (VI) parts. Part I is the introduction, which sets the stage for a preliminary examination of the parking ticket appeals process in Chicago. Part II describes the …

Patentability Standards For Follow-On Pharmaceutical Innovation, Christopher M. Holman, Timo Minssen, Eric M. Solovy

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Follow-on pharmaceutical innovation occurring after the initial discovery of a drug active ingredient plays a very important, but at times under-appreciated, role in providing innovative solutions to compelling medical needs. Examples of follow-on innovation include new forms of a drug with improved safety-efficacy profiles, new formulations and dosages providing improved patient outcomes, and new methods of using an established drug more safely or to treat new indications. Patents play a critical role in incentivizing the research, development, testing, and ultimately commercialization of follow-on pharmaceutical innovation, and in doing so provide substantial benefits for public health and patients’ quality of life. …

Gender And The Tournament: Reinventing Antidiscrimination Law In An Age Of Inequality, Naomi Cahn, June Carbone, Nancy Levit

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Since the 1970’s, antidiscrimination advocates have approached Title VII as though the impact of the law on minorities and women could be considered in isolation. This article argues that this is a mistake. Instead, Reinventing Antidiscrimination Law attempts to reclaim Title VII’s original approach, which justified efforts to dismantle segregated workplaces as necessary to both eliminate discrimination and promote economic growth. Using that approach, this Article is the first to consider how widespread corporate tournaments and growing gender disparities in the upper echelons of the economy are intrinsically intertwined, and how they undermine the core promises of antidiscrimination law. The …

The Renewable Fuel Standard Reimagined: Clearing Path For Truly Advanced Biofuels, Christopher M. Holman

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Congress created the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) program to promote the production, distribution, and use of biofuels in the United States, for the stated purposes of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, increasing energy security, and promoting economic development. The RFS was seen as a means to address substantial challenges stymieing the production and use of biofuels, including the fact that biofuels were not (and are still not) cost competitive with conventional fossil fuels, at least in the absence of government subsidies, and the significant technical barriers facing biofuel production, particularly with respect to cellulosic ethanol, the most preferred category of …

Corporate Governance As Privately-Ordered Public Policy: A Proposal, Lynn A. Stout, Sergio Alberto Gramitto Ricci

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In this Article, we show how our society can use corporate governance shifts to address, if not entirely resolve, a number of currently pressing social and economic problems. These problems include: rising income inequality; demographic disparities in wealth and equity ownership; increasing poverty and income insecurity; a need for greater innovation and investment in solving problems like disease and climate change; the “externalization” of many costs of corporate activity onto third parties such as customers, employees, creditors, and the broader society; the corrosive influence of corporate money in politics; and discontent and loss of trust in the capitalist system among …

The Green Economy: A Marketplace Of Ideas About Our Common Future, Irma S. Russell

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This issue of the UMKC Law Review is dedicated to Professor Fred Cheever who lived an authentic life in the law and in nature, exemplifying commitment to learning about our natural environment and to protecting it though law and advocacy. Professor Cheever began his legal career with the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, which later became Earth justice. Professor of Law at the University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law since 1993, Cheever was the primary organizer of a conference for natural resources law professors through the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation. After returning from a gathering of this organization …

Juliana V. United States: Debating The Fundamentals Of The Fundamental Right To A Sustainable Climate, Erin Ryan, Mary Wood, Jim Huffman, Irma S. Russell, Richard Frank

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This article, based on a live discussion among a panel of national experts, dissects the landmark federal climate lawsuit, Juliana v. United States, 217 F. Supp. 3d 1224 (D. Or. 2016). Juliana is the flagship case in a series of legal actions brought by youth plaintiffs challenging government failures to regulate to prevent climate change. However, few have come as far as Juliana, which has so far survived motions to dismiss from both the government and fossil fuels industry, a motion for interlocutory appeal to the Ninth Circuit to dismiss the case, and even a rare petition for writ of …

Fifty Ways To Promote Teaching And Learning, Gerald Hess, Michael H. Schwartz, Nancy Levit

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Fifty Ways is a collection of faculty development ideas to support and improve legal education. The ideas fall into five categories: institutional and administrative support for teaching, adjunct professor support, feedback from students, collaborations with colleagues, and self-assessment, reflection, and personal development as a teacher.

The Southeastern Association Of Law Schools' Seventieth Anniversary Stories, Nancy Levit

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No abstract provided.

Praxair V. Mallinckrodt: An Expanded Interpretation Of The Printed Matter Doctrine With Important Implications For Biotechnology, Christopher M. Holman

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Although the “printed matter doctrine” has a long history in U.S. patent law, until recently it has played a relatively minor role in policing patent-ability, so much so that an article published in 1994 essentially wrote it off as nothing more than an “archaic common law has-been.” Although the doctrine is rooted in the concept of patent eligibility, it is never mentioned in recent patent eligibility decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court such as Mayo and Alice, and patent law treatises and casebooks tend to give the doctrine little if any coverage. At its core, the printed matter doctrine has …

Bias On Trial: Toward An Open Discussion Of Racial Stereotypes In The Courtroom, Mikah K. Thompson

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In the 2017 case Pena-Rodriguez v. Colorado, the U.S. Supreme Court discussed several safeguards that are in place to assist the trial court in identifying racial bias among jurors. These safeguards include voir dire examination regarding racial bias, observation of juror demeanor and conduct that might demonstrate racial bias, reports of racially biased comments or actions by jurors during trial, and non-juror evidence of racial bias after trial. The Court acknowledged that these safeguards may be insufficient at times and therefore added a fifth one, holding that trial courts may review evidence suggesting that racial bias was a motivating factor …