Law Commons^™

Judging Myopia In Hindsight: Bivens Actions, National Security Decisions, And The Rule Of Law, Peter Margulies

Law Faculty Scholarship

Liability in national security matters hinges on curbing both official myopia and hindsight bias. The Framers knew that officials could be short-sighted, prioritizing expedience over abiding values. Judicial review emerged as an antidote to myopia of this kind. However, the Framers recognized that ubiquitous second-guessing of government decisions would also breed instability. Balancing these conflicting impulses has produced judicial oscillation between intervention and deference. Recent decisions on Bivens claims in the war on terror have defined extremes of deference or intervention. Cases like Ashcroft v. Iqbal and Arar v. Ashcroft display a categorical deference that rewards officials' myopia. On the …

Judicial Amendments Treating Citizen And Immigrant Workers Equally . . . Badly: Labor Rights Without Effective Remedies, Anne M. Lofaso

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Judicial Selection In Rhode Island: Assessing The Experience With Merit Selection: Response, Emily J. Sack

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of Merit Selection On The Characteristics Of Rhode Island Judges, Michael J. Yelnosky

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Foodshed Foundations: Law's Role In Shaping Our Food System's Future, Margaret Sova Mccabe

Law Faculty Scholarship

[. . .] This symposium Article analyzes how we can rethink the architecture of law based on a foodshed model to provide a greater role for local, state, and regional government in the American food system. In turn, greater roles for different levels of government may help America achieve greater efficiencies in domestic food safety, nutrition and related public health issues, sustainability, and international trade.

Americans need a greater voice in the food system. The foodshed model is a powerful vehicle that allows us to conceptualize change, allowing greater citizen participation and a more nuanced approach to food policy. The …

Coal Mine Safety: A Call For Comparative Law And Interdisciplinary Studies, Anne M. Lofaso

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Implications Of A Federal Renewable Portfolio Standard: Will It Supplement Or Supplant Existing State Inititives?, James M. Van Nostrand, Anne Marie Hirschberger

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Leveling The Playing Field In Gmo Risk Assessment: Importers, Exporters, And The Limits Of Science, Alison Peck

Law Faculty Scholarship

The WTO system requires that trade restrictions meant to protect health and safety be based on a risk assessment supported by “sufficient scientific evidence.” Scholars and international standards organizations have pointed out, however, that science is incapable of providing answers to questions of health and safety without incorporating the risk assessors’ value judgments and assumptions. Before GMO-importing countries conduct risk assessments, GMO-producing and exporting countries have already conducted their own risk assessments, which led to their decision to produce and market the products in the first place. Both the exporting and importing countries’ risk assessments employ science informed by the …

Conservation Easements And Adaptive Management, Jesse Richardson

Law Faculty Scholarship

The perpetual nature of conservation easements makes adaptive management difficult on easement property. Various easement provisions may be used to incorporate adaptive management principles into a conservation easement, but various factors, including state statutory requirements and Internal Revenue Code requirements for deductibility, limit the flexibility of management on conservation easement lands. Jesse Richardson discusses how conservation easements limit implementation of adaptive management principles on protected lands. Case studies of conservation easements that now fail to fulfill the original conservation purpose, but are locked into perpetual conservation, illustrate the limitations of conservation easements. Richardson also discusses likely future conflicts between conservation …

The Costs Of Abusing Probationary Sentences: Overincarceration And The Erosion Of Due Process, Andrew Horwitz

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Nba And The Single Entity Defense: A Better Case?, Michael A. Mccann

Law Faculty Scholarship

This Article will explore the relationship between the National Basketball Association, its independently-owned teams, and associated corporate entities, including the Women’s NBA, NBA Properties, NBA Developmental League, NBA China, and single entity analysis under section 1 of the Sherman Act. Section 1 chiefly aims to prevent competitors from combining their economic power in ways that unduly impair competition or harm consumers, be it in terms of raised prices, diminished quality, or limited choices. Single entities are exempt from section 1 because they are considered “one,” rather than competitors, and thus their collaboration does not implicate anticompetitive concerns.

In American Needle …

When Enough Isn't Enough: Qualitative And Quantitative Assessments Of Adequate Education In State Constitutions By State Supreme Courts, Amy L. Moore

Law Faculty Scholarship

This article facilitates the education debate by directing the question of what having an adequate education means, and how state supreme courts are grappling with the issue. This article uses a study of case law from state supreme courts analyzing state constitutional requirements for education. Three themes emerge from this study of case law: state supreme courts are dealing with a choice between judicial restraint and interference; courts struggle with how much to consider funding as opposed to other issues; and courts are trying to define adequacy claims within the context of equity claims.

Brokering Education: A Study Of Charter Receipt, Renewal, And Revocation In Louisiana's Charter Schools, Amy L. Moore

Law Faculty Scholarship

The most fundamental part of a charter school is its charter, its governing document. This article traces the history of Louisiana's charter system from its inception and walks through the legal process of obtaining and retaining a charter and what happens to cause a charter to be revoked. Louisiana provides for five types of charters via statute that have different avenues of funding and different legal requirements from the state. Louisiana provides an excellent case study for the process of chartering because of the recent boom of charter schools in the area; there are lessons to be learned both in …

Did Congress Authorize The Nlrb To Decide Cases With Only Two Sitting Board Members, Where The Nlra’S Statutory Language Provides For A Three-Member Board Quorum?, Anne M. Lofaso

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Information Literacy Plans: Does Your Law Library Need One?, Judith Gire

Law Faculty Scholarship

[Excerpt] "Although information literacy plans were initiated by and for academe, there is no reason they will not work in any law library. Information literacy is about preparing patrons with the skills necessary to locate, evaluate, and effectively use information throughout their lives, including their lives in law firms, corporations, government agencies and courts, as well as law schools. An institutional information literacy plan makes perfect sense for any law library in the business of equipping patrons to manage the information age like pros regardless of whether those patrons are law clerks, associates, partners, judges, or law students. And isn’t …

Equitable Balancing In The Age Of Statutes, Jared Goldstein

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Ivory Tower At Ground Zero: Conflict And Convergence In Legal Education's Responses To Terrorism, Peter Margulies

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Personal Jurisdiction Over Non-Resident Class Members: Have We Gone Down The Wrong Road?, Tanya Monestier

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

American Needle V. Nfl: An Opportunity To Reshape Sports Law, Michael Mccann

Law Faculty Scholarship

This Feature will explore American Needle, Inc. v. NFL and its potential impact on professional sports in the United States. In August 2008, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held that the National Football League (NFL) and its teams operate as a “single entity” for purposes of apparel sales. Because a single entity cannot conspire with itself, it cannot violate Section 1 of the Sherman Act, which prohibits concerted action that unreasonably restrains trade. The U.S. Supreme Court recently granted a writ of certiorari and will review American Needle in its 2009-2010 Term. As this Feature …

Justice Sonia Sotomayor And The Relationship Between Leagues And Players: Insights And Implications, Michael Mccann

Law Faculty Scholarship

This Essay examines U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s important role in shaping U.S. sports law. As a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and later on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Sotomayor authored opinions that resolved two major sports law disputes: whether Major League Baseball (“MLB”) owners could unilaterally impose new labor conditions on MLB players during the 1994 baseball strike and whether Ohio State University sophomore Maurice Clarett was obligated to wait three years from the completion of high school to become eligible for the National Football …

Balancing Consumer Protection And Scientific Integrity In The Face Of Uncertainty: The Example Of Gluten-Free Foods, Margaret Sova Mccabe

Law Faculty Scholarship

In 2009, gluten-free foods were not only "hot" in the marketplace, several countries, including the United States, continued efforts to define gluten-free and appropriate labeling parameters. The regulatory process illuminates how difficult regulations based on safe scientific thresholds can be for regulators, manufacturers and consumers. This article analyzes the gluten-free regulatory landscape, challenges to defining a safe gluten threshold, and how consumers might need more label information beyond the term "gluten-free." The article includes an overview of international gluten-free regulations, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) rulemaking process, and issues for consumers.

Bloodsucking Copyrights, Ann Bartow

Law Faculty Scholarship

Some bloodsuckers live off the life-sustaining fluids of involuntary hosts and leave behind diseases or venom. Fleas, ticks, bedbugs, and mosquitoes are all bloodsuckers that are best avoided. Others, like the leech, suck blood in ways that can be very helpful to a host, promoting blood flow and healing. Vampires are fictional, sentient bloodsuckers that have populated various entertainment genres for centuries. Copyrights, too, can suck blood metaphorically in productive and destructive ways, or simply suck, period, when they senselessly impede free-flowing veins of information. And though they are not (yet) immortal, copyrights last a very long time. In Copyright’s …

A Portrait Of The Internet As A Young Man, Ann Bartow

Law Faculty Scholarship

In brief, the core theory of Jonathan Zittrain’s1 2008 book The Future of the Internet - and How to Stop It is this: good laws, norms, and code are needed to regulate the Internet, to prevent bad laws, norms, and code from compromising its creative capabilities and fettering its fecund flexibility. A far snarkier if less alliterative summary would be “We have to regulate the Internet to preserve its open, unregulated nature.” Zittrain posits that either a substantive series of unfortunate Internet events or one catastrophic one will motivate governments to try to regulate cyberspace in a way that promotes …

A Fourth Amendment For The Poor Alone: Subconstitutional Status And The Myth Of The Inviolate Home, Jordan C. Budd

Law Faculty Scholarship

For much of our nation’s history, the poor have faced pervasive discrimination in the exercise of fundamental rights. Nowhere has the impairment been more severe than in the area of privacy. This Article considers the enduring legacy of this tradition with respect to the Fourth Amendment right to domestic privacy. Far from a matter of receding historical interest, the diminution of the poor’s right to privacy has accelerated in recent years and now represents a powerful theme within the jurisprudence of poverty. Triggering this development has been a series of challenges to aggressive administrative practices adopted by localities in the …

Handcrafted Collaborative Copyright, Ann Bartow

Law Faculty Scholarship

Tribute essay to Dean Laura Gasaway's tenacious and fearless information access advocacy.

Modeling The Effects Of Peremptory Challenges On Jury Selection And Jury Verdicts, Roger Allen Ford

Law Faculty Scholarship

Although proponents argue that peremptory challenges make juries more impartial by eliminating “extreme” jurors, studies testing this theory are rare and inconclusive. For this article, two formal models of jury selection are constructed, and various selection procedures are tested, assuming that attorneys act rationally rather than discriminate based on animus. The models demonstrate that even when used rationally, peremptory challenges can distort jury decision making and undermine verdict reliability. Peremptory challenges systematically shift jurors toward the majority view of the population by favoring median jurors over extreme jurors. If the population of potential jurors is skewed in favor of conviction …

Algae And Biodiesel: Patenting Energized As Green Goes Commercial, Matthew R. Priess, Stanley P. Kowalski

Law Faculty Scholarship

In the twenty-first century, predominant dependence on fossil fuels as energy resources will not be sustainable. Developing and commercializing green energy innovations will be an essential component of the transition to a more diversified energy economy. Algal biodiesel is one of the most promising green fuels because of its potential as a renewable and sustainable fuel source without displacing food crops. Algal biodiesel research and development are necessary early steps towards a transition to a green energy economy. The strategic use of strong patent portfolios will drive this by attracting investment, incentivizing innovation and accelerating commercialization. Whereas algal biodiesel research …

Intellectual Property, Medicine And Health: Current Debates, Stanley P. Kowalski

Law Faculty Scholarship

Johanna Gibson’ s “Intellectual Property, Medicine and Health: Current Debates” is an ambitious attempt to bridge the gap between IPR (largely patents) and the ethical, moral and philosophical issues which should influence global access to innovations in health. This intent is noteworthy and timely, as the complexities are important to address and there is an urgent need for clear-headed strategy. However, disappointingly, the book largely fails, as it is a rambling polemic that lacks focus, clarity and originality. Wading through the thicket of verbiage becomes so daunting that whatever message might be present is lost. The book also is flawed …

Llne Letter To Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, Susan Drisko Zago

Law Faculty Scholarship

A letter from Law Librarians of New England President Susan Drisko Zago urging Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick to restore funding to the State Library of Massachusetts for FY 2010 and subsequent years to a realistic level needed to maintain and increase its collections and services.

Space Age Love Song: The Mix Tape In A Digital Universe, Megan M. Carpenter

Law Faculty Scholarship

Music sharing is one of the most controversial topics in copyright law. And mix tapes have been the classic, iconic form of music sharing for the last 30 years. Even in the face of technological development so rapid and far-reaching as to remove the literal “tape” from “mix tape,” there are nonetheless modern incarnations that crop up on a regular basis, from mix CDs to mix-sharing websites. Social norms permit and even encourage the creation of these modern mix tapes for such diverse reasons as wedding favors and birthday gifts.

If copyright law is meant to promote creativity and proscribe …