Law Commons^™

Jerry Phillips' Product Line Continuity And Successor Corporation Liability: Where Are We Twenty Years Later, George Kuney

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No abstract provided.

Book Review: A Strike Like No Other Strike: Law And Resistance During The Pittston Coal Strike Of 1989 - 1990, Fran Ansley

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No abstract provided.

Watch Out For Whistleblowers, Leslie C. Griffin

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No abstract provided.

Enhancing Patent Disclosure For Faithful Claim Construction, Joe Miller

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Claim construction jurisprudence is in disarray. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reverses trial court claim construction decisions at a worryingly high rate. The proportion of Federal Circuit claim construction opinions that include separate concurrences or dissents continues to grow. And the muddled mix of issues the Federal Circuit framed for en banc review in the Phillips case suggests that the court is having trouble reaching consensus on what the central questions are, much less on how to answer them. Perhaps the path to adequately predictable claim construction is continued tinkering with the analytical constructs internal to …

Taxing The Promise To Pay, Gregg D. Polsky, Brant J. Hellwig

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The IRS recently disclosed that it has identified more than 100 executives at 42 leading public corporations that participated in a tax shelter designed to defer the recognition of income from the exercise of stock options. While the agency thus far has identified approximately $700 million in unreported gains from these shelters, it predicts that the revenue loss to the government will ultimately exceed $1 billion. Compared to most tax shelters, this particular transaction (commonly known as the "Executive Compensation Strategy" or "ECS") is remarkably simple. Rather than exercise the options individually, a participating executive instead transfers the options to …

American Corporate Copyright: A Brilliant, Uncoordinated Plan, Paul J. Heald

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At first glance, American copyright law and policy seem to be dictated entirely by a monolithic block of corporate rightsholders. Over the last twenty years, powerful interests including Disney, the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP), Microsoft, and the American Motion Picture Association (AMPA), have successfully lobbied Congress for copyright term extensions, copyright restoration, software anticircumvention legislation, protection against audio bootlegging, and a series of bilateral and international agreements designed to increase protection for American copyright owners overseas. Even the failure to protect databases in America, widely touted as a victory for the public interest, has been driven …

What Do Flexible Road Signs, Children's Clothes And The Allied Campaign In Europe During Wwii Have In Common? The Public Domain And The Supreme Court's Intellectual Property Jurisprudence, David E. Shipley

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Part I of this article discusses the impact of the Sears, Compco and Bonito Boats, and the uncertainty over whether the principles of federal intellectual property announced in these decisions serve as limitations on the scope of protection that can be afforded under trademark legislation enacted by Congress under its Commerce Clause power. Part II presents the Supreme Court's reaffirmation of fundamental principles intellectual property policy in a series of cases decided in the last decade: Qualitex, Wal-Mart, TrafFix, Mosley and Dastar. Part III summarizes some of the common themes emerging from these decisions …

The Proven Key: Roles And Rules For Dictionaries In The Patent Office And The Courts, Joseph Scott Miller, James A. Hilsenteger

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The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, in its continuing effort to develop a patent claim construction jurisprudence that yields predictable results, has turned to dictionaries, encyclopedias, and similar sources with increasing frequency. This paper explores, from both an empirical and a normative perspective, the Federal Circuit's effort to shift claim construction to a dictionary-based approach. In the empirical part, we present data showing that the Federal Circuit has, since its own in banc Markman decision in April 1995, used reference works such as dictionaries to construe claim terms with steadily increasing frequency. In addition, and contrary to …

Michigan Supreme Court Overturns Landmark Eminent Domain Case, Patricia E. Salkin

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No abstract provided.

Early Land Use Cases, Continued Uncertainty - The Religious Land Use And Institutionalized Persons Act, Gregory M. Stein

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No abstract provided.

Space Law In Its Second Half-Century, Glenn Harlan Reynolds

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No abstract provided.

The Business Of Law And Tortious Interference, Alex B. Long

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One frustrating feature of the interference torts is the difficulty in defining precisely when an intentional interference becomes "tortious." While there has been no shortage of proposals to better define the interference torts, there is widespread uncertainty and dissatisfaction concerning the current state of the law. Attorneys have not been spared from the confusion. However, it is on the business side of the practice of the law, rather than the practice side, that attorneys are more likely to actually be held liable for tortious interference. In general, a tortious interference claim is a viable option for an attorney who feels …

Going On-Line With Justice Pedagogy: Four Ways Of Looking At A Web Site, Fran Ansley

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No abstract provided.

The Religion-State Relationship And The Right To Freedom Of Religion Or Belief: A Comparative Textual Analysis Of The Constitutions Of Predominantly Muslim Countries, Robert C. Blitt

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This study analyzes the constitutional provisions in 44 predominantly Muslim countries addressing the relationship between religion and the state, freedom of religion or belief, and other related human rights as measured against recognized international human rights standards. The geographic diversity of the Muslim world mirrors a central finding of the study, that predominantly Muslim countries encompass a variety of constitutional arrangements - ranging from Islamic republics with Islam as the official state religion, to secular states with strict separation of religion and state. Key findings of the survey include: More than half of the world's Muslim population (estimated at over …

Who Will Watch The Watchdogs?: International Human Rights Nongovernmental Organizations And The Case For Regulation, Robert C. Blitt

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Human rights nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have become a fixture within the international system and a driving force for creating and enforcing human rights norms at international law. This essay examines the growth of human rights NGOs and argues that the industry is in urgent need of formal regulation. After assessing the failure of informal market controls for ensuring accountability within the human rights NGO sector, this paper applies a law and economics consumer protection model to underscore the need for more formal regulation. However, rather than advance a case for government intervention, this paper proposes that human rights NGOs themselves …

Beyond Stereotyping In Equal Protection Doctrine: Reframing The Exclusion Of Women From Combat, Valorie K. Vojdik

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No abstract provided.

What Hath Raich Wrought? Five Takes, Glenn Harlan Reynolds

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The Court's decision in Gonzales v. Raich provides an opportunity to reflect on the Rehnquist Court's apparent run at establishing a judicially-enforceable federalism. Two of the most visible symbols of this effort were the decisions in United States v. Lopez and United States v. Morrison, in which the Court twice struck down acts of Congress as beyond the scope of its commerce power. Now, nearly ten years after Lopez and five years after Morrison, Raich leaves many wondering whether the Court provided an answer to John Nagle's question whether Lopez was destined to be a watershed or a "but see …

Rock, Paper, Scissors: Choosing The Right Vehicle For Federal Corporate Governance Initiatives, Joan Macleod Heminway

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This article acknowledges the trend toward federalizing aspects of corporate governance (as evidenced by, among other things, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002) and offers a model for institutional choice in federal corporate governance rulemaking. Specifically, the article suggests a way to determine whether the components of a specific substantive rule of corporate governance should be legislated by Congress, regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission, or established by the federal courts. Both the thesis of the article and the specific analytical framework it promotes are foundational in corporate governance scholarship and draw from previous research and scholarship in law (including …

Since When Is Dicta Enough To Trump Fourth Amendment Rights - The Aftermath Of Florida V. J.L., Melanie Wilson

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No abstract provided.

Anatomy Of A Disaster Under The Internal Revenue Code, Francine J. Lipman

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No abstract provided.

Attorneys' Perceptions Of Child Witnesses With Mental Retardation, Rebecca Nathanson

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Children with mental retardation are more likely to be abused than the general population, yet are often denied access to the justice system. Research on children without mental retardation has revealed skepticism as to their reliability as witnesses in the court of law. Even more so, children with mental retardation face the issue of credibility because of their age and disability. This study assesses attorneys' perceptions of child witnesses with mental retardation. Thirty-nine criminal attorneys completed a 33-item questionnaire designed to assess their opinions of the abilities of adults and of children with and without mental retardation to recall and …

Book Review, Walking A Gantlet: Nielsen’S License To Harass, Lynne Henderson

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No abstract provided.

Race And The California Recall Election: A Top Ten List Of Ironies, Sylvia R. Lazos, Keith Aoki, Steven Bender

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Arnold Schwarzenegger's election as governor of California in the 2003 recall campaign is rife with cruel ironies. An immigrant himself, he beat the grandson of Mexican immigrants, Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante, by playing the race card, and managed to dodge allegations of his praise for Hitler as a strong leader. While the pundits say that the California recall was about angry voters lashing back at faithless, self-dealing politicians, more lurks beneath the surface. In California, racial and ethnic minorities now comprise a majority of the population, and the recall election brought barely concealed and seething schisms to the surface. Californians, …

“Kulturkampf[S]” Or “Fit[S] Of Spite”?: Taking The Academic Culture Wars Seriously, Sylvia R. Lazos

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Polarization and heated debate within legal academia are nothing new. Some might argue that vigorous contentiousness, even if not always civil, is essential to a healthy intellectual culture. Others would note that lawyers, legal academics especially, are a highly contentious bunch with a reputation for aggressive behavior.

Fundamentally, this Article asks whether strife and disagreement are a necessary part of academic discourse. The Article describes the academic Kulturkampfs aimed at Critical Race Theory that have taken place in the last ten years both outside of and within the Critical Race Theory (CRT) movement. The Article particularly examines what it is …

Aliens In Our Midst Post-9/11: Legislating Outsider-Ness Within The Borders, Sylvia R. Lazos, Raquel E. Aldana

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Three recent books written by Professors Bill Ong Hing, Kevin R. Johnson, and Victor C. Romero provide skillfully crafted roadmaps with which to understand the key emerging issues that will shape immigration law well into the next decade: the relationship of immigration control to national security. This Review captures the insights provided by these three authors to examine the restrictive laws and policies aimed at noncitizens in the name of national security as highlighted by the current efforts to federalize driver’s licenses. As this Review explains, these three books map the current antagonistic attitudes towards noncitizens post 9/11, and serve …

Uniform Commercial Code Survey: Sales, Keith A. Rowley, Carolyn L. Dessin, Larry T. Garvin, Robyn L. Meadows

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2004 Uniform Commercial Code Survey: Sales.

Making Work Pay: Promoting Employment And Better Child Support Outcomes For Low-Income And Incarcerated Parents, Ann Cammett

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The New Jersey Institute for Social Justice prepared this report in response to concerns about child support debt—in particular as it creates a barrier to employment for low-income parents and works at cross-purposes with the goals of the child support program. Drawing on examples from other states, this report identifies a range of policies that inform child support practice in New Jersey and offers administrative, legislative, and programmatic solutions to address child support arrears owed by low-income and incarcerated parents.

Between Dependency And Liberty: The Conundrum Of Children’S Rights In The Gilded Age, David S. Tanenhaus

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Although legal scholars often assume that the history of children's rights in the United States did not begin until the mid twentieth century, this essay argues that a sophisticated conception of children's rights existed a century earlier, and analyzes how lawmakers articulated it through their attempts to define the rights of dependent children. How to handle their cases raised fundamental questions about whether children were autonomous beings or the property of either their parents and/or the state. And, if the latter, what were the limits of parental authority and/or the power of the state acting as a parent? By investigating …

Book Review, Michael Kagan

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There is a frequent critique of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees’ protection role, which goes like this: as UNHCR has grown as a humanitarian aid delivery agency, law and human rights have lost currency. In Rights in Exile: Janus-Faced Humanitarianism, Guglielmo Verdirame and Barbara Harrell-Bond (with Zachary Lomo and Hannah Garry) take this as a starting point from which to reach a far more searing conclusion: UNHCR itself directly violates the human rights of the people it is supposed to protect. Detailed, direct and at times passionate, this book should be required reading for anyone who wants to …

Adr: The New Equity, Thomas O. Main

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No abstract provided.