Law Commons^™

Law Is In The Bin: New Frontiers In Conceptual Art And Legal Liability, Katelyn E. Doering

Notre Dame Law Review

Part I of this Note begins with a discussion of who Banksy is and why his work is important to this legal debate, finishing with a detailed description of the features of conceptual art that are relevant for legal analysis and an argument that the shredding stunt—the event itself, not the partially shredded canvas—is a work of conceptual art. Part II argues that the unique features of the shredding stunt, and of future works in the same artistic category, present a novel legal problem both for artists and for buyers. This novel problem is explored through the lens of …

Uncertain Terms, Leah R. Fowler, Jim Hawkins, Jessica L. Roberts

Notre Dame Law Review

Health apps collect massive amounts of sensitive consumer data, including information about users’ reproductive lives, mental health, and genetics. As a result, consumers in this industry may shop for privacy terms when they select a product. Yet our research reveals that many digital health tech companies reserve the right to unilaterally amend their terms of service and their privacy policies. This ability to make one-sided changes undermines the market for privacy, leaving users vulnerable. Unfortunately, the current law generally tolerates unilateral amendments, despite fairness and efficiency concerns. We therefore propose legislative, regulatory, and judicial solutions to better protect consumers of …

Forum Selection Clauses, Non-Signatories, And Personal Jurisdiction, John F. Coyle, Robin J. Effron

Notre Dame Law Review

Who is bound by a forum selection clause? At first glance, the answer to this question may seem obvious. It is black letter law that a person cannot be bound to an agreement without her consent. In recent years, however, courts have not followed this rule with respect to forum selection clauses. Instead, they routinely enforce these clauses against individuals who never signed the contract containing the clause. Courts justify this practice on the grounds that it promotes litigation efficiency by bringing all of the litigants together in the chosen forum. There are, however, problems with enforcing forum selection clauses …

Delegation, Administration, And Improvisation, Kevin Arlyck

Notre Dame Law Review

Nondelegation originalism is having its moment. Recent Supreme Court opinions suggest that a majority of Justices may be prepared to impose strict constitutional limits on Congress’s power to delegate policymaking authority to the executive branch. In response, scholars have scoured the historical record for evidence affirming or refuting a more stringent version of nondelegation than current Supreme Court doctrine demands. Though the debate ranges widely, sharp disputes have arisen over whether a series of apparently broad Founding-era delegations defeat originalist arguments in favor of a more demanding modern doctrine. Proponents—whom I call “nondelegationists”—argue that these historical delegations can all be …

Copyright And The Creative Process, Mark Bartholomew

Notre Dame Law Review

Copyright is typically described as a mechanism for encouraging the production of creative works. On this view, copyright protection should be granted to genuinely creative works but denied to non-creative ones. Yet that is not how the law works. Instead, almost anything—from test answer sheets to instruction manuals to replicas of items in the public domain—is deemed creative and therefore eligible for copyright protection. This is the consequence of a century of copyright doctrine assuming that artistic creativity is incapable of measurement, unaffected by personal motivation, and incomprehensible to novices and experts alike. Recent neuroscientific research contradicts these assumptions. It …

Bostock Was Bogus: Textualism, Pluralism, And Title Vii, Mitchell N. Berman, Guha Krishnamurthi

Notre Dame Law Review

In Bostock v. Clayton County, one of the blockbuster cases from its 2019 Term, the Supreme Court held that federal antidiscrimination law prohibits employment discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity. Unsurprisingly, the result won wide acclaim in the mainstream legal and popular media. Results aside, however, the reaction to Justice Neil Gorsuch’s majority opinion, which purported to ground the outcome in a textualist approach to statutory interpretation, was more mixed. The great majority of commentators, both liberal and conservative, praised Justice Gorsuch for what they deemed a careful and sophisticated—even “magnificent” and “exemplary”—application of textualist principles, …

Oversight Riders, Kevin M. Stack, Michael P. Vandenbergh

Notre Dame Law Review

Congress has a constitutionally critical duty to gather information about how the executive branch implements the powers Congress has granted it and the funds Congress has appropriated. Yet in recent years the executive branch has systematically thwarted Congress’s powers and duties of oversight. Congressional subpoenas for testimony and documents have met with blanket refusals to comply, frequently backed by advice from the Department of Justice that executive privilege justifies withholding the information. Even when Congress holds an official in contempt for failure to comply with a congressional subpoena, the Department of Justice often does not initiate criminal sanctions. As a …

The Duty Not To Continue Distributing Your Own Libels, Eugene Volokh

Notre Dame Law Review

Say something I wrote about you online (in a newspaper, a blog, or a social media page) turns out to be false and defamatory. Assume I wasn’t culpable when I first posted it, but now I’m on notice of the error.

Am I liable for defamation if I fail to remove or correct the erroneous material? Surprisingly, courts haven’t settled on an answer, and scholars haven’t focused on the question. Libel law is stuck in a time when newspapers left the publisher’s control as soon as they are printed—even though now an article or a post can be seen on …

Cancelling Capitalism?, Christina P. Skinner

Notre Dame Law Review

Grow the Pie’s defense of capitalism is a tremendous contribution, albeit one which Edmans himself downplays. While the author largely bills his work as one aiming to correct the factual record about profitmaximization— while providing pointers for managers and policymakers—Edmans reaffirms the validity and viability of corporate capitalism as an ideology that, in practice, advances human welfare.

Injecting this viewpoint into the academic debate is critically important at a time when voices of stakeholderists seem the loudest. Sociological research long ago confirmed that societal expectations (as often shaped by academic discourse) have real impact on our social systems and …

It’S A Trap: A New Economic Model Addressing American Public Education, Nikhil A. Gulati

Notre Dame Law Review

This Note will argue that, when looking at the quality of a school district, there is some theoretical threshold that determines whether the use of local property tax and zoning by a local government will be effective in increasing the quality of the locality’s schools. This theoretical threshold is conceptually akin to the basic economic idea of a poverty trap. If a locality’s schools are above this quality threshold, the corresponding local government will be able to effectively utilize property taxes and zoning to increase the quality of its schools. However, if it is below the threshold, the local government …

Libel By Omission Of Exculpatory Legal Decisions, Eugene Volokh

Notre Dame Law Review

Is it libelous to write that someone has been convicted of a crime, but to fail to mention that the conviction has been reversed? Or to write that someone has been charged, without mentioning the acquittal? The answers, it turns out, are often “yes”; this Article lays out the precedents that so conclude.

Covid-19 Sewage Testing As A Police Surveillance Infrastructure, Elizabeth E. Joh

Notre Dame Journal on Emerging Technologies

This essay argues that sewage testing will outlive the pandemic and become a part of a general policing surveillance infrastructure. We risk adopting this surveillance method without taking care to assess the legal and policy questions raised by its use. Wastewater can provide early clues not just for COVID-19 outbreaks, but also for the presence (and assumed use) of opioids, methamphetamines, and other illegal drugs. Sewage testing at the University of California, San Diego, recently led to an alert that an infected person was “someone who used a restroom [at a specified residence hall] from 6 a.m. and 9:30 a.m. …

Note: Home-Sharing, Ride-Sharing, And Data-Sharing: Fourth Amendment Hurdles For Local Governance Of The Sharing Economy, Matthew J. Disler

Notre Dame Journal on Emerging Technologies

Cities’ attempts to regulate the sharing economy reveal a conflict between local governance interests and Fourth Amendment doctrine. Although sharing economy industries present local problems, from housing affordability and land-use regulations to traffic congestion and sidewalk safety, cities attempt to effectuate their policies through data reporting requirements that are vulnerable to Fourth Amendment challenge. Businesses have successfully argued that cities’ reporting requirements are unconstitutional searches because they have an unreasonably broad scope and lack an opportunity for pre-compliance review. This Article argues that this impasse results from recent developments that have lent additional confusion to the Fourth Amendment’s administrative search …

The New Editors: Refining First Amendment Protections For Internet Platforms, Mailyn Fidler

Notre Dame Journal on Emerging Technologies

This Article envisions what it would look like to tailor the First Amendment editorial privilege to the multifaceted nature of the internet, just as courts have done with media in the offline world. It reviews the law of editorial judgment offline, where protections for editorial judgment are strong but not absolute, and its nascent application online. It then analyzes whether the diversity of internet platforms and their functions alter how the Constitution should be applied in this new setting. First Amendment editorial privilege, as applied to internet platforms, is often treated by courts and platforms themselves as monolithic and equally …

Note: The "Border" Of Constitutional Electronic Privacy Rights: Electronic Searches And Seizures At The United States' Territorial Limits, Ryan Garippo

Notre Dame Journal on Emerging Technologies

In the recent challenge brought before the First Circuit, the court was not required to directly answer what level of particularized suspicion is required for a forensic search. Although, its holding is consistent with the jurisprudence set forth by both the Fourth and Eleventh Circuits. Furthermore, it is important to note that there have been legal challenges brought on this issue in the Fifth, Seventh, and Tenth Circuits. However, in each of these cases, the court chose not to decide the constitutional question because it was not outcome determinative for the litigants in question. This disagreement between the federal circuit …

Charting The Skies: Where Does Facial Recognition Technology "Fit" In The Data Privacy Cosmos?, Steven D. Zansberg

Notre Dame Journal on Emerging Technologies

What I offer below is a theoretical framework for evaluating competing societal interests: the value our society assigns to the free-flow of information to the public, including highly sophisticated computergenerated analyses of gargantuan data sets—information that helps inform better individual and collective decision-making; and on the other hand, the value we place on privacy even in the context of technological advances. One’s most personal actions and thoughts—what we type into search engines, which videos we watch, for how long or how often, which books or articles we read, with whom we communicate and the contents of those communications—should not be …

Note: Facial Recognition Technology And The Constitution, Mark Simonitis

Notre Dame Journal on Emerging Technologies

Over the past several years, we have seen an increase in the adoption and use of facial recognition technology (FRT). Both private corporations and government organizations have increasingly used this technology over the past several years, and law enforcement agencies have been just as eager to utilize FRT in their operations. The potential uses for this technology in a law enforcement capacity are numerous. For example, FRT could be used to identify criminals whose faces were caught on surveillance footage, or it could be used to help identify citizens during border crossings. However, it is easy to imagine how an …

Letter From The Editor, Fon Bisalbutr

Notre Dame Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Lecture By John Tasioulas: Just Global Health: Integrating Human Rights And Common Goods., Journal Of International & Comparative Law, Notre Dame Law School

Notre Dame Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

The Art Of Economic War: Cultural Property Import Tariffs As Foreign Policy, Catherine Braun

Notre Dame Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

“A Mad And Melancholy Record”: The Crisis Of International Law Histories, Vasuki Nesiah

Notre Dame Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Why The 2020 U.S.-China Trade Agreement Needs Anticorruption Provisions For The Protection Of Intellectual Property, Daniel C.K. Chow

Notre Dame Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

The Potential Impact Of Climate Change Litigation On Government Policy, Fon Bisalbutr

Notre Dame Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Liability And Emerging Digital Technologies: An Eu Perspective, Maria L. Montagnani, Mirta Cavallo

Notre Dame Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Masthead, Jounral Of International & Comparative Law, Notre Dame Law School

Notre Dame Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Legislative Actions To Promote And Enforce Ethical Conduct In Government, Christine Todd Whitman

Journal of Legislation

No abstract provided.

Outsourcing Privacy, Ari Ezra Waldman

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection

An underappreciated part of the narrative of privacy managerialism—and the focus of this Essay—is the information industry’s increasing tendency to outsource privacy compliance responsibilities to technology vendors. In the last three years alone, the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) has identified more than 250 companies in the privacy technology vendor market. These companies market their products as tools to help companies comply with new privacy laws like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), with consent orders from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and with other privacy rules from around the world. They do so by building compliance templates, pre-completed …

Incidental Burdens On First Amendment Freedoms, Charles F. Capps

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection

The Supreme Court is currently reconsidering the question when, if ever, the Free Exercise Clause requires exemptions to neutral laws of general applicability. This Essay proposes an answer that is based on the idea—which this Essay labels the “Principle of Consistency”—that the First Amendment requires comparable levels of protection for speech and religious exercise. Other scholars applying the Principle of Consistency have discussed the implications of United States v. O’Brien, which prescribed intermediate scrutiny for incidental burdens on speech, for the problem of exemptions under the Free Exercise Clause. But no one has discussed the implications of two lines …

Challenges Of Leadership In The Twenty-First Century, Leon Panetta

Journal of Legislation

No abstract provided.

Criminalizing Material Support To Domestic Terrorist Organizations: A National Security Imperative, Jimmy Gurulé

Journal of Legislation

No abstract provided.