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Full-Text Articles in Law
Defining "Disability" Under The Maine Human Rights Act After Whitney V. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., Michael J. Anderson
Defining "Disability" Under The Maine Human Rights Act After Whitney V. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., Michael J. Anderson
Maine Law Review
In Whitney v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, sitting as the Law Court, was asked to determine whether the Maine Human Rights Act (MHRA) requires plaintiffs alleging disability discrimination to show that their condition substantially limits one or more major life activities. In determining that the MHRA does not require such a showing, the court effectively established that the MHRA was intended to protect a much broader range of medical conditions than its federal counterparts, the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (Rehabilitation Act) and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA). In so doing, the Whitney court …
Corpus Linguistics: Misfire Or More Ammo For The Ordinary - Meaning Canon?, John D. Ramer
Corpus Linguistics: Misfire Or More Ammo For The Ordinary - Meaning Canon?, John D. Ramer
Michigan Law Review
Scholars and judges have heralded corpus linguistics—the study of language through collections of spoken or written texts—as a novel tool for statutory interpretation that will help provide an answer in the occasionally ambiguous search for “ordinary meaning” using dictionaries. In the spring of 2016, the Michigan Supreme Court became the first to use corpus linguistics in a majority opinion. The dissent also used it, however, and the two opinions reached different conclusions. In the first true test for corpus linguistics, the answer seemed to be just as ambiguous as before.
This result calls into question the utility of corpus linguistics. …
Understanding Nautilus's Reasonable-Certainty Standard: Requirements For Linguistic And Physical Definiteness Of Patent Claims, Gary M. Fox
Michigan Law Review
Patent applicants must satisfy a variety of requirements to obtain a patent from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The definiteness requirement forces applicants to describe their inventions in unambiguous terms so that other inventors will understand the scope of granted patent rights. Although the statutory provision for the definiteness requirement has been stable for many years, the Supreme Court’s decision in Nautilus v. Biosig Instruments altered the doctrine. The Court abrogated the Federal Circuit’s insoluble-ambiguity standard and replaced it with a new reasonable-certainty standard. Various district courts have applied the new standard in different ways, indicating the need …
Chevron In The Circuit Courts, Kent Barnett, Christopher J. Walker
Chevron In The Circuit Courts, Kent Barnett, Christopher J. Walker
Michigan Law Review
This Article presents findings from the most comprehensive empirical study to date on how the federal courts of appeals have applied Chevrondeference— the doctrine under which courts defer to a federal agency’s reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous statute that it administers. Based on 1,558 agency interpretations the circuit courts reviewed from 2003 through 2013 (where they cited Chevron), we found that the circuit courts overall upheld 71% of interpretations and applied Chevrondeference 77% of the time. But there was nearly a twenty-five-percentage-point difference in agency-win rates when the circuit courts applied Chevrondeference than when they did …
Unambiguous Deterrence: Ambiguity Attitudes In The Juvenile Justice System And The Case For A Right To Counsel During Intake Proceedings, Hannah Frank
Vanderbilt Law Review
According to the traditional rational choice theory of criminal behavior, people choose to commit crimes in a rational manner.' They weigh the costs and benefits and make informed decisions to maximize their utility. Under this framework, the state can deter crime through two main avenues: increasing the probability of detection and increasing the punishment if caught, both of which increase the total cost of committing a crime. Recently, however, behavioral insights have begun to cast doubt on traditional rationality assumptions. Lab experiments and empirical studies using real-world data have shown that people exhibit bounded rationality. For example, individuals have limited …