Law Commons^™

On Patenting Human Organisms Or How The Abortion Wars Feed Into The Ownership Fallacy, Yaniv Heled

Yaniv Heled

The idea of ominous technologies that put human individuals or parts of their bodies under someone else's control has been stirring emotions and terrifying people for centuries. It was a recent offshoot of this idea--the notion of “patenting humans”--that mobilized certain members of Congress to pass legislation prohibiting the issuance of patent claims “directed to or encompassing a human organism.” The values underlying this legislation may well have been agreeable, even admirable. Yet, the actual motivation for it was misguided; its execution, deeply flawed; its potential outcomes, hazardous

This Article reviews the history and background of this prohibition. It fleshes …

Beyond "Perfection": Can The Insights Of Perfecting Criminal Markets Be Put To Practical Use?, Caren Morrison

Caren Myers Morrison

David Jaros’s thought-provoking new Article, Perfecting Criminal Markets, sheds light on a heretofore unappreciated effect of our obsession with criminalization: that merely by creating new crimes, lawmakers may inadvertently strengthen existing criminal markets. To support his argument, Jaros adopts the tenets of neoclassical deterrence theory, which assume that criminalizing an activity will deter its occurrence. But the model Jaros employs has its limits. The weakness of a rational choice account of criminal markets is that it relies so heavily on the assumption that prospective criminals will be aware of, and swayed by, criminal laws that might in fact be quite …

New Rights For The Disabled: The Americans With Disabilities Act Of 1990, Steven Kaminshine

Steven J. Kaminshine

No abstract provided.

Court's Age Discrimination Decision Fails To Resolve Key Questions Arising Under The Adea, Steven Kaminshine

Steven J. Kaminshine

No abstract provided.

Upgrades To Ada Product Of Bipartisan Cooperation, Wendy Hensel

Wendy F. Hensel

No abstract provided.

Hugo Black's Congressional Investigation Of Lobbying And The Public Utility Holding Company Act: A Historical View Of The Power Trust, New Deal Politics, And Regulatory Propaganda, William Gregory, Rennard Strickland

William A. Gregory

No abstract provided.

Legislation To Preserve And Control Open Space Land, William Gregory, Diane Vanwyck

William A. Gregory

No abstract provided.

Discrimination In Customer Segmentation Marketing Practices, Jude A. Thomas

Jude A Thomas

Customer segmentation is a powerful analytical marketing practice that is employed by a wide range of businesses to segregate customers with similar characteristics into subgroups in order to inform operational business processes. Such practices allow firms to better allocate their resources in order to form more profitable customer relationships, but they also have the capacity to lead to unfair discriminatory impact upon customer groups. Current legislation is largely unprotective of customers so positioned, but recent trends in the insurance and lending industries suggest that a broader application of anti-discrimination laws could foretell a future of greater restrictions on the implementation …

California Egg Toss - The High Costs Of Avoiding Unenforceable Surrogacy Contracts, Jennifer Jackson

Jennifer Jackson

In an emotionally charged decision regarding surrogacy contracts, it is important to recognize the ramifications, costs, and policy. There are advantages to both “gestational carrier surrogacy” contracts and “traditional surrogacy” contracts. However, this paper focuses on the differences between these contracts using case law. Specifically, this paper will focus on the implications of California case law regarding surrogacy contracts. Cases such as Johnson v. Calvert and In Re Marriage of Moschetta provide a clear distinction between these contracts. This distinction will show that while gestational carrier surrogacy contracts are more expensive, public policy and court opinions will provide certainty and …

The Cra Implications Of Predatory Lending, Kathleen Engel, Patricia Mccoy

Patricia A. McCoy

This article considers the Community Reinvestment Act's role in combating predatory lending. It provides an overview of the CRA, explains how CRA-covered lenders may enable predatory lending and explores the relationship between the CRA, federal subsidies and predatory lending. The article concludes that the CRA should be used to penalize lenders that engage in predatory lending and recommends that federal bank regulators use CRA to sanction behavior that could encourage further predatory lending.

Inclusionary Eminent Domain, Gerald S. Dickinson

Gerald S. Dickinson

This article proposes a paradigm shift in takings law, namely “inclusionary eminent domain.” This new normative concept – paradoxical in nature – rethinks eminent domain as an inclusionary land assembly framework that is equipped with multiple tools to help guide municipalities, private developers and communities construct or preserve affordable housing developments. Analogous to inclusionary zoning, inclusionary eminent domain helps us think about how to fix the “exclusionary eminent domain” phenomenon of displacing low-income families by assembling and negotiating the use of land – prior to, during or after condemnation proceedings – to accommodate affordable housing where condemnation threatens to decrease …