Law Commons^™

Foreword: Somebody’S Watching Me: Surveillance And Privacy In An Age Of National Insecurity, Robert N. Strassfeld, Cheryl Ough

Faculty Publications

Forward to the Institute for Global Security Law and Policy at Case Western Reserve University symposium Somebody's Watching Me: Surveillance and Privacy in an Age of National Insecurity, Cleveland, OH, October 22-23, 2009

Employing E-Health: The Impact Of Electronic Health Records On The Workplace, Sharona Hoffman

Faculty Publications

Electronic Health Record (HER) systems may soon become a fixture in most medical settings. President Obama’s 29 stimulus legislation includes $19 billion to promote their implementation. The sophisticated features and efficiencies of HER systems have the potential to improve health outcomes and enhance patient welfare considerably. However, this emerging technology also poses significant challenges and risks, not the least of which are its workplace impacts. This article provides a first of its kind analysis of the ramifications of HER systems for workers and employers.

The potential effects of health information computerization on the workplace are numerous. Employers may obtain and …

Introduction: Reproductive Rights, Human Rights, And The Human Right To Health, B. Jessie Hill

Faculty Publications

Introduction - Case Western Reserve University Law Review Symposium 2010: Reproductive Rights, Human Rights, and the Human Right to Health

The Essential Unity Of Shareholders And The Myth Of Investor Short-Termism, George W. Dent

Faculty Publications

The separation of ownership and control publicized by Berle and Means in 1932 persists today. Domination of public companies by self-serving and ineffective executives costs America billions of dollars every year and contributed to the current economic meltdown. Repeated efforts to solve this problem--including the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, expanded disclosure duties, and more stringent requirements for director independence--have had little benefit and have sometimes made matters worse. The flaws in our corporate governance system are a growing problem for America’s economy as disillusioned investors increasingly place their capital in other countries.

Nonetheless, proposals for greater shareholder power have encountered criticisms: various …

Seizing The Grotian Moment: Accelerated Formation Of Customary International Law During Times Of Fundamental Change, Michael P. Scharf

Faculty Publications

Growing out of the author’s experience as Special Assistant to the International Prosecutor of the Cambodia Genocide Tribunal in 28, this article examines the concept of “Grotian moment,” a term the author uses to denote a paradigm-shifting development in which new rules and doctrines of customary international law emerge with unusual rapidity and acceptance. The article makes the case that the paradigm-shifting nature of the Nuremberg precedent, and the universal and unqualified endorsement of the Nuremberg Principles by the U.N. General Assembly in 1946, resulted in accelerated formation of customary international law, including the mode of international criminal responsibility now …

Deceit In Defense Investigations, Peter A. Joy, Kevin C. Mcmunigal

Faculty Publications

Prosecutors and police routinely employ misrepresentation and deceit in undercover investigations. In cases ranging from drug distribution, prostitution, and sexual misconduct with minors to organized crime and terrorism, police and those cooperating with police deceive suspects and their cohorts about their identities and their intentions in order to gain information to help uncover past crimes and thwart future crimes. Frequently, such deceit helps reveal the truth about what criminals do and think.

May defense lawyers and investigators working for them employ similar tactics? Or should prosecutors be the only lawyers allowed to direct and supervise investigatory deception? In recent years, …

Urban Agriculture And Other Green Uses: Remaking The Shrinking City, Catherine J. Lacroix

Faculty Publications

For many decades, the primary challenge of land use law has been how to promote and channel growth and development. Nobody wants stagnation; the cure is growth, and lately the cure has been “smart growth.” In the last several years, however, some cities have begun openly to address a previously unacknowledged truth: some cities will and do shrink. They lose population and have no foreseeable prospect of ever regaining it. The land use planning community has begun to grapple with the issue of the shrinking city, asking how we can achieve managed, “smart” shrinkage To some extent, the answer is …

On The Use And Abuse Of Standards For Law: Global Governance And Offshore Financial Centers, Richard K. Gordon

Faculty Publications

Current trends in international legal scholarship have shifted from a paradigm of state actors working within recognized sources of international law to one that includes networks of domestic regulators that develop and implement best practices or standards on a global basis. The new paradigm can be seen in operation in the efforts by onshore jurisdictions (most of which are financial centers themselves) to restrict the activities of offshore financial centers. Onshore jurisdictions enlisted these regulatory networks, as well as key international organizations, such as the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and the International Monetary Fund, to advance new standards …

Do Two Wrongs Protect A Prosecutor?, Peter A. Joy, Kevin C. Mcmunigal

Faculty Publications

May a former criminal defendant bring a civil rights action against a prosecutor who fabricated evidence during an investigation and then introduced that evidence against the defendant at trial? The Seventh and Second Circuits have divided in answering this question. On November 4, 29, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in an Eighth Circuit case raising this question, Pottawattamie County v. Harrington, 547 F.3d 922 (8th Cir. 28), cert. granted, 129 S. Ct. 22 (April 2, 29), and many expected the Court to resolve the circuit split later this term. But on January 4, 21, the Court dismissed the case …

Aba Explains Prosecutor's Ethical Disclosure Duty, Peter A. Joy, Kevin C. Mcmunigal

Faculty Publications

The ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility recently issued an advisory ethics opinion explaining that the ethical duty of the prosecutor under Model Rule 3.8(d) to disclose exculpatory evidence and information to the defendant is separate from, and more expansive than, the disclosure obligations under the Constitution. This column reviews the opinion and its implications for discovery in criminal cases.

Corporate 'Miranda' Warnings, Peter A. Joy, Kevin C. Mcmunigal

Faculty Publications

Administrative agencies and prosecutors have adopted formal and informal measures to push corporations to establish compliance programs, to disclose wrongdoing voluntarily, and to cooperate with government investigations, creating what some commentators refer to as a culture of cooperation. Key to internal investigations are employee interviews by counsel.

Employees, especially senior employees, may assume that the lawyers representing their organizational employers represent them as well in matters relating to their work. To avoid this misunderstanding, both in-house and outside counsel now use “corporate Miranda warnings” or “Upjohn warnings.” In law enforcement interrogation, the Miranda warning is an antidote to the coercive …

Of Squares And Uncouth Twenty-Eight-Sided Figures: Reflections On Gomilion And Lighfoot After Half A Century, Jonathan L. Entin

Faculty Publications

This essay, part of a symposium on political powerlessness and constitutional interpretation, focuses on Gomillion v. Lightfoot, which rejected an attempt to remove virtually every African American registered voter from the city limits of Tuskegee, Alabama. The paper examines why and how the case arose in a community with an unusually large and independent black middle class that had long placed high priority on voting rights as well as the impact of the ruling not only on political life in Tuskegee but also on the ruling in Baker v. Carr that launched the reapportionment of legislative bodies around the nation. …

Henry King, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

Henry King and I both began at Case Western Reserve in 1983, memorialized in an issue of In Brief, the law school magazine, that has a cover photo showing total devastation. It looks like the aftermath of a faculty meeting, but the picture is really of bombed-out Nuremberg, of course.

Murphy V. Internal Revenue Service, The Meaning Of 'Income,' And Sky-Is-Falling Tax Commentary, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

This article examines the widely noted D.C. Circuit case, Murphy v. Internal Revenue Service, where a panel twice got itself hopelessly entangled in the relationship between the meaning of “income” in the Internal Revenue Code and its meaning in the Sixteenth Amendment. At issue was whether a whistle-blower's recovery for emotional distress could be reached by the income tax. The first time around, the panel concluded that the recovery could not be taxed constitutionally because it was not income. The second time, apparently after having visited another planet, the very same panel concluded that the recovery could be taxed whether …

Dangerous Terrain: Mapping The Female Body In Gonzales V. Carhart, B. Jessie Hill

Faculty Publications

The body occupies an ambiguous position within the law. It is, in one sense, the quintessential object of state regulatory and police power, the object that the state acts both upon and for. At the same time, the body is often constructed in legal discourse as the site of personhood - our most intimate, sacred, and inviolate possession. The inherent tension between these two concepts of the body permeates the law, but it is perhaps nowhere more prominent than in the constitutional doctrine pertaining to abortion. Abortion is one of the most heavily regulated medical procedures in the United States, …

Foreword: Lawfare!, Michael P. Scharf, Shannon Pagano

Faculty Publications

Forward to the Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law's symposium "Lawfare!" 2012, Cleveland, OH.

The Torture Lawyers, Michael P. Scharf

Faculty Publications

This article recounts the story about how these four individuals intentionally cut off the government's primary experts on the Geneva Conventions, the Torture Convention, and customary international law from the decision making process. In doing so, they presented a one-sided and distorted view of U.S. obligations under international law that led to a widespread government policy and practice of torture. It also reveals how a trio of important Supreme Court precedents disrupted these plans, and ultimately swung the balance back in favor of compliance with international law.

In Defense Of Intellectual Property Anxiety, Aaron K. Perzanowski

Faculty Publications

In this Response to Professor Fagundes’s "Property Rhetoric and the Public Domain," Professor Perzanowski expresses skepticism about two assumptions underlying the argument for embracing property rhetoric to promote the public domain. This argument assumes, first, public recognition of social discourse theory as an account of property and, second, rhetorical advantages of social discourse theory that are comparable to those of more familiar notions of private property. Perzanowski concludes that the simple intuitive appeal of Blackstonian property cautions against styling the struggle for balanced copyright and patent policy as a debate over competing property interests.

Fixing Ram Copies, Aaron K. Perzanowski

Faculty Publications

Scholars, litigants, and courts have debated the status of so-called “RAM copies” - instantiations of copyrighted works in the random access memory of computing devices - for decades. The Second Circuit’s decision in Cartoon Network v. CSC Holdings has recently reignited the controversy over these putative copies. There the court held that CSC did not create copies within the meaning of the Copyright Act when it buffered fleeting segments of television programs. In many respects, the Second Circuit’s holding is a straightforward application of the Act’s nested definitions of “copies” and “fixed.” But because the court declined to apply the …

Professor Morris Shanker, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

Morry Shanker began teaching at the Western Reserve Law School shortly after the creation of the Western Reserve. In fact, had Moses Cleaveland not elbowed his way to the front of the boat in 1796, Professor Shanker would have been the first surveyor to step onto the banks of the Cuyahoga. If that had happened, the house band at Severance Hall might be known today as the Shanker Orchestra.

Forensic Science: Why No Research?, Paul C. Giannelli

Faculty Publications

The National Academy of Sciences ground-breaking report on forensic science – Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward – raised numerous issues. One dominant theme that runs throughout the Report is the failure of some forensic science disciplines to comport with fundamental scientific principles – in particular, to support claims with empirical research. The Report observed that “some forensic science disciplines are supported by little rigorous systematic research to validate the discipline’s basic premises and techniques. There is no evident reason why such research cannot be conducted.”

The Report went on to identify fingerprint examinations, firearms (ballistics) …

Putting The Community Back Into The ‘Community Benefit’ Standard, Jessica Wilen Berg

Faculty Publications

The responsibility of hospitals to provide charity care raises fundamental questions about the structure of the United States' health care system. There has been little concrete effort to reassess the obligations of hospitals. This Article seeks to fill that gap by proposing a novel framework for analyzing hospitals' community obligations. This new framework challenges traditional notions of individual charity care and provides a normative basis for encouraging a shift toward public health benefits.

The Universe Of Thinkable Thoughts Versus The Facts Of Empirical Research, Joseph A. Custer

Faculty Publications

Mr. Custer considers the use of "literary warrant" as it affects the usefulness of the West Digest System, and reports on the results of a survey he conducted with both legal practitioners and law faculty. He concludes that the West Digest System has some viability, but it will need to extend its literary warrant to remain a player in today's legal culture.

Litigation, Integration, And Transformation: Using Medicaid To Address Racial Inequities In Health Care, Ruqaiijah Yearby

Faculty Publications

Using a public health policy perspective, this article examines the persistence of racial inequities in nursing homes and prescribes a solution to address these inequities. I use empirical data to prove the persistence of racial inequities in health care, analyze the government policies that allow racial inequities to continue, and provide a solution of regulatory integration. Specifically, I propose that civil rights enforcement be integrated with the nursing home enforcement system, which has been aggressively enforced and monitored. There are many strategies that may lead to the adoption of this system. One such strategy is using the Medicaid Act to …

A Tribute To Henry T. King, Michael P. Scharf

Faculty Publications

Henry King is the reason I'm teaching at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. Over the years he became my mentor, friend, and inspiration.

Privacy Is The Problem, Raymond Shih Ray Ku

Faculty Publications

A local school district remotely activates laptop web cameras that allegedly record the activities of students, even in their bedrooms.1 The President authorizes the National Security Agency (NSA) to monitor the telephone calls and electronic communications of individuals within the United States on an unprecedented scale in the interest of national security.2 Even a cursory examination of the news suggests that the activities and communications of Americans are increasingly subject to government surveillance from every level of government. Whatever we may think about the necessity for this surveillance, we should question how such programs come into being; in other words, …

Transnational Litigation And Institutional Choice, Cassandra Burke Robertson

Faculty Publications

When U.S. corporations cause harm abroad, should foreign plaintiffs be allowed to sue in the United States? Federal courts are increasingly saying no. The courts have expanded the doctrines of forum non convenes and prudential standing to dismiss a growing number of transnational cases. This restriction of court access has sparked considerable tension in international relations, as a number of other nations view such dismissals as an attempt to insulate U.S. corporations from liability. A growing number of countries have responded by enacting retaliatory legislation that may ultimately harm U.S. interests. This article argues that the judiciary’s restriction of access …

Adverse Inference About Adverse Inferences: Restructuring Juridical Roles For Responding To Evidence Tampering By Parties To Litigation, Dale A. Nance

Faculty Publications

For at least two centuries, Anglo-American courts have responded to a party's evidence tampering by allowing the opponent to argue to jurors that they should draw an adverse inference against the offending party in deciding the merits of the case. This Article argues that the use of such inferences, and invitations to draw them, should be radically curtailed, not only because of the ambiguities and risks of prejudice that such inferences entail, but more importantly because they reflect and contribute to a confusion of roles in which the jury is enlisted to participate in the management of the pre-trial conduct …

Property And The Public Forum: An Essay On Christian Legal Society V. Martinez, B. Jessie Hill

Faculty Publications

Christian Legal Society v. Martinez is situated at the intersection of various, and arguably conflicting, lines of doctrine. In ultimately holding that the Hastings College of Law could decline to recognize the student chapter of the Christian Legal Society due to the group’s refusal to accept members who did not conform their beliefs and conduct to the principles of CLS (particularly regarding homosexuality),the Supreme Court was required to sort through a tangle of precedents involving free speech limitations in nonpublic for a, religious groups’ rights of equal access to school facilities, and freedom of expressive association.

Perhaps less obviously, however, …

The (Lack Of) Enforcement Of Prosecutor Disclosure Rules, Kevin C. Mcmunigal

Faculty Publications

In this Article, I assess the apparent prospects for increased disciplinary enforcement of state ethics rules based on Rule 3.8(d) of the American Bar Association's (“ABA”) Model Rules of Professional Conduct that mandates prosecutorial disclosure of exculpatory information. In particular, I focus on whether it makes sense to view recent ABA Formal Opinion 09-454, in which the ABA gave an expansive reading to Model Rule 3.8(d), as the bellwether of an era of increased enforcement of ethical disclosure rules for prosecutors.