Law Commons^™

Finding A Cure: The Case For Regulation And Oversight Of Electronic Health Record Systems, Sharona Hoffman, Andy Podgurski

Faculty Publications

In the foreseeable future, it is likely that the familiar, paper-based patient medical files will become a thing of the past. On April 26, 24, President George W. Bush announced a plan to ensure that all Americans' health records are computerized within ten years and to establish a National Health Information Network. Many advocates are enthusiastically promoting the adoption of health information technology (HIT) and electronic health record (HER) systems as a means to improve U.S. health care.

HER systems often not only serve as record-keeping systems, but also have multiple capabilities, including drug ordering, decision support, alerts concerning patient …

Safford Unified School District No. 1 V. Redding, And The Future Of School Strip Searches, Lewis R. Katz

Faculty Publications

Each year in America an unknown number of children in primary and secondary schools are strip searched by teachers and/or school administrators, forced to remove pants and shirts down to their underwear and sometimes forced to expose their breasts and genitals. In Safford Unified School District No. 1 v. Redding, 129 S.Ct. 2633 (29), the Supreme Court weighed in on the issue, finding that school officials violated the child’s Fourth Amendment rights during a strip search but reversing the Ninth Circuit and awarding the school officials qualified immunity not withstanding the ineptitude of the investigation. The Court purported to apply …

The Intellectual History Of The Shortest Article In Law Review History, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

"The Shortest Article in Law Review History" appeared in 2 to a mixture of acclaim ("Brilliant!"), horror ("Don't you have anything better not to do?"), and indifference ("Huh?"). Since then, many have asked how the article came into being and what its effect on legal scholarship has been. (Well, the author's mother and sister did once raise those questions, or one of them anyway.) This new article provides readers with just about everything needed to understand a twenty-first century development in the life of the mind.

Foreword: Security Detention, Michael P. Scharf, Gwen Gillespie

Faculty Publications

Foreword to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Frederick K. Cox International Law Center at Case Western Reserve University organized a two-day experts meeting on security detention, Cleveland, OH, 2009

A Theory Of Wto Adjudication: From Empirical Analysis To Biased Rule Development, Juscelino F. Colares

Faculty Publications

The positive theory of litigation predicts that, under certain conditions, plaintiffs and defendants achieve an unremarkable and roughly equivalent share of litigation success. This Article, grounded in an empirical analysis of WTO adjudication from 1995 through 27, reveals a high disparity between Complainant and Respondent success rates: Complainants win roughly ninety percent of the disputes. This disparity transcends case type, party identity, income level, and other litigant-specific characteristics. After analyzing and discarding standard empirical and theoretical alternative explanations for the systematic disparity in success rates, this study demonstrates, through an examination of patterns in WTO adjudicators' notorious decisions, that biased …

The Rest Is Silence: Chevron Deference, Agency Jurisdiction And Statutory Silences, Jonathan H. Adler

Faculty Publications

Should agencies receive Chevron deference when interpreting the reach of their own jurisdiction? This article argues that, in general, they should not. We begin by identifying and detailing the various different types of jurisdictional questions that may arise in statutory interpretation. The article then surveys how the Supreme Court and lower federal courts have analyzed these different aspects of the jurisdiction problem, with a particular attention to statutory silences. The Court's Chevron jurisprudence strongly suggest that deference to agency determinations of their own jurisdiction should be disfavored, particularly where a statute is silent (and not merely ambiguous) about the existence …

Judgment, Identity, And Independence, Cassandra Burke Robertson

Faculty Publications

Whenever a new corporate or governmental scandal erupts, onlookers ask "Where were the lawyers?" Why would attorneys not have advised their clients of the risks posed by conduct that, from an outsider's perspective, appears indefensible? When numerous red flags have gone unheeded, people often conclude that the lawyers' failure to sound the alarm must be caused by greed, incompetence, or both. A few scholars have suggested that unconscious cognitive bias may better explain such lapses in judgment, but they have not explained why particular situations are more likely than others to encourage such bias. This article seeks to fill that …

Under The Robes: A Judicial Right To Bare Arms (And Legs And . . .), Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

This essay considers a time-dishonored question: What, if anything, do judges have on under their robes? After serious research and thought, the author concludes that judges are-or, in an economically rational world, should be-minimalists.

Business Lawyers As Enterprise Architects, George W. Dent

Faculty Publications

In 1984 Ronald Gilson published Value Creation by Business Lawyers: Legal Skills and Asset Pricing. It began: "What do business lawyers really do? Embarrassingly enough, at a time when lawyers are criticized with increasing frequency as nonproductive actors in the economy, there seems to be no coherent answer." He dismissed lawyers' own answer that "they 'protect' their clients, that they get their clients the 'best' deal." He also rejected the academic literature which offered a laundry list of roles the business lawyer plays: "a counselor, planner, drafter, negotiator, investigator, lobbyist, scapegoat, champion, and, most strikingly, even as a friend." Dissecting …

No Way Out? The Question Of Unilateral Withdrawals Of Referrals To The Icc And Other Human Rights Courts, Michael P. Scharf, Patrick Dowd

Faculty Publications

Growing out of the authors' work for the International Criminal Court, which was sponsored by a grant from the Open Society Institute, No Way Out examines one of the most vexing legal questions facing the International Criminal Court - whether a State that has referred a case to the Court can subsequently withdraw its referral as part of a domestic peace agreement? The issue has arisen with respect to Uganda's interest in withdrawing its self-referral as part of a peace deal with the leaders of the Lord's Resistance Army. This article examines the Rome Statute, the drafting history, and the …

Foreword: After Guantanamo, Michael P. Scharf, Sonia Vohra

Faculty Publications

“Guantanamo Bay.” To many around the world those two words conjure up haunting images of orange jumpsuit-clad detainees imprisoned behind barbed-wire fences, subjected to the cruelest imaginable interrogation techniques, and held indefinitely without trial, or awaiting trial before military commissions whose procedures violate international law. It is no surprise, then, that the new U.S. administration perceived the Guantanamo Bay detention center and associated detainee policies as an indelible stain on America's moral authority and an impediment to the success of future U.S. foreign policy.

Researching Initiatives And Referendums In Arkansas, Joseph A. Custer

Faculty Publications

This bibliographic essay and guide to researching Arkansas initiatives and referendums is intended to assist anyone interested in this vital subject.

E-Health Hazards: Provider Liability And Electronic Health Record Systems, Sharona Hoffman, Andy Podgurski

Faculty Publications

In the foreseeable future, electronic health record (EHR) systems are likely to become a fixture in medical settings. The potential benefits of computerization could be substantial, but EHR systems also give rise to new liability risks for health care providers that have received little attention in the legal literature. This Article features a first of its kind, comprehensive analysis of the liability risks associated with use of this complex and important technology. In addition, it develops recommendations to address these liability concerns. Appropriate measures include federal regulations designed to ensure the quality and safety of EHR systems along with agency …

Introduction To Proceedings From A Conference On Newborn Screening For Nontreatable Disorders, Maxwell J. Mehlman

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Preparing For Disaster: Protecting The Most Vulnerable In Emergencies, Sharona Hoffman

Faculty Publications

Many federal, state, local and private entities are investing significant resources in disaster readiness initiatives. Often disregarded, however, are the special needs of vulnerable populations during disasters. In the context of emergencies, vulnerable groups may include individuals with disabilities, pregnant women, children, the elderly, prisoners, members of ethnic minorities, people with language barriers, and the impoverished. The fate of the disadvantaged during disasters has received little attention in the legal literature, and this article begins to fill that gap. It examines ethical theories of distributive justice and existing federal and state civil rights and emergency response laws and argues that …

International Law And The Torture Memos, Michael P. Scharf

Faculty Publications

This article explores the influence of international law in the evolution of the Bush Administration's policies toward detainees in the global war on terror. The detainee case study provides a modern lens for evaluating Jack Goldsmith and Eric Posner's hypothesis set forth in THE LIMITS OF INTERNATIONAL LAW that international law exerts no “compliance pull” on American policymakers in times of crisis.

Business, The Environment, And The Roberts Court: A Preliminary Assessment, Jonathan H. Adler

Faculty Publications

The Roberts Court has developed a reputation for being a "pro-business" court. This article, prepared for the 29 Santa Clara Law Review symposium on "Big Business and the Roberts Court," seeks to offer a preliminary assessment of this claim with reference to the Roberts Court's decisions in environmental cases. Reviewing the environmental law decisions of the Roberts Court to date reveals no evidence of a "pro-business" bias. This does not disprove the claim that the Roberts Court is pro-business, but it may suggest the need to refine conventional descriptions of the Roberts Court. The lack of a pro-business orientation in …

Taking Property Rights Seriously: The Case Of Climate Change, Jonathan H. Adler

Faculty Publications

The dominant approach to environmental policy endorsed by conservative and libertarian policy thinkers, so-called "free market environmentalism" (FME), is grounded in the recognition and protection of property rights in environmental resources. Despite this normative commitment to property rights, most self-described advocates of FME adopt a utilitarian, welfare-maximization, approach to climate change policy, arguing that the costs of mitigation measures could outweigh the costs of climate change itself. Yet even if anthropogenic climate change is decidedly less than catastrophic - indeed, even if it net beneficial to the globe as whole - human-induced climate change is likely to contribute to environmental …

Standing Still In The Roberts Court (Panel), Jonathan H. Adler

Faculty Publications

This Article, prepared for the Case Western Reserve Law Review symposium on “Access to the Courts in the Roberts Era,” offers a preliminary look at the standing jurisprudence of the Roberts Court. Contrary to claims made by some Court commentators, the Roberts Court has not tightened the requirements for Article III standing. To the contrary, insofar as the Roberts Court has altered the law of standing, it has made it easier for at least some litigants to pursue their claims in federal court. The Court’s decisions denying standing have largely reaffirmed prior holdings. By comparison, some of the Court’s decisions …

Introduction To Symposium On Access To The Courts In The Roberts Era, Jonathan L. Entin

Faculty Publications

Introduction to the Case Western Reserve Law Review's symposium "Access to the Courts in the Roberts Era" 2009, Cleveland, OH

Rethinking Anticircumvention's Interoperability Policy, Aaron K. Perzanowski

Faculty Publications

Interoperability is widely touted for its ability to spur incremental innovation, increase competition and consumer choice, and decrease barriers to accessibility. In light of these attributes, intellectual property law generally permits follow-on innovators to create products that interoperate with existing systems, even without permission. The anticircumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") represent a troubling departure from this policy, resulting in patent-like rights to exclude technologies that interoperate with protected platforms. Although the DMCA contains internal safeguards to preserve interoperability, judicial misinterpretation and narrow statutory text render those safeguards largely ineffective.

One approach to counteracting the DMCA's restrictions …

Beyond The Torture Memos: Perceptual Filters, Cultural Commitments, And Partisan Identity, Cassandra Burke Robertson

Faculty Publications

Who should face accountability for the mistreatment of prisoners in the war on terror? Five years ago, the scope of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib was first revealed; this year, the Justice Department admitted that a single suspect was waterboarded 183 times. Some at the bottom of the political hierarchy have already been convicted for their participation in prisoner abuse. Those closer to the top of the political hierarchy also find their actions subject to scrutiny, as the Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility is carrying out an investigation into the professional conduct of the lawyers who authored the …

A Radically Immodest Judicial Modesty: The End Of Facial Challenges To Abortion Regulations And The Future Of The Health Exception In The Roberts Era, B. Jessie Hill

Faculty Publications

If there is anything as strongly associated in the public mind with Chief Justice John Roberts as his black robe and judicial temperament, it is surely his claim to judicial modesty. And indeed, some commentators have suggested that there are signs of newfound judicial restraint in the Roberts Court. One example of this purported restraint is the Roberts Court’s expressed preference for narrower, as-applied decisionmaking in constitutional cases, as opposed to striking down statutes on their face. The Roberts Court has turned away facial challenges or otherwise expressed a preference for making decisions on an as-applied basis in a number …

Reproductive Rights As Health Care Rights, B. Jessie Hill

Faculty Publications

U.S. legal scholarship concerning reproductive rights has largely revolved around the poles of decisional autonomy, privacy, and equality, with a concomitant a tendency to de-emphasize the medical aspect of abortion rights. The medical approach has been particularly disfavored by feminist scholars, largely due to concerns about undermining the equality rationale for reproductive rights and placing too much power in the hands of physicians. In addition, American constitutional law has tended to treat reproductive-rights cases differently from other cases raising challenges to government restrictions on individuals’ rights to access certain forms of medical treatment, granting heightened judicial scrutiny to the former …

Will Directed Evolution Destroy Humanity, And If So, What Can We Do About It?, Maxwell J. Mehlman

Faculty Publications

In contemplating the technologies emerging from the Human Genome Project, nothing scares people more than the prospect that we will attempt to use genetic engineering to control the human evolutionary process.

Foreword: Combating Terrorist Financing, Richard K. Gordon, Christyn Rossman

Faculty Publications

Forward to the Case Western Reserve University School of Law's Institute for Global Security Law and Policy symposium The World Conference on Combating Terrorist Financing, Cleveland, OH, April 10 to 11, 2008

Making All The Children Above Average: Ethical And Regulatory Concerns For Pediatricians In Pediatric Enhancement Research, Jessica W. Berg, Maxwell J. Mehlman, Daniel B. Rubin, Eric Kodish

Faculty Publications

Building on the knowledge generated by the long history of disease-oriented research, the next few decades will witness an explosion of biomedical enhancements to make people faster, stronger, smarter, less forgetful, happier, prettier, and live longer. Growing interest in pediatric enhancements is likely to stimulate the conduct of enhancement research involving children. However, guidelines for the protection of human subjects were developed for investigations of therapeutic modalities. To date, virtually no attention has been paid to whether these rules would be appropriate for investigations to establish the safety and efficacy of technologies intended for enhancement rather than therapeutic uses and, …

The Nrc Report And Its Implications For Criminal Litigation, Paul C. Giannelli

Faculty Publications

The National Research Council, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, issued a landmark report on forensic science in February 2009. In the long run, the report’s recommendations, if adopted, would benefit law enforcement and prosecutors. The recommendations would allow forensic science to develop a strong scientific basis and limit evidentiary challenges regarding the reliability of forensic evidence. In keeping with its congressional charge, however, the NRC Committee did not directly address admissibility issues. Nevertheless, given its content, the report will inevitably be cited in criminal cases. Indeed, within months, the United States Supreme Court cited the report, noting …

Scientific Evidence And Prosecutorial Misconduct In The Duke Lacrosse Rape Case, Paul C. Giannelli

Faculty Publications

The need for pretrial discovery in criminal cases is critical. A defendant's right to confrontation, effective assistance of counsel, and due process often turns on pretrial disclosure. This essay discusses a case that demonstrates this point.

International Law In Crisis: A Qualitative Empirical Contribution To The Compliance Debate, Michael P. Scharf

Faculty Publications

In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 21, Professors Jack Goldsmith and Eric Posner published The Limits of International Law, a potentially revolutionary book that employs rational choice theory to argue that international law is really just “politics” and does not render a “compliance pull” on State decisionmakers. Critics have pointed out that Goldsmith and Posner’s identification of the role of international law in each of their case studies is largely conjectural, and that what is needed is qualitative empirical data that identifies the international law-based arguments that were actually made and the policy-makers’ responses to such …