Law Commons^™

In Re Sanders And The Resurrection Of Stanley V. Illinois, Josh Gupta-Kagan

Faculty Publications

In 1972, the Supreme Court in Stanley v. Illinois declared that parents are entitled to a hearing on their fitness before the state places their children in foster care. Somewhat oddly, Stanley went on to be cited as a leading case regarding the rights of unwed fathers to object to private adoptions favored by mothers -- an issue not present in Stanley. Odder still, most states routinely violated Stanley in child welfare cases -- the context in which the Stanley rule arose. Most states apply the "one parent doctrine," which holds that finding one parent unfit justifies taking the child …

Beyond The Schoolhouse Gates: The Unprecedented Expansion Of School Surveillance Authority Under Cyberbulling Laws, Emily Suski

Faculty Publications

For several years, states have grappled with the problem of cyberbullying and its sometimes devastating effects. Because cyberbullying often occurs between students, most states have understandably looked to schools to help address the problem. To that end, schools in forty-six states have the authority to intervene when students engage in cyberbullying. This solution seems all to the good unless a close examination of the cyberbullying laws and their implications is made. This Article explores some of the problematic implications of the cyberbullying laws. More specifically, it focuses on how the cyberbullying laws allow schools unprecedented surveillance authority over students. This …

'Sophisticated Robots': Balancing Liability, Regulation, And Innovation, F. Patrick Hubbard

Faculty Publications

Our lives are being transformed by large mobile “sophisticated robots” with increasingly higher levels of autonomy, intelligence, and interconnectivity among themselves. For example, driverless automobiles are likely to become commercially available within a decade. Many people who suffer physical injuries from these robots will seek legal redress for their injury, and regulatory schemes are likely to impose requirements to reduce the number and severity of injuries.

This Article addresses the issue of whether the current liability and regulatory systems provide a fair, efficient method for balancing the concern for physical safety against the need to incentivize the innovation necessary to …

Proximity-Driven Liability, Bryant Walker Smith

Faculty Publications

This working paper argues that commercial sellers’ growing information about, access to, and control over their products, product users, and product uses could significantly expand their point-of-sale and post-sale obligations toward people endangered by these products. The paper first describes how companies are embracing new technologies that expand their information, access, and control, with primary reference to the increasingly automated and connected motor vehicle. It next analyzes how this proximity to product, user, and use could impact product-related claims for breach of implied warranty, defect in design or information, post-sale failure to warn or update, and negligent enabling of a …

Law School Training For Licensed 'Legal Technicians'? Implications For The Consumer Market, Elizabeth Chambliss

Faculty Publications

In January 2014, the ABA Task Force on the Future of Legal Education released its report calling, among other things, for limited licensing and the expansion of independent paraprofessional training by law schools. In Washington State, all three law schools are collaborating with community college paralegal programs to design and deliver specialized training for “Limited License Legal Technicians” (LLLTs), who will be licensed to deliver limited family law services beginning in 2015. At least three other states, including California and New York — which together contain nearly twenty-six percent of U.S. lawyers and seventy-six law schools — are actively seeking …

Pink Franklin V. South Carolina: The Naacp’S First Case, W. Lewis Burke

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Ubiquitous Privacy, Thomas P. Crocker

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Policing Facts, Seth W. Stoughton

Faculty Publications

The United States Supreme Court’s understanding of police practices plays a significant role in the development of the constitutional rules that regulate officer conduct. As it approaches the questions of whether to engage in constitutional regulation and what form of regulation to adopt, the Court discusses the environment in which officers act, describes specific police practices, and explains what motivates officers. Yet the majority of the Court’s factual assertions are made entirely without support or citation, raising concerns about whether the Court is acting based on a complete and accurate perception. When it comes to policing facts, the Court too …

50 Years After The War On Poverty: An Introduction, Emily Suski

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Automated Vehicles Are Probably Legal In The United States, Bryant Walker Smith

Faculty Publications

This article provides the most comprehensive discussion to date of whether so-called automated, autonomous, self-driving, or driverless vehicles can be lawfully sold and used on public roads in the United States. The short answer is that the computer direction of a motor vehicle’s steering, braking, and accelerating without real-time human input is probably legal. The long answer, which follows, provides a foundation for tailoring regulations and understanding liability issues related to these vehicles.

The article’s largely descriptive analysis, which begins with the principle that everything is permitted unless prohibited, covers three key legal regimes: the 1949 Geneva Convention on Road …

Hydraulic Fracturing On Federal And Indian Lands: An Analysis Of The Bureau Of Land Management's Revised Proposed Rule, Nathan D. Richardson, Alan Krupnick, Madeline Gottlieb, Molly Feiden

Faculty Publications

The federal government controls 700 million acres of subsurface rights (plus 56 million subsurface acres of Indian mineral estate) across 24 states, making it the largest landowner in the nation, and therefore in a position to negotiate lease terms and shape regulations of oil and gas development. The federal Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) rules on how drilling activity can take place on federal lands essentially dictate terms, making BLM the largest “regulator” of drilling activity in the country. BLM last revised its oil and gas regulations (the Onshore Orders) in the 1980s and early 1990s, well before the recent …

Reconsidering Dual Consent, Lisa V. Martin

Faculty Publications

Before a child may travel internationally, many countries require proof that both of the child’s parents consent. These “dual consent” requirements are aimed at preventing international child abduction, and many countries have adopted them as part of the coordinated effort to implement the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. In recent years, international air carriers have been urged to impose similar requirements for all children traveling on international flights. Although well-intentioned, dual consent requirements pose significant harms, especially to children of single parents and parents subjected to domestic violence. This article explores the unintended consequences …

The Value Of Life: Constitutional Limits On Citizens’ Use Of Deadly Force, F. Patrick Hubbard

Faculty Publications

This Article argues that most states have unconstitutionally overbroad authorizations for citizens to use deadly force in the context of crime prevention, citizen’s arrest, and defense of one’s “castle.” Similarly, some authorizations of deadly force for self-defense in public areas may be unconstitutional. The starting points of this argument are the fundamental value of life, the state’s monopoly of deadly force, and the fundamental constitutional right to life. Because of the state’s monopoly of deadly force, any use of such force is either legitimate or proscribed. The lack of a third category of “private” use of deadly force affects constitutional …

The Real Impact Of Adoptive Couple V. Baby Girl: The Existing Indian Family Doctrine Is Not Affirmed But The Future Of Icwa's Placement Preferences Is Jeopardized, Marcia A. Yablon-Zug

Faculty Publications

On July 3, 2013, Dusten Brown and his wife Robin, and Brown’s parents, Tommy and Alice Brown, both filed actions to adopt "Baby Veronica", the four-year-old girl at the heart of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl. The Browns’ adoption petitions were based on the assumption that the Baby Girl Court did not affirm "The Existing Indian Family Doctrine," a doctrine which limits application of The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) solely to children previously in the care or custody of an Indian relative. The Browns believed ICWA’s placement preferences, which give preference to …

Unequal Protection Under The Law: Why Fda Should Use Negotiated Rulemaking To Reform The Regulation Of Generic Drugs, Marie C. Boyd

Faculty Publications

The duty to ensure the safety of drug products, through adequate warnings or other means, should ultimately rest with the drug's manufacturer regardless of whether the drug is a generic drug or a brand-name drug. Recent U.S. Supreme Court holdings, however, suggest that while the manufacturer of a brand-name drug is always responsible for its label's content, this is not the case for generic drugs. In addition, by holding that failure-to-warn claims against generic drug manufacturers based on state law are preempted, the Court has removed the protections and compensation that state tort law can provide consumers of generic drugs …

The Social Medium: Why The Authenticantion Bar Should Be Raised For Social Media Evidence, Colin Miller

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

National “Harmony”: An Inter-Branch Constitutional Principle And Its Application To Diversity Jurisdiction, Jesse M. Cross

Faculty Publications

Most constitutional interpretation continues, in the words of John Hart Ely, to be "clause-bound" in nature: it presumes that each constitutional clause can be studied in isolation from each other clause. As a result of this shortsighted methodology, constitutional scholars have overlooked a single organizing metaphor that was used at the Constitutional Convention to shape a host of constitutional clauses scattered across Articles I and III: the metaphor of national "harmony." Within the rhetoric of Enlightenment science, the term "harmony" was used in the Founding era to identify those forces that extended between the independent parts of a larger system …

Fisher V. Texas And The Irrelevance Of Function In Race Cases, Derek W. Black

Faculty Publications

This symposium paper analyzes Fisher v. Texas in the context of the Supreme Court's overall race jurisprudence, demonstrating that the Court's decisions are driven by the form that considerations of race take rather than how those considerations actually operate. The University of Texas admissions plan, when compared to the admissions plan approved at the University of Michigan Law School in Grutter v. Bollinger, is very narrowly tailored. The University of Texas considered race in a smaller portion of admissions decisions and in a more limited way, even when race was considered. The Supreme Court, however, expressed serious skepticism of the …

The Constitutional Limit Of Zero Tolerance In Schools, Derek W. Black

Faculty Publications

With the introduction of modern zero tolerance policies, schools now punish much more behavior than they ever have before. But not all the behavior is bad. Schools have expelled the student who brings aspirin or fingernail clippers to campus, who does not know that a keychain knife in his backpack, or who reports having taken away a knife from another student in order to keep everyone safe. Despite challenges to these examples, courts have upheld the suspension and expulsion of this good-faith, innocuous behavior. With little explanation, courts have opined that the Constitution places no meaningful limit on the application …

Dark Sarcasm In The Classroom: The Failure Of The Courts To Recognize Students' Severe Emotional Harm As Unconstitutional, Emily Suski

Faculty Publications

Sometimes the very people who are supposed to teach, nurture, and protect students in public schools — the students’ teachers, principals, coaches, and other school officials — are instead the people who harm them. Public school officials have beaten students, causing significant physical harm. They have also left students suffering from depression, suicidal ideation, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. When school officials cause such severe harm to students, all the federal courts of appeals to consider the issue have concluded that the Fourteenth Amendment at least in theory protects them, regardless of whether the form of the harm is emotional or …

Contents May Have Shifted: Disentangling The Best Evidence Rule From The Rule Against Hearsay, Colin Miller

Faculty Publications

Vince brings a battery action against Dan based upon an encounter between the two men. Dan claims that he was acting in self-defense and wants to testify that Ed sent him the following text message minutes before the encounter: “Vince is coming to see you to collect on that drug debt that you owe him.” Dan could argue that he is offering the statement not to prove the truth of the matter asserted but to prove its “effect on the listener,” making it nonhearsay Specifically, Dan could claim that he is offering the statement to prove that, regardless of whether …

Managing The Risks Of Shale Gas Development Using Innovative Legal And Regulatory Approaches, Nathan D. Richardson, Sheila Olmstead

Faculty Publications

Booming production of oil and gas from shale, enabled by hydraulic fracturing technology, has led to tension between hoped-for economic benefits and feared environmental and other costs, with great associated controversy. Study of how policy can best react to these challenges and how it can balance risk and reward has focused on prescriptive regulatory responses and, to a somewhat lesser extent, voluntary industry best practices. While there is undoubtedly room for improved regulation, innovative tools are relatively understudied. The liability system predates environmental regulation yet still plays an important — and in some senses predominant — role. Changes to that …

Reading Between The Blurred Lines Of Fisher V. University Of Texas, Eboni S. Nelson

Faculty Publications

After more than eight months of anticipation and speculation, the Supreme Court finally issued its opinion in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin. Contrary to fears held by some and hopes held by others, the Court did not use the case as an opportunity to overrule Grutter v. Bollinger, thereby prohibiting the consideration of race in higher education admissions decisions. Instead, the Court vacated the Fifth Circuit’s decision upholding the University of Texas’ (“UT” or “University”) race-based admissions policy and remanded the case “for further proceedings consistent with [the] opinion.”

At first glance, the majority opinion authored by Justice …

The Contractual Foundation Of Family-Business Law, Benjamin Means

Faculty Publications

Most U.S. businesses are family owned, and yet the law governing business organizations does not account adequately for family relationships. Nor have legal scholars paid sufficient attention to family businesses. Instead, legal scholars operate within a contractarian model of business organization law, which holds that a firm is comprised of a nexus of contracts among economically rational actors. Intimate relationships appear irrelevant except insofar as they affect contractual choices. Indeed, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as family-business law.

This Article lays the foundation for a law of family business by expanding the contractarian model: a firm includes not …

Comparing The Clean Air Act And A Carbon Price, Nathan D. Richardson, Arthur Fraas

Faculty Publications

Over the last half-decade, a variety of federal legislative proposals for limiting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have been put forward, most of which would set a price on carbon. As of early 2013, the one politically plausible policy appears to be a carbon tax, passed as part of a larger fiscal reform package. Meanwhile, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has begun regulating GHG emissions from a variety of sources using its authority under the Clean Air Act. It may be necessary to choose between these two policies, however. The Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill that failed in 2009 would have preempted much …

Informal–Formal Sector Interactions In Automotive Engineering, Kampala, Dick Kawooya

Faculty Publications

This chapter provides findings from a Ugandan case study that examined innovation transfers between informal-sector automotive artisans and formally employed researchers at Makerere University’s College of Engineering, Design, Art and Technology (CEDAT). Th e primary site studied was CEDAT’s Gatsby Garage, an automotive workshop where it was found that the informal-sector artisans were central to innovative processes but were at the same time driven more by sharing impulses than by concern for the intellectual property (IP) implications of their work. Based on these findings, it is argued that Ugandan policy-makers need to seek policy tools to support innovation transfers between …