Law Commons^™

Political Advertising In Virtual Reality, Scott P. Bloomberg

Faculty Publications

This Article is about how biometric data collected through VR technologies will greatly exacerbate existing problems with political ad microtargeting. Commercially available VR devices can—and in some cases, must—be integrated with sensors that track users’ eyes, faces, hands, and bodies. Political campaigns will be able to leverage this data to target ads with extraordinary precision. Indeed, targeting ads with biometric data may well be the next step in the evolution of microtargeted political messaging—a practice that has contributed to a rise in disinformation, filter-bubbles, and privacy invasions. If this sounds like science fiction, it is closer than you may think. …

The Right To A Public Trial, Conditional Courtroom Entry And Tiers Of Constitutional Scrutiny, Stephen Smith

Faculty Publications

The constitutional test the SupremeCourt has prescribed to review courtroom closures for compliance with the Sixth Amendment’s right to a public trial is in the nature ofstrictscrutiny. The Courtrequires an “overriding interest” to justify the closure, and a narrow, minimally restrictive scope to the closure. Many lower courts have imposed a less demanding test for “partial” closures, which admit to the courtroom some, but not all, of the public. These courts require a less demanding justification before closing the courtroom to certain individuals—the justification need be only “substantial,” ratherthan “overriding.” Thisstandard is in the nature of intermediate scrutiny, as applied …

Didn’T I Cover That In Class? Low-Stakes Technique Of Quizzing To The Rescue, Robin A. Boyle

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

We all have had those moments when students’ papers do not reflect an important lesson covered in class. For instance, if teaching persuasive writing, you have likely instructed your students to use a full sentence for their point headings in their briefs, only to find phrases where sentences should have been used. Consequently, you find yourself making the same written comments on papers or verbal comments in conferences with students, beginning with, “As I had instructed in class…” In his groundbreaking book, Experiential Learning, researcher and theorist David Kolb introduced the concept of “deep learning,” which can remedy …

The Empty Promise Of The Fourth Amendment In The Family Regulation System, Anna Arons

Faculty Publications

Each year, state agents search the homes of hundreds of thousands of families across the United States under the auspices of the family regulation system. Through these searches—required elements of investigations into allegations of child maltreatment in virtually every jurisdiction—state agents invade the home, the most protected space in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. Accordingly, federal courts agree that the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement applies to family regulation home searches. But almost universally, the abstract recognition of Fourth Amendment protections runs up against a concrete expectation on the ground that state actors should have easy and expansive access to families’ homes. Legislatures …

Mysterizing Religion, Marc O. Degirolami

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

A mystery of faith is a truth of religion that escapes human understanding. The mysteries of religion are not truths that human beings happen not to know, or truths that they could know with sufficient study and application, but instead truths that they cannot know in the nature of things. In the Letter to the Colossians, St. Paul writes that as a Christian apostle, his holy office is to “bring to completion for you the word of God, the mystery hidden from ages and from generations past.” Note that Paul does not say that his task is to make …

Humanizing Virtual Dispute Resolution, Elayne E. Greenberg

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

How might neutrals and advocates foster interpersonal dynamics when conducting arbitrations and mediations virtually, consistent with the ethical obligations of each profession and the ethical underpinnings of each process?

Virtual dispute resolution for commercial dispute resolution has become the new normal. Yet, the dispute resolution listserves are still peppered with posts from mediators and arbitrators who, although publicly extolling their own commitments to their impartiality and neutrality, are also simultaneously voicing their strong preferences for conducting their dispute resolution processes in person. According to these neutrals, they are unable to attain the same results when the process is conducted …

Copyright’S Capacity Gap, Andrew Gilden, Eva E. Subotnik

Faculty Publications

Most areas of law require that individuals meet a certain threshold of capacity before their decisions — e.g., to marry, to enter into a contract, or to execute an estate plan — are given legal effect. Copyright law, by contrast, gives legal effect to creative decisions by granting the decisionmaker many decades of exclusive rights so long as they are a human being and have demonstrated a “creative spark.” This Article examines the overlooked consequences of this gap in capacity standards between copyright and other areas of law. It shows that this gap has produced numerous opportunities for vulnerable creators …

The International Commitments Of The Fifty States, Ryan M. Scoville

Faculty Publications

U.S. law allocates power to conduct foreign relations primarily to the federal government, but it is well known that states routinely maintain foreign relations of their own. Much of this activity appears to result in legal and political commitments, whether in the form of “sister state” agreements or binding pledges to cooperate on discrete issues such as investment, environmental protection, and transportation. These commitments are at least loosely comparable to international treaties and may either advance or disserve state and national interests.

Yet very little is known about the commitments that are in force. For the most part, neither federal …

Red-Flag Laws, Civilian Firearms Ownership And Measures Of Freedom, Royce De R. Barondes

Faculty Publications

This essay provides context for an assessment of a part of the recently-enacted Bipartisan Safer Communities Act--federal legislation funding state red-flag procedures, which allow for seizures of firearms from persons who have not committed crimes.

First, it assesses Maryland’s experience during the first year of implementing these procedures. The essay details computations, extrapolating from Maryland’s first-year experience, showing that adoption of these statutes causes blameless persons to be subject to being killed by the government at a rate comparable to or in excess of the murder rate.

Second, the essay identifies an overlooked impact of this federal legislation. The legislation’s …

Private Environmental Nudges, Anthony Moffa

Faculty Publications

Environmentalist outcry against single-use plastics has rapidly translated into municipal and state policy. Bans and taxes on plastic bags, and, to a lesser extent, polices targeting plastic food/drink containers and plastic straws, have popped up all over the country. Many large national corporations, including Starbucks, Disney, and Hyatt to name a few, have also taken steps to reduce the amount of single-use plastics that their customers add to the waste stream.

Two ongoing discussions in the environmental law scholarship parallel these innovations in policy. The first re-examines the proper role for subnational governments in environmental policymaking, reviving a debate about …

From Comprehensive Liability To Climate Liability: The Case For A Climate Adaptation Resilience And Liability Act (Carla), Anthony Moffa

Faculty Publications

The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) created a uniquely broad and powerful scheme of statutory liability for environmental cleanup of contaminated sites. CERCLA famously imposes strict, retroactive, joint and severable liability. One might wonder, especially through the lens of contemporary partisanship, how such a powerful, comprehensive liability scheme passed through Congress in 1980. In large part, CERCLA’s passage can be attributed to historical context that may appear wholly unique at first blush. Now, the world confronts another watershed of environmental history and past actors face a potential flood of liability. Much of the situation is different in …

Dual Fiduciaries: Unicorns, Corporate Law And The New Frontier, Anat Alon-Beck

Faculty Publications

Legal and regulatory structures influence the shift in equities in the United States from public markets to private markets, entrepreneurial opportunities and new firm formation. There is a rise in the number of “unicorn” firms, which are privately held venture-capital backed startups that are valued at $1 billion or more. The number of unicorns in the United States and overseas has grown exponentially over the last few years. This chapter discusses the rise of the unicorns and with it the increasing importance of corporate governance and fiduciary duties. There are new vertical and horizontal conflicts among common and preferred shareholders …

Is The Clean Water Act Obsolete?, Jonathan Adler

Faculty Publications

The Clean Water Act (CWA) is fifty years old and has not been meaningfully revised in 35 years. Over this time, the CWA has helped to protect and improve water quality, but substantial water quality challenges remain including (but not limited to) nonpoint source water pollution. Given these challenge's and dramatic changes in the nature of and scientific understanding of today’s water quality challenges, it is appropriate to ask whether the CWA remains capable of fostering further environmental progress or whether it is obsolete. Prepared for the Case Western Reserve Law Review symposium on “The Clean Water Act at 50,” …

The Hidden Cost Of Contracting For Esg: A New Perspective On Private Ordering, Juliet P. Kostritsky, Jillian T. Fox, Blake Spiller

Faculty Publications

Currently, despite the increasing pressure on corporations to account for Environmental Social Governance (ESG) factors in their disclosures and actions, a lack of clarity on the meaning of ESG persists. ESG might be equivalent to stakeholderism, in which companies can sacrifice firm or shareholder market value to serve non-financial values. A second meaning would permit companies to pursue ESG only if it advanced the firm’s financial value. The second meaning poses no new challenges for corporate law.

This Article will address how the lack of clarity on ESG makes it difficult to assess whether a provision in a contract of …

Integration & Transformation: Incorporating Critical Information Literacy And Critical Legal Research Into Advanced Legal Research Instruction, Courtney Selby

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Legal research is not a separate and distinct endeavor from legal analysis and advocacy. These activities are inextricably intertwined in the practice of law. Few would suggest that advocacy includes the process of applying rules to situations in a vacuum without reference to context and consequences. Yet we often see this assumption about the legal research process. Many students presume that conducting legal research is a neutral endeavor, and that when done properly, it delivers the universe of relevant authorities to the researcher. This essay is about my experience integrating critical perspectives into an existing advanced legal research course …

References To Classic American Novels In Advocacy And Judicial Opinions, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

With this Journal of the Missouri Bar article, the survey of courts’ cultural markers returns to literature – particularly American literature. Besides “To Kill a Mockingbird,” federal and state courts in their written opinions have cited and quoted from other classic novels written by American authors, including "Catch-22", "Moby-Dick", and "The Grapes of Wrath".

Burning Questions: Changing Legal Narratives On Cannabis In Indian Country, Robin M. Rotman, Sam J. Carter

Faculty Publications

In the not-so-distant past, thoughts of Cannabis legalization in the United States were radical. In the present day, the narratives around Cannabis are changing. The term “present day” affixes this Article to early 2023, a snapshot in time. To understand the current legal narratives surrounding Cannabis, and what they might become in the future, it is important to examine the history of Cannabis law and policy in United States. This Article begins by discussing Cannabis regulation in the United States, from the rise of federal regulation to the gradual deregulation by states with tacit federal consent. The Article then examines …

There Is No Such Thing As Circuit Law, Thomas B. Bennett

Faculty Publications

Lawyers and judges often talk about “the law of the circuit,” meaning the set of legal rules that apply within a particular federal judicial circuit. Seasoned practitioners are steeped in circuit law, it is said. Some courts have imagined that they confront a choice between applying the law of one circuit or another. In its strong form, this idea of circuit law implies that each circuit creates and interprets its own body of substantive law that is uniquely applicable to disputes that arise within the circuit’s borders.

This article argues that the notion of circuit law is nonsensical and undesirable …

Solutions Still Searching For A Problem: A Call For Relevant Data To Support "Evergreening" Allegations, Erika Lietzan, Kristina M. L. Acri

Faculty Publications

For years pharmaceutical policymaking discussions have been revolving around allegations of supposed “evergreening” by pharmaceutical companies, and policymakers have considered a range of significant policy reforms — including to antitrust law and drug regulatory law — to address this purported problem. This paper evaluates empirical data offered to substantiate “evergreening” and explains that these data — though mostly accurate — do not support proposed policy changes.

The “evergreening” claim is that by securing additional patents and FDA-related exclusivities after approval of their new drugs, brand drug companies enjoy a period of exclusivity in the market that is longer than the …

Overcoming Barriers To Documenting Institutional Knowledge, Cynthia Bassett, Lauren Seney

Faculty Publications

It is inevitable—employees come and go in libraries. When they leave, they take their institutional knowledge out the door with them unless it is captured before they go. Documenting institutional knowledge is crucial for continuity of service. Anyone who has ever inherited a department or started at a new library with highly reined and involved procedures knows that learning how and why processes are managed can be overwhelming. If there is no documentation to explain things, library staff can be stymied for months as they get up to speed, severely impacting productivity and morale. Knowing all of this, many libraries …

Crypto In Real Estate Finance, R. Wilson Freyermuth, Christopher K. Odinet, Andrea Tosato

Faculty Publications

Blockchain and cryptocurrencies have ushered in a digital gold rush. But all that glitters is not gold. The latest fad is the use of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to purchase and finance real estate. Typically, crypto real estate transactions begin with the transfer of title for a residential property into a dedicated business entity, such as a limited liability company. Thereafter, an NFT is ‘minted’ and used to represent the ownership interest in that entity. The real property is then marketed online specifying that, to acquire it, one simply purchases the relevant NFT via a blockchain transfer. Crucially, buyers are expected …

Jurisdiction And The Moral Impact Theory Of Law, Michael S. Green

Faculty Publications

Positivists and interpretivists (Dworkinians) might accept that conceptual facts about the law—facts about the content of the concept of law—can obtain in the absence of communities with law practices. But they would deny that legal facts can obtain in such communities’ absence. Under the moral impact theory, by contrast, legal facts can precede all communities with law practices. I identify a set of legal facts in private international law—the law of jurisdiction—that concerns when a community’s law practices can, and cannot, have the legal effects that the practices claim to have. This law is noncommunitarian, in the sense …

Tragedies Of The Cultural Commons, Etienne C. Toussaint

Faculty Publications

In the United States, Black cultural expressions of democratic life that operate within specific historical-local contexts, yet reflect a shared set of sociocultural mores, have been historically crowded out of the law and policymaking process. Instead of democratic cultural discourse occurring within an open and neutral marketplace of ideas, the discursive production and consumption of democratic culture in American politics has been rivalrous. Such rivalry too often enables dominant White supremacist cultural beliefs, values, and practices to exercise their hegemony upon law’s production and meaning. The result has been tragedy for politically disempowered and socioeconomically excluded communities.

This Article uses …

A Tokenized Future: Regulatory Lessons From Crowdfunding And Standard Form Contracts, Darian M. Ibrahim

Faculty Publications

This Article examines the world of risk investing in the cryptoeconomy. The broader crypto market is booming despite the latest downturn. People and institutions are buying in. The question is now how to regulate it.

This Article first tackles the question of whether coins, tokens, and other investable cryptoassets are securities. Second, for those cryptoassets that are not securities, this Article seeks to find a regulatory solution that balances promoting innovation with investor protection, just as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) would do. To strike the right balance, this Article adopts a proposal by Ian Ayres and Alan Schwartz …

A World Without Prosecutors, Jeffrey Bellin

Faculty Publications

Bennett Capers’ article Against Prosecutors challenges us to imagine a world where we “turn away from prosecution as we know it,” and shift “power from prosecutors to the people they purport to represent.”

[...]

Capers joins a long line of authors seeking to attack mass incarceration by reducing the role of prosecutors. I agree with these authors that we should dramatically shrink the footprint of American criminal law and ending the war on drugs is a good place to start. But while Capers styles his proposal as a “[r]adical change,” I find the focus on prosecutors in this context decidedly …

A New Feudalism: Selfish Genes, Great Wealth, And The Rise Of The Dynastic Family Trust (Dft), Eric Kades

Faculty Publications

Today’s record levels of economic inequality are infecting our future as the top 0.01% bequeath vast wealth to their descendants. With the death of the Rule Against Perpetuities (RAP), this inequality has the potential to harden social class lines—not just for a generation or two, but forever. Although it may sound implausible, interviews with estate lawyers serving very high-net-worth clients reveal that some members of the wealthiest tier of testators are already exploiting the RAP’s elimination, along with a tax loophole, to establish dynasty trusts that will financially empower their bloodline as long as it continues. Recent work in evolutionary …

Improving (And Avoiding) Interstate Interpretive Encounters, Aaron-Andrew P. Bruhl

Faculty Publications

State courts often encounter the statutes of other states. Any encounter with another state’s statutes raises an interesting but inconspicuous question about choice of law. In particular, the interstate encounter presents a choice of interpretive law. Despite some universal practices in statutory interpretation, there are methodological differences across jurisdictions—both at the level of overall approach and in the details of particular interpretive canons. When a state court encounters the statute of a sister state, may the forum state use its own interpretive methods or must it instead use the methods of the enacting state?

The existing doctrine on this choice-of-law …

Nomos, Narrative, And Nephi: Legal Interpretation In The Book Of Mormon, Nathan B. Oman

Faculty Publications

The Book of Mormon helped launch one of America’s most successful religions, and millions around the world accept it as scripture. It is thus one of the more influential books to have been published in the United States. Ironically, precisely because of its role in the founding of Mormonism, the text of the Book of Mormon has often been ignored. Recently, however, the Book of Mormon has begun to attract the attention of scholars whose interest in the text goes beyond either religious devotion or the academic study of Mormonism. Rather, they look to the text as a literary creation …

Legal Citations: A Foundation Of Written Advocacy, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

The article advanced this formula for achieving effective appellate advocacy: “First, you seek to persuade the court of the merit of the client’s case, to create an emotional empathy for your position. Then you assist the court to reach a conclusion favorable to the client’s interest in terms of the analysis of the law and the procedural posture of the case.”

Interpreting State Statutes In Federal Court, Aaron-Andrew P. Bruhl

Faculty Publications

This Article addresses a problem that potentially arises whenever a federal court encounters a state statute. When interpreting the state statute, should the federal court use the state’s methods of statutory interpretation—the state’s canons of construction, its rules about the use of legislative history, and the like—or should the court instead use federal methods of statutory interpretation? The question is interesting as a matter of theory, and it is practically significant because different jurisdictions have somewhat different interpretive approaches. In addressing itself to this problem, the Article makes two contributions. First, it shows, as a normative matter, that federal courts …