Law Commons^™

Structural Rights In Privacy, Harry Surden

Publications

This Essay challenges the view that privacy interests are protected primarily by law. Based upon the understanding that society relies upon nonlegal devices such as markets, norms, and structure to regulate human behavior, this Essay calls attention to a class of regulatory devices known as latent structural constraints and provides a positive account of their role in regulating privacy. Structural constraints are physical or technological barriers which regulate conduct; they can be either explicit or latent. An example of an explicit structural constraint is a fence which is designed to prevent entry onto real property, thereby effectively enforcing property rights. …

Essentially A Mother, Jennifer S. Hendricks

Publications

This article connects the constitutional jurisprudence of the family to debates over reproductive technology and surrogacy. Despite the outpouring of literature on reproductive technologies, courts and scholars have paid little attention to the constitutional foundation of parental rights. Focusing on the structural/political function of parental rights, this article argues that a gestational mother has a constitutional claim to be recognized as a legal parent.

The article first discusses the "unwed father cases." Despite believing that natural sex differences justified distinctions in parental rights, the Supreme Court crafted a test giving men parental rights if they established relationships with their biological …

Communicating During Emergencies: Toward Interoperability And Effective Information Management, Philip J. Weiser

Publications

The suboptimal state of communications technology used by public safety agencies has emerged as a high profile political issue. In most cases, public safety agencies are able only to communicate using antiquated networks, engineered solely for providing voice communications and unable to interoperate beyond a select number of users. This type of system fails to provide the type of economies of scale, network flexibility, or the broader functionalities routinely used by the military and private sector enterprises. The challenge facing policymakers is thus how to develop a next generation architecture for public safety and spur adoption of a new set …

Patents On Legal Methods? No Way!, Andrew A. Schwartz

Publications

An “invention,” as used in the United States patent laws, refers to anything made by man that employs or harnesses a law of nature or a naturally occurring substance for human benefit. A watermill, for instance, harnesses the power of gravity to run machinery. But legal methods, such as tax strategies, are not inventions in this sense, because they employ “laws of man” — not laws of nature to produce a useful result.

The Patent Office Meets The Poison Pill: Why Legal Methods Cannot Be Patented, Andrew A. Schwartz

Publications

In 2003, for the first time in its 170-year history, the United States Patent Office began awarding patents for novel legal innovations, in addition to traditional inventions such as the telephone or airplane. Commentators have accepted the Patent Office's power to grant legal method patents, but at the same time have criticized this new type of patent on policy grounds. But no one has suggested that the Patent Office exceeded its authority by awarding patents for legal methods, until now.

In the Patent Act of 1952, which is still in effect today, Congress established certain requirements for patentability, including a …

In Pursuit Of A Next Generation Network For Public Safety Communications, Philip J. Weiser, Dale N. Hatfield

Publications

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, a unitary reliance on Land Mobile Radio systems (LMRs) failed public safety agencies, leaving them without any source of communications once they lost transmission capability. Unfortunately, in the wake of this tragedy, many have dusted off traditional prescriptions for improving public safety communications, such as more dedicated spectrum and more money for single-purpose LMRs (or LMRs based on technology that fails to facilitate broader functionalities). As we explain, however, both the needs underscored by Katrina and the capabilities made possible by emerging technologies call for a different strategy.

In this paper, we argue that …