Law Commons^™

Appropriate(D) Moments, Richard H. Chused

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Elder Abuse And The Court System: Oil And Vinegar, Bernard A. Krooks, Elizabeth Valentin

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Transitional Justice And Judicial Activism— A Right To Accountability?, Ruti Teitel

Articles & Chapters

Victims of systemic rights abuses, their families, and non-governmental organizations are turning to international and regional human rights tribunals to address the failure of states to investigate, prosecute, and remedy past human rights violations. In many cases this relates to acts that occurred decades ago and for which a previous repressive regime was responsible. In other cases there may be powerful interests within the state, such as the police or security service, that are complicit with the violations in question. This Article explores the historical and political contexts in which these cases have arisen, how the courts approach the question …

When Rights Work: Fragile Networks, Improbable Discourses And Unpredictable Globalizations Of Law - A Contemporary Thai Case Study, Frank W. Munger

Articles & Chapters

This is a case study of the legal practice of a young Thai “cause lawyer.” The study joins a growing number by other scholars who are skeptical of global convergence on a single form of the “rule of law,” and who argue instead that legal development in the new states of Asia and elsewhere will be path-dependent. Though this research examines advocacy by a relatively small group of practitioners, I argue that the study, together with my other case studies of social justice practitioners challenging the authority of government in different ways, provides a window on the development of law’s …

Introduction To Combating Threats To The International Financial System: The Financial Action Task Force, William P. Lapiana

Articles & Chapters

The U.S. legal profession is not as familiar with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) as it should be. That is perhaps the single most important message of this issue published by the New York Law School Law Review, which now makes available to everyone the information and analyses presented at the April 25, 2013 symposium.1 It is the substance of the work published here that gives meaning to that message.

Law, History And Lessons In The Crispr Patent Conflict, Jacob S. Sherkow

Articles & Chapters

Predicting the outcome of the ongoing patent disputes surrounding genome-editing technology is equal parts patent analysis and history.

Genome-editing technology based on clustered, regularly interspaced, short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) and CRISPR associated protein 9 (Cas9) has generated great excitement in both academia and industry. But a potential patent dispute between two sets of inventors has left the biotech community pondering its fate. Understanding several facets of patent law and history may provide some lessons about the probable — and best — outcome for the dispute.

Private Regimes In The Public Sphere: Optimizing The Benefits Of Common Interest Communities, Gerald Korngold

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Administrating Patent Litigation, Jacob S. Sherkow

Articles & Chapters

Recent patent litigation reform efforts have focused on every branch of govemment-Congress, the President, and the federal courts-save the fourth: administrative agencies. Agencies, however, possess a variety of functions in patent litigation: they serve as "gatekeepers" to litigation in federal court; they provide scientific and technical expertise to patent disputes; they review patent litigation to fulfill their own mandates; and they serve, in several instances, as entirely alternative fora to federal litigation.

Understanding administrative agencies' functions in managing or directing, i.e., "administrating," patent litigation sheds both descriptive and normative insight on several aspects of patent reform. These include several problems …

Administering Patent Litigation, Jacob S. Sherkow

Articles & Chapters

Recent patent litigation reform efforts have focused on every branch of government — Congress, the President, and the federal courts — save the fourth: administrative agencies. Agencies, however, possess a variety of functions in patent litigation: they serve as “gatekeepers” to litigation in federal court; they provide scientific and technical expertise to patent disputes; they review patent litigation to fulfill their own mandates; and they serve, in several instances, as entirely alternative fora to federal litigation. Understanding administrative agencies’ functions in managing or directing, i.e., “administrating,” patent litigation sheds both descriptive and normative insight on several aspects of patent reform. …

Are Prosecutors The Constitution's Gatekeepers?, Rebecca Roiphe

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Reducing Secrecy: Balancing Legitimate Government Interests With Public Accountability, Nadine Strossen

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Making Peace With Your Enemy: Nelson Mandela And His Contributions To Conflict Resolution, Jean R. Sternlight, Andrea Schneider, Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Robert Mnookin, Richard Goldstone, Penelope Andrews

Articles & Chapters

This is a transcription of the tenth anniversary celebration of the Saltman Center for Conflict Resolution at the William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The event was held in honor of NelsonMandela, and included a panel discussion about his contributions to the dispute resolution field.

Panelists included Dean Penelope Andrews of the University of Cape Town Faculty of Law, Prof. Carrie Menkel-Meadow of the U.C. Irvine School of Law, Prof. Robert Mnookin of Harvard Law School, and Judge Richard Goldstone, a former member of the Constitutional Court of South Africa.

An introduction was made by …

Forensic Psychiatry And The Law: Litigation, Advocacy, Scholarship And Teaching, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

There's A Dyin Voice Within Me Reaching Out Somewhere: How Tj Can Bring Voice To The Teaching Of Mental Disability Law And Criminal Law, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

In this article, I discuss my historical involvement with therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ), how I use it in my classes (both in the free-standing TJ class and in all the others that I teach), its role in my written scholarship, and its role in conferences that I regularly attend. Although this is all positive and supportive of all efforts to widen the appeal of TJ as well as its applicability in the classroom, in scholarship and in “real life,” I also share some information that is far from optimistic with regard to the way that TJ is being reacted to by …

'Love Is Just A Four-Letter Word': Sexuality, International Human Rights, And Therapeutic Jurisprudence, Michael L. Perlin, Alison Lynch

Articles & Chapters

One of the most controversial social policy issues that remains dramatically underdiscussed in scholarly literature is the sexual autonomy of persons with psychosocial and intellectual disabilities, especially those who are institutionalized. This population – always marginalized and stigmatized – has traditionally faced a double set of conflicting prejudices: on one hand, people with disabilities are infantilized (as not being capable of having the same range of sexual desires, needs and expectations as persons without disabilities), and on the other, this population is demonized (as being hypersexual, unable to control base or primitive urges). Although attitudes about the abilities and capabilities …

Privacy As Trust: Sharing Personal Information In A Networked World, Ari Ezra Waldman

Articles & Chapters

This Article is the first in a series on the legal and sociological aspects of privacy, arguing that private contexts are defined by relationships of trust among individuals. The argument reorients privacy scholarship from an individual right to social relationships of disclosure. This has implications for a wide variety of vexing problems of modern privacy law, from limited disclosures to “revenge porn.”

The common everyday understanding is that privacy is about choice, autonomy, and individual freedom. It encompasses the individual’s right to determine what he will keep hidden and what, how, and when he will disclose to the public. Privacy …

I Expected It To Happen/I Knew He'd Lost Control: The Impact Of Ptsd On Criminal Sentencing After The Promulgation Of Dsm-5, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

The adoption by the American Psychiatric Association of DSM-5 significantly changes (and in material ways, expands) the definition of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a change that raises multiple questions that need to be considered carefully by lawyers, mental health professionals, advocates and policy makers.

My thesis is that the expansion of the PTSD criteria in DSM-5 has the potential to make significant changes in legal practice in all aspects of criminal procedure, but none more so than in criminal sentencing. I believe that if courts treat DSM 5 with the same deference with which they have treated earlier versions of …

Discussing Advocacy Skills In Traditional Doctrinal Courses, Stephen A. Newman

Articles & Chapters

Can teaching students in doctrinal courses, using traditional case-oriented materials, convey some of the skills lawyers need to practice law effectively? While the recent interest in and debate over training practice-ready lawyers makes this a timely question, my thinking about this harks back to the mid-1990s, when Harry Wellington, then dean of New York Law School, suggested that faculty members consider teaching law from the lawyer’s perspective rather than from the perspective of either the judge or the legal scholar.

In traditional doctrinal courses in law school, like my own in family law, coverage is broad and time is short. …

Tilting At Stratification: Against A Divide In Legal Education, Rebecca Roiphe

Articles & Chapters

Critics suggest we divide law schools into an elite tier whose graduates serve global business clients and a lower tier, which would prepare lawyers for simple disputes. This idea is not new. A similar proposal emerged in the early twentieth century. This article draws on the historical debate to argue that this simplistic approach cannot solve the myriad problems facing the legal profession and legal education. Supporters of separate tiers of law school rely on a caricature of the early history to argue that the Bar is acting in a protectionist way to ensure its own monopoly and keep newcomers …

Stem Cell Patents After The America Invents Act, Jacob S. Sherkow, Christopher Scott

Articles & Chapters

Under the newly passed Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA), the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office may hear new challenges to stem cell patents. Here, we explore how the new law affects challenges to stem cell patents, focusing on two recent cases, and discuss the future of stem cell patent disputes.

The History Of Patenting Genetic Material, Jacob S. Sherkow, Henry T. Greely

Articles & Chapters

The US Supreme Court’s recent decision in Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc. declared, for the first time, that isolated human genes cannot be patented. Many have wondered how genes were ever the subjects of patents. The answer lies in a nuanced understanding of both legal and scientific history. Since the early twentieth century, “products of nature” were not eligible to be patented unless they were “isolated and purified” from their surrounding environment. As molecular biology advanced, and the capability to isolate genes both physically and by sequence came to fruition, researchers (and patent offices) began to apply …

Creating A Building A Disability Rights Information Center For Asia And The Pacific Clinic: Of Pedagogy And Social Justice, Michael L. Perlin, Catherine Barreda, Katherine Davies, Mehgan Gallagher, Nicole Israel, Stephanie Mendelsohn

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Redefining Professionalism, Rebecca Roiphe

Articles & Chapters

Most scholars condemn professionalism as self-serving, anti-competitive rhetoric. This Article argues that professionalism can be a positive and productive way of thinking about lawyers’ work. While it is undoubtedly true that the Bar has used the ideology of the professional role to support self-interested and bigoted causes, professionalism has also served as an important way of developing and marshalling group identity to promote useful ends. The critics of professionalism tend to view it as an ideology, according to which professionals, unlike businessmen, are concerned not with their own financial gain but with the good of their clients and the community …

You Might Have Drugs At Your Command: Reconsidering The Forced Drugging Of Incompetent Pre-Trial Detainnes From The Perspectives Of International Human Rights And Income Inequality, Michael L. Perlin, Meredith Schriver

Articles & Chapters

Ever since the Supreme Court's 2003 decision in Sell v. United States, 539 U.S. 166 (2003), there has been a cottage industry of commentary on the question of whether the state can medicate an incompetent defendant for the purpose of making him or her competent to stand trial. Moreover, there have been multiple cases interpreting Sell broadly and narrowly, both in the context of medication issues and in the context of other treatments. Because of the vagueness of certain terminology, questions such as what a "serious" crime is, what "substantially" meant to the Court in Sell, and how the least …

The Practice Value Of Experiential Legal Education: An Examination Of Enrollment Patterns, Course Intensity, And Career Relevance, Margaret Reuter, Joanne M. Ingham

Articles & Chapters

How will law schools meet the challenge of expanding their education in lawyering skills as demanded from critics and now required by the ABA? This article examines the details of the experiential coursework (clinic, field placement, and skills courses) of 2,142 attorneys. It reveals that experiential courses have not been comparably pursued or valued by former law students as they headed to careers in different settings and types of law practice. Public interest lawyers took many of these types of courses, at intensive levels, and valued them highly. In marked contrast, corporate lawyers in large firms took far fewer. When …

Empowering Law Students To Overcome Extreme Public Speaking Anxiety: Why Just Be It Works And Just Do It Doesn't, Heidi K. Brown

Articles & Chapters

For law students experiencing extreme public speaking anxiety, which can manifest from variations of introversion, shyness, social anxiety, or social phobia, the Socratic method of intellectual discourse — either in the classroom or in the first-year oral argument experience — can trigger such a high level of apprehension that it may threaten even an otherwise strong student’s confidence in his or her future as an attorney. Extreme public speaking anxiety can pose a serious impediment to processing and comprehending legal concepts, and engaging with professors, classmates, and substantive material. Unless the anxious law student takes steps to address the roots …

One Significant Step: How Reforms To Prison Districts Begin To Address Political Inequality, Erika L. Wood

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Still Fighting After All These Years: Minority Voting Rights 50 Years After The March On Washington, Deborah N. Archer

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

The Price Of Equal Justice: How Establishing A Right To Counsel For People Who Face Losing Their Homes Helps Tackle Economic Inequality, Andrew Scherer

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Trafficking In Law: Cause Lawyer, Bureaucratic State And Rights Of Human Trafficking Victims In Thailand, Frank W. Munger

Articles & Chapters

In this case study of a young, Thai “cause lawyer”, advocacy for human rights is considered in context. The most important elements of that context are the path of development of Thai political and legal institutions, globalisation of law, and the networks of relationships that penetrate the state. The case study shows that human rights advocacy by NGO lawyers can adapt creatively to unpromising conditions under which courts provide little access or oversight. At the same time, the case study raises profound questions about the ultimate independence of cause lawyers when the state must be made a partner in order …