Law Commons^™

Tax Benefits Of Government-Owned Marijuana Stores, Benjamin Leff

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This Article is the first to address whether independent governmental affiliates that sell marijuana are exempt from federal income tax under section 115 of the Internal Revenue Code. It argues that such entities should easily pass the IRS's current interpretation of the three requirements for tax-exemption under section 115: (i) that exempt income be derived from "the exercise of any essential governmental function"; (ii) that such income "accru[e] to a State or any political subdivision thereof"; and (iii) that the income "not serve private interests[.]" In addition, this Article argues that though selling marijuana is illegal under federal law, that …

Nontechnical Disclosure, Jonas Anderson

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One of the primary goals of the patent system is the broad dissemination of technical knowledge. But, as this Article argues, there is also an underappreciated amount of nontechnical knowledge contained in a patent, information that may in certain cases be more valuable to readers than the technical disclosure contained in a patent. This Article looks at various types of nontechnical disclosure to argue that appreciating the nontechnical aspects of patent disclosure can increase our understanding of what information patents are disseminating to the general public.

Supreme Court Amicus Brief Of Law Professors In Support Of Petitioner Lee V. Tam, No. 15-1293 (Filed Nov. 16, 2016), Christine Farley, Rebecca Tushnet

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The Federal Circuit’s ruling that the § 2(a) disparagement provision is unconstitutional, if upheld, could allow for numerous provisions of the Trademark Act to be overturned, dismantling the modern trademark system. The trademark system is premised on evaluating speech and making content-based determinations. Granting a trademark registration requires content-based determinations, though not viewpoint-based, as words are evaluated independent of applicants’ individual viewpoints.In no way does the refusal to register a trademark prevent its use or diminish public debate. Rather than facilitating public debate, a trademark registration is a government-issued document that makes it easier for its owner to suppress the …

Book Review J. Shoshanna Ehrilich, Regulating Desire: From The Virtuous Maiden To The Purity Princess, Maya Manian

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In this effective and engaging book, J. Shoshanna Ehrlich uncovers the hidden agendas underlying the long history of the law's regulation of female adolescent sexuality. Ehrlich persuasively demonstrates that a multitude of laws purporting to protect public health in one form or another in fact "encode the value of female virtue into law based upon a set of assumptions about their sexuality" (3). The book spans a wide time period, moving chronologically through a series of legal reform movements targeting young women's sexuality, from the 1838 effort to criminalize seduction to the modem-day movement promoting abstinence-only sex education. Although the …

Intellectual Property And Related Rights In Climate Data, Michael Carroll

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This chapter focuses on the ways in which intellectual property law can act as a barrier to data sharing. Intellectual property laws supply exclusive rights that can enable a researcher, employer or funder to ‘own’ data; they can then bring legal claims against persons who access or reuse data without permission. Some of these rights attach automatically to data, data sets, or databases, and thus must be managed properly to enable robust data sharing in climate science. Other rights are created by contract, and the policies around such privately created rights must be understood and analyzed. This chapter briefly describes …

Thinking Outside The Jury Box: Deploying The Grand Jury In The Guilty Plea Process, Roger Fairfax

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There is near-universal agreement that the engine of the modern American criminal justice system is plea bargaining.'Given the ubiquity of plea bargaining, the Supreme Court and the rest of the legal community have begun setting their sights on how the practice might be better regulated. At the same time, many hold the view that the grand jury has outlived its usefulness in the administration of criminal justice and is a relic of a time gone by. Even before recent calls for the abolition of the grand jury in the wake of high-profile cases that seemed to cast the institution in …

President Obama's Approach To The Middle East And North Africa: Strategic Absence, Paul Williams

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Many commentators argue that the White House does not have a policy regarding the Middle East and North Africa. Based on observations of the White House's foreign policy decisions over a breadth of seven years, this article argues that The White House does have a clear policy and it is one of Strategic Absence. The term Strategic Absence is used to describe political behavior that arises from a belief that sometimes, in foreign affairs, it is better to be absent rather than present. Strategic Absence has led to a degradation of American influence in the Middle East and has contributed …

Policing Criminal Justice Data, Wayne Logan, Andrew Ferguson

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This article addresses a matter of fundamental importance to the criminal justice system: the presence of erroneous information in government databases and the limited government accountability and legal remedies for the harm that it causes individuals. While a substantial literature exists on the liberty and privacy perils of large multi-source data assemblage, often termed "big data," this article addresses the risks associated with the collection, generation and use of "small data" (i.e., individual-level, discrete data points). Because small data provides the building blocks for all data-driven systems, enhancing its quality will have a significant positive effect on the criminal justice …

The Big Data Jury, Andrew Ferguson

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This article addresses the disruptive impact of big data technologies on jury selection.Jury selection requires personal information about potential jurors. Current selection practices, however, collect very little information about citizens, and litigants picking jury panels know even less. This data gap results in a jury selection system that: (1) fails to create a representative cross-section of the community; (2) encourages the discriminatory use of peremptory challenges; (3) results in an unacceptably high juror “no show” rate; and (4) disproportionately advantages those litigants who can afford to hire expensive jury consultants.Big data has the potential to remedy these existing limitations and …

Judicial Lobbying, Jonas Anderson

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Abstract: Judges who lobby Congress for legal reform tread into an ethical gray area: lobbying is legally permissible, but generally frowned upon. Currently, there are no legal or ethical constraints on judges speaking publicly regarding proposed legislative changes, only an ill-defined norm against the practice. Scholars have largely dismissed judicial lobbying efforts as the result of haphazard, one-off events, driven by the unique interests, expertise, or ideology of the individual judge involved. According to scholars, there is nothing that should be done-not to mention little that could be done-to restrict judges from lobbying. Judicial lobbying occurs, in large part, when …

Stories Of Teaching Race, Gender, And Class: A Narrative, Brenda V. Smith

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This Essay transcribes and discusses Smith's keynote speech at the New England Clinical Conference at Harvard Law School in November, 2015. Smith's speech discusses the intersection between race, gender, and class, highlighting them as sites of vulnerability through a personal storytelling lens. By sharing her individual experiences, Smith hopes to draw attention to insecurities and threats faced by many individuals who refuse to speak out.

Frontlines: Policing At The Lexus Of Race And Mental Health, Camille Nelson

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he last several years have rendered issues at the intersection of race, mental health, and policing more acute. The frequency and violent, often lethal, nature of these incidents is forcing a national conversation about matters which many people would rather cast aside as volatile, controversial, or as simply irrelevant to conversations about the justice system. It seems that neither civil rights activists engaged in the work of advancing racial equality nor disability rights activists recognize the potent combination of negative racialization and mental illness at this nexus that bring policing practices into sharp focus. As such, the compounding dynamics and …

Can't Get There From Here: Recalculate Into Better Legal Writing, Heather Ridenour

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No abstract provided.

Is Courtesy No Longer Contagious, David Spratt

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No abstract provided.

Why The Hurry To Regulate Autonomous Weapon Systems-But Not Cyber-Weapons?, Kenneth Anderson

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No abstract provided.

Why Delaware Courts Should Abolish The Schnell Doctrine, Mary Siegel

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No abstract provided.

The Historical Realization Of The Americans With Disabilities Act On Athletes With Disabilities, Michael W. Carroll, Michael Cottingham, Don Lee, Deborah Shapiro, Brenda Pitts

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The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 has been one of the most powerful tools used by persons with disabilities in the fight for access and equality. Significant case law demonstrates the impact of the ADA on disability sport participation and access, but little is known regarding how the ADA has impacted athletes with disabilities. Thus, the purpose of this study was to gain the perspective of elite athletes with disabilities who competed before and after the ADA's enactment. Participants were interviewed, and the data were transcribed and analyzed. Findings indicated that participants generally felt physical barriers were most …

Residual Value Capture In Subsidized Housing, Brandon Weiss

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This Article argues that our primary federal subsidized housing production pro- gram, the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC), will result in the unnecessary forfeit of billions of dollars of government investment and the potential displacement of tens of thousands of households beginning in 2020 when LIHTC property use restrictions start to expire. The LIHTC example is presented as a case study of an inherent dynamic of public-private partnerships namely, the potential capture by for-profit providers of "residual value." For purposes of this Article, this is value generated by a public-private transaction that is unnecessary to incentivize a private provider to …

The Feminist Case For Acknowledging Women's Acts Of Violence, Jamie Abrams

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This Article makes a feminist case for acknowledging women’s acts of violence as consistent with — not threatening to — the goals of the domestic violence movement and the feminist movement. It concludes that broadly understanding women’s use of strength, power, coercion, control, and violence, even illegitimate uses, can be framed consistent with feminist goals. Beginning this conversation is a necessary — if uncomfortable — step to give movement to the movement to end gendered violence.

The domestic violence movement historically framed its work on a gender binary of men as potential perpetrators and women as potential victims. This binary …

Should The Best Offenses Ever Be A Good Defense: The Public Authority To Use Force In Millitary Operations: Recalibrating The Use Of Force Rules In The Standing Rules Of Engagement, Gary Corn

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The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff's Standing Rules of Engagement/StandingRules for the Use of Force (SROE/SRUF)for U.S. Forces provides strategic guidance to the armed forces on the authority to use force during all military operations. The standing self-defense rules in the SROE for national, unit, and individual self-defense form the core of these use-of-force authorities. The SROE self-defense rules are incorrectly built on a unitary jus ad bellum framework, legally inapplicable below the level of national self-defense. Coupled with the pressures of sustained counter-insurgency operations, this misalignment of individual and unit self-defense authorities has led to a conflation …

Law Enforcement Access To Data Across Borders: The Evolving Security And Rights Issues, Jennifer Daskal

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No abstract provided.

Liability For Mobile Health And Wearable Technologies, Lindsay Wiley, Nicolas Terry

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Most of the legal commentary regarding mobile health has focused on direct regulation leveraging existing laws and regulators such as HIPAA privacy through HHS-OCR or device regulation by the FDA. However, much of the mobile health revolution likely will play out in lightly regulated spaces bereft of most of the privacy, security, and safety rules associated with traditional health care. This article examines the potential for common law liability models to bridge these gaps (even on a temporary basis). Part II of this paper provides an introduction to the terminology used, and presents a brief typology of the apps appearing …

Predictive Prosecution, Andrew Ferguson

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Police in major metropolitan areas now use “predictive policing” technologies to identify and deter crime. The early successes of predictive policing have led a few prosecutor’s offices to adopt quasi-“predictive prosecution” strategies. Predictive prosecution involves the identification and targeting of suspects deemed most at risk for future serious criminal activity, and then the use of that information to shape bail determinations, charging decisions, and sentencing arguments. This type of “Moneyball” prosecution has begun in New York City and Chicago, and this essay addresses the promise and peril of this new technology.This essay for the Wake Forest Law Review’s Symposium on …

Enforcement Discretion Under Attack: Implications For Fda, Lewis Grossman

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Author's Note: On June 23, as this article was going to press, the Supreme Court deadlocked 4-4 in U.S. v. Texas, thus affirming a preliminary injunction against implementation of the Obama Administration’s deferred-action program for millions of undocumented immigrants. Because the Court’s terse per curiam decision established no precedent, the questions that the case raised regarding the permissible scope of administrative enforcement discretion remain unresolved on the national level. The Supreme Court will likely consider them again—after a decision on a permanent injunction in the same case, in a similar immigration dispute, or perhaps in another field of administrative law. …

#Lawyeringpeace: The Role Of Lawyers In Peacebuilding, Paul Williams, Christin Coster

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Based on the Public International Law & Policy Group’s (“PILPG”) two decades of experience assisting countries and clients in conflict situations, it is clear there are a number of ways for lawyers and international law to promote peacebuilding. This article condenses information shared during the International Law Weekend panel, “International Law and States in Emergency: Responses and Challenges.” The focus of the presentation was how lawyers can and should make a difference in peacebuilding and post-conflict constitution drafting. The world needs more lawyers to “lawyer peace” by assisting countries and clients involved in ongoing conflicts or in peace negotiations. In …

Genealogies Of Cost–Benefit Analysis In Transatlantic Regulatory Cooperation, Fernanda Nicola

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Cost–benefit analysis (CBA) has become a quintessential tool in administrative law informing a variety of modes of regulatory governance. It provides a justification for the regulation of markets based on a quasi-scientific and seemly neutral logic to assess the impact of secondary legislation by government agencies. A new frontier for CBA is the promotion of trade liberalization. It features prominently in the regulatory chapter of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). During the TTIP negotiations, scholars deployed CBA as a “neutral” tool to achieve greater convergence or reassert divergence and experimentalism in regulatory governance across the Atlantic. A genealogical …

The Fact Of The Matter, David Spratt

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No abstract provided.

Arbitrary Detention? The Immigration Detention Bed Quota, Anita Sinha

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When President Obama took office in 2009, Congress through appropriations linked the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) funding to “maintaining” 33,400 immigration detention beds a day. This provision, what this Article refers to as the bed quota, remains in effect, except now the mandate is 34,000 beds a day. Since 2009, DHS detentions of non-citizens have gone up by nearly 25 percent. To accommodate for this significant spike over a relatively short period of time, the federal government has relied considerably on private prison corporations to build and operate immigration detention facilities.

This Article takes a comprehensive look at …

Applying The Health Justice Framework To Diabetes As A Community-Managed Social Phenomenon, Lindsay Wiley

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INTRODUCTION: In East Harlem, it is possible to take any simple nexus of people -the line at an A.T.M., a portion of a postal route, the members of a church choir -and trace an invisible web of diabetes that stretches through the group and out into the neighborhood, touching nearly every life with its menace.Ten years ago, the New York Times published "Bad Blood," a series of articles examining the impact of diabetes on the residents of New York City. In the years that followed, New York pioneered a series of groundbreaking legal interventions, including implementing measures to track diabetes …

From Patient Rights To Health Justice, Lindsay Wiley

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Models emphasizing professional autonomy, patient rights, market power, and health consumerism are no longer adequate to address the increasingly social, collective nature of health law institutions, instruments, and norms. What is needed is a new model that expressly recognizes the public-alongside the patient, the provider, and the payer-as an important stakeholder and active participant in decisions about medical treatment, health care coverage, and allocation of scarce resources. In a previous article, the author looked to the environmental justice, reproductive justice, and food justice movements for inspiration in developing a "health justice" approach to eliminating social disparities in health. This Article …