Law Commons^™

Master Gardeners, Kathleen Morris

Publications

In legal education, we tend to focus first and foremost on producing graduates who can effectively serve and thrive in the private for-profit, non-profit, and federal government economies. There are pressing reasons to maintain these priorities. And yet, assuming legal educators come to believe -- as Schragger has (and I have) -- that cities belong "at the center of economic and constitutional thinking," it stands to reason that law schools should find a way to place cities among the subjects at the center of legal educational thinking. Now is the time to consider how law schools can help raise up …

Economics And The Evolution Of Non-Party Litigation Funding In America: How Court Decisions, The Civil Justice Process, And Law Firm Structures Drive The Increasing Need And Demand For Capital, Fiona Mckenna, Alan L. Zimmerman, Daniel J. Bush, Cheryl Kaufman

Publications

This paper views civil litigation initiated by a party seeking money damages through the lens of the underlying economics that impact the civil justice system's ability to achieve fair outcomes. It examines how access to capital has impacted the functioning of civil justice in the United States.

End The Death Penalty, Rachel A. Van Cleave

Publications

No abstract provided.

De-Categorizing Child Abuse - Equally Devastating Acts Require Equally Solicitous Statutes Of Limitations, Rosemary La Puma

Publications

News reports of childhood sexual abuse by Catholic priests initially shocked and subsequently angered the public. Emboldened by the public's reaction toward sexual abusers, survivors attempted to confront their abusers in civil court. Jurisdictions adjudicated these claims if they were brought within two years of reaching the age of majority. Yet, survivors often did not recognize the damage done to them until several years after they reached the age of majority. And by the time they did, the two-year statute of limitations had passed. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, survivors lobbied state legislatures to extend. the time within …

The Best Public Defenders Are Anarchists, Rachel A. Van Cleave, Peter Keane

Publications

After decades in criminal defense and in legal education, Golden Gate University School of Law Dean Emeritus Peter Keane is retiring. In addition to serving as dean and leading the San Francisco Public Defender's Office, Keane has also taken on leadership roles with the State Bar and with numerous tasks forces and commissions. He sat down recently with Rachel Van Cleave, the current dean of GGU Law, to reflect on his career.

Circuit Splits And Empiricism In The Supreme Court, Karen M. Gebbia

Publications

This Article demonstrates, empirically rather than merely in theory, how a failure to apply accurate data to test carefully constructed hypotheses leads to unreliable conclusions concerning the relationship between the Supreme Court and the circuit courts of appeal. Specifically, commentators routinely misapply facially accurate raw data regarding the rate at which the Court reverses circuit court decisions to support unreliable conclusions regarding the comparative degree of accord between the Court and individual circuits. Commentators and the popular press then employ these unreliable conclusions to draw unsupported inferences regarding the reasons for supposed discord between the Court and the circuits, and …

Recovering Forgotten Struggles Over The Constitutional Meaning Of Equality, Helen Norton

Publications

No abstract provided.

Threaten Sentencing Enhancement, Coerce Plea, (Wash, Rinse,) Repeat: A Cause Of Wrongful Conviction By Guilty Plea, Wes R. Porter

Publications

Our American criminal justice system is too often described as broken. It was not a clean break in a single, isolated location. Instead, our criminal justice system suffers from many, many little nicks, bumps, and bruises at the hands of its keepers. The evolution of sentencing enhancements within our criminal justice system represents the latest nagging, reoccurring injury. In the ultimate Trojan horse to criminal defendants, the Supreme Court sought to protect the individual rights of the accused with its recent decisions on sentencing enhancements. But at the hands of lawmakers, the judiciary, and prosecutors, criminal defendants suffer more. Our …

Our Supreme Court Tackles Greenhouse Gas Analysis In Eirs, Alan Ramo

Publications

No abstract provided.

Two New Case Developments In Landlord-Tenant Law, Myron Moskovitz

Publications

No abstract provided.

Using A Long Arm To Undo A Fraudulent Conveyance, Marc Greenberg

Publications

No abstract provided.

Passage And Flow Considered Anew: Wild Salmon Restoration Via Hyrdo Relicensing, Paul Stanton Kibel

Publications

The FERC hydro relicensing process in the United States has often provided an effective mechanism to modify the terms of dam operations to reduce the adverse impacts on fisheries, particularly impacts on wild Pacific Coast salmon. This experience with FERC relicensing suggests that a transparent and scientifically rigorous regulatory framework to periodically review and modify the way dams operate can play a critical role in the restoration of wild fish stocks.

Substantive Equality And Sexual Orientation: Twenty Years Of Gay And Lesbian Rights Adjudication Under The South African Constitution, Eric C. Christiansen

Publications

Examining the historical achievements and failures of the South African Constitution’s sexual orientation protections highlights larger lessons from the last twenty years of constitutionalism in South Africa. In this Article, I use the drafting history, Constitutional Court adjudication, and the practical insufficiencies of the Constitution’s inclusion of sexual orientation-based protections to highlight three categories of insights. These lessons include an encouraging insight regarding the inclusion of novel and progressive elements when drafting modern constitutions; some modest claims about the capacity of courts to combat inequality based on sexual orientation despite the limitations of purely legal victories; and a hopeful affirmation …

Law Schools And Learning Outcomes: Developing A Coherent, Cohesive, And Comprehensive Law School Curriculum, Anthony S. Niedwiecki

Publications

This Article will detail a process that law schools can use to comply with the ABA Standards requiring schools develop their learning outcomes for the entire institution, academic programs, and courses. At the same time, this process can be used as a roadmap for curricular review and planning. As an example, this Article will use the steps that The John Marshall Law School took to review and change its professional skills curriculum. Part I will outline the accreditation requirements for developing and publishing learning outcomes. Part 11 of the Article will provide an overview of the process of curricular planning …

Why Patent Exhaustion Should Liberate Products (And Not Just People), Samuel F. Ernst

Publications

Patent exhaustion is a doctrine that excuses infringement where the patent holder has either authorized the sale of a patented item or licensed its use or sale. Absent an effective contractual restriction, the patent holder's rights in the patented item are exhausted and the patent holder cannot sue for infringement based on further use or resale of the item. This Article explores the question of whether patent exhaustion adheres in the patented device or if it is a defensive doctrine that only adheres to the benefit of particular parties. Traditionally courts have articulated the doctrine as liberating the accused product …

The Lost Precedent Of The Reverse Doctrine Of Equivalents, Samuel F. Ernst

Publications

Proponents of legislative patent reform argue that the current patent system perversely impedes true innovation in the name of protecting a vast web of patented inventions, the majority of which are never even commercialized for the benefit of the public. Opponents of such legislation argue that comprehensive, prospective patent reform legislation would harm the incentive to innovate more than it would curb the vexatious practices of non-practicing entities. But while the "Innovation Act" wallows in Congress, there is a common law tool to protect innovation from the patent thicket lying right under our noses: the reverse doctrine of equivalents. Properly …

The Problem Of Mop Heads In The Era Of Apps: Toward More Rigorous Standards Of Value Apportionment In Contemporary Patent Law, David Franklyn, Adam Kuhn

Publications

This article addresses this critical question of consumer demand surveys. The article argues that the law should always require rigorous apportionment of value based on scientifically-accepted standards of consumer demand measurement. Further, the article discusses how best to achieve this policy goal and how courts have approached it to date. This article then walks through the pertinent case law on apportionment, the role and defensibility of survey evidence, and offers guidance on proper survey design.

Social Function And Value Capture: Do They Or Should They Have A Role To Play In Polish Land Development Regulation, Colin Crawford, Julian Conrad Juergensmeyer, Dawid Sześciło

Publications

Following the introductory Part I, in Part II, two of the three authors here, both U.S. law professors, seek to identify some conceptual and practical legal tools for a more orderly and balanced land use development in the Warsaw metropolitan region, one that promotes not just economic and industrial growth but one that also serves medium- and longer-term social and environmental interests as well. Part III, written by the third author – a Polish law professor, will evaluate the prospects for, as well as the challenges and impediments to, implementing these legal tools in the Polish context. Finally, in Part …

The Energy Prosumer, Sharon B. Jacobs

Publications

Decentralization is becoming a dominant trend in many industries, and the electricity industry is no exception. Increasing numbers of energy consumers generate their own electricity and/or provide essential grid services such as storage, efficiency, and demand response. This Article offers a positive account of the emergence of these new energy actors, which it calls "energy prosumers. " It then frames several doctrinal and procedural puzzles that prosumers create, including jurisdictional puzzles, distributional concerns, and democratic challenges. Ultimately, it concludes that prosumers can be a positive disruptive force in the electricity industry if courts and regulators can manage these challenges effectively. …

Comparative Reflections On Duncan V. Louisiana And Baldwin V. New York, William Pizzi

Publications

No abstract provided.

Saving The Public Interest Class Action By Unpacking Theory And Doctrinal Functionality, Suzette M. Malveaux

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No abstract provided.

Wide-Scale Small Unmanned Aircraft System Access To The National Airspace System, John Robbins, Brent Terwilliger, David Ison, Dennis Vincenzi

Publications

Expected revisions of federal policies and regulations for the operation and certification of small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) are anticipated to significantly increase the volume of traffic in the National Airspace System (NAS). By investigating critical needs of regulatory compliance and safety, as well as new advancements, it may be possible to identify strategies to address the most pressing concerns of sUAS integration. Findings and recommendations from this research are presented to highlight implications and possible solutions to urgent needs of UAS stakehold-ers, including industry, government, and academia.

Facilitating Competition By Remedial Regulation, Kristelia A. García

Publications

In music licensing, powerful music publishers have begun—for the first time ever— to withdraw their digital copyrights from the collectives that license those rights, in order to negotiate considerably higher rates in private deals. At the beginning of the year, two of these publishers commanded a private royalty rate nearly twice that of the going collective rate. This result could be seen as a coup for the free market: Constrained by consent decrees and conflicting interests, collectives are simply not able to establish and enforce a true market rate in the new, digital age. This could also be seen as …

Colorado Rule Of Evidence 502: Preserving Privilege And Work Product Protection In Discovery, Christopher B. Mueller, Ronald J. Hedges, Lino S. Lipinsky

Publications

No abstract provided.

Guns And Drugs, Benjamin Levin

Publications

This Article argues that the increasingly prevalent critiques of the War on Drugs apply to other areas of criminal law. To highlight the broader relevance of these critiques, this Article uses as its test case the criminal regulation of gun possession. This Article identifies and distills three lines of drug war criticism and argues that they apply to possessory gun crimes in much the same way that they apply to drug crimes. Specifically, this Article focuses on: (1) race- and class-based critiques; (2) concerns about police and prosecutorial power; and (3) worries about the social and economic costs of mass …

Marriage, Abortion, And Coming Out, Scott Skinner-Thompson, Sylvia A. Law, Hugh Baran

Publications

Over the past two decades, legal protections for lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals have dramatically expanded. Simultaneously, meaningful access to reproductive choice for women has eroded. What accounts for the different trajectories of LGBTQ rights and reproductive rights?

This Piece argues that one explanation—or at least partial explanation—for the advance of LGBTQ rights relative to reproductive rights is the differing degree to which individuals have come out about their experiences with sexuality compared to coming out about experiences with unplanned pregnancies. In particular, as catalogued in this Piece, popular media portrayals of lesbian and gay individuals have proliferated, broadening the …

Love, Anger, And Lawyering, Deborah J. Cantrell

Publications

This essay explores how mindfulness practices helped one lawyer, now legal scholar, explore the roles of love and anger in lawyering.

Classification Standards For Health Information: Ethical And Practical Approaches, Craig Konnoth

Publications

Secondary health information research requires vast quantities of data in order to make clinical and health delivery breakthroughs. Restrictive policies that limit the use of such information threaten to stymie this research. While the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) for the new Common Rule permits patients to provide broad consent for the use of their information for research, that policy offers insufficient flexibility. This Article suggests a flexible consenting system that allows patients to consent to a range of privacy risks. The details of the system will be fleshed out in future work.

Prior Consistent Statements: The Dangers Of Misinterpreting Recently Amended Federal Rule Of Evidence 801(D)(1)(B), Laird C. Kirkpatrick, Christopher B. Mueller

Publications

A recent amendment to Federal Rule of Evidence 801(d)(1)(B) expands the situations in which prior consistent statements by testifying witnesses can be used as substantive evidence, and not merely as rehabilitating evidence. In this piece, the Authors argue that the revised rule may mislead judges and lawyers to conclude that prior consistent statements are always usable as substantive evidence when offered to rehabilitate a witness. Nothing could be further from the truth. The intent, although hard to discern on the face of the revised rule, is only to allow substantive use of consistent statements that are otherwise admissible to rehabilitate …

Values And Assumptions In Criminal Adjudication, Benjamin Levin

Publications

This Response to Andrew Manuel Crespo's Systemic Facts: Toward Institutional Awareness in Criminal Courts proceeds in two Parts. In Part I, I argue that Crespo presents a compelling case for the importance of systemic factfinding to the task of criminal court judges. If, as a range of scholars has argued, criminal courts are increasingly serving a quasi-administrative function, then shouldn’t they at least be administrating accurately? Systemic Facts provides a novel account of how — with comparatively little institutional reform — courts might begin to serve as more effective administrators. However, in Part II, I also argue that Crespo’s account …