Law Commons^™

Conceptualizing The Field After September 11th: Forward To A Symposium On Public Health Law, Lawrence O. Gostin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Safeguarding the public's health, safety, and security took on new meaning and urgency after the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. on September 11, 2001. On October 4, 2001, a Florida man named Robert Stevens was diagnosed with inhalational anthrax. The intentional dispersal of anthrax through the U.S. postal system in New York, Washington, Pennsylvania and other locations resulted in at least five deaths, hundreds treated, and thousands tested. The prospects of new, larger, and more sophisticated attacks have created a sense of deep vulnerability. The need to rapidly detect and …

Architecture As Crime Control, Neal K. Katyal

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Building on work in architectural theory, this Article demonstrates how additional attention to cities, neighborhoods, and individual buildings can reduce criminal activity. The field of cyberlaw has been transformed by the insight that architecture can regulate behavior in cyberspace; this insight will now be applied to the regulation of behavior in real space. The instinct of many lawyers, however, is to focus on legal rules, without thinking about the constraint of physical space. Ironically, even an architectural problem in crime control - "broken windows" - has prompted legal, not architectural solutions. Four architectural concepts are considered: increasing an area's natural …

Digital Millennium Copyright Act: Can It Take Down Internet Infringers?, David L. Clark

Computer Law Review and Technology Journal

In response to the growing digital age, Congress enacted the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") on October 28, 1998. Unlike traditional copyright statutes, the DMCA does not address the act of infringement but instead focuses on the technology that makes infringement easier. Copyright holders have begun to develop encryption technology to prevent unauthorized use of their works, and the DMCA assists those efforts by prohibiting any person from circumventing those security provisions or selling decryption devices. The DMCA also encourages Internet Service Providers ("ISPs") to disable websites that are accused of copyright infringement; it protects the ISPs with a safe …

Suppressing Speech In Judicial Elections: How The Canons Of Judicial Ethics Abridge The Freedom Of Speech Of Judges And Candidates For Judicial Office, Bradley S. Clanton

MC Law Review

Symposium - The Judicial Selection

Fast, Cheap, And Out Of Control: Lessons From The Icann Dispute Resolution Process, Elizabeth G. Thornburg

Computer Law Review and Technology Journal

The Internet is constantly expanding, both as a means of communication and as a means of commerce. As its contacts among people and businesses expand, more and more disputes will arise and will need resolution. These disputes will evolve both from business-to-consumer transactions and from business-to-business transactions. Some of the claims will include breach of contract, breach of warranty, and even fraud. Others will concern intellectualproperty rights such as trademarks, copyrights, and patents. Still others will involve competition law, raising issues of antitrust, trade disparagement, and other claims of unfair competition. Alleging defamation, invasion of privacy and emotional distress, some …

The Protection Of Intellectual-Property Rights In A Federalist Era, Steve Malin

Computer Law Review and Technology Journal

The framers of the Constitution envisioned a nation comprising several separate and independent sovereign states. Under a system of dual sovereignty, the states gave up certain enumerated powers delegated to the federal government. Among those powers was the authority to enact laws designed to protect patent and copyright owners and to encourage invention and original authorship.

Also in the framers' minds - recent caselaw tells us - was the belief that the states retained immunity from suits brought by individuals. Despite this fact, the federal intellectual-property system has historically placed sovereign states on equal footing with individuals as to both …

Widgets To Windows: The "Webolution" Of Commercial Sales, Joseph A. Zavaletta, Edward B. Hymson

Computer Law Review and Technology Journal

Five years ago, a new "nation" developed unlike any other in history - it has no government, no political borders, no buildings, no army, no citizens, no elections, and no leader. But by all accounts, this nation has the most dynamic economic engine in history. Based on recent studies by the Center for Research in Electronic Commerce at the University of Texas at Austin ("CREC"), if this nation were ranked by gross domestic product, its 2000 revenues of $830 billion would give it the twelfth largest gross domestic product in the world, ahead of Canada and behind Mexico. With an …

An Ip Conundrum: Can Patent Policy And Trade Dress Law Be Reconciled?, Michael Scott Fuller

Computer Law Review and Technology Journal

Patent protection in the United States has traditionally been a compromise between the competing interests of Congress and the inventor. While Congress seeks disclosure of technology in order to benefit the common good, inventors want protection of their proprietary inventions, otherwise known as their "intellectual property." Patent law provides a bargained-for exchange, giving the invention protection for a finite period of 20 years from the date of application. Upon expiration of this congressionally sanctioned monopoly, the invention passes ipso facto into the public domain.

In the past, this mutually beneficial arrangement was the accepted means by which both Congress and …

Telecommunications Law: Open Access To Cable Broadband Transmission: At&T Corp. V. City Of Portland, 216 F.3d 871 (9th Cir. 2000), Deborah L. Lively

Computer Law Review and Technology Journal

In AT&T Corp. v. City of Portland, the Ninth Circuit considered whether a local cable franchising authority could condition the transfer of a cable franchise upon the cable operator's grant of unrestricted access to its cable broadband transmission facilities.

In 1998, AT&T - the nation's largest long-distance telephone provider - proposed a merger with Telecommunications, Inc. ("TCI"), which was among the nation's largest cable-television operators. In the merger, AT&T received access to TCI's cable broadband transmission system as a conduit for AT&T's "@Home" Internet service. A cable broadband system provides Internet access at much faster speeds than through typical modem …

Business-Method Patents: Of Questionable Validity? - Amazon.Com, Inc. V. Barnesandnoble.Com, Inc., 239 F.3d 1343 (Fed. Cir. 2001), Chris Morton

Computer Law Review and Technology Journal

In 1998, in State Street Bank & Trust Co. v. Signature Financial Group, Inc., the Federal Circuit gave new life to the business-method patent. Critics viewed this decision as a judicially created exception to the statutory requirement ofpatentable subject matter. Uncertainty under the State Street ruling led to the issuance of a flood of widely criticized and questionable patents, including Amazon.com's one-click-purchase patent. In an attempt to enforce this patent, Amazon.com sued Barnesandnoble.com, and the trial court granted a preliminary injunction. Bamesandnoble.com appealed, claiming that the one-click-purchase patent was invalid because it failed to meet the statutory requirements of …

Hyperlinks To And From Commercial Websites, Christopher J. Volkmer

Computer Law Review and Technology Journal

E-commerce, through the use of a website, is a business reality. This is true for companies of any size, in any location, selling any kind of product or service. Doing business over the Internet is part of what all companies must do to compete; with this new form of business, however, comes new legal issues. As e-commerce develops, it is important for business owners to keep advancing their knowledge in order to manage the risks that come with new opportunities.

Hyperlinks are basic building blocks used to connect the sites of the World Wide Web, and their use has significant …

Copyright Act Of 1976 - Copyright Infringement - Supreme Court Holds That The Selling Of Freelance Authors' Articles By Print Publishers To Electronic Publishers Constitutes Copyright Infringement. New York Times Co. V. Tasini, 533 U.S. 483 (2001), S. Brock Benson

Computer Law Review and Technology Journal

In New York Times Co. v. Tasini, the Supreme Court decided the issue of whether the selling to electronic publishers of articles in collective works without permission from the freelance authors was permissible under § 201 (c) of the Copyright Act. In earlier proceedings, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York granted summary judgment for the publishers, holding that the publishers were entitled to place contents of their periodicals into electronic databases without the permission of the authors whose works appeared in the periodicals. The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, however, reversed …

Title Page, Mc Law

MC Law Review

Title Page

Securing Liberty With Chains: Locking Up The Fifth Amendment Within The Confines Of Miranda Dickerson V. United States, Bryan P. Doyle

MC Law Review

Notes

Do The Crime, Do The Time, But The Time Should Fit The Crime: Does Mississippi Need Sentencing Guidelines - White V. State, Renee C. Harrison

MC Law Review

Notes

The Least Of Evils For Judicial Selection, Leslie Southwick

MC Law Review

Symposium - The Judicial Selection

Proposed Remedy For Mississippi's Medical Malpractice Miseries, A, Jeffrey O'Connell

MC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Tort Reform And The Medical Liability Insurance Crisis In Mississippi: Diagnosing The Disease And Prescribing A Remedy, Neil Vidmar, Leigh Ann Brown

MC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Traditional Free-Speech Law: Does It Apply On The Internet?, A. John Harper Iii

Computer Law Review and Technology Journal

The First Amendment states that Congress "shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." But as Oliver Wendell Holmes recognized, the First Amendment "obviously was not intended to give immunity for every possible use of language." Accordingly, the Supreme Court's free-speech jurisprudence has traditionally been one of line drawing - distinguishing protected from unprotected speech by evaluating its content in light of the medium through which it is expressed. In terms of content, there are generally three categories of speech: "(1) speech that everyone has a right to (political speech, speech about …

Packet Sniffers And Privacy: Why The No-Suspicion-Required Standard In The Usa Patriot Act Is Unconstitutional, Robert Berkowitz

Computer Law Review and Technology Journal

The legal standards for electronic surveillance, like the underlying technologies themselves, are constantly evolving. Originally aimed at analog telephones with landlines, the law has had to develop in order to deal with an expanding array of electronic communications, most recently the Internet. The challenge is a double one: statutes allowing surveillance must balance law enforcement's need for information with the privacy rights of the subjects of surveillance and the public at large. The USA Patriot Act, passed in the wake of the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., is the most recent attempt to strike this balance. …

Genetic Interventions: (Yet) Another Challenge To Allocating Health Care, Arti K. Rai

San Diego Law Review

Much of the existing literature on genetic intervention addresses questions of discrimination or reproductive decisionmaking. Although this book discusses those questions,

it takes as its major focus an issue that is perhaps even more vexing—the issue of how we should, from the standpoint of distributive justice, allocate genetic interventions. In other words, given the wide range of genetic interventions that may become available, how should we divide such interventions? Implicit in this problem is the reality that scarcity will prevent individuals from having access to all genetic interventions that would be of benefit to them. In this brief Essay, I …

Masthead

San Diego Law Review

No abstract provided.

Punishing Reproductive Choices In The Name Of Liberal Genetics, Alexander Morgan Capron

San Diego Law Review

When the four American moral philosophers who individually have already made the most significant contributions to the ethical analysis of contemporary health care and medicine collaborate, it should come as no surprise that their joint effort is a lucid and powerful analysis of the principles that a just and humane society would employ in setting policies about how the new tools of molecular genetics should be used for human betterment. In From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice, Allen Buchanan, Dan W. Brock, Norman Daniels, and Daniel Wikler aimed to steer a middle course between two extreme models. The first …

Genetic Enhancement, Distributive Justice, And The Goals Of Medicine, Mark A. Hall

San Diego Law Review

In this brief Essay, I focus on chapter 4 of the book’s discussion of the distinction between treatment and enhancement.

This distinction is at the core of many of the most challenging problems of ethics and public policy raised by genetics. This is also the place where there appears to be disagreement or ambivalence among these authors

and where fault

lines appear in their otherwise remarkably united front.

Introduction

San Diego Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Ethics Of Genetic Intervention: Human Research And Blurred Species Boundaries, Rebecca Dresser

San Diego Law Review

From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice1

is a well-written and tightly argued analysis. This Essay addresses two topics meriting more attention than they received from these authors. First, this Essay considers in greater detail a topic the book briefly addresses—the human research necessary to support clinical use of genetic interventions. What appears as simply a step along the way to clinical benefits may actually present serious impediments. Second, this Essay expands on a point the authors mentioned only in passing. They noted that developments in

genetics are blurring traditional species boundaries. Blurred boundaries between humans and other species raise …

A Rawlsian Approach To Solving The Problem Of Genetic Discrimination In Toxic Workplaces, Robert A. Bohrer

San Diego Law Review

The Human Genome Project (HGP) may well be the beginning of a technological leap that rivals the advent of the Industrial Age.2 The principal goal of the project is to map and fully sequence3

the twenty- four chromosomes that contain the complete genetic contents of a

normal human cell. The human genome consists of twenty-two pairs of chromosomes plus the X and Y chromosomes that determine gender.4 As would be expected for such a technologically adventurous undertaking, the HGP has been accompanied by a substantial outpouring of concern about the ethical, legal, and social issues that will arise from this …

Does Technological Enhancement Of Human Traits Threaten Human Equality And Democracy?, Michael H. Shapiro

San Diego Law Review

This Article outlines some of the moral, legal, and general policy difficulties that societies and individuals will face if technological enhancements via germ line and somatic mechanisms become possible. It identifies and analyzes some of the conceptual structures necessary to explain the nature of these difficulties, suggests some alternative basic scenarios—such as greater or lesser scarcity of technological enhancement resources, impacts on how we perceive each other, and different remediation patterns—and then maps and reverse maps the projected technological developments against the value and legal structures. This Article also describes and comments on what may seem to be, from our …

Deconstructing Binary Race And Sex Categories: A Comparison Of The Multiracial And Transgendered Experience, Julie A. Greenberg

San Diego Law Review

Millions of people are transgendered

and cannot easily be categorized as either male or female. Similarly, millions of people are multiracial and cannot be classified as being of one distinct race. Race classification systems have existed for centuries and have been the subject of extensive commentary and critique for decades. Sex and gender classification systems, on the other hand, have just started to become the subject of litigation in the last half of the twentieth century

and it is only during the last decade that sex classification systems have become the topic of extensive scholarly discussion.

Reasonable Expectations And The Erosion Of Privacy, Shaun B. Spencer

San Diego Law Review

This Article examines how the prevailing legal conception of privacy facilitates the erosion of privacy. The law generally measures privacy by reference to society’s reasonable expectation of privacy. If we think of the universe of legally private matters as a sphere, the sphere will contract or (at least in theory) expand in accordance with changing social expectations. This expectation-driven conception of privacy in effect establishes a privacy marketplace, analogous in both a literal and metaphorical sense to a marketplace of ideas. In this marketplace, societal expectations of privacy fluctuate in response to changing social practices. For this reason, privacy is …