Law Commons^™

Gaining Momentum: A Review Of Recent Developments Surrounding The Expansion Of The Copyright Misuse Doctrine And Analysis Of The Doctrine In Its Current Form, Woodrow Hartzog

Faculty Scholarship

The United States intellectual property ("IP") system is the foundation for incentives for authors and inventors to create and invent so that their work will be distributed to the public for the betterment of society. These incentives, in the form of limited monopolies over creations via patents, copyrights, and trademarks, are becoming increasingly important as the United States depends upon intellectual property to sustain its economy. As the intellectual property industry grows, it becomes vital to preserve the impetus behind its creation: the public good, or more specifically, the public's ability to make use of and enjoy new ideas and …

The Software Patent Experiment, Robert M. Hunt, James Bessen

Faculty Scholarship

Over the past two decades, the scope of technologies that can be patented has been expanded to include many items previously thought unsuitable for patenting, for example, computer software. Today, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office grants 20,000 or more software patents a year. Conventional wisdom holds that extending patent protection to computer programs will stimulate research and development and, thus, increase the rate of innovation. In this article, Bob Hunt and Jim Bessen investigate whether this has, in fact, happened. They describe the spectacular growth in software patenting, who obtains patents, and the relationship between a sharp focus on …

Where Have The Great Inventers Gone?, James Bessen

Faculty Scholarship

The author expands on the idea that the patent system has been a hinderance to collaborative innovation.

Hierarchies Of Harm In Canadian Criminal Law: The Marijuana Trilogy And The Forcible 'Correction' Of Children, Janine Benedet

All Faculty Publications

The author examines the seemingly contradictory Supreme Court of Canada decisions which upheld the prohibition on possession of marijuana (R. v. Malmo-Levine), yet allowed the defence of “reasonable correction” for parents and teachers charged with assaulting a child (Canadian Foundation for Children, Youth and the Law v. Canada (Attorney General)). She argues that these two decisions speak to the limits of the criminal law and the role that section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms plays in setting those limits. These decisions are also linked by the attempt by some members of the Court to establish a …

Aedpa's "Adjudication On The Merits" Requirement: Collateral Review, Federalism, And Comity, Robert D. Sloane

Faculty Scholarship

The modern law of federal habeas corpus is a labyrinth of counterfactuals and arcane procedural hurdles that few state petitioners manage to navigate-as Justice Blackmun once wrote less charitably in dissent, "a Byzantine morass of arbitrary, unnecessary, and unjustifiable impediments to the vindication of federal rights." The convoluted inquiries required arise from the need to reconcile three developments of the past four decades that remain in tension with one another: first, the Warren Court's expansion of federal habeas relief, identified with Fay v. Noia and its progeny; second, the Burger and Rehnquist Courts' curtailment of that expansion, identified with Wainwright …

Is Equity Compensation Tax Advantaged?, David I. Walker

Faculty Scholarship

Employees who receive stock options and other forms of equity compensation generally are able to defer paying tax on this compensation for years, sometimes decades. In a rising market this deferral results in a tax benefit at the employee level. This article asks whether the employee-level tax benefit in a rising market results in a global tax advantage for companies that rely heavily on equity compensation and their employees. There are two primary issues. First, on initial inspection one might conclude that the employee-level benefit in a rising market is offset by a disadvantage in a stagnant or declining market. …

Free Trade Against Free Riders?, Kevin Outterson

Faculty Scholarship

The US is using free trade agreements to address the global free rider problem in pharmaceutical R&D. This brief article outlines several objections to that approach.

Developments In International Commercial Dispute Resolution In 2003, Mark W. Friedman, Jack J. Coe, William W. Park, Dietmar W. Prager, Steven Smith

Faculty Scholarship

The past year was another active one for international commercial disputes, with significant although not revolutionary developments in U.S. arbitration law, and considerable growth in investor-State disputes under investment treaties.

Do We Have A Right To Speak With Another's Language? Eldred And The Duration Of Copyright, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

The law embodies two contradictory sets of rights and interests pertaining to copyright and speech. On the one hand. stand authors' claims to deserve compensation and control over their works. On the other hand stand the public's claims to be free to build on and deploy the cultural works that pervade daily life.

Legal And Ethical Duties Of Lawyers After Sarbanes-Oxley, Roger C. Cramton, George M. Cohen, Susan P. Koniak

Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines the legal and ethical duties of lawyers after Sarbanes-Oxley, focusing on the application, interpretation and ambiguities of the SEC rule implementing Section 307. Although our primary frame of reference will be on the SEC's new rules as an aspect of lawyer regulation, those rules are part of federal securities laws and should be considered in that aspect, i.e., whether they advance the purposes of the federal securities laws. The rules affecting lawyers should not be assessed in a vacuum as a mere turf war between federal regulators on the one hand and the organized bar and its …

Bidder Collusion And Antitrust Law: Refining The Analysis Of Price Fixing To Account For The Special Features Of Auction Markets, Robert C. Marshall, Michael J. Meurer

Faculty Scholarship

Courts and commentators have painstakingly analyzed antitrust policy toward horizontal price fixing, but surprisingly, one of the most common forms of price fixing--bidder collusion-has escaped the sustained attention of antitrust lawyers. We attribute this inattention to the mistaken belief that the economics of bidder collusion is essentially equivalent to the economics of price fixing in posted-price markets. However, there are significant differences regarding the economics of collusion in auction and procurement markets as compared to posted-price markets, and we derive antitrust policy recommendations that apply specifically to bidder collusion in this article.

Table Of Contents - Issue 1

Journal of Dispute Resolution

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents - Issue 2

Journal of Dispute Resolution

No abstract provided.

Damages: Using A Case Study To Teach Law, Lawyering, And Dispute Resolution, Melody Richardson Daily, Chris Guthrie, Leonard L. Riskin

Journal of Dispute Resolution

One of the primary goals of the Center for the Study of Dispute Resolution (CSDR) at the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Law has been to develop innovative and alternative teaching models that prepare law students to be better, more responsive lawyers and to broaden the philosophical maps (or mental models or mind sets) with which they approach their work

Summary Of Damages, Donna L. Pavlick

Journal of Dispute Resolution

The following timeline is based on the story of the Sabias as told in BARRY WERTH, DAMAGES: ONE FAMILY'S LEGAL STRUGGLES IN THE WORLD OF MEDICINE (1998).

Damages As Narrative, Melody Richardson Daily

Journal of Dispute Resolution

Let's begin with a thought experiment. Imagine that the year is 2030 and you are a successful attorney. One day you receive a call from a legal scholar who tells you that she is writing a book about legal education at the beginning of the twenty-first century, and she invites you to contribute a chapter. She explains that your chapter should be twenty to thirty pages long, but that the content is entirely up to you. Because you enjoy writing, you agree to write the chapter.

Teaching And Learning From The Mediations In Barry Werth's Damages, Leonard L. Riskin

Journal of Dispute Resolution

The two mediations in the book Damages, illuminate much about mediation in today's litigation environment - even though they took place in 1993 and each was, in its own way, quite unusual. for that reason - and because we have few good detailed descriptions of real mediations - I have used these two mediations to teach in a variety of settings. First, they served as one of several focuses in the course based on this book, called Damages: A Case Study, that we taught at the University of Missouri-Columbia, School of Law in the winter 2002 and 2003 semesters. In …

Insurance Aspects Of Damages, The, Douglas R. Richmond, Robert H. Jerry Ii

Journal of Dispute Resolution

"[I]t is difficult ... to imagine an event or transaction that does not involve insurance in some way."' So it is with the most salient event in the lives of Tony and Donna Sabia, whose son Tony John Sabia, or "Little Tony," was born with profound disabilities. In the final analysis, the ability of Tony and Donna to pay for the future medical care and living expenses needed by their son depends on whether they can reach the liability insurance coverage possessed by the health care providers who attended Donna and Little Tony at the time of his birth. It …

Relations Between Lawyer And Client In Damages: Model, Typical, Or Dysfunctional, Rodney J. Uphoff

Journal of Dispute Resolution

This essay begins, therefore, by briefly examining the question of what constitutes good lawyering. The essay acknowledges the difficulty of defining precisely what is good lawyering. In fact, scholar, judges, and lawyers often disagree markedly when they characterize lawyer behavior using the term. Not surprising, then, even though academic commentators routinely trumpet the importance of establishing a meaningful attorney-client relationship as an important aspect of good lawyering, not all in the legal profession embrace that view.

Experiences Of Collaborative Law: Preliminary Results From The Collaborative Lawyering Research Project, Julie Macfarlane

Journal of Dispute Resolution

For more than two decades, some of the most respected scholars in the field of dispute resolution have questioned the apparently intrinsic bias of litigation against cooperative, problem-solving outcomes for clients. The continuing discussion focuses on the increasingly adversarial and "uncivil" character of much civil litigation, especially commercial litigation;' the abuse of discovery practices to extend and escalate conflict and costs; the pressure to compete rather than to cooperate when facing the uncertainty of the other side's next move (the classic prisoner's dilemma described by Mnookin and Gilson); an observed tendency towards a reduction of counseling and "deliberative wisdom" provided …

Assessing Mediator Performance: The Usefulness Of Participant Questionnaires, Roselle L. Wissler, Robert W. Rack Jr.

Journal of Dispute Resolution

As part of their obligation to provide quality services, courts that offer mediation need to periodically assess the performance of mediators to whom they refer cases. One of several methods that have been proposed for monitoring mediator quality is participant assessments of mediator performance. The present article reports an empirical study that examined attorneys' assessments of the skillfulness of mediators in a federal appellate civil medations program. The attorneys rated some of the mediators as being more skillful than others, and these differences generally remained whether or not favorable outcomes were achieved in mediation. In addition, the attorneys rated individual …

To Be Announced: Silence From The United States Supreme Court And Disagreement Among Lower Courts Suggest An Uncertain Future For Class-Wide Arbitration - Green Tree Fin. Corp. V. Bazzle, Jonathan R. Bunch

Journal of Dispute Resolution

With growth in the area of arbitration agreements relating to employment, credit cards, loans, and other form agreements, the issue of class-wide arbitration has become an area of significant judicial activity. However, increased judicial activity has not resulted in increased clarity; to the dismay of those parties seeking to pursue or avoid class-wide arbitration, the law on this issue has become unpredictable from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. The United States Supreme Court has expressed the importance of the class-action as a valuable device for vindicating plaintiffs' rights. Additionally, the Supreme Court has recognized arbitration as a valuable form of dispute resolution. …

Going Dutch: Should Employees Have To Split The Costs Of Arbitration In Disputes Arising From Mandatory Employment Arbitration Agreements - Morrison V. Circuit City Stores, Inc., John F. Crawford

Journal of Dispute Resolution

Employers often require their employees to sign arbitration agreements as a condition of employment, obligating employees to submit their disputes with employers to binding arbitration. These agreements may include terms, such as cost splitting provisions, that may be advantageous to the employer, but extremely limiting to an employee seeking to enforce her statutory rights. The United States Supreme Court has yet to set out a clear position about whether an employee, by signed agreement, can be required to pay all or part of the arbitration fees and costs when the employee submits a statutory claim to arbitration. Federal district courts …

Securities Arbitration Awards Of Punitive Damages: Protective Or Expansive Steps For Review - Sawtelle V. Waddell & (And) Reed, Inc., Andrew Kopp

Journal of Dispute Resolution

An award of punitive damages is often the most significant and detrimental part of an award arising from a judicial or arbitral proceeding. In 1995, the United States Supreme Court resolved a circuit split upholding an arbitral panel's authority to award punitive damages under a securities arbitration agreement. This decision was monumental in establishing arbitral power. However, it left several questions unanswered. For example, which, if any, standards should be applied to such awards? This casenote addresses the reviewability of punitive damages awards arising out of a securities arbitration hearing.

Sovereign Debt Reform And The Best Interest Of Creditors, William W. Bratton, G. Mitu Gulati

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Article is about boilerplate language located at the back of contracts drafted by the world's largest law firms. The clauses in question are process provisions that regulate the amendment of sovereign debt contracts. These paragraphs have been drafted and redrafted by generations of corporate lawyers, yet they have changed little in their broad outlines in more than a century of use. Now they take center stage in the global financial arena, where they govern billions of dollars (and pounds, euros, and yen) of sovereign debt in default and billions more in imminent risk of default. Officials, academics, and even …

Public Confidence Laws Gone Awry: A Modern Circuit Split Reveals That Some Federal Courts Manipulate Standing Rules To Promulgate Severe First Amendment Restrictions On The Spouses And Children Of Public Employees, Nicholas R. Farrell

Vanderbilt Law Review

Federal courts in the United States have consistently upheld the constitutional doctrine that "[t]he essential rights of the First Amendment in some instances are subject to the elemental need for order without which the guarantees of civil rights to others would be a mockery." Given the central role of government workers in maintaining that order, the First Amendment rights of public employees have been particularly susceptible to restriction. For example, in 1940, Congress enacted the Hatch Act, which declared unlawful certain political activities of federal employees. Specifically, section nine of the Act prohibited officers and employees in the executive branch …

The Misappropriation Of Trust Fund Taxes Under The Guise Of Reasonable Cause, P. Prestin Weidner

Vanderbilt Law Review

Employers are generally required to withhold income, Social Security, and Medicare taxes from their employees' paychecks. Employers hold these taxes "in trust" until they are deposited or otherwise paid over to the government. Since one of the most common problems faced by owners and managers of businesses is the lack of adequate cash to satisfy their numerous immediate obligations, this system creates a temptation for the employer to use the withheld funds to cover its costs. Short-term bank loans are often either unavailable or unaffordable, and the employer's own debtors may be unable to pay or not yet obligated to …

Judges As Film Critics: New Approaches To Filmic Evidence, Jessica Silbey

Faculty Scholarship

This Article exposes internal contradictions in case law deciding the use and admissibility of film as evidence. Based on a review of more than ninety state and federal cases dating from 1923 to the present, the Article explains how the source of these contradictions is the frequent miscategorization of film as "demonstrative evidence," that category of evidence that purports to illustrate other evidence rather than to be directly probative of some fact at issue. The Article further demonstrates how these contradictions are based on two venerable jurisprudential anxieties. One is the concern about the growing trend toward replacing the traditional …

Forcible Medication For Courtroom Competence: The Case Of Charles Sell, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

The right to refuse treatment is firmly recognized in U.S. law. Competent persons have the legal right to refuse treatment, even life-sustaining treatment, and incompetent patients can also refuse treatment through an advance directive, by naming a health care agent to make decisions for them or by having a person who knows their wishes express them.

American Bioethics And Human Rights: The End Of All Our Exploring, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

In his compelling novel Blindness, José Saramago tells us about victims stricken by a contagious form of blindness who were quarantined and came to see themselves as pigs, dogs, and “lame crabs.” Of course, they were all human beings - although unable to perceive themselves, or others, as members of the human community. The disciplines of bioethics, health law, and human rights are likewise all members of the broad human rights community, although at times none of them may be able to see the homologies, even when responding to a specific health challenge.

The boundaries between bioethics, health law, and …