Law Commons^™

California’S New Ethics Standards: A Hot Bed Of Controversy, Rebecca Callahan

ExpressO

The article examines California’s new ethics rules and examines the cases which have been decided to date challenging and applying those rules. The stated goals of the New Ethics Rules are “to inform and protect participants in arbitration, and to promote public confidence in the arbitration process.” This is a laudable goal since arbitration is a private process that is dependent on public acceptance. The heart of the controversy concerning the New Ethics Rules revolves around the practical inconvenience and cost burden associated with compliance. The enclosed article concludes that such a burden goes hand-in-hand with the privilege of being …

Initial Interest Confusion: Standing At The Crossroads Of Trademark Law, Jennifer E. Rothman

All Faculty Scholarship

While the benchmark of trademark infringement traditionally has been a demonstration that consumers are likely to be confused by the use of a similar or identical trademark to identify the goods or services of another, a court-created doctrine called initial interest confusion allows liability for trademark infringement solely on the basis that a consumer might initially be interested, attracted, or distracted by a competitor's, or even a non-competitor's, product or service. Initial interest confusion is being used with increasing frequency, especially on the Internet, to shut down speech critical of trademark holders and their products and services, to prevent comparative …

Towards A Basal Tenth Amendment: A Riposte To National Bank Preemption Of State Consumer Protection Laws, Keith R. Fisher

ExpressO

Recent regulations promulgated by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency assert a sweeping authority to preempt a broad array of state laws, including consumer protection laws, applicable not only to national banks but to their state-chartered operating subsidiaries. These regulations threaten to disrupt state efforts to combat predatory lending and other abusive practices and to interfere with a state’s sovereign authority over corporations chartered under its laws. Yet federal courts faced with challenges to these initiatives have failed to devote any substantial analysis to claims based on the Tenth Amendment. The problem with such claims is the absence …

Sailing Around Erie:The Emergence Of A Federal General Common Law Of Arbitration, Kenneth Dunham

ExpressO

This paper traces the history of American arbitration from the common law to the FAA. It discusses the FAA as a procedural act prior to Southland v. Keating and as a substantive law act following Southland. It discusses the Erie doctrine as applicable to federal courts and state law preemption. The article concludes that Southland by-passed Erie using the Commerce Clause and the Supremacy Clause to create a federal common law of arbitration.

U.S. Supreme Court Tort Reform: Limiting State Power To Articulate And Develop Its Own Tort Law–Defamation, Preemption, And Punitive Damages, Thomas C. Galligan

ExpressO

U.S. Supreme Court Tort Reform: Limiting State Power to Articulate and Develop Its Own Tort Law–Defamation, Preemption, and Punitive Damages analyzes and critiques the three primary areas in which the U.S. Supreme Court has found federal constitutional limits on a state’s power to articulate, develop, and apply its common law of torts. It is the first piece to consider all three areas together as an emerging body of jurisprudence which Professor Galligan calls U.S. Supreme Court tort reform. After setting forth a modest model of adjudication, the article applies that model to each of the three areas: defamation and related …

Interjurisdictional Enforcement Of Rights In A Post-Erie World, Robert A. Schapiro

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Dual Constitutions And Constitutional Duels: Separation Of Powers And State Implementation Of Federally Inspired Regulatory Programs And Standards, Jim Rossi

William & Mary Law Review

Frequently, state-wide executive agencies and localities attempt to implement federally inspired programs. Two predominant examples are cooperative federalism programs and incorporation of federal standards in state-specific law. Federally inspired programs can bump into state constitutional restrictions on the allocation of powers, especially in states whose constitutional systems embrace stronger prohibitions on legislative delegation than the weak restrictions at the federal level, where national goals and standards are made.

This Article addresses this tension between dual federal/state normative accounts of the constitutional allocation of powers in state implementation of federally inspired programs. To the extent the predominant ways of resolving the …

State Ballot Initiatives In The Federal Preemption Equation: A Medical Marijuana Case Study, K.K. Duvivier

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

As with the political reform initiatives, this second type of ballot initiative represents a category for which the initiative process is especially appropriate: issues requiring experimentation in the area of health, traditionally a topic of strong concern at the state level. Furthermore, this category of initiative does not suffer from the ills that detractors note in other contexts. These initiatives expand personal rights and do not infringe on others' rights, and they address elemental issues, so citizens can be sufficiently informed to cast votes representing their convictions. These types of initiatives, however, confront a significant problem. They frequently involve areas …

Preemption Of State Spam Laws By The Federal Can-Spam Act, Roger Allen Ford

Law Faculty Scholarship

Unsolicited bulk commercial email is an increasing problem, and though many states have passed laws aimed at curbing its use and abuse, for several years the federal government took no action. In 2003 that changed when Congress passed the CAN-SPAM Act. Though the law contains many different restrictions on spam messages, including some restriction of nearly every type that states had adopted, the Act was widely criticized as weak. Many of the CAN-SPAM Act's provisions are weaker than corresponding provisions of state law, and the Act preempts most state spam laws that would go farther, including two state laws that …

The Court Of Appeals For The Fifth Circuit 2003-2004 Insurance Decisions: A Survey And An Empirical Analysis, Willy E. Rice

Faculty Articles

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decided twenty-four insurance-related appeals between the survey period of June 2003 through May 2004. Those cases originated in nine federal district courts. The overwhelming majority of appeals concerned the interpretation and enforcement of insurance contracts. Barring one case of first impression, most involved very familiar procedural and substantive conflicts.

This year, federal preemption questions and conflicts over subject matter jurisdiction appeared in several cases. The Fifth Circuit also decided six class-action or class-certification cases, and the court decided two conflicts involving allegedly widespread racial and ethnic discrimination in the sale and marketing of various …

The Fda And The Tort System: Postmarketing Surveillance, Compensation, And The Role Of Litigation, Catherine T. Struve

All Faculty Scholarship

The dispute over FDA regulatory preemption is familiar: Preemption advocates assert that products liability suits stifle innovation, and proponents of tort liability counter that the FDA fails adequately to protect the public and that persons injured by defective products deserve compensation. The FDA's premarket approval process cannot detect all potential safety problems with a new drug; postmarketing surveillance is essential, and the FDA's efforts in that regard fall short. Advocates of preemption will find it difficult to establish that FDA regulation should entirely displace the tort system. This article examines whether a case could be made for an intermediate approach …

The Use Of Hiring Preferences By Alaska Native Corporations After Malabed V. North Slope Borough, James P. Mills

Seattle University Law Review

This article argues that Native corporations can provide employment preferences for Alaska Natives, so long as they are appropriately tailored to provide employment preferences to that corporation's shareholders or those closely related to the shareholders. Moreover, a hiring preference based on shareholder status is not a preference based on race and, as such, does not violate Alaska state law.24 But even if the Alaska Supreme Court found that these hiring preferences did violate the state constitution, given the federal government's unique relationship with Native corporations 25 and Congress's clear intent for Native corporations to favor Alaska Natives in their hiring …