Law Commons^™

Supreme Court Amicus Brief Of Law Professors In Support Of Petitioner, Abraham V. Alpha Chi Omega, Christine Farley

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The Federal Lanham Act provides that injunctive relief, the primary remedy in trademark cases, is to be granted in accordance with the principles of equity. Expressly included among such equitable principles are the defenses of acquiescence, laches, and estoppel. Naturally, these defenses have become commonplace in defending against claims of trademark infringement. In the absence of a statute of limitations courts rely on the doctrine of laches, for example, to determine when trademark infringement claims have become stale. Our informal study of the district in which this case arises shows that from 2005 to 2011, nearly two thirds of answers …

Is Financial Instability A Tax Problem With A Tax Solution?, Hilary Allen

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Financial regulation and taxation are two fields of law that are notoriously complex and specialized. Given thiscircumstance, it is perhaps not surprising that financial regulators often pay little attention to tax, and focusinstead on their own sphere of influence. Unfortunately, financial regulators ignore tax incentives at the peril offinancial stability.

The Case For Drones, Kenneth Anderson

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American University, WCL Research Paper No. 2014-12Abstract:This cover story in Commentary magazine (7500 words) offers a defense of drone warfare and targeted killing against legal and ethical claims made by both the American libertarian right and the American and international left. It addresses empirical claims of "excessive" civilian casualties, as well as ethical arguments that drones make the resort to force not just easier, but "too easy," and that in order to deter "overuse" of armed force, soldiers (and implicitly civilians) need to be exposed to otherwise unnecessary risk. It explains how drone technology and targeted killing fit together in …

Distorted And Diminished Tort Claims For Women, Jamie Abrams

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Childbirth is distinctly characterized in tort law by the literal emergence of a potential putative plaintiff. This Article seeks to position the birthing woman — distinct from the pregnant woman or the parent — squarely within the negligence framework and, in doing so, to challenge prevailing assumptions dominating obstetric medical decision-making. The existence of two patients and two putative plaintiffs is unique to childbirth, yet largely unexamined in tort. This Article examines how the dominant focus on fetal harms in modern childbirth overshadows the birthing woman in tort and distorts the normative dualities of childbirth.

While theoretically childbirth falls within …

Searching For Solutions To The Indigent Defense Crisis In The Broader Criminal Justice Reform Agenda, Roger Fairfax

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As we mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Gideon v. Wainwright decision, the nearly universal assessment is that our indigent defense system remains too under-resourced and overwhelmed to fulfill the promise of the landmark decision, and needs to be reformed. At the same time, fiscal necessity and moral outrage have prompted a historic reexamination of outdated policies that have led to an overreliance on incarceration and inefficiencies in the administration of criminal justice. This Essay argues that there are synergies between the indigent defense reform agenda and the broader criminal justice reform agenda, which places a premium on cost-effective, evidence-based, …

Fda And The Rise Of The Empowered Consumer, Lewis Grossman

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This Article traces the still-evolving view of consumers of FDA-regulated products as capable, rational, and rights-bearing decision makers. It also examines the corresponding diminution of FDA’s role as a paternalistic gatekeeper collaborating with medical and scientific experts to prevent products and manufacturer-provided information from reaching the public. Compared with their 1960s counterparts, today’s consumers of food and drugs have far greater freedom to make unmediated choices among a wider variety of products, guided by a relative deluge of labeling and advertising information. Moreover, food and drug regulation, once the exclusive domain of bureaucrats and experts, has become a focus of …

Fair Use And Education: The Way Forward, Peter Jaszi

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The ability to make reasonable fair use of copyrighted material is both economically and culturally important to the enterprise of education. No other feature of copyright laws offers educators access of the same potential scope. In asserting fair use, teachers, librarians, and others cannot rely on a claim of "economic exceptionalism, "for which there is no clear basis in U.S. copyright law. Nor can they expect to arrive at satisfactory shared understandings with copyright owners. Instead, they should seek to take advantage of current trends in copyright case law, including the marked trend toward preferring uses that are "transformative," where …

Tax Planning For Marijuana Dealers, Benjamin Leff

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In recent years, many states have legalized marijuana while the federal government continues to consider all marijuana sales and use illegal. But marijuana industry insiders consider not federal criminal law but federal tax law to be the biggest impediment to the development of a legitimate marijuana industry. State-sanctioned marijuana sellers are required to pay federal income taxes pursuant to § 280E, a formerly largely symbolic provision that Congress enacted to punish drug dealers, but which now could potentially drive legitimate marijuana sellers underground. This paper proposes a tax strategy that enables state-sanctioned marijuana sellers to avoid the impact of § …

Denial Of Territory To Terrorist Groups In Us Counterterrorism Strategy, Kenneth Anderson

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This short (1500 words) policy briefing paper describes the strategic evolution of US counterterrorism policies to incorporate "denial of territory" strategies alongside existing strategies, particularly long-term, increasingly continuous surveillance by drones, and armed drone attacks, pursued as a counter-raiding strategy against terrorist groups. It argues that US counterterrorism requires not only a counter-raiding strategy via drone strikes, but also the ability to deny territory to terrorist groups.Denial of territory means two distinct strategies, however. One is to deny safe havens to terrorist groups; safe houses, compounds, training camps and bases -- the tiny slices of territory that are usually understood …

Law And Ethics For Autonomous Weapon Systems: Why A Ban Won't Work And How The Laws Of War Can, Kenneth Anderson, Matthew Waxman

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Stanford University, The Hoover Institution (Jean Perkins Task Force on National Security and Law Essay Series) American University Washington College of Law Research Paper No. 2013-11 Columbia Public Law Research Paper 13-351 Abstract: Public debate is heating up over the future development of autonomous weapon systems. Some concerned critics portray that future, often invoking science-fiction imagery, as a plain choice between a world in which those systems are banned outright and a world of legal void and ethical collapse on the battlefield. Yet an outright ban on autonomous weapon systems, even if it could be made effective, trades whatever risks …

Shame, Blame, And The Emerging Law Of Obesity Control, Lindsay Wiley

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In using law as a tool to combat the obesity epidemic, legal scholars and policymakers are drawing heavily on the lessons of tobacco control. This Article describes the resulting emergence of "obesity control law" and argues for a radical reorientation of it from a "denormalization" strategy based on the tobacco control experience to a "destigmatization" strategy based on the HIV prevention experience. The war on obesity is nearing a political crossroads. Subsidies and food industry regulations aimed at making our environment more conducive to physical activity and healthy eating are in danger of losing out to cheaper and more politically …

The U.S. Department Of Agriculture As A Public Health Agency, Lindsay Wiley

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Introduction: The "war on obesity" is now well into its second decade.' What began as an effort to encourage medical doctors to screen and treat patients whose weight put them at risk for health problems has transformed into a much broader public health campaign to address the root causes of obesity. A growing number of state, territorial and local health departments are currently exploring new ways to promote healthy eating and physical activity. At the federal level, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has made "nutrition, physical activity and obesity" a top priority.

Who’S Your Nanny, Lindsay Wiley

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INTRODUCTION: In June 2012, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced his plans for a ban on the sale of sugary beverages in containers larger than 16 ounces. Shortly thereafter, the Center for Consumer Freedom took out a full-page ad in the New York Times featuring Bloomberg photo-shopped into a matronly dress with the tag line "New Yorkers need a Mayor, not a Nanny."1 On television, the CATO Institute's Michael Cannon declared, "This is the most ridiculous sort of nanny state-ism; [ilt's none of the mayor's business how much soda people are drinking." And in news- papers around the country, …

Procedural Hurdles And Thwarted Efficiency: Immigration Relief In Wage And Hour Collective Actions, Llezlie Green

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Wage theft and its frequent exploitative companions, trafficking and involuntary servitude, have seen substantial increases in recent years. Low-wage workers often bear the brunt of these practices. Vulnerable populations, such as immigrant workers, and more specifically, undocumented workers, experience wage theft and other forms of workplace-related exploitation at alarmingly high rates. Individual adjudications of these claims are neither efficient nor, in many cases, feasible, given attorneys’ aversion to shouldering the risks and costs in cases that may yield only limited attorneys’ fees. The collective adjudication of Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) claims, however, largely resolves these challenges and provides an …

The Jury As Constitutional Identity, Andrew Ferguson

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This article seeks to reframe how citizens see jury service in America.Juries once existed at the core of American constitutional identity. At the founding of the country, jury service and voting were twin political rights, equal in stature and importance. Some founders even considered the jury more important than the right to vote as a means to ensure a robust democratic system. During the battles for racial equality (before and after the Reconstruction Amendments) and gender equality (before and after the Nineteenth Amendment), advocates explicitly linked demands for voting and jury service as symbols of political equality. Americans fought, protested, …

"I Am Ronald Cotton": Teaching Wrongful Convictions In A Criminal Law Class, Cynthia E. Jones

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No abstract provided.

Advocating For Equality, Stephen Wermiel

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No abstract provided.

The Landmark That Wasn't: A First Amendment Play In Five Acts Case Study And Commentaries, Stephen Wermiel

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What follows is an original case study of our First Amendment law of free expression and how it is created by the Supreme Court. Drawing heavily on heretofore unpublished internal papers from the chambers of Justice William Brennan and other Justices, this Article reveals how the 1964 landmark decision in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan was once in serious jeopardy of being overruled. In the course of this discussion, and in their examination of the evolution of the Court’s decision in Dun & Bradstreet v. Greenmoss Builders (1985), the authors describe and analyze: (1) how and to what extent …

The Referendum Process In Maryland: Balancing Respect For Representative Government With The Right To Direct Democracy, Steven G. Shapiro

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This article will examine the Maryland referendum petition process to determine whether any changes in the current law should or could be made. This includes whether the legislature should reverse the holding in Whitley, whether it should add additional requirements to and restrictions on the signature gathering process, and whether the percentage of voters needed for a successful challenge should be increased.

First, as a matter of policy, should the law be changed? For example, does it strike the proper balance between respect for the legislative process and allowing for more voices in legislative matters by the public at large? …

Playing To The Audience, David Spratt

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No abstract provided.

Antitrust Enforcement And Sectoral Regulation: The Competition Policy Benefits Of Concurrent Enforcement In The Communications Sector, Jonathan Baker

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The US competition agencies – the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) – often share jurisdiction with sectoral regulators also charged with fostering competition, such as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). This article highlights how this institutional structure – concurrent jurisdiction – helps protect competition through the lens of recent US experiences involving the communications industry. It argues that concurrent jurisdiction is likely most effective when the communications regulator has independent access to industry information to limit capture, when the communications regulator can take a long-term perspective, when the antitrust agency can …

Lessons From Personhood's Defeat: Abortion Restrictions And Side Effects On Women's Health, Maya Manian

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State personhood laws pose a puzzle. These laws would establish fertilized eggs as persons and, by doing so, would ban all abortions. Many states have consistently supported laws restricting abortion care. Yet, thus far no personhood laws have passed. Why? This Article offers a possible explanation and draws lessons from that explanation for understanding and resisting abortion restrictions more broadly. I suggest that voters’ recognition of the implications of personhood legislation for health issues other than abortion may have led to personhood’s defeat. In other words, opponents of personhood proposals appear to have successfully reconnected abortion to pregnancy care, contraception, …

Reimagining The Law Of Self-Employment: A Comparative Perspective, Jayesh Rathod, Michal Skapski

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U.S. employment law has traditionally disfavored bright-line rules to distinguish between traditional “employees” and independent contractors, instead relying on more flexible criteria, to be applied on a case-by-case basis. This fluidity has enabled employers to structure these relationships – and the corresponding bundle of worker rights and benefits – in ways that serve their own material and normative interests. Indeed, recent employment law literature has noted a dramatic shift towards independent contracting and contingent worker schemes in the U.S., even when the actual workplace dynamics are more akin to an employer-employee relationship. These same trends are now visible on the …

Crashing The Misdemeanor System, Jenny M. Roberts

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With “minor crimes” making up more than 75% of state criminal caseloads, the United States faces a misdemeanor crisis. Although mass incarceration continues to plague the nation, the current criminal justice system is faltering under the weight of misdemeanor processing.

Operating under the “broken windows theory,” which claims that public order law enforcement prevents more serious crime, the police send many petty offenses to criminal court. This is so even though the original authors of the theory noted that “[o]rdinarily, no judge or jury ever sees the persons caught up in a dispute over the appropriate level of neighborhood order” …

Kiobel V. Royal Dutch Petroleum: The Alien Tort Statute's Jurisdictional Universalism In Retreat, Kenneth Anderson

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Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum (Shell), a long-running Alien Tort Statute (ATS) case brought by Nigerian plaintiffs alleging aiding and abetting liability against various multinational oil companies for human rights violations of the Nigerian government in the 1990s, including a non-US Shell corporation, first came before the US Supreme Court in the 2011-2012 term, following a sweeping Second Circuit holding that there was no "liability for corporations" under the ATS. In oral argument, however, several Justices asked a different question from corporate liability: noting that the case involved foreign plaintiffs, foreign defendants, and conduct taking place entirely on foreign sovereign …

Judicial Ethics And Supreme Court Exceptionalism, Amanda Frost

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In his 2011 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary, Chief Justice John Roberts cast doubt on Congress’s authority to regulate the Justices’ ethical conduct, declaring that the constitutionality of such legislation has “never been tested.” Roberts’ comments not only raise important questions about the relationship between Congress and the Supreme Court, they also call into question the constitutionality of a number of existing and proposed ethics statutes. Thus, the topic deserves close attention.

This Essay contends that Congress has broad constitutional authority to regulate the Justices’ ethical conduct, just as it has exercised control over other vital aspects of the …

Remarks By Diane Orentilcher, Diane Orentlicher

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Twenty years into the contemporary era of international criminal tribunals, a large measure of consensus has developed (at least among states that fund tribunals) has developed around the notion that these courts should dispense justice only in respect of the most serious international crimes. This view is reflected in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), whose preamble affirms "that the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole must not go unpunished" and whose admissibility provisions direct the Court to dismiss a case on the ground that it "is not of sufficient gravity …

"Give Us Free": Addressing Racial Disparities In Bail Determinations, Cynthia E. Jones

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This article considers racial disparities that occur nationally in the bail determination process, due in large part to the lack of uniformity, resources, and information provided to officials in bail proceedings. It argues that the almost unbridled decision making power afforded to bail officials is often influenced by improper considerations such as the defendant's financial resources or the race of the defendant. As a result of these failures, the bail determination process has resulted not only in racial inequalities in bail and pretrial detention decisions, but also in the over-incarceration of pretrial defendants and the overcrowding of jails nationwide. The …

Remedies Reveals The Seamless Web, Candace Kovacic-Fleischer

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INTRODUCTION: Remedies is a course that consolidates many of the concepts learned in the first year of law school and some from the second. A typical Remedies course will reintroduce principles from constitutional law, compare and contrast torts and contracts, and apply criminal concepts in civil contexts. Teaching Remedies can be both challenging and rewarding. Challenging because it crosses a wide variety of subject areas. Rewarding because it weaves a variety of subject areas into the "seamless web" of the law, eliciting from students an occasional "aha." Early classes in law school tend to separate courses into discrete subject areas, …

Modernizing Jury Instructions In The Age Of Social Media, David Aaronson, Sydney Patterson

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No abstract provided.