Law Commons^™

Quasi-Inquisitorialism: Accounting For Deference In Pretrial Criminal Procedure, Jennifer E. Laurin

Notre Dame Law Review

Police and prosecutorial activities that take place long before a criminal trial are frequently critical to, even dispositive of, the accuracy and reliability of case disposition. At the same time, the regulatory touch of constitutional criminal procedure in the pretrial realm is insistently light. Proposals to address actual or risked deficiencies in this arena have proliferated in recent years, exemplified by pushes for social-science-rooted investigative best practices, for broader defense access to evidence prior to trial, for more oversight in plea bargaining, and so on. But in the face of these critiques, broad pretrial discretion largely reigns.

A prevailing explanation …

Widening The Lane: An Argument For Broader Interpretation Of Permissible Uses Under The Driver's Privacy Protection Act, Candace D. Berg

Notre Dame Law Review

This Note argues that the recent judicial interpretations of the DPPA by the Supreme Court and the Seventh Circuit have improperly limited the scope of permissible uses. The imposition of reasonableness limitations on disclosure, and the judicial analysis of disclosure to determine the exclusive predominant purpose, were novel judicial interpretations of a longstanding and established statute. Courts’ narrow interpretations of the permissible uses of the DPPA are contrary to the text of the statute and do not advance the statute’s central goals. The courts’ approaches are also likely to have significant practical effect contrary to general policy aims. Such changes …

The Vonage Trilogy: A Case Study In "Patent Bullying", Ted Sichelman

Notre Dame Law Review

This Article presents an in-depth case study of a series of infringement suits filed by “patent bullies.” Unlike the oft-discussed “patent trolls”—which typically sell no products or services and perform no R&D—patent bullies are large, established operating companies that threaten or institute costly patent infringement actions of dubious merit against smaller companies, usually in order to suppress competition or garner licensing fees. In an ideal world of high-quality patents and optimal patent licensing and litigation, infringement suits by aggressive incumbents would have a cleansing, almost Darwinian effect. Yet, defects and distortions in patent examination, licensing, and litigation—the very problems that …

The Curious Incident Of The Supreme Court In Myriad Genetics, Dan L. Burk

Notre Dame Law Review

Often what is not said is as significant as what is said. In its recent Myriad Genetics decision, the United States Supreme Court is curiously silent about the relationship between its holding in that case and the holding in its immediately previous patent subject matter case, Mayo v. Prometheus. This reticence is all the more puzzling given that the Court initially remanded Myriad to the lower courts for reconsideration in light of the Mayo holding. The Court’s silence regarding Mayo leaves uncertain the relationship between the “products of nature” doctrine that serves as the basis for the Myriad decision, and …

Immigration Separation Of Powers And The President's Power To Preempt, Catherine Y. Kim

Notre Dame Law Review

This Article explores the unique separation of powers issues raised in the immigration context, focusing on the respective powers of Congress and the President to preempt state law. Pursuant to traditional understanding, Congress and only Congress is constitutionally vested with the authority to displace conflicting state laws. Outside of the immigration context, the Supreme Court nonetheless has invoked competing theories of executive power to justify extending preemptive effect to administrative decisions. At the same time, however, it has imposed significant doctrinal restrictions on its exercise. In its recent decision in Arizona v. United States, the Court departed from these existing …

Judge Posner, Judge Wilkinson, And Judicial Critique Of Constitutional Theory, Marc O. Degirolami, Kevin C. Walsh

Notre Dame Law Review

Judge Richard Posner’s well-known view is that constitutional theory is useless. And Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III has lambasted constitutional theory for the way in which its “cosmic” aspirations threaten democratic self-governance. Many other judges hold similar views. And yet both Posner and Wilkinson—in the popular press, in law review articles, and in books—have advocated what appear to be their own theories of how to judge in constitutional cases. Judicial pragmatism for Posner and judicial restraint for Wilkinson seem to be substitutes for originalism, living constitutionalism, political process theory, and so on. But both Posner and Wilkinson also deny that …

Against Coherence In Statutory Interpretation, John David Ohlendorf

Notre Dame Law Review

A long tradition in legal theory views the judicial role as centrally including the duty to make the entire body of law “speak with one voice.” This coherence ideal permeates much of the law of statutory interpretation, but one body of doctrine that it has particularly influenced is the set of standards that federal courts use to determine when a newly enacted statute overrides preexisting legal rules. Determining whether Congress implicitly intends to preempt state law, repeal previous legislation, or displace federal common law is an increasingly important part of the “ordinary diet of the law.” And although, this Article …

Seeking Common Ground In The Abortion Regulation Debate, Jessica Arden Ettinger

Notre Dame Law Review

This Note argues that requiring abortion clinics to adhere to the same standards as ambulatory surgical centers is unconstitutional, at least in the context of those clinics that provide only medication abortion, because it unduly burdens a woman’s right to choose whether to obtain an abortion. Although there may be a rational basis to require abortion clinics offering surgical abortion procedures to meet surgical facility standards, no such basis attends the imposition of those requirements on clinics that provide nonsurgical services. Given the number of clinics that continue to close in the face of this new regulatory legislation—which significantly reduces …

Respecting Legislators And Rejecting Baselines: Rebalancing Casey, Paul C. Quast

Notre Dame Law Review

Part I of this Note describes the background cases leading to the Supreme Court’s decision in Casey and the resulting undue burden standard. This Part also explains the limited circumstances in which the undue burden standard gives more definitive guidelines for judicial decisionmaking. Part II works through several federal district and appellate court cases to identify some of the underlying baseline presumptions and normative value judgments influencing judicial decisions in this area of the law. These baselines are often dispositive in determining whether a restriction on abortion is due or undue, cutting against the goodwill attempts by legislatures to make …

The Rule Of Law As A Law Of Law, Steven G. Calabresi, Gary Lawson

Notre Dame Law Review

Justice Scalia is famous for his strong rule orientation, best articulated in his 1989 article, The Rule of Law as a Law of Rules. In this Article, we explore the extent to which that rule orientation in the context of constitutional interpretation is consistent with the Constitution’s original meaning. We conclude that it is far less consistent with the Constitution than is generally recognized. The use of standards rather than rules is prescribed not only by a few provisions in the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment but also by key aspects of the 1788 constitutional text. The executive …

Constitutional Limits On Surveillance: Associational Freedom In The Age Of Data Hoarding, Deven R. Desai

Notre Dame Law Review

Protecting associational freedom is a core, independent yet unappreciated part of the Fourth Amendment. New surveillance techniques threaten that freedom. Surveillance is no longer primarily forward looking. Today, changing technology allows law enforcement and intelligence services to obtain the same, if not more, information about all of us by looking backward. This shift massively expands the government’s ability to examine, investigate, and deter exercise of the freedom of association.

Forward-looking surveillance has limits that don’t apply to backward-looking surveillance. Some limits are practical such as the cost to place a person in a car to follow a suspect. Some are …

The Governance Structure Of Shadow Banking: Rethinking Assumptions About Limited Liability, Steven L. Schwarcz

Notre Dame Law Review

In an earlier article, I argued that shadow banking—the provision of financial services and products outside of the traditional banking system, and thus without the need for bank intermediation between capital markets and the users of funds—is so radically transforming finance that regulatory scholars need to rethink their basic assumptions. This Article attempts to rethink the corporate governance assumption that owners of firms should always have their liability limited to the capital they have invested. In the relatively small and decentralized firms that dominate shadow banking, equity investors tend to be active managers. Limited liability gives these investor-managers strong incentives …

The Equitable Anti-Injunction Act, Erin Morrow Hawley

Notre Dame Law Review

The Anti-Injunction Act of 1867 (AIA or the Act) has never been more important. Originally enacted to expedite the collection of revenue-raising taxes, courts and scholars have for years assumed that the statute imposes a jurisdictional bar on any pre-enforcement challenge to a tax. On this interpretation, taxpayers subject to an invalid tax have two choices only: comply or pay the tax and pursue a refund. Read this way, the Act is a marked departure from the general rule that pre-enforcement challenges are permissible so long as justiciability requirements are met. And it imposes a marked burden on aggrieved taxpayers …

Mirrored Externalities, Lisa Grow Sun, Brigham Daniels

Notre Dame Law Review

A fundamental but underappreciated truth is that positive and negative externalities are actually mirror reflections of each other. What we call “mirrored externalities” exist because any action with externalities associated with it can be described as a choice to do or to refrain from doing that particular action. For example, if a person smokes and thereby creates a negative externality of more secondhand smoke, then her choice not to smoke creates a positive externality of less secondhand smoke. Conversely, if a person’s choice to get an immunization confers a positive externality of reducing vectors for disease transmission, then a choice …

We The People: Juries, Not Judges, Should Be The Gatekeepers Of Expert Evidence, Krista M. Pikus

Notre Dame Law Review

This Note urges restoration of the proper balance of power between judges and juries regarding expert evidence. Our justice system has steadily moved away from letting juries decide important questions of fact and toward putting the decisionmaking power into the hands of judges. The recent developments in evidence law, requiring judges to act as the “gatekeepers” of expert evidence, present significant obstacles for plaintiffs attempting to get cases to a jury. This newer standard in expert evidence is a violation of the foundational precept in American jurisprudence that the people should be the sovereign, not the judge.

Market Power Without Market Definition, Daniel A. Crane

Notre Dame Law Review

Antitrust law has traditionally required proof of market power in most cases and has analyzed market power through a market definition/market share lens. In recent years, this indirect or structural approach to proving market power has come under attack as misguided in practice and intellectually incoherent. If market definition collapses in the courts and antitrust agencies, as it seems poised to do, this will rupture antitrust analysis and create urgent pressures for an alternative approach to proving market power through direct evidence. None of the leading theoretic approaches—such as the Lerner Index or a search for supracompetitive profits—provides a robust …

Parting The Chevron Sea: An Argument For Chevron's Greater Applicability To Cabinet Than Independent Agencies, Andrew T. Bond

Notre Dame Law Review

This Note argues that cabinet agencies are better suited to receive Chevron deference than independent agencies because voters should desire such policy decisions to be made by those closest to electoral accountability, rather than unelected Article III judges with life-tenure. In other words, the judiciary should accept the countermajoritarian difficulty as fundamentally true and review cabinet agency decisions in light of Chevron deference. Part I examines the revolutionary decision of Chevron and its aftermath. Central to Part I is an inquiry into whether Chevron should be applied on a case-by-case or across-the-board basis, and whether Chevron has usurped the judiciary’s …

Procedural Rights At Sentencing, Carissa Byrne Hessick, F. Andrew Hessick

Notre Dame Law Review

In determining which constitutional procedural rights apply at sentencing, courts have distinguished between mandatory and discretionary sentencing systems. For mandatory systems—systems that limit sentencing factors and specify particular punishments based on particular facts—defendants enjoy important rights including the right to a jury, the right to proof beyond a reasonable doubt, the right to notice of potential sentencing aggravators, and the right not to be sentenced based on ex post facto laws. By contrast, for discretionary systems—systems that leave the determination of sentencing factors and how much punishment to impose based on particular facts to the judge’s discretion—defendants do not enjoy …

Labor In Faith: A Comparative Analysis Of Hosanna-Tabor V. Eeoc Through The European Court Of Human Rights' Religious Employer Jurisprudence, Francesca M. Genova

Notre Dame Law Review

This Note uses the European Court of Human Rights’ framework to analyze the Supreme Court’s decision in Hosanna-Tabor v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which recognizes a “ministerial exception” for religious organizations as a defense to certain employment claims. It argues that the unanimous Supreme Court in Hosanna-Tabor examines factors similar to those of its European counterpart, but protects religious liberties more robustly by avoiding some of the European Court’s preoccupations. Yet, the European Court’s assessment anticipates the difficulties of applying the “ministerial exception” in future cases.

Due Process Disaggregation, Jason Parkin

Notre Dame Law Review

One-size-fits-all procedural safeguards are becoming increasingly suspect under the Due Process Clause. Although the precise requirements of due process vary from context to context, the Supreme Court has held that, within any particular context, the Due Process Clause merely requires one-size-fits-all procedures that are designed according to the needs of the average or typical person using the procedures. As the Court explained when announcing the modern approach to procedural due process in Mathews v. Eldridge, the due process calculus must be focused on “the generality of cases, not the rare exceptions.” A more granular approach to due process rules, the …

A House Divided: When State And Lower Federal Courts Disagree On Federal Constitutional Rights, Wayne A. Logan

Notre Dame Law Review

This Article provides the first in-depth examination of state-federal concurrent constitutional authority and does so by focusing on a context in which its consequences are most problematic: within individual states. While a handful of articles over the years have examined state court power vis-a-vis federal constitutional questions more generally, no systematic effort has been undertaken to examine intrastate, state-federal conflict on federal constitutional questions. This Article redresses this deficit, using as its doctrinal locus federal constitutional criminal procedure, with its unique impact on government power and individual liberty and privacy.

Privatizing Mass Settlement, Jaime Dodge

Notre Dame Law Review

From BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to the National Football League’s (NFL) inability to honor Super Bowl tickets, corporate defendants are contravening the established litigation wisdom and offering full compensation to victims—without haggling to pay pennies on the dollar, without stall tactics and frivolous motions; indeed, without any litigation at all. These offers have often been dismissed as rare one-off exceptions to the rule.

This Article challenges that claim, suggesting that these private mass settlements are instead relatively common features in our aggregate litigation system. The Article explores the reasons that, contrary to traditional wisdom, defendants would …

What's Next: The Future Of Rico, G. Robert Blakey, John C. Coffee, Paul E. Coffey

Notre Dame Law Review

No abstract provided.

Foreward, G Robert Blakey

Notre Dame Law Review

No abstract provided.

Curiouser And Curiouser: The Supreme Court's Separation Of Powers Wonderland, Bernard Schwartz

Notre Dame Law Review

No abstract provided.

Expressive Genericity: Trademarks As Language In The Pepsi Generation, Rochelle Cooper Dreyfuss

Notre Dame Law Review

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Development Of Estonia In 1988, Igor Gryazin

Notre Dame Law Review

No abstract provided.

Fact-Finding And The Death Penalty: The Scope Of A Capital Defendant's Right To Jury Trial, Welsh S. White

Notre Dame Law Review

No abstract provided.

Reflections On The Philosophy Of Law, Parts I & Ii, Igor N. Grazin

Notre Dame Law Review

No abstract provided.

Erisa -- Nieto V. Ecker: The Propriety Of Non-Fiduciary Liability Under Section 409, Kevin B. Bogucki, Charles P. Cullen, Judith Ann Hagley

Notre Dame Law Review

No abstract provided.