Law Commons^™

Staff Matters: When Do Comments About Age Become Discriminatory?, Jodi Schafer Sphr, Shrm-Scp

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

Age-related comments in the workplace can lead to discrimination and legal consequences. The federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) protects employees aged 40 or older, while Michigan law extends protection to all ages. Harassment based on age can create a hostile work environment and result in lawsuits. Employers should address such issues, educate employees about discrimination and bias, and promote a culture that values diversity.

J Mich Dent Assoc November 2022

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

Monthly, The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association brings news, information, and feature articles to our state's oral health community and the MDA's 6,200+ members. No publication reaches more Michigan dentists!

In this issue, the reader will find the following original content:

• A cover story on choosing an educational path for professional enrichment
• A feature story on how a Michigan manufacturer closed during the pandemic repurposes their operations to produce essential PPE, becoming a COVID Hero for Michigan dentists.
• A feature article on how the MDA provides CE for members to comply with Licensure mandates.
• Feature information on practice management …

The Intersecting And Additive Nature Of Vulnerability: Dehumanizing Or Protecting?, Megan Berry-Cohen

Department of Psychology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Recent research has examined how extra-legal factors such as emotions and stereotypes impact legal judgment decisions regarding traditionally vulnerable populations. Less work has explored not only what makes a group vulnerable, but how people perceive, interpret, and apply that vulnerability. The current research therefore integrates psychological theory and legal models to understand vulnerability and its implications. Three studies examined the roles of various factors, including dehumanization and empathy, in understanding how people respond to vulnerable individuals in general and then to women who have survived sexual violence.

In Experiment 1, I manipulated sex (female vs. male), age (older: 60 years …

Vol. 43, No. 1, Fall 2022: Table Of Contents, Northern Illinois University Law Review

Northern Illinois University Law Review

Table of Contents and Masthead for Volume 43, Issue 1 of the Northern Illinois Law Review

Contra Naturam, F. H. Buckley

Northern Illinois University Law Review

There’s a revival of interest in natural law, but while its adherents claim to hold the philosophic high ground, they’ve failed to recognize the doctrine’s weaknesses. Classical natural law holds that our moral requirements are rooted in the natural world and the instincts and preferences that form human nature. However, this runs afoul of the logical distinction between empirical and normative statements; and while other natural lawyers say they’ve avoided this problem, their “New Natural Law” implausibly asserts that rational self-interest will lead us to the good. It won’t, because rational self-interest can’t explain the duties we owe other people. …

Dissonance And Distress In Bankruptcy And Mass Torts, Andrew D. Bradt, Zachary D. Clopton, D. Theodore Rave

Fordham Law Review

This Essay reviews the highly successful Fordham Law Review symposium entitled Mass Torts Evolve: The Intersection of Aggregate Litigation and Bankruptcy, held in 2022. The symposium brought together judges, scholars, and practitioners who work on multidistrict litigation (MDL), bankruptcy, or both. The symposium was successful because it brought these groups into conversation at a time when high-profile mass tort defendants are increasingly turning to bankruptcy to escape MDL, while others involved in the MDL process seek to keep them in. The symposium was also successful—and distressing, in our view—because it highlighted disturbing trends in complex litigation.

This Essay makes …

Due Process Alignment In Mass Restructurings, Sergio Campos, Samir D. Parikh

Fordham Law Review

Mass tort defendants have recently begun exiting multidistrict litigation by filing for bankruptcy. This new strategy ushers defendants into a far more hospitable forum that offers accelerated resolution of all state and federal claims held by both current and future victims. Bankruptcy’s structural, procedural, and substantive benefits also provide defendants with unique optionality.

Bankruptcy’s resolution promise is alluring, but the process relies on a very large assumption: that future victims can be compelled to relinquish property rights in their cause of action against the corporate defendant and others without consent or notice. Bankruptcy builds an entire resolution structure on the …

Covid-19 Aggregate Litigation: The Search For The Upstream Wrongdoer, Robert H. Klonoff

Fordham Law Review

The COVID-19 pandemic has generated many suits—including thousands of class actions—in which plaintiffs claim that defendants caused economic or health-related harm. Although the COVID-19 context may have led many plaintiffs’ lawyers to believe that the cases would be received with great sympathy, courts thus far have been very cautious, focusing closely—as they do in non-COVID cases—on whether the defendant has breached clear contractual commitments or has engaged in tortious or other wrongdoing. If anything, courts have been more skeptical and cautious in the COVID-19 context, recognizing that everyone has suffered due to the pandemic and that, in many instances, defendants …

Discretionary Denial Of Inter Partes Review And The Patent Trial And Appeal Board, Xinni Cai

Fordham Law Review

The inter partes review (IPR) is an administrative procedure conducted by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), an adjudicative body within the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). IPR provides an opportunity for third parties to challenge a patent’s validity after it has already been granted. A petitioner can file a petition with the PTAB to “institute” IPR. If the review is instituted, the PTAB considers the evidence presented and issues a final written decision, either holding the patent valid or striking it down as invalid. Although IPR was introduced as an alternative to litigation, it is often used …

Let's Not Do Responsibility Skepticism, Ken M. Levy

Journal Articles

I argue for three conclusions. First, responsibility skeptics are committed to the position that the criminal justice system should adopt a universal nonresponsibility excuse. Second, a universal nonresponsibility excuse would diminish some of our most deeply held values, further dehumanize criminal, exacerbate mass incarcerations, and cause an even greater number of innocent people (nonwrongdoers) to be punished. Third, while Saul Smilansky's 'illusionist' response to responsibility skeptics - that even if responsibility skepticism is correct, society should maintain a responsibility-realist/retributivist criminal justice system - is generally compelling, it would not work if a majority of society were to convert, theoretically and …

Law School Rankings And The Impossibility Of Anti-Racism, Rory D. Bahadur

St. Mary's Law Journal

This Article uses the U.S. News law school rankings to illustrate how powerful, invisible, and stubborn systemic racism is. This Article does not level allegations of intentionally blameworthy conduct at U.S. News, or any person or entity. More broadly, this Article does not address conscious and deliberate racism, or the examples of this type of racism with which America’s history is replete. Nor is this Article attempting to undervalue the significant impact of deliberately racist actions in American history on the economic disparity between white people and people of color.

Instead, I make an untrue assumption: All Americans of every …

Navigating The Non-Fungible Token, Kimberly A. Houser, John T. Holden

Utah Law Review

$91.8 million, $69 million, and $52.7 million. These are the amounts associated with the three most sought after Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) sold in 2021. Although NFTs were first created in 2014, 2021 saw a massive rise in their global popularity. In fact, Google reported that in 2021, “How to buy an NFT?” was one of its most searched questions.

NFTs can alternatively represent a collectible, a financial instrument, or a permanent record associated with a person, physical or digital object, or data—each presenting an entirely distinct set of legal issues. The lack of governmental expertise in emerging technologies accompanied by …

When Cannabis Businesses Fail: Assignment For The Benefit Of Creditors As An Alternative To Bankruptcy, Edward S. Adams

Utah Law Review

Cannabis businesses should keep the ABC in mind if they begin to struggle. As the cannabis industry becomes a greater part of our economy, more practitioners need to be aware of the solutions to risks that come with running a business associated with cannabis. While the federal government appears to have taken a mostly hands-off approach with states with their own regulatory schemes, that does not address the concerns of a failing cannabis business. The ABC addresses those concerns and can serve as a valid substitute for filing for bankruptcy.

Alternatives To Mainstream Alternative Dispute Resolution: Eliminating Forced Arbitration Agreements As A Condition Of Employment, Anne M. Lofaso, Ashley M. Stephens

Utah Law Review

Today, many employers require their employees, as a condition of employment, to agree to arbitrate employment-related legal claims rather than pursue them in court. While arbitration can be mutually beneficial, allowing parties to avoid the cost, time, publicity, and unpredictability associated with traditional litigation, mandatory arbitration often lacks the same procedural safeguards afforded by the justice system. Forced arbitration not only deprives employees of their right to sue their employer in a public court, but it also denies them any meaningful voluntary choice to surrender that right. This Article takes a close look at a variety of workplace grievance procedures …

The Positive And Negative Purcell Principle, Harry B. Dodsworth

Utah Law Review

The Purcell Principle—the idea that courts should think twice about changing the rules before elections to avoid confusing voters—is sorely misunderstood. Despite deriving from a three-page opinion, the Purcell Principle has morphed into one of the Supreme Court’s most powerful election-law doctrines. By and large, the Court has interpreted the principle as a bright-line rule barring any judicial intervention close to elections and has overwhelmingly used the principle to uphold voting restrictions. That’s a problem because the Purcell Principle is not a bright-line rule. And it’s certainly not one that rubber stamps voting restrictions. To make matters worse, we know …

The Court’S Gerrymandering Conundrum: How Hyper-Partisanship In Politics Alters The Rucho Decision, Vince Mancini

Utah Law Review

The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Rucho v. Common Cause was the latest in a line of opinions regarding reviewability of gerrymandering claims related to the constitutionally required decennial state redistricting process. In Rucho, the Court altered the course of future electoral processes and held that partisan gerrymandering claims were nonjusticiable. In doing so, the Court failed to consider obvious pitfalls in limiting the type of review available for these gerrymandering claims. In particular, the Court failed to understand the gravity of the impact such a decision would have on minority voting power and discarded one of the few structural …

The 14th Annual Sir Hugh Laddie Lecture - Mr. Justice Laddie And His Intellectual Property Cases: Of Millefeuilles And A Fish Called Elvis, David Vaver

Articles & Book Chapters

For me, it was a trip through the judgments of a master craftsman who could succinctly summarize the dispute before him; weigh the conflicting evidence; say what rang true and what did not; state the applicable law, often from first principles set in their historical and policy context; and end by saying who won and lost and what to do. Copyright law might be "over-strong", as he suggested in a 1996 lecture;14 but when he had to decide whether a TV documentary critical of cheque-book journalism could freely use another channel's footage to make its point, Laddie J. said his …

Vol. 13, No. 1, Fall 2022: Table Of Contents, Northern Illinois University Law Review Online Supplement

Northern Illinois Law Review Supplement

No abstract provided.

Clark Memorandum: Fall 2022, J. Reuben Clark Law School, Byu Law School Alumni Association, J. Reuben Clark Law Society

The Clark Memorandum

• A Certain Idea of BYU
• Building Bridges Between the Latter-day Saint and Jewish Communities
• Exemplary Scholars, Devoted Leaders

Private Inequity: Reform Rule 506 To Safely Accommodate Investment By Nonaccredited Investors, Allen C. Page

William & Mary Business Law Review

In 2012, Congress enacted Title III of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (the “JOBS Act”), which it named the Crowdfund Act, to create an exemption from registration under the Securities Act of 1933 that, in the words of President Barack Obama, would allow “ordinary Americans . . . to go online and invest in entrepreneurs that they believe in.” While perhaps well-intentioned in principle, Regulation Crowdfunding imposes material limitations and costs on the issuer, leading most issuers to conclude that the inclusion of unaccredited investors in a crowdfunding campaign is not worth the complexity and expense. Furthermore, the most …

Who Owns The Meme?: Establishing A Definitive Framework To Resolve Disputes In Social Media Account Ownership Between Employers And Employees, Tom Galvin

William & Mary Business Law Review

The pervasive nature of social media and its growing impact on every aspect of society has created a novel issue: who owns a social media account, an employer or an employee, following the termination of the employment relationship? Courts thus far have produced an inconsistent and confusing legal terrain that will only continue to breed uncertainty amongst parties involved in disputes over social media account ownership. This Note examines the current jurisprudence, analyzes its strengths and weaknesses, proposes a definitive framework to determine ownership between the parties, and demonstrates that framework using the facts of an ongoing case. This framework …

Keeping Gates Down: Further Narrowing The Computer Fraud And Abuse Act In The Wake Of Van Buren, George F. Leahy

William & Mary Business Law Review

Internet-connected devices have become essential parts of personal and professional life. As these devices have grown in importance and prevalence in the workplace, so too have federal computer regulations come into the spotlight. Prior to the Supreme Court’s Decision in Van Buren v. United States, the Circuit Courts of Appeals were split on the interpretation of the “exceeds authorized access” clause of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), a commonly invoked federal law that imposes criminal and civil liability for computer misuse. Although the Court’s narrow holding clarified the definition of “exceeds authorized access,” the Court did not …

Covid-19 & The Illinois Health Care Right Of Conscience Act: A Legal Analysis, Matthew Moustis

Northern Illinois University Law Review

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many people who refused to be vaccinated because of their religious or moral beliefs tried to use the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act to block their employers' vaccination requirements. In response, some elected officials argued that the Act was being misinterpreted. They believed it was intended only to protect health care providers who refused to provide certain services to patients, not to allow people to avoid measures taken to ensure public health during a pandemic. Their interpretations were incorrect. The Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act was properly construed as a right to …

Vol. 5, Issue 3 Table Of Contents

SAIPAR Case Review

No abstract provided.

Editorial Note, O'Brien Kaaba, Kafumu Kalyalya

SAIPAR Case Review

No abstract provided.

Bizwayo Newton Nkunika V Lawrence Nyirenda And Electoral Commission Of Zambia 2019/Ccz/005 (1 March 2021), O'Brien Kaaba

SAIPAR Case Review

No abstract provided.

S V Lifumbela And Others 2022 (1) Nr 205 (Sc), Dunia P. Zongwe

SAIPAR Case Review

The Lifumbela case stems straight from the High Treason Trial, Namibia’s longest and – probably – most expensive judicial saga. In S v Lifumbela, the Supreme Court of Namibia had to settle an appeal against the convictions and sentences of 30 accused implicated in the High Treason Trial. Despite the big stakes involved in this matter, the apex court did not manage to rise to this once-in-a-lifetime occasion and seize this historic moment.

By confirming that the appellants committed high treason, murder, and attempted murder on the basis of conspiracy (i.e., an incomplete crime), the Namibian Supreme Court upended the …

Chimanga Changa Limited V Export Trading Limited (Scz Appeal No. 3 Of 2022), Ntemena Mwanamwambwa, Chenela Mwale-Simbotwe

SAIPAR Case Review

The Supreme Court’s decision in Chimanga Changa has set a clear and resounding tone as well as a sound precedent in the Jurisprudence of Zambian Corporate Insolvency law, specifically in relation to how voluntary business rescue proceedings should be commenced, when they commence and most importantly that an application objecting to the commencement of business rescue proceedings pursuant to section 22(1), does not answer to the definition of a legal proceeding for purposes of effecting a moratorium within the confines of section 25 of the Act.

Eva Chiboni V. New Future Finance Company Limited 2020/Hpc/0776, Chanda Chungu

SAIPAR Case Review

The decision in Eva Chiboni has been seen by some as a victory for vulnerable groups of people in Zambia, compared to bigger entities that do at time take advantage of parties with less bargaining powers. However, as this article has demonstrated, it reached an outcome not supported by principles of law, particularly those relating to the need to provide lucid and clear evidence of a vitiating factor or illegality to declare a contract null and void.

Zambia Electronic Clearing House Limited V. James Kalengo Caz Appeal No. 239 Of 2020, Chanda Chungu

SAIPAR Case Review

The Court of Appeal’s decision in James Kalengo is crucial because it demonstrates that the concept of a legitimate expectation of renewal, as a principle and concept exists under Zambian employment law. Whilst an employer does retain the discretion to renew a contract of employment or not when it is due to expire, an employee may have a legitimate expectation of renewal if there is any past practice, prior promise or bad faith/mala fides in relation to the renewal.