Law Commons^™

Power, Primacy, And The Corporate Law Pivot, Grant M. Hayden, Matthew T. Bodie

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

As a Vice Chancellor, Chancellor, Chief Justice, and now a private citizen, Leo Strine has consistently recognized the shape of power relations within corporate law. With his wry wit and sharp prose, he has cut to the quick on issues such as director independence, shareholder rights, and the separation of ownership from ownership. Underlying these decisions are both the recognition of the underlying power dynamics at play and the pursuit of fairness under the law. As the Chief Justice has gone from lawmaker to commentator, his perspective has shifted on the role of corporate law in shaping society. Like him, …

Law Enforcement Officers, Students, And The School-To-Prison Pipeline: A Longitudinal Perspective, Jason P. Nance

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Recent data indicate that the majority of schools now have regular contact with law enforcement officers, transforming the educational experience for hundreds of thousands of students nationwide. The proper role of police officers in schools, if any, has been hotly debated for years. But this debate was elevated to an unprecedented level during the summer of 2020 following the tragic deaths of George Floyd and others, precipitating national calls to 'defund the police' and leading many school districts to reconsider their relationships with law enforcement agencies. This debate over whether police officers belong in schools continues today. While proponents argue …

Victims As A Check On Prosecutors: A Comparative Assessment, Jenia I. Turner

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

In Against Prosecutors, Bennett Capers presents thought-provoking arguments for empowering victims in criminal cases. He proposes that victims should be given greater authority to initiate and direct prosecutions of criminal cases, and should have the options to veto prosecutions or to serve as private prosecutors themselves. Such a shift of authority from public prosecutors to victims, Capers argues, could help check prosecutorial abuses and steer enforcement of criminal law to those areas where it is most needed. Capers urges us to ponder this possibility as a way of transforming the criminal justice system into one that is fairer and more …

An Objective-Chance Exception To The Rule Against Character Evidence, Hillel J. Bavli

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

A central principle of U.S. law is that individuals should be judged in court based on their actions and not on their character. Rule 404 of the Federal Rules of Evidence therefore prohibits evidence of an individual’s previous acts to prove that the individual acted in accordance with a certain character or propensity. But courts regularly deviate from or altogether ignore this rule, resulting in arbitrariness and judgments based on an individual's prior acts rather than on evidence regarding the events at issue in a case.

In this Article, I argue that at the center of the unpredictability surrounding the …

U.S. International Tax Policy And Corporate America, Christopher H. Hanna, Cody A. Wilson

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Given the Republican-controlled House and narrow Democratic majority in the Senate, the Biden Administration has found itself in the perilous situation of needing to raise tax revenue while retaining the support of moderate Democrats. President Biden has proposed raising revenue by bringing the United States closer to a worldwide no deferral system and raising the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 28 percent. These changes are unlikely to become law. Together, they simply do not have the support of moderate Democrats, Republicans, and, especially, Corporate America.

This Article aims to resolve the Biden Administration’s conundrum by proposing a worldwide …

To Call A Donkey A Racehorse—The Fiduciary Duty Misnomer In Corporate And Securities Law, Marc I. Steinberg

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

A recurrent theme in corporate law is the presence of directors and officers owing fiduciary duties of care and loyalty to the respective companies they serve. Although not as visible in the securities law setting, concepts of fiduciary duty-like obligations arise with some frequency. While the rigorous application of fiduciary standards was applied in days of yesteryear, its adherence today largely is nonexistent. Nonetheless, courts continue to embrace language in their opinions that emphasizes the continued presence of fiduciary duty standards. Reality, however, strikes a very different key. In fact, standards of fiduciary duty have become greatly diluted in the …

Extraterritoriality And Conflict Of Laws, Anthony J. Colangelo

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This Article views the modern federal presumption against the extraterritoriality of U.S. law through the lens of conflict of laws. It argues that the presumption makes many of the same mistakes that conflict methodologies have already made, and sometimes the mistakes are worse. It then proposes a way to harmonize federal extraterritoriality and state choice of law to identify a superior approach to both.

Teaching About Race And Family Law: Introduction, Jessica Dixon Weaver

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

Investigating Design, Mark Mckenna, Jessica Silbey

Faculty Scholarship

Design is ascendant. Steve Jobs’s legendary obsession with design was widely regarded as Apple’s comparative advantage, and that lesson has not been lost on its competitors. Design thinking is a growth industry, in business and at universities, and design professionals continue to take on increasingly significant roles within firms. The increasing economic significance of design has been reflected in an explosion of design patent applications and increasing amount of design litigation.
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/="/">Despite design’s growing economic and legal importance, relatively little is known by legal scholars and policymakers about designers or the design process. This paper addresses that gap …

Unraveling The Web Of Legal Protection: Race, Police Misconduct, And The Favorable Termination Rule, Jasmine Gonzales Rose, Caitlin Glass, Neda Khoshkhoo

Faculty Scholarship

The murder of George Floyd raised greater awareness of the pervasiveness of racialized police violence in the United States. Advocates, activists, and concerned policymakers have drawn attention to legal barriers that prevent accountability for police who kill and abuse Black, Indigenous, and other people of color (“BIPOC”), such as qualified immunity. However, the true extent of the legal system’s protections regarding racialized police misconduct remains unrecognized. A key example of this is the favorable termination rule, which many jurisdictions have interpreted as imposing an “indications-of-innocence” standard. This standard, in numerous instances, serves as a procedural loophole that prevents civil rights …

Bias And Biometrics: Regulating Corporate Responsibility And New Technologies To Protect Rights, Erika George

Faculty Scholarship

A growing body of literature has documented the ways in which algorithms and new technology are being deployed in ways that discriminate and violate human rights. The regulatory environment is still evolving, but not as rapidly as new technologies are being introduced by private corporations and implemented in public settings. Governments are using AI in immigration and asylum determinations and law enforcement, arenas where racism and xenophobia can often arise. In the aftermath of the racial justice uprisings following the murder of George Floyd, some technology firms pledged to reconsider providing surveillance technology to police without protections in place. This …

What Is Consumer Protection For?, Luke Herrine

Articles

When law and economics barreled its way into consumer protection scholarship two score years ago, it brought with it the consumer sovereignty framework: an approach to analysis in which actual markets are compared to an ideal market in which consumers optimize exogenous welfare functions by choosing between optimally competitive sellers. Even after two decades of behavioralist critique and even with increasingly critical perspectives taking root since the Global Financial Crisis, this consumer sovereignty ideal continues to serve as both a descriptive and normative baseline for consumer protection scholarship.

This Article argues that it is time to reconsider the consumer sovereignty …

Assessing Amateurism In College Sports, Casey E. Faucon

Articles

College sports generate approximately $8 billion each year for the National C[artel] Athletic Association and its member institutions. Most of this revenue flows from lucrative television broadcasting deals, which often incorporate the right to commercialize and sell the names, images, and likenesses of college athletes. Under its current revenue scheme, student-athletes-85 percent of whom live below the poverty line-receive a share of zero. For over a century, we've justified this exploitative distribution scheme under a cloak of student-athlete "amateurism." Antitrust challenges to the NCAA's amateurism rules clash with the assumption that "amateurism" is a revered tradition and an important tenet …

The Surprising Virtues Of Data Loyalty, Woodrow Hartzog, Neil M. Richards

Faculty Scholarship

Lawmakers in the United States and Europe are seriously considering imposing duties of data loyalty that implement ideas from privacy law scholarship, but critics claim such duties are unnecessary, unworkable, overly individualistic, and indeterminately vague. This paper takes those criticisms seriously, and its analysis of them reveals that duties of data loyalty have surprising virtues. Loyalty, it turns out, can support collective well-being by embracing privacy’s relational turn; it can be a powerful state of mind for reenergizing privacy reform; it prioritizes human values rather than potentially empty formalism; and it offers solutions that are flexible and clear rather than …

Of Afrofuturism, Of Algorithms, Ngozi Okidegbe

Faculty Scholarship

Algorithms are proliferating in criminal legal structures. The predictions produced by these algorithms inform life-altering decisions around surveillance and incarceration. Their continued use poses a challenge to ongoing racial justice efforts. Contesting how algorithms of today maintain the racial status quo requires a fundamental rethinking of the algorithm project. This essay explores how Afrofuturism can facilitate such a rethinking. It imagines how applying an Afrofuturist paradigm to the adoption, construction, implementation, and oversight of algorithms could radically change the kind of algorithms developed and the purposes for which they are developed. Tapping into this potential offers the chance for members …

Legislating Data Loyalty, Woodrow Hartzog, Neil Richards

Faculty Scholarship

Lawmakers looking to embolden privacy law have begun to consider imposing duties of loyalty on organizations trusted with people’s data and online experiences. The idea behind loyalty is simple: organizations should not process data or design technologies that conflict with the best interests of trusting parties. But the logistics and implementation of data loyalty need to be developed if the concept is going to be capable of moving privacy law beyond its “notice and consent” roots to confront people’s vulnerabilities in their relationship with powerful data collectors.

In this short Essay, we propose a model for legislating data loyalty. Our …

Ford's Underlying Controversy, Christine P. Bartholomew, Anya Bernstein

Faculty Scholarship

Personal jurisdiction—the doctrine that determines where a plaintiff can sue—is a mess. Everyone agrees that a court can exercise personal jurisdiction over a defendant with sufficient in-state contacts related to a plaintiff’s claim. This Article reveals, however, that courts diverge radically in their understanding of what a claim is. Without stating so outright, some courts limit the claim to a cause of action or its elements, while others understand it to encompass the controversy underlying the litigation. What is worse, few have noticed that these discrepancies even exist, much less explained why. This Article does just that. We show that …

Transition Barriers Of U.S. Military Veterans With Combat Occupations, Carole Thomas

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Many combat-occupation veterans experience difficulty translating their military occupation to a civilian occupation after they leave the military. Veterans may struggle with military culture, self-leadership, health concerns, stereotypes, and employment barriers such as disability and underemployment. In this qualitative descriptive research study, the researcher analyzed the transition barriers U.S. combat-occupation veterans experienced when entering the civilian sector and workforce. The researcher interviewed six participants via Zoom using semistructured interview questions. All participants met the criteria of being 18–29 years old, being a veteran with a combat occupation, and having a willingness to tell their transition experiences. Five of the six …

Dedication To Ronald B. Lansing, 1932–2021

Lewis & Clark Law Review

No abstract provided.

Zombie Laws, Howard M. Wasserman

Lewis & Clark Law Review

A judicial declaration of constitutional invalidity does not erase a challenged law. Such a law is “dead” in that enforcement efforts will not succeed in court, where judicial precedent binds and dictates the outcome in future litigation. But such a law is “alive” in that it remains on the books and may be enforced by a departmentalist executive acting on an independent constitutional judgment. Judge Gregg Costa has labeled these statutory remainders “zombie laws.”

This Article describes several principles that define constitutional litigation, how those principles produce zombie laws, and the scope and nature of zombie laws. It then describes …

The Alchemy Of Effective Auditor Regulation, Sarah J. Williams

Lewis & Clark Law Review

The audit profession has repeatedly failed in its obligation to accurately opine on financial statements prepared by companies that trade in U.S. markets. The list of entities that have contributed to the quest for effective regulation of these auditors is long; it includes the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Congress, outside directors of public companies, and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), a recent congressional creation. Yet, despite 50 years of effort, the formula for efficacious oversight of the audit profession remains elusive.

This Article is the first in a …

Reconciling Agricultural Production And Property Rights With The Use Of Dicamba Herbicides, Terence J. Centner

Lewis & Clark Law Review

The production of food and fiber by our nation’s farmers is often dependent on using herbicides to control weed growth that can reduce crop yields. After several decades of herbicide usage, some weed species developed resistance to glyphosate and were decreasing yields. Seed and pesticide manufacturers responded to weed resistance by developing genetically engineered soybean and cotton seeds and specially formulated over-the-top (OTT) dicamba products. Commencing in 2017, OTT dicamba products were used to successfully kill glyphosate-resistant weeds. However, dicamba is a volatile herbicide, and applications of the new OTT products were accompanied by spray drift and volatilization that injured …

Step-Parent As Fiduciary, Ruth Zafran

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Does a step-parent have any obligations toward the non-resident legal parent of the child? To date, the law has been silent on this point, and the scholarship has paid little, if any, attention to it. This Article argues that the conceptual framework of fiduciary enables us to recognize, both conceptually and legally, the relationship between the step-parent and the non-resident legal parent (who, generally speaking, spends less time with the child on a day-to-day basis). The aim of this fiduciary duty is to protect the more vulnerable party (in this specific context, the non-resident legal parent) from the more powerful …

South Africa’S Reformed Investment Regime As A Model For Developing Countries, John Mayer

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Beginning in 2012, South Africa decided to unilaterally terminate many Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) with European countries—this represented a departure from the 1990s, where South Africa, like many other developing countries, entered into BITs with wealthy, capital-exporting states in the hopes of attracting foreign direct investment. In 2015, South Africa enacted, in place of the BITs, the Protection of Investment Act, designed to protect foreign investors while also providing the state more freedom to regulate in the public interest. This Comment analyzes the history of South Africa’s BIT policy, and argues that South Africa has suffered minimally, if at all, …

Social Media, Securities Markets, And The Phenomenon Of Expressive Trading, John P. Anderson, Jeremy Kidd, George A. Mocsary

Lewis & Clark Law Review

A new category of retail stock trader has emerged: the “expressive” trader. An expressive trader is not motivated by profit alone, but trades as a form of social protest, political speech, or aesthetic expression. GameStop’s meteoric surge in price in January 2021 revealed the power expressive traders can exert on the market. This Essay explores the phenomenon of expressive trading and its implications for issuers, markets, and regulators. The Essay sets forth potential defensive measures available to issuers against the consequences of expressive trading, and cautions regulators against hasty action to address expressive trading.

Using Adaptive Governance To Protect Oregon’S Water Resources, Lauren Butz

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Over 30 years ago, Oregon adopted the innovative In-Stream Water Rights Act, which introduced new regulatory tools and incentives for encouraging efficient water consumption, and paved the way for the emergence of water trusts. However, Oregon’s water resources are under increasing strain as the state faces the challenges of over-appropriation and climate change. New solutions are needed to augment the existing regulatory framework. This Comment draws on the principles of adaptive governance and ecological resilience to formulate possible legal solutions to help the state adapt to increasing demands for water, proposing that Oregon leverage corporate social responsibility to encourage investments …

Title Ix Abroad: A Proposed Framework For Extraterritorial Application, Christina Vieira Da Rosa

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Regulatory changes to Title IX made clear that the statute’s sexual assault grievance procedures do not apply to incidents that take place outside the United States. This Comment explores the reasoning underlying these 2020 regulations, which signal a departure from prior interpretations of Title IX and limit recourse for U.S. students who are sexually assaulted while studying abroad. Ultimately, this Comment argues that Title IX should have an extraterritorial reach when both complainant and respondent are affiliated with U.S. institutions. Such a change would harmonize Title IX’s underlying purpose with the practical difficulties of investigating and adjudicating conduct occurring outside …

Front Matter

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Front Matter contains Table of Contents, Masthead, and faculty for Lewis & Clark Law Review Volume 26, Issue 1.

Transforming The Culture Of Youth Justice In The Wake Of Youth Prison Closures, Jessica K. Heldman

Lewis & Clark Law Review

In 2019, the Governor of California vowed to fundamentally transform the state’s youth justice system. The legislature endorsed this commitment by enacting SB 823, which began a phased closure of state-run youth prisons in 2021. California is not the first state—nor will it be the last—to close facilities in light of decreased youth crime and greater awareness of the harms associated with incarceration. Although a welcomed development, the closure of youth prisons should not be viewed as the culmination of reform; rather, it is only the beginning. To achieve far more impactful change, state and local jurisdictions must confront the …

The Promise Of Patent-Backed Finance For Smes And Universities, And Shifting Patent Eligible Subject Matter, Mattias Karlsson Dinnetz, Michael S. Mireles

Lewis & Clark Law Review

This Article reviews and addresses some of the problems concerning adequate capital to develop patented inventions and products, and inhibiting the widespread use of patents to raise financing. The Article divides the IP finance market into three separate, but interrelated markets and analyzes problems, including U.S. patent-eligible subject matter doctrine, within those markets impeding patent-backed financing. The Article provides numerous proposals, some of which are in the literature, and calls for additional research for addressing the issues.