Law Commons^™

April 13, 2016: The Future Of Law School, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “The Future of Law School“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Obviousness As Fact: The Issue Of Obviousness In Patent Law Should Be A Question Of Fact Reviewed With Appropriate Deference, Ted L. Field

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

One of the most common defenses that an accused infringer raises in a patent infringement lawsuit is that the patent claims at issue are invalid for obviousness. The question of obviousness is based on several factual determinations, and the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit should sensibly review these determinations with deference to the jury’s or trial court’s findings. But these courts instead treat the ultimate determination of obviousness as a question of law to be reviewed de novo. This Article challenges the correctness of this standard of review and argues that courts …

Table Of Contents

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Masthead

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

St. Thomas More And His Utopia In Antebellum American Lawyer's Thought, Michael H. Hoeflich

UTOPIA500

The fifth UTOPIA500 presentation was April 7, 2016 about St. Thomas More and his Utopia in Antebellum American Lawyers' Thought. A former dean at Kansas Law and a renowned historian of colonial and pre-Civil War America, Professor Michael H. Hoeflich is also a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He explored the publication history of More's UTOPIA, and the extent to which editions of the book were available in antebellum America. Professor Hoeflich noted that the novel, as a work of "politics," was well known by the likes of Jefferson, Madison, and John Adams, but its influence thereafter ebbed and …

April 7, 2016: The Religious Liberty-Gay Rights Problem, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “The Religious Liberty-Gay Rights Problem“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Criminal Prosecution And Section 1983, Barry C. Scheck

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Procedural Due Process Claims, Erwin Chemerinsky

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Section 1983 Custom Claims And The Code Of Silence, Myriam Gilles

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Problems Concerning Litigating Custom And Practice Cases, Steve Ryals

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter, Spring 2016

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter

No abstract provided.

"If That's The Way It Must Be, Okay": Campbell V. Acuff-Rose On Rewind

Loyola of Los Angeles Entertainment Law Review

The 1994 Supreme Court case Campbell v. Acuff-Rose established broad protections for parody in U.S. copyright law. While the case is well known, the facts behind the case are not. None of the three courts that heard the case were told that the alleged parody by 2 Live Crew appeared only on a “sanitized” version of the group’s controversial album. Thus the work had a heightened commercial purpose: filling up a meager album so that album could serve as a market stopgap for its controversial cousin. Although commercial purpose is a key factor in the fair use calculus, no court …

Resourcecontracts.Org – A Searchable Repository For Publicly Available Mining And Petroleum Contracts, Sophie Thomashausen

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

ResourceContracts.org is an online, searchable and user-friendly repository of publicly available mining and petroleum contracts from around the world. It currently includes over 1,000 from 72 countries. In addition to PDF scans of each executed contract, the site includes: the full text of contracts in searchable format; plain language summaries of each contract’s key social, environmental, human rights, fiscal, and operational terms; and tools for searching and comparing contracts. Users can search contracts by country, natural resource, year, by type of contract, company, corporate group, or by annotation category.

Keeping Cases From Black Juries: An Empirical Analysis Of How Race, Income Inequality, And Regional History Affect Tort Law, Donald G. Gifford, Brian Jones

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Judging Adaptive Management Practices Of U.S. Agencies, Robert L. Fischman, J. B. Ruhl

Articles by Maurer Faculty

All U.S. federal agencies administering environmental laws purport to practice adaptive management (AM), but little is known about how they actually implement this conservation tool. A gap between the theory and practice of AM is revealed in judicial decisions reviewing agency adaptive management plans. We analyzed all U.S. federal court opinions published through 1 January 2015 to identify the agency AM practices courts found most deficient. The shortcomings included lack of clear objectives and processes, monitoring thresholds, and defined actions triggered by thresholds. This trio of agency shortcuts around critical, iterative steps characterizes what we call AM-lite. Passive AM differs …

Not Ideas Of The Thing But The Thing Itself: Imagining A Support Group For Separated And Divorced Fathers As A Site Of Legal Education, Thomas Mcmorrow

Dalhousie Law Journal

Legal education is not just about attaining an abstract knowledge of formal institutions, norms, and processes; it is also about developing insight into oneself and ones relationships. Therefore, understanding and developing the personal and social conditions that make governance through law possible are crucial elements of legal education. This article highlights legal education's potential role in fostering every person's sense of implication in-and responsibility forbuilding a just society In order to illustrate this concept, this article looks at the ways in which DADs, a support group for separated and divorced fathers, constitutes a site of legal education.

Agonizing Identity In Mental Health Law And Policy (Part Ii):A Political Taxonomy Of Psychiatric Subjectification, Sheila Wildeman

Dalhousie Law Journal

This is the second part of a two-part essay exploring the function of identity in mental health law and policy or more broadly the function of identity in the politics of mental health. Part one began with the Foucauldian exhortation to undertake a "critical ontology of ourselves," and adopted the methodology of autoethnography to explore the construction or constructedness of the authors identity as an expert working in the area of mental health law and policy. That part concluded with a gesture of resistance to identification on one or the other side of the mental health/ illness divide (the divide …

March 31, 2016: Well, If It Is A Crime, Why Shouldn’T Women Be Punished?, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Well, If It is a Crime, Why Shouldn’t Women Be Punished?“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

March 25, 2016: Religious Exemptions, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Religious Exemptions“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Newsroom: Can Court 'Restore Fundamental Liberties'? 03-23-2016, Sheldon Whitehouse, David A. Logan

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Where's The Sense In Hill V. Gateway 2000?: Reflections On The Visible Hand Of Norm Creation, Shubha Ghosh

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Cognition And Common Sense In Contract Law, Beverly Horsburgh, Andrew Cappel

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Of Contract, Culture, And The Code: Judge Easterbrook And The Cheyenne Indians, John M. Conley

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Common Sense And Contract Law: Fear Of A Normative Planet?, Thomas Joo

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Communisitic Inclinations Of Sir Thomas More, David Papke

UTOPIA500

The fourth UTOPIA500 presentation was march 10, 2016. Dr. David R. Papke, Professor of Law at Marquette University Law School, received an official "Me and Tommy More" polo shirt from Dr. Malloy. Dr. Papke then spoke about The Communistic Inclinations of Sir Thomas More. A well-known scholar of legal history and law in popular culture, Dr. Papke noted the affinity that existed between the themes in Utopia and the views of Karl Marx as well as those of leaders of the Bolshevik Revolution. He also explored the problem of competing approaches to literary analysis and criticism - whether to seek …

Brands, Competition Law And Ip, Maurice Stucke

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Corporate Agricultural Investment And The Right To Food: Addressing Disparate Protections And Promoting Rights-Consistent Outcomes, Kaitlin Y. Cordes, Anna Bulman

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

Over the past decade, the world has witnessed heightened corporate interest in large-scale land-based agricultural investment. While such investments can potentially have positive effects for local communities, they also can have wide-ranging negative impacts on human rights, including through forced displacement and the loss of livelihoods. This Article examines the impact of large-scale corporate agricultural investment on the right to food, as well as on human rights more generally. It considers the protections offered by the investment and human rights legal regimes to both corporations and individuals, including recent international developments relating to transnational corporate accountability and efforts to integrate …

Sustainable Development Goals: How Can The Mining Sector Contribute?, Lisa E. Sachs

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

In September 2015, the heads of 193 United Nations (UN) Member States adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved by 2030. The agenda provides a successor framework to the Millennium Development Goals, which were adopted in 2000, with a view to ending poverty in all forms and dimensions, protecting the planet, and ensuring prosperity for all.

A Silver Lining? Impact Of Commodity Price Fall On Good Governance In Sierra Leone, Herbert M'Cleod, Nicolas Maennling, Lisa E. Sachs

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

From 2002 to 2013, resource-rich countries in Africa enjoyed the benefits of a commodity boom, using increased revenues to embark on major infrastructure projects in roads, rail, ports, and housing. But when commodity prices fell starting in 2011 (see figure below), public sector revenues took a major hit with private sector companies scaling back operations, delaying investment decisions and suspending unprofitable operations. Especially as the number and size of investments in the sector contracted, Governments felt increased pressure to collect, manage and spend those revenues more efficiently. As a result, the fall in commodity prices and mounting economic pressure actually …

Land Deals And The Law: Grievances, Human Rights, And Investor Protections, Kaitlin Y. Cordes, Lise Johnson, Sam Szoke-Burke

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

Land-based investments can create significant grievances for local individuals or communities, and host governments seeking to address those grievances must navigate a complicated landscape of legal obligations and pragmatic considerations. This briefing note, funded by UK aid from the Department for International Development, focuses on practical solutions for governments confronting grievances that arise from large-scale investments in agricultural or forestry projects. It accompanies a more in depth report on similar issues, entitled "Land Deal Dilemmas: Grievances, Human rights, and Investor Protections."

The briefing note considers such solutions in the context of governments’ legal obligations, particularly those imposed by international investment …