Law Commons^™

Open For Trouble: Amending Washington's Open Public Meetings Act To Preserve University Patent Rights, Vladimir Lozan

Washington Law Review

Times have changed. Science is no longer “a perfect working model of democracy,” so transparent that it does not need supervision by outsiders. Instead, science is now regulated at the federal and state level. At the federal level, laws and regulations require peer review meetings for research at state public universities to ensure compliance with federal funding mandates. At the state level, the Washington Open Public Meetings Act (OPMA) requires that peer review meetings at state universities be open to the public. When a scientist presents during one of these peer review meetings, the state university may lose patent rights …

Two Versions Of Rational-Basis Review And Same-Sex Relationships, Robert C. Farrell

Washington Law Review

Although it purports to be a single standard, equal protection’s rational-basis review has two faces that use different methods and produce conflicting results. The United States Supreme Court employs both versions but does not acknowledge that a conflict exists between them. Without an explicit acknowledgment of the contradictory nature of the two rationality reviews, it follows that the Court has made no effort to explain in what context one version should be used and in what context the other is appropriate. As a result, it is very difficult to predict with accuracy the outcome of arguments based on equal protection’s …

Clearing The Air: Ordinary Negligence In Take-Home Asbestos Exposure Litigation, Rebecca Leah Levine

Washington Law Review

Since 2005, take-home asbestos exposure claims have constituted a new wave of asbestos litigation. In contrast to employees exposed to asbestos at a worksite, take-home exposure occurred among those affected by employees who inadvertently carried asbestos home on their clothing or their tools. While some jurisdictions have rejected these claims on the basis that the defendant did not owe a legal duty to the plaintiff, the Washington Court of Appeals recently recognized the potential validity of a household member’s claim for relief for the harm he or she suffered as a result of asbestos exposure. In doing so, the court …

Getting Into The Field, Jay A. Mitchell

Journal of Food Law & Policy

A group of students enrolled in a law school clinic wanders through a large farmers' market. They stop to chat with the proprietors of a farm that has sold vegetables at the market for many years. They visit with a cheesemaker and an apple grower. A second group learns about the economic costs of organic production from a farmer and talks with an olive oil producer. Both sets of students seem unusually attentive to their surroundings. That may be because the first group helped the sponsor of the market rework the market's rules and regulations, and the second developed a …

Greenwashing The Organic Label: Abusive Green Marketing In An Increasingly Eco-Friendly Marketplace, Greg Northen

Journal of Food Law & Policy

The green wave of environmental advertising among organic food producers, distributors, and retailers begun during the 1990s has become an all-out green tsunami. The organic food market is the fastest growing segment of the American food industry. Consumers are increasingly becoming aware of the impact their purchases have on several environmental issues. As a result, those consumers are becoming more aware of their spending power and are willingly altering their buying practices to purchase from companies that emphasize environmental responsibility. In fact, some retailers' inventory is already being scanned for alternative green products by their customers' iPhones because, guess what, …

Journal Of Food Law & Policy - Spring 2011, Journal Editors

Journal of Food Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Food Entrepreneurs And Food Safety Regulation, Nina W. Tarr

Journal of Food Law & Policy

It is a bucolic scene: local food growers and producers chatting with consumers who come back each week to participate in a direct and continuing conversation about food with someone they know, and to engage in commerce. This illusion of simplicity masks the ever-growing morass of conflicting, complicated, and expensive regulatory oversight that undermines the local food movement by creating barriers between producers and consumers. Those creating and implementing food policy in the United States are facing a fundamental dilemma of how to reconcile the local food movement with regulations designed to address concerns about food safety.

This article will …

Contents, Journal Editors

Journal of Food Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

The History And Future Of Genetically Modified Crops: Frankenfoods, Superweeds, And The Developing World, Brooke Glass-O'Shea

Journal of Food Law & Policy

In a 1992 letter to the New York Times, a man named Paul Lewis referred to genetically modified (GM) crops as "Frankenfood," and wryly suggested it might be "time to gather the villagers, light some torches and head to the castle." Little did Lewis know that his neologism would become the rallying cry for activists around the world protesting the dangers of genetic engineering. The environmental activist group Greenpeace made great use of the "Frankenfood" epithet in their anti-GM campaigns of the 1990s, though they have since backed away from the word and the hardline stance it represents. But genetically …

Canadian Food Law Update, Patricia L. Farnese

Journal of Food Law & Policy

Provided below is an overview of developments in Canadian food law and policy in 2010. This update primarily analyzes the regulatory and policy developments and litigation activities by the federal government. This focus reflects the significance of federal activities in the food policy realm.

The Union Idea In 21st Century America, Amanda M. Perry

Senior Honors Projects

This project explores the development of the “union idea” and its role in low wage labor markets in the 21st Century.

The "labor question" became a central issue in the early 20^th century because its solution seemed essential to the survival of American democracy itself: could a society based on wage labor provide a rising standard of living and full social participation for those workers? For a time during and after World War II the “union idea” - workplace democracy, working class solidarity, and the allocation of resources partly on a social rather than a market basis – became …

Development For The Past, Present, And Future: Defining And Measuring Sustainable Development, Max Cantor

Senior Honors Projects

In 1987, the United Nations released the Brundtland Report, which defined sustainable development as “development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” While this definition provides a relatively stable theoretical base from which development economists and political scientists can begin to tackle issues surrounding sustainable development, the inherently amorphous nature of this definition has also created a fair amount of ambiguity in both the economic literature surrounding sustainable development and the subsequent attempts by economists to measure it.

Historically, those interested in the science of development have typically …

A Comprehensive Study Of The Patent Process, Andrew Schicho

Senior Honors Projects

A Comprehensive Study Of The Patent Application Process
Andrew Schicho
Faculty Sponsor: Bahram Nassersharif, Mechanical Engineering

Next year I will be attending graduate school to attain a PhD in Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science. During this time, I will be completing a research fellowship which involves the study of new forms of green energy. The field of green energy is expanding and new inventions have the potential to be incredibly profitable if they are efficient and competitive in today’s market. It is likely that my research will need to be protected from competitors looking to create similar products for harvesting …

Old Media Vs. New Media: Characterizations Of Free Speech During Times Of War, Jamie A. Mercurio

Senior Honors Projects

Old Media vs. New Media: Characterizations of Free Speech During Times of War

Jamie Mercurio

Faculty Sponsor:  Dr. Ian Reyes, Communication Studies

If citizens want their voices to be heard, they must know how to make them be heard. This project will outline and discuss several situations throughout recent history in which citizens with significant statements to make managed to catch the eye of the mass media and practically become household names. Each of the cases plays upon American First Amendment rights against a backdrop of two noteworthy time periods in American history: the Vietnam War era (specifically the late …

Prometheus Unbound: The Gulf Coast Claims Facility As A Means For Resolving Mass Tort Claims - A Fund Too Far, Linda S. Mullenix

Louisiana Law Review

No abstract provided.

Billy-Bob Teeth Saves Porn Star: Coping With Defective Work-For-Hire Registrations, Thomas G. Field

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “This paper begins by briefly reviewing statutory provisions that determine initial copyright ownership, govern title transfers, establish requisites to infringement litigation, and bar untimely suits.

It then examines Billy-Bob Teeth and Jules Jordan Video and explains how, in the latter case, the Ninth Circuit applied rationales adopted by the Seventh Circuit in the former case to overturn a JMOL unfavorable to an "adult film" star.

The third part of the paper reviews use of the copyright statute of limitations to resolve competing ownership claims.

The last part of the paper, flagging important differences between § 201(b) and § 204(a), …

Masthead, Volume 9, Number 3, 2011, Editorial Board

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

Masthead for Volume Nine, Issue Number Three.

London, Libel Capital No Longer? The Draft Defamation Act 2011 And The Future Of Libel Tourism, Thomas Sanchez

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “In the past decade, London emerged as the forum of choice for “libel tourists”—strategic, often foreign, plaintiffs who bring defamation actions in a jurisdiction with plaintiff-friendly libel laws, even if they and the defamatory material at issue lack a substantial connection with that jurisdiction. England’s defamation laws and procedures make it significantly easier for claimants to commence and prevail in libel actions than do the laws and procedures of many other countries, particularly the United States. As a result, English courts have entertained several high-profile defamation cases involving foreign parties who have only tenuous connections to England, such as …

Corruption And Confidence In Public Institutions: Evidence From A Global Survey, Bianca Clausen, Aart Kraay, Zsolt Nyiri

Department of Political Science and Law Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Well-functioning institutions matter for economic development. In order to operate effectively, public institutions must also inspire confidence in those they serve. We use data from the Gallup World Poll, a unique and very large global household survey, to document a quantitatively large and statistically significant negative correlation between corruption and confidence in public institutions. This suggests an important indirect channel through which corruption can inhibit development: by eroding confidence in public institutions. This correlation is robust to the inclusion of a large set of controls for country and respondent-level characteristics. Moreover we show how it can plausibly be interpreted as …

The Antitrust Economics Of Free, David S. Evans

Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper Series

This article examines antitrust analysis when one of the possible subject products of an antitrust or merger is ordinarily offered at a zero price. It shows that businesses often offer a product for free because it increases the overall profits they can earn from selling the free product and a companion product to either the same customer or different customers. The companion product may be a complement, a premium version of the free product, or the product on the other side of a two-sided market. The article then shows how antitrust and merger analysis should proceed when the subject is …

Car Trouble, Douglas G. Baird

Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper Series

By common account, the reorganizations of Chrysler and General Motors were extraordinary cases, very much alike, but different from any other. Government intervention on such a scale is not likely to recur and, given their peculiar character, these bankruptcies offer few lessons for corporate reorganizations as a general matter. This essay suggests that this perception is fundamentally wrong. Each case presented a radically different challenge for the bankruptcy system. Moreover, these two distinct challenges, far from being unusual, are not particularly related to the fact of government involvement and are likely to recur many times. The debate over speedy sales …

Implementing An Online Dispute Resolution Scheme: Using Domain Name Registration Contracts To Create A Workable Framework, Michael G. Bowers

Vanderbilt Law Review

Online businesses have grown tremendously in the past decade. As a larger percentage of the U.S. economy moves onto the Internet, a larger percentage of people doing business online will find themselves disagreeing with each other. How those disputes are resolved presents an ongoing challenge in a world where traditional ordering mechanisms, like geographical boundaries, become increasingly antiquated. As contracts are formed across state and national lines, dispute resolution systems built around spatial locations become ever more unwieldy. The complications and costs of securing a favorable decision from a far-off decisionmaking body make reliance on geographic-based systems exceedingly difficult. Out …

Memory And Punishment, O. Carter Snead

Vanderbilt Law Review

Developments in cognitive neuroscience-the science of how the brain enables the mind--continue to prompt profound scholarly debate and reflection on the practice and theory of criminal law. Advances in the field have raised vexing questions relating to lie detection, interrogation methods, the Fifth Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination, competency to stand trial, defenses to guilt (such as diminished capacity and insanity), sentencing, and the relationship between moral responsibility and punishment. Similarly, for the past decade, philosophers, scientists, clinicians, and legal scholars have been engaged in a major debate about the cognitive neuroscience of memory and new capacities to modify it …

Text Offenders: Privacy, Text Messages, And The Failure Of The Title Iii Minimization Requirement, Seth M. Hyatt

Vanderbilt Law Review

For the past forty years, theory and practice in electronic surveillance have enjoyed an uneasy coexistence. In theory, under ("Title III"), government agents must use wire and electronic taps sparingly, and only under strict judicial supervision. In practice, however, federal courts have recognized countless loopholes and exceptions, leading critics to wonder whether Title III meaningfully limits state investigatory power.

Nowhere is this tension more apparent than in the context of "minimization." Under Title III, government agents conducting electronic surveillance must "minimize the interception of communications not otherwise subject to interception under this chapter." They must not listen in on any …

Vertical Targeting And Leakage In Carbon Policy, James B. Bushnell, Erin T. Mansur

Dartmouth Scholarship

This paper examines the intersection between two aspects of climate policy design. The first is the point of regulation: should it be placed on pollution sources, carbon-rich inputs, or consumers? The second aspect concerns the external effects of a local climate policy. Leakage occurs when partial regulation results in an increase in emissions in unregulated parts of the economy. Our model demonstrates how directly regulating polluters can increase foreign emissions while indirect regulation (either upstream or downstream of the pollution source) will decrease foreign emissions. The net effect on combined domestic and foreign emissions will depend on market elasticities.

Table Of Contents - Cardozo Law Review, Volume 32, Issue 5

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Decade Of Uncertainty: Precon, Leaked Guidance, And Where To Go From Here?, Kim Diana Connolly

Other Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Optimal Lead Plaintiffs, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch

Scholarly Works

Adequate representation in securities class actions is, at best, an afterthought and, at worst, usurped and subsumed by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act’s lead-plaintiff appointment process. Once appointed, the lead plaintiff bears a crushing burden: Congress expects her to monitor the attorney, thwart strike suits, and deter fraud, while judges expect her appointment as the “most adequate plaintiff” to resolve intra-class conflicts and adequate-representation problems. But even if she could be all things to all people, the lead plaintiff has little authority to do much aside from appointing lead counsel. Plus, class members in securities-fraud cases have diverse preferences …

Supervising Managed Services, James B. Speta

Duke Law Journal

Many Internet-access providers simultaneously offer Internet access and other services, such as traditional video channels, video on demand, voice calling, and other emerging services, through a single, converged platform. These other services which can be called "managed services" because the carrier offers them only to its subscribers in a manner designed to ensure some quality of service in many circumstances will compete with services that are offered by unaffiliated parties as applications or services on the Internet. This situation creates an important interaction effect between the domains of Internet access and managed services, an effect that has largely been missing …

Myspace, Yourspace, But Not Theirspace: The Constitutionality Of Banning Sex Offenders From Social Networking Sites, Jasmine S. Wynton

Duke Law Journal

In recent years there has been intense public pressure to enact increasingly restrictive and intrusive sex offender laws. The regulation of sex offenders has now moved online, where a growing amount of protected expression and activity occurs. The latest trend in sex offender policy has been the passage of state laws prohibiting sex offenders from visiting social networking sites, such as Myspace or Facebook. The use of these websites implicates the First Amendment right of expressive association. Broad social-networking-site bans threaten the First Amendment expressive association rights of sex offenders, who do not lose all of their constitutional rights by …