Law Commons^™

How To Claim A Gene: Application Of The Patent Disclosure Requirements To Genetic Sequences, Patrick Brian Giles

Georgia State University Law Review

Prior to 1980, the only source of insulin for diabetics was the pancreas of animals, such as cows or pigs. While supply was not a problem, this source did carry the risk of infection and allergic reaction. Other therapeutic proteins, such as growth hormone, were previously only available in minuscule amounts from the pituitary glands of human cadavers. However, by 1980 the emerging field of biotechnology provided methods for producing mass quantities of human proteins such as insulin and growth hormone using the science of genetic engineering. These laboratory methods generally involve inserting a gene that encodes the desired therapeutic …

Work Product Privilege: The Future Of Tax Accrual Work Paper Discovery In The Eleventh Circuit After Textron, Tracy Hamilton

Georgia State University Law Review

The struggle between the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and business taxpayers regarding the discovery of tax accrual work papers is not a new battle. The IRS, seeking a road map of the corporation’s vulnerable tax positions, argues that tax accrual work papers are prepared for ordinary business purposes and are not subject to the protection of the work product privilege as established in Hickman v. Taylor and codified in Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(b)(3). Corporate taxpayers, desperate to keep the IRS from discovering work papers containing the probability of success analysis of vulnerable tax positions (not to mention potential …

Preliminary Materials, Georgia State University Law Review

Georgia State University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Deporting Families: Legal Matter Or Political Question?, Angela M. Banks

Georgia State University Law Review

Last year 245,424 noncitizens were removed from the United States, and courts played virtually no role in ensuring that these decisions did not violate individual substantive rights like freedom of speech, substantive due process, or retroactivity. Had these individuals been deported from a European country, domestic and regional courts would have reviewed the decisions to ensure compatibility with these types of rights. Numerous international law scholars and immigration scholars seek to minimize the gap between the legal processes offered in the United States and Europe for noncitizens challenging deportation orders. Many of these scholars contend that greater recognition of international …

Comparing Ceo Employment Contract Provisions: Differences Between Australia And The United States, Jennifer G. Hill, Ronald W. Masulis, Randall S. Thomas

Vanderbilt Law Review

This study compares CEO employment contracts across two common law countries: the United States and Australia. Although the regulatory regimes of these jurisdictions enjoy many comparable features, there are also some important institutional differences in terms of capital market, tax, and regulatory structures, which are discussed here. Debate has raged in the United States on the issue of whether executive compensation is efficient and determined at arm's length, or skewed by a power imbalance between managers and shareholders. A comparative analysis of the kind undertaken in our study provides an additional perspective on the optimal contracting and managerial power models …

Restraining Amazon.Com's Orwellian Potential: The Computer Fraud And Abuse Act As Consumer Rights Legislation, Alicia C. Sanders

Federal Communications Law Journal

In 2009, Amazon.com decided to correct a potential copyright violation by deleting e-books by George Orwell and Ayn Rand from the Kindles of users who had already purchased the offending texts. Two of those users, Justin Gawronski and Antoine Bruguier, claimed that Amazon.com had violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) by accessing their Kindles without authorization. The plaintiffs also relied on other causes of action, including breach of contract and trespass to chattels. Although the dispute quickly settled, the Gawronski lawsuit remains a useful case study that shows why the CFAA is a useful protection for consumers. Recently, …

Access To Media All A-Twitter: Revisiting Gertz And The Access To Media Test In The Age Of Social Networking, Ann E. O'Connor

Federal Communications Law Journal

Plaintiffs' access to media has long been a factor in defamation cases, enabling courts to determine whether that plaintiff is a public figure who must meet the actual malice standard, or whether that plaintiff is a private figure worthy of greater protection from defamation. This component of the public-private distinction can no longer be applied with clear precision, given the advent of social networking and today's world of widespread media access. In light of the massive changes that have taken place in the media world, the access to media test must be revisited and appropriately retailored to avoid an inappropriate …

Roberts' Rules: The Assertiveness Of Rules-Based Jurisprudence, Joseph Blocher

Tulsa Law Review

No abstract provided.

One Nation - Reexamining Tribal Sovereign Immunity In The Modern Era Of Self-Determination, Bryce P. Harp

Tulsa Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Myth Of “Conquered Provinces”: Probing The Extent Of The Vra’S Encroachment On State And Local Autonomy, Michael Halberstam

UC Law Journal

This Article advances the controversial thesis that the preclearance provision under section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) is not as intrusive as is generally assumed. It shows that the architecture of the preclearance regime is consistent with “new institutionalist” models of administration that favor devolution and learning through monitoring and disclosure. The Article thereby counters the unchallenged view— articulated in Supreme Court jurisprudence, the legislative record, and scholarship— that the U.S. Department of Justice’s authority to object to state and local election law changes under the preclearance regime has amounted to a heavy-handed intervention into state and local …

Note – Conscionable Judging: A Case Study Of California Courts’ Grapple With Challenges To Mandatory Arbitration Agreements, Paul Thomas

UC Law Journal

This Note addresses a study of California state court decisions concerning the invalidation of contracts on the ground that the contract is unconscionable. Cases in this area have proliferated rapidly as a consequence of the frequent and highly successful use of the unconscionability defense as a weapon to attack petitions to compel mandatory arbitration of disputes. A review of four years of unconscionability-related decisions in the California courts of appeal leads to certain conclusions, which generally support a hypothesis that while judges form definite personal opinions as to the legality of typical mandatory arbitration agreements, those opinions are only weakly …

Data Note: Examining Collaboration Between State Intellectual And Developmental Disabilities Agencies And State Vocational Rehabilitation Agencies, Kelly Haines, Heike Boeltzig, Jean E. Winsor

Data Note Series, Institute for Community Inclusion

Since Fiscal Year 1988, the Institute for Community Inclusion has administered the National Survey of State Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Agencies' Day and Employment Services. The FY 2009 survey included a module to assess the ways in which state intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) agencies collaborate with their state vocational rehabilitation (VR) agencies to support integrated employment outcomes for adults with IDD. A total of 40 agencies responded to the module. Their responses provide a broader understanding of the relationship between the two types of state agencies, and the ways in which they work together to provide integrated employment services.

Waiver Of The Right To Remove In Forum Selection Clauses Subject To The Convention On The Recognition And Enforcement Of Foreign Arbitral Awards, William E. Marple, Andrew O. Wirmani

Mercer Law Review

Three federal appellate decisions have now addressed whether, in cases subject to the United Nations Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards (New York Convention), parties may agree to waive their right to remove to federal court through forum selection clauses. In all three cases, each court held that to be enforceable the waiver must be expressed in "clear and unequivocal" terms or meet some other heightened standard of scrutiny. These court decisions present several significant points. First, the decisions of these courts to deviate from general principles of contract construction and analyze the waiver issue under …

Overcoming Under-Compensation And Under-Deterrence In Intentional Tort Cases: Are Statutory Multiple Damages The Best Remedy?, Stephen J. Shapiro

Mercer Law Review

There is a general agreement that the primary purpose of tort law is to compensate parties injured by the wrongful conduct of another. Typically, a prevailing plaintiff is awarded compensatory damages. The main purpose of tort law is to make the plaintiff whole, to the extent possible, in order to put the plaintiff in the same financial situation the plaintiff would have been in absent the defendant's actions. A prevailing plaintiff, however, will not normally be made whole by the award of a reasonable amount of compensatory damages. The primary reason for this insufficiency is that the plaintiff will have …

Health Care Reform, The Spending Clause, And Dole's Restrictions, David G. Oedel

Mercer Law Review

I am here to discuss a constitutional problem with the Health Care Reform Act" that so far has gotten little attention and that has not yet been discussed by our other panelists. The question is whether the federal government's expansion of Medicaid is a coercive exercise of federal power in violation of the Spending Clause of the United States Constitution." This is one of the two main arguments being pressed by the twenty states87 in the Florida litigation challenging the constitutionality of health care reform." It is an argument that I think you're likely to hear more of in the …

Turning Citizens Into Subjects: Why The Health Insurance Mandate Is Unconstitutional, Randy E. Barnett

Mercer Law Review

In 2010 something happened in this country that has never happened before: Congress required that every person enter into a contractual relationship with a private company. I realize that writers make lots of factual claims that readers are wise to be skeptical about. I can prove, however, that an economic mandate like this one is unprecedented. If this mandate had ever happened before, everyone reading this passage would know all the contracts the federal government requires them to make, upon pain of a penalty enforced by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). No reader, however, can recite any such mandate and …

Introduction Of Speakers At The Aals Hot Topic Panel Discussion On January 7, 2011, Brad Joondeph

Mercer Law Review

There are currently about twenty cases being litigated in the lower federal courts that challenge-in some way, shape, or form-the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, as amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, also affectionately known as the ACA or "Obamacare." Thus far, three district courts have dispositively ruled on the merits of the constitutional challenges: one from the Western District of Virginia, one from the Eastern District of Virginia, and one from the Eastern District of Michigan. So we now have three cases that are essentially in the courts of appeals. …

What Is A Judicial Author?, Peter Friedman

Mercer Law Review

Martha Woodmansee has pointed out that

the law has yet to be affected by the "critique of authorship" initiated by Foucault and carried forward in the rich variety of post-structuralist research that has characterized literary studies during the last two decades. Indeed, . . . it would seem that as creative production becomes more corporate, collective, and collaborative, the law invokes the Romantic author all the more insistently.

Woodmansee wrote about the conceptions of authorship that legal institutions bring to bear in deciding copyright-related disputes.2 Nevertheless, the law's ignorance of the "critique of authorship" includes a willful ignorance of the …

Crossing The Constitutional Line In Spending From Persuasion To Compulsion: A Reply To Gillian Metzger, David G. Oedel

Mercer Law Review

In her remarks at the 2011 Annual Meeting of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS), Professor Gillian Metzger of Columbia University Law School offered an interesting critique of the Spending Clause claim now being pursued by a majority of the states in the United States in the constitutional challenge to health care reform. The states claim that the changes to Medicaid are beyond the power of Congress to effect constitutionally under the Spending Clause of the United States Constitution because the changes are coercive and also violate the "general restrictions" identified by the Supreme Court of the United States …

Milavetz, Gallop & Milavetz, Pa. V. United States: "In Contemplation Of' The Meaning, Applicability, And Validity Of Attorney Restrictions In The Bapcpa, Joseph D. Orenstein

Mercer Law Review

In Milavetz, Gallop & Milavetz, PA. v. United States, the Supreme Court of the United States held that, under section 227 of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (BAPCPA), attorneys who provide bankruptcy counsel are "debt relief agencies." The Court also held two BAPCPA provisions constitutional: one provision that prevented debt relief agencies from advising a debtor to incur more debt in contemplation of bankruptcy and another that imposed disclosure requirements on debt relief agencies. In light of the inconsistent and unclear interpretations of BAPCPA provisions considered in this case, the Court's ruling acts to …

Is Driving With The Intent To Gather News A Crime? The Chilling Effects Of California’S Anti-Paparazzi Legislation, Christina M. Locke, Kara Carnley Murrhee

Loyola of Los Angeles Entertainment Law Review

While celebrities may have a love-hate relationship with the photographers who give them red carpet publicity but also pursue shots of their most intimate moments, the California Legislature has little use for the paparazzi. The 2010 anti-paparazzi bill is the most recent in a string of legislative attempts to curb aggressive paparazzi. Assembly Bill 2479 makes two major changes. The first change penalizes those who capture images or audio recordings by false imprisonment, targeting paparazzi who swarm celebrities and prevent them from moving or driving freely. The second change enhances penalties for reckless driving if one has an intent to …

The Right-To-Honest-Services Doctrine—Enron’S Final Victim: Pure Void-For-Vagueness In Skilling V. United States, Wesley Burrell

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

No abstract provided.

Relatively Unguided: Examining The Precedential Value Of The Plurality Decision In Shady Grove Orthopedic Associates V. Allstate Insurance Co., And Its Effects On Class Action Litigation, Andrew J. Kazakes

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

No abstract provided.

Unreasonable Calculations Of “Reasonable” Fees: Perdue V. Kenny A. Ex. Rel. Winn And The Supreme Court’S Ongoing Struggle With 42 U.S.C. § 1988, Kristin A.C. Olin

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

No abstract provided.

Is Silence Still Golden? The Implications Of Berghuis V. Thompkins On The Right To Remain Silent, Brigitte Mills

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents - Issue 3, North Carolina Law Review

North Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Milieu Of The Boardroom And The Precinct Of Employment, Deborah A. Demott

North Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Dangerous Categories: Narratives Of Corporate Board Diversity, Lissa L. Broome, John M. Conley, Kimberly D. Krawiec

North Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Commentary: Puzzles About Corporate Boards And Board Diversity, Donald C. Langevoort

North Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Board Diversity Revisited: New Rationale, Same Old Story, Lisa M. Fairfax

North Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.