Law Commons^™

Cryptic Patent Reform Through The Inflation Reduction Act., Arti K. Rai, Rachel E. Sachs, Price W. Nicholson

Articles

If a statute substantially changes the way patents work in an industry where patents are central, but says almost nothing about patents, is it patent reform? We argue the answer is yes — and it’s not a hypothetical question. The Inflation Reduction Act (“IRA”) does not address patents, but its drug pricing provisions are likely to prompt major changes in how patents work in the pharmaceutical industry. For many years scholars have decried industry’s ever-evolving strategies that use combinations of patents to block competition for as long as possible, widely known as “evergreening,” but legislators have not been receptive to …

Humans In The Loop, Nicholson Price Ii, Rebecca Crootof, Margot Kaminski

Articles

From lethal drones to cancer diagnostics, humans are increasingly working with complex and artificially intelligent algorithms to make decisions which affect human lives, raising questions about how best to regulate these “human in the loop” systems. We make four contributions to the discourse.

First, contrary to the popular narrative, law is already profoundly and often problematically involved in governing human-in-the-loop systems: it regularly affects whether humans are retained in or removed from the loop. Second, we identify “the MABA-MABA trap,” which occurs when policymakers attempt to address concerns about algorithmic incapacities by inserting a human into decision making process. Regardless …

Meeting Clean Energy Goals Will Require The Grid Of The Future, Ken Berlin, Rob Gramlich, Alexandra B. Klass, Josiah Neeley

Articles

The transmission grid is the critical superhighway that connects energy supply and demand. But our grid was designed for the power plants of the past—not for the diverse range of resources and technologies of our clean energy future. Over 70 percent of the nation’s transmission infrastructure is more than 25 years old, and in many areas of the country constraints have already been an impediment to renewable power. To meet greenhouse gas reduction goals, we will need to expand electric transmission systems by 60 percent by 2030 and possibly triple the capacity of these systems by 2050. The Infl ation …

Constitutional Law: Lochner Revenant: The Dormant Commerce Clause & Extraterritoriality, Robin Feldman, Gideon Schor

The Judges' Book

No abstract provided.

Tsai Today (2023), Southern Methodist University, Dedman School Of Law, Tsai Center For Law, Science And Innovation

Tsai Today

No abstract provided.

Preemptive Federal Legislation For Ev Manufacturers To Sell Direct To Customers, Peter Luu

Journal of Law and Mobility

This article advocates for federal legislation to implement a nationwide EV licensing system that would allow both EV manufacturers and dealers to sell and service their vehicles directly to consumers nationwide. This prospective legislation would preempt dealer franchise laws that prohibit or limit manufacturers from selling their vehicles directly to consumers. This article does not argue that direct distribution is the superior method of distribution; instead, this article argues that manufacturers should have the freedom to pursue direct distribution. As more EV companies enter the market, EV manufacturers need to have the flexibility to use a variety of distribution systems …

How Might We Reimagine Transportation Technology To Combat Forced Labor: Conference Explanations And Recommendations From The Law And Mobility Program’S Annual Conference 2023, Brittany Eastman

Journal of Law and Mobility

The University of Michigan Law School’s Law and Mobility Program (LAMP), a resource for scholarship about the legal implications of emerging transportation technology with a particular focus on connected and automated vehicles (CAVs), hosts an annual conference. The topic of the LAMP Annual Conference 2023 considered how we might reimagine transportation technology in a way that combats the systemic vulnerabilities that leave certain populations more likely to experience forced labor. This topic was selected because there are multiple lenses through which to consider the transportation equity outcomes for users, industry workers, and society at large; forced labor is just one …

Guilty Of Probable Cause: Public Arrest Records And Dignity In The Information Age, Nicholas Thompson

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

The United States is exceptional among Western nations in its treatment of criminal records. Today, an estimated one-third of Americans1 bear the “modern equivalent of branding”: the publicly-accessible criminal record.2 Far from remaining locked in digital limbo, these records serve a variety of purposes, from legitimate law enforcement use to extortion against arrestees seeking to scrub their mugshots from a Google search.3 It would be natural to assume that such records result from an individual’s commission of a crime, for which the individual is duly convicted and then marked with the brand of the state for the transgression. But the …

The Policy Origins Of Wi-Fi, John Blevins

Indiana Law Journal

Wi-Fi technology has become a necessary foundation of modern economic and cultural life. This Article explains its history. Specifically, it argues that Wi-Fi owes its existence and widespread adoption to federal policy choices that have been underexplored in the literature. Wi-Fi’s development is often portrayed as an unexpected and lucky accident following the FCC’s initial decision in the 1980s to allow more unlicensed and experimental uses. This view, however, obscures the more fundamental role that federal policy played. For one, the rise of modern Wi-Fi was the product of a series of policy decisions spanning decades. In addition, the FCC’s …

Copyright And Racism, Kimber Thomas

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

Slides on copyright and racism by Dr. Kimber Thomas with an emphasis on United States copyright.

Includes points related to the origin of United States copyright law, original authorship and tangibility requirements, creation of works via oral or visual tradition and knowledge, the useful articles exclusion, and works made for hire.

Revisiting Goldwater-Nichols: Why Making The Joint Staff A General Staff Will Improve Civilian Control Of The Military And Refine The Constitutional Balance Of War Powers, Michael D. Minerva

American University National Security Law Brief

As the United States has progressively become more involved globally since World War II, the U.S. military is being stretched beyond the professional military competency straining civilian control of the military. To remedy this, it is again time to revisit our national security structure, and adopt a General Staff in place of the Joint Staff. Following World War II and the destruction of the German General Staff by the Nazi Party, the General Staff as an institution has been emotionally rejected in the United States without a careful historical and legal examination of how that institution operates under varying forms …

Questions Of Intellectual Property And Fundamental Values In The Digital Age, Jessica Silbey

Marquette Intellectual Property & Innovation Law Review

None

The Independent State Legislature Theory, Federal Courts, And State Law, Carolyn Shapiro

University of Chicago Law Review

During the litigation surrounding the 2020 election, the independent state legislature theory (ISLT) emerged as a potentially crucial factor in the presidential election. The ISLT rests on the Electors and Elections Clauses of the Constitution, which assign decisions about federal elections to state legislatures. Proponents of the ISLT, including Supreme Court Justices, assert that state constitutions’ substantive provisions cannot apply to state election laws governing federal elections; that state courts’ statutory interpretations of such laws must be rigidly textualist and are reviewable, apparently de novo, by federal courts; and/or that delegations of decisionmaking authority to nonlegislative bodies may be limited, …

Stakeholderism Silo Busting, Aneil Kovvali

University of Chicago Law Review

No abstract provided.

Sponsor Control: A New Paradigm For Corporate Reorganization, Vincent S.J. Buccola

University of Chicago Law Review

Bankruptcy scholars have long organized their field around a stylized story, a paradigm, of lender control. When lenders extend credit, the story goes, they insist on the borrower agreeing to strict covenants and granting blanket liens on its assets; then, if the borrower later encounters financial distress, they use their bargained-for rights as prods to steer the company toward a resolution favorable to themselves, whether or not that resolution is value maximizing for the investors as a group. As fruitful as the lender-control heuristic has been, however, it no longer corresponds to reality.

This Article introduces a new interpretive paradigm …

100 Years Of International Ip - Reflections On Past, Present And Future, Frederick M. Abbott

Scholarly Publications

We have been asked to reflect on the past 100 years of international intellectual property law and to try to project forward about what changes might be necessary or desirable in the future. Only a science fiction writer would purport to have some idea about what things might look like a hundred years in the future, including from the standpoint of international intellectual property, so my remarks on that will be somewhat more proximate to the present.

Climate Insecurity, Shi-Ling Hsu

Scholarly Publications

Global climate change causes climatic events such as hurricanes, droughts, floods, and heat waves to occur more frequently and with greater severity. In addition to inflicting direct harm, climatic events disrupt the flow of commerce and natural resources, creating shortages of goods and services sometimes temporarily, sometimes not. Climate change is getting worse, so climatic events will escalate over time, and as events cumulate, there is the potential for multiple events to heap harm on top of harm, exponentially increasing misery and disruption. What looms is the prospect of shortages of basic life necessities.

A vast literature on food and …

Judicial Reform Or Abusive Constitutionalism In Israel, Yaniv Roznai, Rosalind Dixon, David Landau

Scholarly Publications

How should the constitutional reform in Israel be assessed in comparative terms? Comparative constitutional understandings point to the centrality of three key sets of norms as part of the ‘democratic minimum core’: (i) commitments to free and fair, regular multi-party elections; (ii) political rights and freedoms; and (iii) a system of institutional checks and balances necessary to maintain (i) and (ii). Any change in judicial power and independence must be assessed against the benchmark of the democratic minimum core, and by reference to its cumulative practical effect on a system of institutional checks and balances.

We claim that recent changes …

Public Profiteering Of Prison Labor, Tiffany Yang

North Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Automated Governance, Ifeoma Ajunwa

North Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Two Title Ixs, Emily Suski

North Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Social Justice And The Structure Of The Litigation System, Yotam Kaplan, Ittai Paldor

North Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

When One Assault Ends And Another Begins: The Challenge For Domestic Violence Victims After State V. Dew, Olivia Clark

North Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Turf Wars And Red Herrings: Recent American Legislations And Their Impact On Global Evs And Semiconductors Trade, Manya Gupta, Arnav Sharma

Indian Journal of International Economic Law

In 2022, the United States began a new journey dedicated to revitalizing its long-lost industrial potential through the Inflation Reduction and CHIPS Acts. While appearing to be classic industrial policies aimed at boosting manufacturing potential in concerned areas, the Acts also mark an attempt at shifting global supply chains to the advantage of the United States. The seemingly innocuous titles of these legislations point towards combating inflation and producing microchips. However, the Acts mask the US’ attempts at shifting critical supplies to domestic or allied territories and must be approached with caution. The Acts contain measures that may attract some …

Asymmetric Challenges In Cybersecurity Among Wto Members : A Justification For A Veiled Trade Barrier?, Daniel Oluwadayo Akindipe, Love Gbenga-Fabusiwa

Indian Journal of International Economic Law

There is a higher prevalence of cyberattacks amongst the least developed and the developing country members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) than its developed country members. To proffer appropriate safeguards against cyberthreats, developed country members are adopting solutions outside of the WTO with Preferential Trade Agreements that specifically make provision on cybersecurity. Normative doctrinal research methodology was used in this research to analyze applicable legislation and rules that are applicable to the WTO members in the area of cybersecurity. The study revealed that the WTO does not have adequate provisions regarding the cybersecurity challenges of its least developed and …

Introducing The Gender Dimension Of Plastic Pollution In The Arctic, Sara L. Seck, Tahnee Prior

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This short communication seeks to introduce a new perspective – a gender dimension – into ongoing conversations on the governance of plastic pollution in the Arctic. Specifically, it seeks to understand (1) the degree to which gender and plastic pollution intersect in Arctic research and policy-making to date; and (2) the degree to which negotiations of the UN Treaty on Plastic Pollution integrate diverse gender perspectives from the North. We first consider the extent of the plastics problem in the Arctic and the degree to which existing research addresses its gender-dimension. Then, we introduce existing regional and global responses to …

Can A Tribunal’S Former Counsel Appear Before The Tribunal? A Comment On Certain Container Chassis, Andrew Martin

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Lawyer mobility has been recognized as an important but not determinative consideration in legal ethics, particularly when it comes to conflicts of interest. Mobility poses particular issues for counsel to a tribunal. Those counsel may well at some point leave that position and pursue other opportunities. Prospective opportunities may sometimes involve appearing as counsel for a party before the same tribunal – especially where the tribunal operates in a highly specialized area of law. Can a lawyer appear before a tribunal if they were previously counsel to that tribunal? This discrete issue, though it rarely arises in the case law, …

Loyalty, Conscience, And Withdrawal: Are Government Lawyers Different?, Andrew Martin

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

There is a growing recognition that the core concepts and specific rules of legal ethics can have unusual and even unique implications for government lawyers. In this short essay, I examine how loyalty, conscience, and withdrawal apply to government lawyers. I argue that while government lawyers should be slower than lawyers in private practice to exercise their professional discretions to withdraw from a matter, they must be particularly ready to withdraw when unavoidably required – despite any selfless dedication to the ideal of a non-partisan public service.

The Continuing Application Of Gladue Principles In The Professional Discipline Of Indigenous Lawyers: A Comment On Law Society Of Ontario V Mccullough, Andrew Martin

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

While Gladue principles have previously been applied in the professional discipline of Indigenous lawyers, the recent decision of the Law Society Tribunal in Law Society of Ontario v McCullough affirms and applies those precedents in new and powerful ways. In this case comment, I explain the ways in which McCullough is important in its application of Gladue principles and consider what questions remain to be settled in future decisions.

Assessing Visions Of Democracy In Regulatory Policymaking, Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia, Christopher J. Walker

Faculty Scholarship

Motivated in part by Congress’s failure to legislate, presidents in recent years seem to have turned even more to the regulatory process to make major policy. It is perhaps no coincidence that the field of administrative law has similarly seen a resurgence of scholarship extolling the virtues of democratic accountability in the modern administrative state. Some scholars have even argued that bureaucracy is as much as if not more democratically legitimate than Congress, either in the aggregative or deliberative sense, or both.

In our contribution to this Ensuring Democratic Accountability in the Administrative State Symposium, we make a modest intervention …