Conflict of Laws Commons^™

Beyond The Reach Of States: The Dormant Commerce Clause, Extraterritorial State Regulation, And The Concerns Of Federalism, Peter C. Felmly

Maine Law Review

The Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution provides that “[t]he Congress shall have Power ... [t]o regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.” Interpreting this explicit grant of power to Congress, the Supreme Court has long recognized the existence of an implied limitation on the power of a state to legislate in areas of interstate commerce when Congress has remained silent. Under what is referred to as the negative or “dormant” Commerce Clause, the federal courts have thus scrutinized state legislation for well over one hundred years. In the past several …

Smith V. Town Of Pittston: Municipal Home Rule's Narrow Escape From The Morass Of Implicit Preemption, Shane Wright

Maine Law Review

In Smith v. Town of Pittston, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, sitting as the Law Court, upheld a municipal ordinance adopted by the town of Pittston that prohibited the spreading of septage within Pittston. The majority held that Pittston's ordinance did not violate the Maine Hazardous Waste, Septage and Solid Waste Management Act (Solid Waste Management Act), which “govern[s] the disposal of garbage, sludge, septage and other waste.” The majority interpreted the “home rule” statute as granting sufficient authority to Pittston, as a municipal corporation, to enact the ordinance at issue. The dissent, on the other hand, would have held …

New Hampshire Motor Transport Association V. Rowe: Federal Preemption Of Maine's Attempt To Regulate Internet Sales Of Tobacco To Minors, Nathaniel D. Bryans

Maine Law Review

In New Hampshire Motor Transport Ass'n v. Rowe, trade associations sought a declaratory judgment that the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act of 1994 (FAAAA) preempts a Maine law enacted to facilitate collection of state taxes and restrict the delivery of tobacco products to minors (the Tobacco Delivery Law). The district court granted the plaintiffs' second motion for summary judgment in part, finding that a single provision of little independent consequence escaped preemption, and enjoined enforcement of the preempted provisions. The state appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, which held that most of Maine's Tobacco …

Conflict Of Laws (2017), James P. George, Randy D. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

States’ and nations’ laws collide when foreign factors appear in a lawsuit. Nonresident litigants, incidents outside the forum, and judgments from other jurisdictions can create problems with personal jurisdiction, choice of law, and the recognition of foreign judgments. This article reviews Texas conflict cases from Texas state and federal courts during the Survey period from December 1, 2015, through November 30, 2016. The article excludes cases involving federal–state conflicts; intrastate issues, such as subject matter jurisdiction and venue; and conflicts in time, such as the applicability of prior or subsequent law within a state. State and federal cases are discussed …

Justice Blackmun And Preclusion In The State-Federal Context, Karen Nelson Moore

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

No abstract provided.

“I Am Undocumented And A New Yorker”: Affirmative City Citizenship And New York City’S Idnyc Program, Amy C. Torres

Fordham Law Review

The power to confer legal citizenship status is possessed solely by the federal government. Yet the courts and legal theorists have demonstrated that citizenship encompasses factors beyond legal status, including rights, inclusion, and political participation. As a result, even legal citizens can face barriers to citizenship, broadly understood, due to factors including their race, class, gender, or disability. Given this multidimensionality, the city, as the place where residents carry out the tasks of their daily lives, is a critical space for promoting elements of citizenship. This Note argues that recent city municipal identification-card programs have created a new form of …

Hyatt V. Franchise Tax Board Of California: Perils Of Undue Disputing Zeal And Undue Immunity For Government-Inflicted Injury, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Nevada Law Journal

Twenty years ago, California reacted with suspicion to inventor Gilbert Hyatt’s move to Nevada, concluding that he had not actually changed his residency to Las Vegas in time to avoid millions in state taxes based on a lucrative patent assignment. So convinced was California, it engaged in highly questionable shadowing of Hyatt (including dumpster dives). A jury later found this shadowing sufficiently abhorrent to support a multi-million dollar damage verdict in Hyatt’s favor as part of Hyatt’s invasion of privacy/abuse of power claim. Ultimately, after two trips to the U.S. Supreme Court, the verdict was substantially reduced and then limited …

Ln Mgmt. Llc Series 5105 Portraits Place V. Green Tree Loan Servicing Llc, 133 Nev. Adv. Op. 55 (Aug. 03, 2017), Wesley Lemay Jr.

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

If a homeowner that owns property in Nevada but declares bankruptcy in Texas and fails to list the Home Owners Association (HOA) as a creditor, the HOA cannot violate the automatic stay imposed by the bankruptcy and sell the property. If the property is sold in violation of the automatic stay, the sale is invalid. Under Ninth Circuit law, the sale is void ab initio while the Fifth Circuit holds that these types of sales are voidable, but can be approved by the bankruptcy court.

Chinese Conflicts Of Law: A Restatement And Legisprudence Proposal, Shaoming Zhu

SJD Dissertations

China has a long history of addressing conflict issues between different legal systems. However, there is as yet no unified legislation on Conflicts of Law in China. Rules on the topic of Conflicts of Law can be found in various legal sources without a clear structure or statement of their hierarchy and effectiveness. This research draws a comprehensive, well-organized map of Conflicts of Law rules in China by introducing the evolution of Conflicts of Law in China, defining the scope of Conflicts of Law as a legal science, restating the structure and contents of Chinese Conflicts of Law rules, and …

Amend The Communications Decency Act To Protect Victims Of Sexual Exploitation, Samantha Vardaman

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

"Local Data" In European Choice Of Law: A Trojan Horse From Across The Atlantic?, T.W. Dornis

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Class Action Settlements, Cy Pres Awards, And The Erie Doctrine, Andrew Rodheim

Northwestern University Law Review

As class action settlement funds become more and more prevalent, cy pres awards have become a more common means of providing relief to absent class members. The primary purpose of cy pres awards is to provide a second-best form of relief when it is deemed impossible to directly compensate individual plaintiffs. Most often, these cy pres awards are given to some kind of charitable organization. Under federal law, class action settlements and cy pres awards are governed by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(e). Rule 23(e)(2) requires all class action settlements to be “fair, reasonable, and adequate,” but provides no …

A Comparative Approach To Counter-Terrorism Legislation And Legal Policy, Paul David Hill Jr

Senior Honors Theses

Since the 9/11 attacks, American legislation and legal policy in regards to classifying and processing captured terrorists has fallen short of being fully effective and lawful. Trial and error by the Bush and Obama administrations has uncovered two key lessons: (1) captured terrorists are not typical prisoners of war and thus their detainment must involve more legal scrutiny than the latter; and (2) captured terrorists are not ordinary criminals and thus the civilian criminal court system, due to constitutional constraints, is not capable of adequately trying every count of terrorism. Other nations, including France and Israel, approach this problem with …

Have Prenup, Will Travel: Why England’S Law On Marital Agreements Has Attracted Forum Shoppers And How The Courts Can Fight Back, Karina Vanhouten

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

This Note examines the English judiciary’s reluctance to fully accept marital agreements, and the disruptive effect this has in the global legal arena. In our increasingly international world, the fundamental events of family life—marriage, divorce, and death—often no longer occur in the same jurisdiction. In recent years, prospective divorcées from around the globe have flocked to England to take advantage of the country’s matrimonial law, which generally favors the party seeking to invalidate or minimize a marital agreement. This forum-shopping phenomenon is problematic because English courts regularly disregard foreign marital agreements that would be valid and binding in other jurisdictions, …

The Missouri Student Transfer Program, Howard E. Fields Iii

Dissertations

In 1993, the state of Missouri passed the Outstanding Schools Act. This law was created as a means to ensure that “all children will have quality educational opportunities, regardless of where in Missouri they live.” Section 167.131 of this law states that an unaccredited district must pay the tuition and transportation cost for students who attend an accredited school in the same or adjoining district. This portion of the law became known as the Student Transfer Program.

The Riverview Gardens School District (RGSD) was one of three unaccredited school districts in the state of Missouri in 2013. With close to …

What's The [Irreparable] Harm?: Incentivizing Creativity Through Preliminary Injunctions In Copyright Law, Arielle Matza

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Return Of The Unprovided-For Case, Michael S. Green

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Parochial Procedure, Maggie Gardner

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The federal courts are often accused of being too parochial, favoring U.S. parties over foreigners and U.S. law over relevant foreign or international law. According to what this Article terms the “parochial critique,” the courts’ U.S.-centrism generates unnecessary friction with allies, regulatory conflict, and access-to-justice gaps. This parochialism is assumed to reflect the preferences of individual judges: persuade judges to like international law and transnational cases better, the standard story goes, and the courts will reach more cosmopolitan results.

This Article challenges that assumption. I argue instead that parochial doctrines can develop even in the absence of parochial judges. Our …

Twenty Reasons To Publish In Dignity, Donna M. Hughes

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Anchoring More Than Babies: Children's Rights After Obergefell V. Hodges, Susan Hazeldean

Cardozo Law Review

The Supreme Court's recent decision upholding a constitutional right to samesex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges was a huge advance not just for LGBT Americans, but also for children. Obergefefl suggests children have a fundamental right to be raised by their parents without being demeaned or marginalized by the state. This has important implications for other vulnerable children, including U.S. citizen children with undocumented parents. This Article argues that deporting these children's parents contravenes their fundamental right to be raised by a loving parent, to equal protection of the law, and to remain in the United States as U.S. citizens. …

A Human Rights Perspective To Global Battlefield Detention: Time To Reconsider Indefinite Detention, Yuval Shany

International Law Studies

This article discusses one principal challenge to detention without trial of suspected international terrorists—the international human rights law (IHRL) norm requiring the introduction of an upper limit on the duration of security detention in order to render it not indefinite in length. Part One of this article describes the “hardline” position on security detention, adopted by the United States in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks (followed, with certain variations, by other countries, including the United Kingdom and the State of Israel), according to which international terrorism suspects can be deprived of their liberty without trial for the …

The Limits Of Inviolability: The Parameters For Protection Of United Nations Facilities During Armed Conflict, Laurie R. Blank

International Law Studies

This article examines the international legal protections for United Nations humanitarian assistance and other civilian facilities during armed conflict, including under general international law, setting forth the immunities of the United Nations, and the law of armed conflict (LOAC), the relevant legal framework during wartime. Recent conflicts highlight three primary issues: (1) collateral damage to UN facilities as a consequence of strikes on military objectives nearby and military operations in the immediate vicinity; (2) the misuse of UN facilities for military purposes; and (3) direct attacks on fighters, weapons or other equipment that cause damage to such facilities. To identify …

German Conflict Rules And The Multinational Enterprise, Dagmar Coester-Waltjen

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Abortion, Moral Law, And The First Amendment: The Conflict Between Fetal Rights & Freedom Of Religion, Barbara Pfeffer Billauer

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

The status of abortion as murder, and therefore amenable to governmental intervention and criminalization, has been asserted by those favoring limits on abortion. Opponents claim a superior right of privacy and/or equality exists under the Constitution, vesting in a woman the right to decide activities and actions that affect her physical corpus. The claimed interest of a State to protect the fetus is impliedly based on the concept of “morality” or “natural law,” specifically on the premise that feticide is violative of the basic code of conduct of societal norms. To my knowledge, until now, this is the first investigation …

The Defend Trade Secrets Act: Why Interpreting The New Law On Its Own Terms Promotes Uniformity, Patrick Ruelle

Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review

Trade secrets, a category of intellectual property recognized at state and federal law, are integral parts of many corporations’ intellectual property portfolios. A trade secret is a type of intellectual property that is not disclosed by its owner, and is therefore unlike patents, trademarks, or copyrights—all types of information that are disclosed to the public. As a result, trade secrets may represent a viable alternative to patents and copyrights since its value is derived from its secrecy.

In the United States, the laws governing trade secrets have typically been the offspring of the state common law. As each state developed …

Wisconsin Patent Acquisition In The Final Frontier: Creating A Void, Nicholas J. Thibodeau

Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review

In early 2006, the Wisconsin Legislature passed 2005 Wisconsin Act 335, creating the Wisconsin Aerospace Authority (WAA). Unique to this particular act is the enumeration of the power to acquire intellectual property by the WAA. While granting them the power to acquire intellectual property is not unique, there is an interesting problem with that acquisition: the Act does not conform to the Parker Doctrine, and thus allows the WAA to be subject to antitrust litigation in its intellectual property acquisition under the proper circumstances. Specifically, the Act allows the WAA to enter into exclusive contracts that allow the WAA to …

Extraterritorial Constitutionalism: A Rule Proposed, 50 J. Marshall L. Rev. 787 (2017), Joseph Alfe

UIC Law Review

Does the Fourth Amendment apply in cases of cross-border shootings of foreign nationals, when those shots were fired by United States Border Patrol agents from American soil, striking a victim in Mexico? In oral argument, Petitioner failed to heed the trail of breadcrumbs strewn at his feet by inquisitive Supreme Court Justices. A workable, yet narrow rule that would plug the critically important gap in application of the United States Constitution to remedy such cross-border atrocities, was not articulated. I propose one here. The world’s busiest border is that which is shared between the United States and Mexico. Our countries …

A Relational Feminist Approach To Conflict Of Laws, Roxana Banu

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Feminist writers have long engaged in critiques of private law. Surrogacy contracts or the “reasonable man” standard in torts, for example, have long been the subjects of thorough feminist analysis and critique. When private law issues touch on more than one jurisdiction, Conflict of Laws is the doctrine that determines which jurisdiction can try the case and—as separate questions—which jurisdiction’s law should apply and under what conditions a foreign judgment can be recognized and enforced. Yet, there are virtually no feminist perspectives on Conflict of Laws (also known as Private International Law). This is still more surprising when one considers …

Limiting The Last-In-Time Rule For Judgments, Kevin M. Clermont

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

A troublesome problem arises when there are two binding but inconsistent judgments: Say the plaintiff loses on a claim (or issue) in the defendant’s state and then, in a second action back home, wins on the same claim (or issue). American law generally holds that the later judgment is the one entitled to preclusive effects. In the leading article on the problem, then-Professor Ruth Bader Ginsburg suggested that our last-in-time rule should not apply if the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the second court’s decision against giving full faith and credit. Although that suggestion is unsound, the last-in-time rule …

12 Angry Men V. The Agency: Why Preemption Should Resolve This Conflict In Drug Labeling Litigation, Michelle L. Richards

Marquette Law Review

The Supreme Court has found in favor of preemption in tort liability cases involving matters of heavy federal regulation in which Congress has delegated implementation of a statute involving technical subject matter to the agency. It has not been the case, however, in matters concerning the labeling of prescription drugs, despite the fact that the FDA has exclusively regulated drug labeling for more than a century. In fact, the current state of affairs now allows a jury to substitute the judgment of the FDA in approving a label on a name-brand drug for their own in state law failure to …