Law and Politics Commons^™

Gotta Catch ‘Em All!: The National Diet’S Inadequate Attempt To Control Manga Pirates, Sydney Landers

University of Miami Law Review

Internet piracy threatens Japan’s most popular cultural exports: manga and anime. Fans have taken to translating and distributing the works online for other fans to enjoy because official translated versions of manga and anime are released overseas later than the original in Japan, or they are never released at all. In order to combat the illegal downloading and distributing of manga, the National Diet, Japan’s legislature, passed an amendment to the Japanese Copyright Act that increases punishments for leech sites and illegal downloading of manga.
This Note discusses the manga and anime industries and their struggles with piracy before reviewing …

Slapping Back In Federal Court: Florida’S Anti-Slapp Statute, Harris Blum

University of Miami Law Review

Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, or “SLAPPs,” are frivolous lawsuits used to silence and harass critics by forcing them to spend money on legal fees. An overwhelming majority of states have enacted anti-SLAPP statutes to shield against these lawsuits, recognizing their potential to chill free speech and healthy debate. Though anti-SLAPP statutes come in different shapes and sizes, they commonly employ procedural mechanisms such as expedited dismissal procedures, heightened standards at the pleading and summary judgment stages, and fee-shifting provisions. The unintended consequence of these features is that SLAPP filers can often elude the protections of anti-SLAPP statutes by filing …

Muzzling Anti-Vaxxer Fear Speech: Overcoming Free Speech Obstacles With Compelled Speech, Barbara Pfeffer Billauer

University of Miami Law Review

As the anti-vax industry continues to stoke fear and incite vaccine resistance, some means must be found to detoxify their false messages. Counterspeech, the preferred mode to deal with unfortunate rhetoric, is both ineffective and counter-effective when addressing factual “scientific speech” addressing health, I show here that many instances of the most potent anti-vax speech arise in the context of arguably commercial speech. I therefore investigate other free speech protections available to shield factually false anti-vax speech used in this context, concluding that while complete First Amendment protection may exist in the context of political speech (without proof of fraud), …

“Safe Spaces” And “Brave Spaces”: The Case For Creating Law School Classrooms That Are Both, Laura P. Graham

University of Miami Law Review

Over the past decade, the subject of “safe spaces” on college and university campuses has received much press. As originally conceived, the term “safe space” refers to an environment—often a physical space—in which “everyone feels comfortable expressing themselves and participating fully, without fear of attack, ridicule, or denial of experience.” And while this original conception may not seem controversial, the meaning of “safe spaces” as applied to higher education classrooms is a subject of ongoing vigorous debate. On one side of the debate are those who believe that safe spaces foster learning by making it possible for students to be …

We’Ll Protect You! Oh, Wait, But Not You. Or You, You, Or You: The Consequences Of The Court’S Major Undertaking In Department Of Homeland Security V. Thuraissigiam, Jae Lynn Huckaba

University of Miami Law Review

For centuries, the writ of habeas corpus has been used to test the legality of restraints on a person’s freedom. The Founders, recognizing the significance of the protection, incorporated the writ into the Suspension Clause of our Constitution. In the last century, the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that noncitizens may invoke the Suspension Clause. Courts, especially in the immigration context, also expanded the definition of “in custody” for the purpose of habeas corpus to included non-detained persons in removal proceedings. The Supreme Court has departed from such precedent and gave new meaning to habeas corpus in the immigration context—a …

What Is Standard Tomorrow, May Not Have Been Today: An Argument For Claiming ScèNes À Faire, Logan Sandler

University of Miami Law Review

Recent lawsuits involving the Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise and the Oscar award-winning movie The Shape of Water required courts to wrestle with the application of the decisive scènes à faire doctrine. In doing so, the Ninth Circuit exposed the doctrine’s chief pitfall: the lack of a temporal framework.
The modern scènes à faire doctrine limits the scope of what authors can claim as substantially similar by excluding the standard or stock elements in a given expressive work from copyright protection. Courts will often conclude that a contested element is scènes à faire if it can be demonstrated that …

Blackwater Rising: The Legal Issues Raised By The Unprecedented Privatization Of U.S. Military Functions, Robert D. Peltz

University of Miami Law Review

The Army has used civilian contractors to provide supplies and services to its forces in the field since the Revolutionary War. These early contractors fed the cavalry’s horses and transported supplies. Over the years, the role of the civilian contractor has dramatically evolved. Following the Vietnam War and the end of the draft, there has been an ever-increasing privatization of functions previously performed by the military.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which began in response to the September 11 attacks and have only recently started to come to a formal end, have significantly accelerated this process. As a result, …

Bolstering Juliana: Enforceability Of Environmental Claims Through International Treaty Obligations In U.S. Courts, Lindsey Laielli

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract forthcoming.

Justice For Venezuela: The Human Rights Violations That Are Isolating An Entire Country, Andrea Matos

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming.

A Guide To The 87th Texas Legislative Session, José Menéndez, Pearl D. Cruz

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Challenges and potential solutions during the 87th Texas Legislative session.

A Pioneer Of The Law & Society Movement: One Eyewitness’S Reflections, Jayanth K. Krishnan

Articles by Maurer Faculty

There is arguably no more seminal a figure in the field of law and society than Professor Marc Galanter. That a Special Issue featuring dedications to several leading academic lights would be hosted by the University of Chicago Law Review is especially significant in terms of Marc’s inclusion because Chicago is where Marc came of age as a student.

Professor Richard Abel, some years back, chronicled Marc’s educational journey in Hyde Park. As Abel tells it—and as Marc has told me over the years—after finishing his B.A. and while continuing to work on his master’s degree from Chicago, Marc enrolled …

Protecting Sentient Artificial Intelligence: A Survey Of Lay Intuitions On Standing, Personhood, And General Legal Protection, Eric H. Martinez, Christoph Winter

Faculty Scholarship

To what extent, if any, should the law protect sentient artificial intelligence (that is, AI that can feel pleasure or pain)? Here we surveyed United States adults (n = 1,061) on their views regarding granting 1) general legal protection, 2) legal personhood, and 3) standing to bring forth a lawsuit, with respect to sentient AI and eight other groups: humans in the jurisdiction, humans outside the jurisdiction, corporations, unions, non-human animals, the environment, humans living in the near future, and humans living in the far future. Roughly one-third of participants endorsed granting personhood and standing to sentient AI (assuming …

Caring For The Souls Of Our Students: The Evolution Of A Community Economic Development Clinic During Turbulent Times, Gowri J. Krishna, Kelly Pfeifer, Dana Thompson

Articles

Community Economic Development (CED) clinicians regularly address issues surrounding economic, racial, and social justice, as those are the core principles motivating their work to promote vibrant, diverse, and sustainable communities. When COVID-19 arrived, and heightened attention to police brutality and racial injustice ensued, CED clinicians focused not only on how to begin to address these issues in their clinics, but on how to discuss these issues more deeply and effectively with their students. This essay highlights the ways in which the pandemic school year influenced significant rethinking of one CED clinic’s operations: first, the pandemic sharpened the clinic’s mission to …

A Human Rights Crisis Under Our Roof, Aglae Eufracio

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming.

The Meaning, History, And Importance Of The Elections Clause, Eliza Sweren-Becker, Michael Waldman

Washington Law Review

Historically, the Supreme Court has offered scant attention to or analysis of the Elections Clause, resulting in similarly limited scholarship on the Clause’s original meaning and public understanding over time. The Clause directs states to make regulations for the time, place, and manner of congressional elections, and grants Congress superseding authority to make or alter those rules.

But the 2020 elections forced the Elections Clause into the spotlight, with Republican litigants relying on the Clause to ask the Supreme Court to limit which state actors can regulate federal elections. This new focus comes on the heels of the Clause serving …

How The Gun Control Act Disarms Black Firearm Owners, Maya Itah

Washington Law Review

Through 18 U.S.C. § 924(c), the Gun Control Act (GCA) outlaws the possession of a firearm “in furtherance of” a drug trafficking crime. The statute’s language is broad, and federal courts have interpreted it expansively. By giving prosecutors wide discretion in charging individuals with § 924(c) violations, the language enables the disproportionate incarceration of Black firearm owners.

This Comment addresses this issue in three parts. Part I discusses the ways early gun control laws overtly disarmed Black firearm owners. Additionally, Part I provides context for the passage of the Gun Control Act of 1968, which coincided with the backlash to …

Article: Anti- Love Jihad Law: An Analysis Of Women’S Religious And Marital Rights, Snehal Sharma

Gender and Women's Studies Faculty Publications

In November 2020, Uttar Pradesh government enacted an ordinance – ‘Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion Ordinance, 2020’. Since the ordinance has made the process of religious conversion and interfaith marriage complicated and prolonged in the state, it is commonly known as ‘anti- love jihad law’. This paper analyses and lays out the potential impact of this ordinance on inter-religious marriages, and how it conflicts with women’s religious, marital, and bodily autonomy. Here the author discusses the procedures of anti-conversion ordinance along with the Special Marriage Act (1954) and personal laws related to marriage to assess their impact on inter-religious couples …

The Euclid Proviso, Ezra Rosser

Washington Law Review

This Article argues that the Euclid Proviso, which allows regional concerns to trump local zoning when required by the general welfare, should play a larger role in zoning’s second century. Traditional zoning operates to severely limit the construction of additional housing. This locks in the advantages of homeowners but at tremendous cost, primarily in the form of unaffordable housing, to those who would like to join the community. State preemption of local zoning defies traditional categorization; it is at once both radically destabilizing and market responsive. But, given the ways in which zoning is a foundational part of the racial …

"Send Freedom House!": A Study In Police Abolition, Tiffany Yang

Washington Law Review

Sparked by the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, the 2020 uprisings accelerated a momentum of abolitionist organizing that demands the defunding and dismantling of policing infrastructures. Although a growing body of legal scholarship recognizes abolitionist frameworks when examining conventional proposals for reform, critics mistakenly continue to disregard police abolition as an unrealistic solution. This Essay helps dispel this myth of “impracticality” and illustrates the pragmatism of abolition by identifying a community-driven effort that achieved a meaningful reduction in policing we now take for granted. I detail the history of the Freedom House Ambulance Service, a Black civilian …

Baby & Bathwater: Standing In Election Cases After 2020, Steven J. Mulroy

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

The current consensus among commentators is that the flood of cases challenging the 2020 presidential election results was almost completely meritless. This consensus is correct as to the ultimate result, but not as to the courts’ treatment of standing. In their (understandable) zeal to reject sometimes frivolous attempts to overturn a legitimate election and undermine public confidence in our electoral system, many courts were too quick to rule that plaintiffs lacked standing. These rulings resulted in unjustified sweeping rulings that voters were not injured even if their legal votes were diluted by states accepting illegal votes; that campaigns did not …

Pushing The First Domino: Freeing The Whales In Canada, Luc Paul Bourgeois

LLM Theses

In 2019, the Canadian Parliament adopted Bill S-203, titled the Ending the Captivity of Whales and Dolphins Act [Whales Act], to phase-out the captivity of cetaceans – that is, whales, dolphins, and porpoises – mainly for entertainment purposes. This new law reflected scientific knowledge and signaled a shift in public attitudes relating to cetacean captivity. Undeniably, this piece of legislation raises many legal and normative questions. Drawing on the capabilities approach, espoused by Martha C. Nussbaum, this paper will explore the nature and impact of the Whales Act in the Canadian political and legal landscape, as well as the newly …

Equal Justice Under Law: Navigating The Delicate Balance Between Religious Liberty And Marriage Equality, Meg Penrose

Faculty Scholarship

This Article discusses the current state of the law and offers thoughts on its future. Part Il provides a brief overview of the legal landscape involved in the clash between religious liberty and same-sex marriage From Justice Scalia's seminal religious liberty test to the evolution of same- sex marriage, Part Il describes the current law. Part III introduces the reader to public accommodations laws. After providing this brief history, Part Ill discusses three Supreme Court cases that could have resolved the religious liberty versus marriage equality question. Part IV looks ahead and draws analogies to the 1960s religious liberty objections …

The Fight Over Frankenmeat: The Fda As The Proper Agency To Regulate Cell-Based “Clean Meat”, Zoe A. Bernstein

Brooklyn Law Review

In recent years, concern over the environmental, animal welfare, and human costs of animal agriculture has spurred an increased demand for nonanimal sourced protein. This has led to significant innovation in food technology. As part of this trend, food scientists have developed a process for in-vitro cultivation of meat cells to produce protein that is biologically and nutritionally identical to meat from traditionally raised and slaughtered animal sources, but that involves neither animal agriculture nor animal slaughter. This lab-grown “clean meat” represents a new era in food technology and is already having an effect on the existing meat industry. In …

Crisis Management Lessons From The Clinton Administration's Implementation Of Presidential Decision Directive 56, Leonard R. Hawley

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

Drawing on personal experience, the author asks what the current administration can learn from the Clinton administration’s implementation of Presidential Decision Directive 56, examines the real-world application of the directive during the Clinton administration and the pitfalls of its agency-centric successor during the Bush administration, and identifies recurring problems and best practices for successfully responding to current global crises.

Calling The Shots: Balancing Parental And Child Rights In The Age Of Anti-Vax, Mahrukh Badar

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Vaccinations have become a contentious issue in recent times. Although there has always been opposition to vaccines, the internet has made it possible for pseudoscience and false information to spread like never before. This has led to alarming declines in vaccine confidence and adherence rates globally. High-income countries have seen the sharpest drop in vaccine confidence rates. Factors such as the complacency effect and religious objections likely explain this decline. Most countries have attempted to raise vaccine confidence levels by enacting laws that make vaccinations for children compulsory, with strict penalties for parents who refuse to comply. In addition to …

Bad Law Or Just Bad Timing?: Post-Pandemic Implications Of Managed Care Advisory Group, Llc V. Cigna Healthcare, Inc.’S Ban On The Use Of Virtual Technology For Taking Non-Party Evidence Under Section 7 Of The Federal Arbitration Act, Latoya C. Brown

University of Miami Law Review

The COVID-19 pandemic has had an enormous socio-economic impact globally. To continue operations, the legal field, like other sectors, has had to adapt to the exigencies of the pandemic by, inter alia, becoming increasingly reliant on remote technologies to conduct business. Yet, only a few months before COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, the Eleventh Circuit ruled in Managed Care Advisory Group, LLC v. CIGNA Healthcare, Inc., 939 F.3d 1145 (11th Cir. 2019), that Section 7 of the Federal Arbitration Act (the “FAA”), 9 U.S.C. § 7, prohibits prehearing discovery and does not allow a summonsed witness to appear in locations …

Foreword, Lauren F. Louis

University of Miami Law Review

No abstract provided.

Cruise Contracts, Public Policy, And Foreign Forum Selection Clauses, John F. Coyle

University of Miami Law Review

A cruise ship contract is the prototypical contract of adhesion. The passenger is presented with the contract on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. If she refuses to sign, the ship sails without her. To ensure that cruise companies do not draft one-sided contracts that are unfair to passengers, Congress has enacted a number of statutes that regulate these agreements. One such statute is 46 U.S.C. § 30509. This law stipulates that any contract provision that limits the liability of the cruise company for personal injury or death is void as against public policy if the ship stops at a U.S. port.
In …

The Power Of Two Words To Split Circuits, Natalie Whitacre

University of Miami Law Review

28 U.S.C. § 1782 authorizes federal judges to grant assistance to a “foreign or international tribunal” for discovery proceedings. The meaning of the term “foreign or international tribunal” has been the subject of much dispute. In 2019 the Sixth Circuit became the first court of appeals to extend the purview of the statute to private commercial arbitration, creating a circuit split. However, the use of 28 U.S.C. § 1782 in arbitral proceedings raises a number of questions about whether U.S. style discovery would impede the efficiency of arbitration and whether the practice could be extended to international tribunals located within …

Informed Consent: Disclosure Of The Presentence Investigation Report Before A Guilty Plea, George D. Bell

University of Miami Law Review

The Constitution bestows upon all accused persons the right to a trial by jury, the right to confront accusers, the right to remain silent, and the right to be presumed innocent. The law requires waiver of these rights to be done voluntarily, with the fullest possible knowledge of material consequences. Punishment is possibly the most material consequence of a guilty plea, yet criminal defendants who pleaded guilty are forced to relinquish their rights before punishment is determined. Our jurisprudence of due process prohibits this kind of practice, but it is routine in Federal court. For a guilty plea to comport …