Legal Remedies Commons^™

What Are The Causes And Remedies Of Wrongful Convictions?, Audree Alick

The Mid-Southern Journal of Criminal Justice

Wrongful convictions, also known as miscarriages of justice, are very common in the criminal justice system today. With the first known wrongful conviction in 1872, to the most recent in 2023, researchers have similarly identified three causes of wrongful convictions: false confessions, eyewitness errors, and investigative misconduct. Wrongful convictions can cause many physical and mental effects on post-exonerees and currently incarcerated individuals, including but not limited to, clinical anxiety, depression, and PTSD. Analyses of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) have proven instrumental in cases of wrongful convictions. Each exoneree should have access to the DNA database to test against the DNA evidence …

The Constitution As A Source Of Remedial Law, Carlos Manuel Vázquez

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In Equity’s Constitutional Source, Owen W. Gallogly argues that Article III is the source of a constitutional default rule for equitable remedies—specifically, that Article III’s vesting of the “judicial Power” “in Equity” empowers federal courts to afford the remedies traditionally afforded by the English Court of Chancery at the time of the Founding, and to develop such remedies in an incremental fashion. This Response questions the current plausibility of locating such a default rule in Article III, since remedies having their source in Article III would be available in federal but not state courts and would apply to state-law …

A New Wound For Old Scars: Why Act 1036 Of 2021 Is Unconstitutional And Why The Arkansas Retroactive-Legislation Doctrine Should Change, Bryce Jefferson

Arkansas Law Notes

In 2021, the Arkansas General Assembly overwhelmingly approved Act 1036, the Justice for Vulnerable Victims of Sexual Abuse Act. This Act amends the statute of limitations for “vulnerable victims” of sexual abuse. The Act allows a person who was either disabled, a minor, or both at the time he or she was a victim of sexual abuse to bring a civil action against an alleged abuser until the age of fifty-five (55)—replacing the former statutory age limit of twenty-one (21). The Act also revives previously time-barred claims for a period not earlier than six (6) months after and not later …

Fixing "Litigating The Fix", Steven C. Salop, Jennifer E. Sturiale

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Merging firms have increasingly been asking trial courts to adjudicate their merger “as remedied” by a voluntary “fix.” These are remedies that have been rejected by (or never proposed to) the agency. This procedure is known as Litigating-the-Fix” (“LTF”). This article proposes a judicial procedure for managing cases in which the merging parties attempt to LTF. Our recommendations flow from a decision theory approach informed by the relevant LTF case law, the merger enforcement record, the language and goals of Section 7, and an economic analysis of the incentives of the parties and agencies created by LTF. Our recommendation addresses …

A Call To Abolish Determinate-Plus Sentencing In Washington, Rachel Stenberg

Washington Law Review

For certain incarcerated individuals who commit sex offenses, Washington State’s determinate-plus sentencing structure requires a showing of rehabilitation before release. This highly subjective “releasability” determination occurs after an individual has already served a standard sentence. A review of recent releasability determinations reveals sentences are often extended on arbitrary and inconsistent grounds—especially for individuals who face systemic challenges in prison due to their identity or condition. This Comment shows that the criteria to determine whether individuals are releasable is an incomplete picture of their actual experience in the carceral setting, using the distinct example of incarcerated individuals with mental illness. While …

Copyright And Federalism: Why State Waiver Of Sovereign Immunity Is The Best Remedy For State Copyright Infringement, Leroy J. Ellis V

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property

When a photographer intentionally takes a picture of a subject, or a writer puts a story to paper, the resulting works are protected by copyright. That protection is bolstered after the authors register their works with the Copyright Office. All private parties, from individuals to corporations, can be sued for infringing on the work should they use it without pay or permission.

However, what happens when the infringer is not a private party? What happens when the state or a state entity is the infringer? What happens when a public university decides to use a copyright owner’s work without pay …

Ministerial Employees And Discrimination Without Remedy, Charlotte Garden

Indiana Law Journal

The Supreme Court first addressed the ministerial exemption in a 2012 case, Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC. The ministerial exemption is a defense that religious employers can invoke in discrimination cases brought by employees who qualify as “ministerial,” and it is rooted in the First Amendment principle that government cannot interfere in a church’s choice of minister. However, Hosanna-Tabor did not set out a test to determine which employees are covered by this exemption, and the decision was susceptible to a reading that the category was narrow. In 2020, the Court again took up the ministerial exemption, …

Getting Into Equity, Samuel L. Bray, Paul Miller

Journal Articles

For two centuries, common lawyers have frequently talked about a “cause of action.” But “cause of action” is not an organizing principle for equity. This Article shows how a plaintiff gets into equity, and it shows equity is shaped by the interplay of its remedial, procedural, and substantive law. Equity is adjectival, related to law rather than the other way around. Remedies, not rights, are what give it power. And for getting into equity, it is the grievance that is central. To insist on an equitable cause of action is to work a fundamental change in how a plaintiff gets …

Nonparty Interests In Contract Law, Omri Ben-Shahar, David A. Hoffman, Cathy Hwang

All Faculty Scholarship

Contract law has one overarching goal: to advance the legitimate interests of the contracting parties. For the most part, scholars, judges, and parties embrace this party primacy norm, recognizing only a few exceptions, such as mandatory rules that bar enforcement of agreements that harm others. This Article describes a distinct species of previously unnoticed contract law rules that advance nonparty interests, which it calls “nonparty defaults."

In doing so, this Article makes three contributions to the contract law literature. First, it identifies nonparty defaults as a judicial technique. It shows how courts deviate from the party primary norm with surprising …

Preliminary Damages, Gideon Parchomovsky, Alex Stein

All Faculty Scholarship

Historically, the law helped impecunious plaintiffs overcome their inherent disadvantage in civil litigation. Unfortunately, this is no longer the case: modern law has largely abandoned the mission of assisting the least well off. In this Essay, we propose a new remedy that can dramatically improve the fortunes of poor plaintiffs and thereby change the errant path of the law: preliminary damages. The unavailability of preliminary damages has dire implications for poor plaintiffs, especially those wronged by affluent individuals and corporations. Resource constrained plaintiffs cannot afford prolonged litigation on account of their limited financial means. Consequently, they are forced to either …

Equity, Law And The Seventh Amendment, Samuel Bray

Journal Articles

The Seventh Amendment requires that the civil jury trial right be “preserved” in “Suits at common law.” Those bits of constitutional text have long set the justices on a path of historical reconstruction. For roughly two centuries, the Supreme Court has determined the scope of the civil jury trial right in federal court by reference to historic English courts. But no one is happy with the current test. In one widely used variant, it requires an inquiry into analogous 1791 actions, followed by an inquiry into the legal or equitable provenance of the remedy sought, and then a weighing that …

Tort Law And Civil Recourse, Mark A. Geistfeld

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Recognizing Wrongs. by John C.P. Goldberg and Benjamin C. Zipursky.

Oliver Wendell Holmes's Theory Of Contract Law At The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Daniel P. O'Gorman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Restatements Of Statutory Law: The Curious Case Of The Restatement Of Copyright, Shyamkrishna Balganesh, Peter S. Menell

Faculty Scholarship

For nearly a century, the American Law Institute’s (ALI) Restatements of the Law have played an important role in the American legal system. And in all of this time, they refrained from restating areas of law dominated by a uniform statute despite the proliferation and growing importance of such statutes, especially at the federal level. This omission was deliberate and in recognition of the fundamentally different nature of the judicial role and of lawmaking in areas governed by detailed statutes compared to areas governed by the common law. Then in 2015, without much deliberation, the ALI embarked on the task …

What Do We Remedy?, Nicholas B. Cornell, Paul Miller, John Oberdiek

Book Chapters

This chapter examines the nature of civil wrongs from the perspective of the law of remedies, querying the supposition that remedies are exclusively responsive to primary rights violations and, in turn, the related supposition that a civil wrong is nothing more the violation of a primary right and correlative duty. Here, remedies correct for wrongs, but it is essential to recognize that the nature of a wrong—and, in turn, the selection of an apt or responsive remedy—is not driven exclusively by the nature of the right that was violated by the wrongdoer. This chapter’s analysis is framed as a critique …

The Importance Of Doctor Liability In Medical Malpractice Law: China Versus The United States, Vincent R. Johnson

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

Medical malpractice law in China does not work. Disappointed patients and their families, or the gangs they hire, frequently resort to physical violence, beating up doctors and disrupting hospital activities in order to extort settlements. This happens because Chinese law has failed to provide viable remedies to many victims of medical malpractice.

This dysfunctional situation (medical chaos or yinao) has persisted for more than two decades. Today, parents in China discourage their children from attending medical school because practicing medicine is too dangerous.

Reforming Chinese medical malpractice law will be difficult. Many factors contribute to the public’s lack of confidence …

Retroactive Adjudication, Samuel Beswick

All Faculty Publications

This Article defends the retroactive nature of judicial lawmaking. Recent Supreme Court judgments have reignited debate on the retroactivity of novel precedent. When a court announces a new rule, does it apply only to future cases or also to disputes arising in the past? This Article shows that the doctrine of non-retroactive adjudication offers no adequate answer. In attempting to articulate a law of non-retroactivity, the Supreme Court has cycled through five flawed frame-works. It has variously characterized adjudicative non-retroactivity as (1) a problem of legal philosophy; (2) a discretionary exercise for balancing competing right and reliance interests; (3) a …

Evolution And Revolution: The Remedial Smorgasbord For Misleading Conduct In Australia, Elise Bant, Jeannie Marie Paterson

FIU Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Rohingya Genocide, Paul Williams, Todd F. Buchwald, Jenny Domino, Rebecca Hamilton, Michael P. Scharf, Meilena Sterio

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

The Failure Of Economic Interpretations Of The Law Of Contact Damages, Nathan B. Oman

Nathan B. Oman

The law of contracts is complex but remarkably stable. What we lack is a widely accepted interpretation of that law as embodying a coherent set of normative choices. Some scholars have suggested that either economic efficiency or personal autonomy provide unifying principles of contract law. These two approaches, however, seem incommensurable, which suggests that we must reject at least one of them in order to have a coherent theory. This Article dissents from this view and has a simple thesis: Economic accounts of the current doctrine governing contract damages have failed, but efficiency arguments remain key to any adequate theory …

Common Law Punitive Damages: Something For Everyone?, Doug Rendleman

Doug Rendleman

Common law punitive damages have some feature that will get everyone's goat: a civil court meting out quasi-criminal punishment; a sanction, punishment, imposed after mere civil procedure; a civil jury stretching imprecise instructions into Robin Hood justice; a private plaintiff receiving a windfall that exceeds any reasonable estimate of loss; and, finally, the Supreme Court wielding the discredited doctrine of substantive due process. This article will examine the preceding fault lines and the countervailing considerations, devoting more attention to substantive due process than the others. It will then turn to Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker, and include some modest …

What's A Judge To Do? Remedying The Remedy In Institutional Reform Litigation, Susan Poser

Susan Poser

Democracy by Decree is the latest contribution to a scholarly literature, now nearly thirty-years old, which questions whether judges have the legitimacy and the capacity to oversee the remedial phase of institutional reform litigation. Previous contributors to this literature have come out on one side or the other of the legitimacy and capacity debate. Abram Chayes, Owen Fiss, and more recently, Malcolm Feeley and Edward Rubin, have all argued that the proper role of judges is to remedy rights violations and that judges possess the legitimate institutional authority to order structural injunctions. Lon Fuller, Donald Horowitz, William Fletcher, and Gerald …

Autonomy, Gideon Parchomovsky, Alex Stein

All Faculty Scholarship

Personal autonomy is a constitutive element of all rights. It confers upon a rightholder the power to decide whether, and under what circumstances, to exercise her right. Every right infringement thus invariably involves a violation of its holder’s autonomy. The autonomy violation consists of the deprivation of a rightholder of a choice that was rightfully hers — the choice as to how to go about her life.

Harms resulting from the right’s infringement and from the autonomy violation are often readily distinguishable, as is the case when someone uses the property of a rightholder without securing her permission or, worse, …

October 1, 2019 Broadcast: 'The Rohingya Genocide', Rebecca Hamilton

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Accommodating Competition: Harmonizing National Economic Commitments, Jonathan Baker

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This article shows how the norm supporting governmental action to protect and foster competitive markets was harmonized with economic rights to contract and property during the 19th century, and with the development of the social safety net during the 20th century. It explains why the Constitution, as understood today, does not check the erosion of the entrenched but threatened national commitment to assuring competitive markets.

“Nationwide” Injunctions Are Really “Universal” Injunctions And They Are Never Appropriate, Howard Wasserman

Howard M Wasserman

Federal district courts are routinely issuing broad injunctions prohibiting the federal government from enforcing constitutionally invalid laws, regulations, and policies on immigration and immigration-adjacent issues. Styled “nationwide injunctions,” they prohibit enforcement of the challenges laws not only against the named plaintiffs, but against all people and entities everywhere.

The first problem with these injunctions is one of nomenclature. “Nationwide” suggests something about the “where” of the injunction, the geographic scope in which it protects. The better term is “universal injunction,” which captures the real controversy over the “who” of the injunction, as courts purport to protect the universe of all …

Dignity Takings, Dignity Restoration: A Tort Law Perspective, Valerie P. Hans

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

Newsroom: Have We Outgrown Brown? 02-06-2018, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

“Nationwide” Injunctions Are Really “Universal” Injunctions And They Are Never Appropriate, Howard Wasserman

Faculty Publications

Federal district courts are routinely issuing broad injunctions prohibiting the federal government from enforcing constitutionally invalid laws, regulations, and policies on immigration and immigration-adjacent issues. Styled “nationwide injunctions,” they prohibit enforcement of the challenges laws not only against the named plaintiffs, but against all people and entities everywhere.

The first problem with these injunctions is one of nomenclature. “Nationwide” suggests something about the “where” of the injunction, the geographic scope in which it protects. The better term is “universal injunction,” which captures the real controversy over the “who” of the injunction, as courts purport to protect the universe of all …

Statutory Damages And Standing After Spokeo V. Robins, Richard L. Heppner Jr.

Law Faculty Publications

In Spokeo v. Robins, the U.S. Supreme Court held that courts may no longer infer the existence of an injury in fact—and thus constitutional standing—from a statute’s use of a particular remedy, such as a statutory or liquidated damages provision. But Spokeo also directed courts to consider whether Congress intended to identify an intangible harm and elevate it to the status of a “concrete” injury in fact when deciding standing questions. This article argues that courts can and should continue to pay close attention to the structure and language of statutory remedial provisions in making that assessment. The article proposes …