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Articles 241 - 270 of 382

Full-Text Articles in Legal Writing and Research

Symposium Panel: Bringing Blurred Lines Into Focus, Suzanne Kessler, Ramona Desalvo, Sara Ellis Jan 2016

Symposium Panel: Bringing Blurred Lines Into Focus, Suzanne Kessler, Ramona Desalvo, Sara Ellis

Belmont Law Review

Belmont Law Review Symposium: Bringing Blurred Lines into Focus, October 2015.


Modern Legal History 2015: The Road To Obergefell, Abby Rubenfeld, Regina Lambert Jan 2016

Modern Legal History 2015: The Road To Obergefell, Abby Rubenfeld, Regina Lambert

Belmont Law Review

We’re going to have the opportunity to hear about the road to Tanco v. Haslam, one of the most important individual rights constitutional decisions from the United States Supreme Court in the last half-century. We’ll have an opportunity to gain from Ms. Rubenfeld’s and Ms. Lambert’s perspectives and experiences and hear their stories, Belmont Law Review Modern Legal History Symposium, November 20, 2015.


Social Media And “Flash-Infringement”: Live Music Culture And Dying Ip Protection, Michael M. Epstein Jan 2016

Social Media And “Flash-Infringement”: Live Music Culture And Dying Ip Protection, Michael M. Epstein

Belmont Law Review

This article interrogates issues of music intellectual property rights infringement at live performances. I am especially interested in music infringement at live concerts and DJ-driven mash-up parties, and the use of technologies to transfer protected content by smartphone — or remote storage device — at or near the performance site. The covalent forces of social media, including the use of smartphone apps such as Meerkat and Periscope, and flash mob culture have created a perhaps unstoppable threat to copyright and other intellectual property rights — a phenomenon that I define in this article as “flash infringement.” In a flash infringement …


Symposium Presentation: Nsai Director Bart Herbison On Copyright Reform For Songwriters, Bart Herbison Jan 2016

Symposium Presentation: Nsai Director Bart Herbison On Copyright Reform For Songwriters, Bart Herbison

Belmont Law Review

A transcript of a presentation at the Belmont University College of Law Symposium, "Entertainment Law and Music Business in Transition."


Salvaging General Jurisdiction: Satisfying Daimler And Proposing A New Framework, B. Travis Brown Jan 2016

Salvaging General Jurisdiction: Satisfying Daimler And Proposing A New Framework, B. Travis Brown

Belmont Law Review

General jurisdiction is slowly being eroded. What was once a well-trodden path used to hale corporate defendants into the courthouse is now increasingly barred or shut. In its most recent general jurisdiction opinion, Daimler AG v. Bauman, the U.S. Supreme Court continued its trend towards divesting general jurisdiction of its utility. This is a mistake. The 21st century’s economy is increasingly complex, and general jurisdiction must evolve with this complexity. Failing to do so allows intricate corporate structures to insulate corporate defendants from the jurisdiction of U.S courts. Although the theory of personal jurisdiction has come a long way since …


The Burden Of The Bargain: Revisiting The Predicament Of Meshing Workers’ Compensation And Tort Law In Light Of Widespread Acceptance Of Aligning Liability With Fault, Margaret Hearn Teichmann Jan 2016

The Burden Of The Bargain: Revisiting The Predicament Of Meshing Workers’ Compensation And Tort Law In Light Of Widespread Acceptance Of Aligning Liability With Fault, Margaret Hearn Teichmann

Belmont Law Review

Most courts, legislatures, and scholars agree that the widespread movement over the past half-century toward aligning liability with fault has positively influenced tort law; however, the change has not come without difficulty. Courts and legislatures have struggled to determine how these developing doctrines affect apportionment of damages in various contexts. This note addresses the issue of how damages should be apportioned among multiple tortfeasors when an injured plaintiff has suffered a workplace injury and the employer or a coworker is partially to blame.


The Attorney–Client Privilege And Former Employees: History, Principle, And Precedent, Heath Henley Jan 2016

The Attorney–Client Privilege And Former Employees: History, Principle, And Precedent, Heath Henley

Belmont Law Review

When does attorney-client privilege protect communications between an attorney and her client’s former employee? Unfortunately, there is no simple answer to this question. In federal courts, privilege over communications with current employees is generally governed by the subject-matter test. Under this legal doctrine, communication is privileged when it regards subject matter within the scope of the employee’s position. The rationale for the doctrine is that it is often the lower level employees who will have the information that an attorney needs. Extending the doctrine to former employees, however, has caused courts to stumble as they have attempted to reconcile evidentiary …


Symposium Address: U.S. Representative Marsha Blackburn On Federal Copyright Reform, Marsha Blackburn Jan 2016

Symposium Address: U.S. Representative Marsha Blackburn On Federal Copyright Reform, Marsha Blackburn

Belmont Law Review

A transcript of the address at the Belmont University College of Law Symposium, "Entertainment Law and Music Business in Transition."


Judicial Perspective Panel 2015, Jeffrey S. Bivins, Holly Kirby Jan 2016

Judicial Perspective Panel 2015, Jeffrey S. Bivins, Holly Kirby

Belmont Law Review

A transcript of the Judicial Perspective Panel Event at Belmont University College of Law Symposium.


Nationwide Permit 13, Shoreline Armoring, And The Important Role Of The U.S. Army Corps Of Engineers In Coastal Climate Change Adaptation, Travis Brandon Jan 2016

Nationwide Permit 13, Shoreline Armoring, And The Important Role Of The U.S. Army Corps Of Engineers In Coastal Climate Change Adaptation, Travis Brandon

Law Faculty Scholarship

The ongoing armoring of the nation’s coastlines with seawalls and bulkheads causes the inevitable destruction of miles of coastal wetlands. Armoring increases the rate of shoreline erosion and blocks the long term migration of wetlands inland, a process that will be necessary for coastal wetlands to survive sea level rise. Coastal armoring also reduces the habitat available to coastal species, and blocks access to the upper reaches of the beach for sea turtles and other species that depend on the beach for nesting. And yet, despite these well established and significant environmental harms, the United States Army Corps of Engineers …


Local, State, And Federal Responses To Stalking: Are Anti-Stalking Laws Effective?, Tracey Carter Jan 2016

Local, State, And Federal Responses To Stalking: Are Anti-Stalking Laws Effective?, Tracey Carter

Law Faculty Scholarship

Statistics show that there are currently 7.5 million victims of stalking in the United States each year. The year 2014 commemorated the 20th Anniversary since passage of the federal Violence Against Women Act of 1994 (“VAWA”) that was signed by President Bill Clinton on September 13, 1994. Passage of this Act marked a key transformation in our nation’s response to the crimes of domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking. The VAWA was established to promote “collaboration among law enforcement, health care providers, nonprofit service groups, community leaders, and the private sector” to combat these crimes. In fact, the VAWA was …


Buckle Up: State Child Safety Restraint Laws Need To Be Strengthened To Better Protect Children, Ellen A. Black Jan 2016

Buckle Up: State Child Safety Restraint Laws Need To Be Strengthened To Better Protect Children, Ellen A. Black

Law Faculty Scholarship

This article reviews the history of child safety restraints and analyzes the relevant health agency recommendations to consider their accretive value in determining whether stronger child safety restraint laws should be enacted. Next, the article reviews the current state of law in the area of child safety restraints and addresses arguments against strengthening the current laws. Lastly, the article concludes that states should enact the proposed model act to ensure that this nation's children ride safely restrained.


State 'Right To Try' Acts: A Good Start, But A Federal Act Is Necessary, Ellen A. Black Jan 2016

State 'Right To Try' Acts: A Good Start, But A Federal Act Is Necessary, Ellen A. Black

Law Faculty Scholarship

In an effort to help terminally ill patients bypass the FDA's arduous, time-consuming approval process and have quicker access to potentially life-saving drugs, states across the country have passed "right to try" acts. These state acts allow a terminally ill patient the right to access an investigational drug that has completed initial safety testing, known as Phase I, but that has not been approved by the FDA. The reasoning behind these acts is that terminally ill patients, with the guidance and counsel of their physicians, should have the choice whether to pursue an unapproved drug, rather than placing their fate …


A Special Delivery: Litigating Pregnancy Accommodation Claims After The Supreme Court’S Decision In Young V. United Parcel Service, Inc., Lynn Ridgeway Zehrt Jan 2016

A Special Delivery: Litigating Pregnancy Accommodation Claims After The Supreme Court’S Decision In Young V. United Parcel Service, Inc., Lynn Ridgeway Zehrt

Law Faculty Scholarship

For over twenty years, the federal courts of appeals have been divided over the extent to which the Pregnancy Discrimination Act requires employers to offer light-duty or other work accommodations to pregnant employees. The division between circuits centers on the interpretation of the language in the second clause of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act mandating that employers “shall” treat pregnant employees “the same... as other persons... similar in their ability or inability to work.” Four circuits interpreted this clause to merely explain the first clause, thereby refusing to enforce any significant obligation on employers to accommodate pregnancy-related physical limitations, even when …


Internal Investigations And The Evolving Fate Of Privilege, Lucian E. Dervan Jan 2016

Internal Investigations And The Evolving Fate Of Privilege, Lucian E. Dervan

Law Faculty Scholarship

In 1981, the United States Supreme Court delivered a landmark ruling in Upjohn Co. v. United States. The decision made clear that the protections afforded by the attorney-client privilege apply to internal corporate investigations. This piece examines the fundamental tenets of Upjohn, discusses some recent challenges to the applicability of privilege to materials gathered during internal investigations, and considers the manner in which the international nature of modern internal investigations adds complexity and uncertainty to the field.


'White Collar Crime': Still Hazy After All These Years, Lucian E. Dervan, Ellen S. Podgor Jan 2016

'White Collar Crime': Still Hazy After All These Years, Lucian E. Dervan, Ellen S. Podgor

Law Faculty Scholarship

With a seventy-five year history of sociological and later legal roots, the term “white collar crime” remains an ambiguous concept that academics, policy makers, law enforcement personnel and defense counsel are unable to adequately define. Yet the use of the term “white collar crime” skews statistical reporting and sentencing for this conduct. This Article provides a historical overview of its linear progression and then a methodology for a new architecture in examining this conduct. It separates statutes into clear-cut white collar offenses and hybrid statutory offenses, and then applies this approach with an empirical study that dissects cases prosecuted under …


Corporate Criminal Liability, Moral Culpability, And The Yates Memo, Lucian E. Dervan Jan 2016

Corporate Criminal Liability, Moral Culpability, And The Yates Memo, Lucian E. Dervan

Law Faculty Scholarship

This article examines the Department of Justice's Principles of Federal Prosecution of Business Organizations (contained in the USAM) and considers the concept of "moral culpability" within them. The article goes on to propose revising the Principles of Prosecution to better focus on questions of "corporate moral culpability" as a means of more accurately assessing corporate criminal liability. In doing so, the article proposes not only changes to the Principles of Prosecution, but changes to the common law respondeat superior test for corporate liability. Finally, the article considering the impact of the Yates Memo (2015) on corporate charging decisions and the …


Fair Play Fair Pay: The Need For A Terrestrial Public Performance Right And General Copyright Reform, Loren E. Mulraine Jan 2016

Fair Play Fair Pay: The Need For A Terrestrial Public Performance Right And General Copyright Reform, Loren E. Mulraine

Law Faculty Scholarship

Copyright is a unique species of the law, tethered in a very tangible way to what is largely an intangible: intellectual property. It should be no surprise then that any collection of laws governing property that can be literally created in a moment out of nothing but the mind of the creator, will ultimately have an eternal struggle keeping pace with that very thing it purports to govern. Historically, copyright law has been relegated to being the horse that is second to cross the finish line at the Kentucky Derby. The horse is indeed world class; however, it is simply …


Symposium Panel: Bringing Blurred Lines Into Focus, Loren E. Mulraine Jan 2016

Symposium Panel: Bringing Blurred Lines Into Focus, Loren E. Mulraine

Law Faculty Scholarship

Belmont Law Review Symposium: Bringing Blurred Lines into Focus, October 2015


Fair Play Fair Pay: The Need For A Terrestrial Public Performance Right And General Copyright Reform, Loren E. Mulraine Jan 2016

Fair Play Fair Pay: The Need For A Terrestrial Public Performance Right And General Copyright Reform, Loren E. Mulraine

Belmont Law Review

Copyright is a unique species of the law, tethered in a very tangible way to what is largely an intangible: intellectual property. It should be no surprise then that any collection of laws governing property that can be literally created in a moment out of nothing but the mind of the creator, will ultimately have an eternal struggle keeping pace with that very thing it purports to govern. Historically, copyright law has been relegated to being the horse that is second to cross the finish line at the Kentucky Derby. The horse is indeed world class; however, it is simply …


Dissecting The Hybrid Rights Exception: Should It Be Expanded Or Rejected?, David L. Hudson Jr., Emily H. Harvey Jan 2016

Dissecting The Hybrid Rights Exception: Should It Be Expanded Or Rejected?, David L. Hudson Jr., Emily H. Harvey

Law Faculty Scholarship

In the early 1960s, the Supreme Court of the United States adopted a high level of protection for religious liberty claims. The Court applied a version of strict scrutiny when evaluating governmental laws or regulations that burdened an individual's free exercise of religion. In 1990, the Supreme Court reversed decades of precedent and fundamentally changed the meaning and application of the Free Exercise Clause. In Employment Division v. Smith, the Court, in an opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia, determined that the Free Exercise Clause does not protect individuals from laws that donot target specific religious beliefs or practices. However, Justice …


First Amendment Right To Receive Information And Ideas Justifies Citizens' Videotaping Of The Police, David L. Hudson Jr. Jan 2016

First Amendment Right To Receive Information And Ideas Justifies Citizens' Videotaping Of The Police, David L. Hudson Jr.

Law Faculty Scholarship

Several courts have declared that members of the public have a First Amendment-protected right to film or videotape the police. At least one legal commentator has posited that this right falls within three of the five textually-based freedoms of the First Amendment - the Speech, Press, and Petition Clauses. This right to receive information and ideas is a "corollary" of the right to speak that triggers the First Amendment interests of not only speakers, but also audiences. This right to receive information and ideas applies in the context of citizens recording the police. The public has a right to know …


Voices On Innocence, Lucian E. Dervan, Richard A. Leo, Meghan J. Ryan, Valena Elizabeth Beety, Gregory M. Gilchrist, William W. Berry Jan 2016

Voices On Innocence, Lucian E. Dervan, Richard A. Leo, Meghan J. Ryan, Valena Elizabeth Beety, Gregory M. Gilchrist, William W. Berry

Law Faculty Scholarship

In the summer of 2015, experts gathered from around the country to sit together and discuss one of the most pressing and important issues facing the American criminal justice system – innocence. Innocence is an issue that pervades various areas of research and influences numerous topics of discussion. What does innocence mean, particularly in a system that differentiates between innocence and acquittal at sentencing? What is the impact of innocence during plea bargaining? How should we respond to growing numbers of exonerations? What forces lead to the incarceration of innocents? Has an innocent person been put to death and, if …


Everything Old Is New Again: Will Narrow Networks Succeed Where Hmos Failed?, Deborah R. Farringer Jan 2016

Everything Old Is New Again: Will Narrow Networks Succeed Where Hmos Failed?, Deborah R. Farringer

Law Faculty Scholarship

As health insurers try to navigate the new limitations set forth under the ACA, including prohibitions on denying individuals with pre-existing conditions and limitations on the rating of patients, insurers are looking towards models that will enable them to control costs without access to their usual tools. What they have developed is not so much a new insurance model, but actually a concept that first arose during the rise of managed care; that is, limited provider networks utilized within health maintenance organizations (“HMOs”). These “new” insurance products, often referred to as narrow networks or high-performance networks, offer beneficiaries a more …


The Meaning Of The Constitution And The Selection Of Judges, Harold See Jan 2016

The Meaning Of The Constitution And The Selection Of Judges, Harold See

Law Faculty Scholarship

In the ongoing debate over the best method for choosing judges, the focus has been on the perceived drawbacks of judicial election without commensurate consideration of either the advantages of popular elections or the disadvantages of the commission system-usually styled the "Missouri plan" or "merit selection." One such consideration is the means of defining the judicial power.


Advising The President: The Growing Scope Of Executive Power To Protect America, Alberto R. Gonzales Apr 2015

Advising The President: The Growing Scope Of Executive Power To Protect America, Alberto R. Gonzales

Law Faculty Scholarship

The scope of power that the executive branch has to act independently of the other government branches in the national security arena is one of the most difficult questions to answer in constitutional law. Congress has passed a number of statutes empowering the President to take actions necessary to protect our national security, but on relatively few occasions has Congress authorized the President to use force through declarations of war. As Counsel to the President, my job was to work with Attorney General John Ashcroft and other senior lawyers in the Bush Administration to advise the President on the limits …


For Patients And Profits: Ethical Astuteness And The Business Of Dialysis, Joshua E. Perry Jan 2015

For Patients And Profits: Ethical Astuteness And The Business Of Dialysis, Joshua E. Perry

Belmont Law Review

The view of ethical astuteness introduced and outlined in this paper aims to add value for a firm in the healthcare business – with a particular application to a for-profit organization providing dialysis services – by addressing two chief concerns: A.) The competing priorities between the patient’s interest in the healthcare encounter and the investor’s interest in generating a return on profits; and B.) The vulnerabilities of a financially-conflicted, for-profit healthcare provider to an allegation of medical malpractice.


The Great Tactician: The Chief Justice, Obamacare, And Walking The Tightrope Of Partisan Politics, Katherine H. Blankenship Jan 2015

The Great Tactician: The Chief Justice, Obamacare, And Walking The Tightrope Of Partisan Politics, Katherine H. Blankenship

Belmont Law Review

This note argues that true judicial restraint is a fictional impossibility. Any practice of judicial restraint is at the very same moment an exercise of judicial activism because a judge cannot approach the law from a truly objective, mechanical position. Every judicial opinion is influenced not only by the political and moral vantage point of the judge, but also the judge’s policy and societal concerns. This thesis is illustrated by a case study of National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, and, specifically, Chief Justice Roberts’s opinion regarding the individual mandate and the Medicaid provision of the Affordable Care Act. …


Our Patient System And Health Care Information Technology: Valuable Incentive Or Impediment To Innovation?, Gary Montle, Ryan Levy, Margaret Rowland Jan 2015

Our Patient System And Health Care Information Technology: Valuable Incentive Or Impediment To Innovation?, Gary Montle, Ryan Levy, Margaret Rowland

Belmont Law Review

Patentable inventions have often been transformative, but the pace of such innovation has changed exponentially in the last thirty years. The patent law still seeks to reward ingenuity and nowhere should this maxim be truer than in the area of health information technology. But the pace and scope of changes in that arena have made rewarding that ingenuity with a patent increasingly difficult. The courts have struggled to apply patent laws to technology that is new and novel to a fault. This Article seeks to address how it is possible to continue to reward ingenuity in a field where progress …


Gestational Surrogacy Contracts In Tennessee: Freedom Of Contract Concerns & Feminist Principles In The Balance, Jennifer S. White Jan 2015

Gestational Surrogacy Contracts In Tennessee: Freedom Of Contract Concerns & Feminist Principles In The Balance, Jennifer S. White

Belmont Law Review

Drawing upon feminist theory and principles of freedom of contract, this Note proposes a new statutory framework for addressing surrogacy in the state of Tennessee. Part I provides a balanced discussion of why couples choose surrogacy as well as varying types of surrogacy available to individuals. Part II explores the judicial and legislative responses toward surrogacy contracts in the United States and discusses significant surrogacy litigation that continues to shape the public policy arguments surrounding this issue. Part III provides background on Tennessee’s approach to the right to privacy as well as recent surrogacy case law and legislation. Part IV …