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Patent Pilot Program Perspectives: Patent Litigation In The Northern District Of Illinois, 17 J. Marshall Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 348 (2018)

UIC Review of Intellectual Property Law

A Patent Pilot Program, or PPP, is geared towards giving designated judges in various districts more experience with patent cases. The Volume 17 RIPL Executive Board interviewed several participating judges in the Northern District of Illinois’ PPP.

This note is comprised of interviews with Judge Thomas M. Durkin, Judge Matthew F. Kennelly, and Judge Rebecca R. Pallmeyer of the United States District Court, Northern District of Illinois; taken over the course of May and June of 2017 by the Volume 17 RIPL Board members Kaylee Willis and Benjamin Lockyer. Its contents compile a uniform effort by both the judges interviewed …

The Supreme Court: A Help Or A Hindrance To The Federal Circuit's Mission?, 17 J. Marshall Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 298 (2018), Donald Dunner

UIC Review of Intellectual Property Law

Before the establishment of the Federal Circuit, the system of patent enforcement was deeply flawed, with the circuit courts then responsible for reviewing district court patent decisions harboring widely varying attitudinal views in the interpretation of the patent law. Suggestions for solving the problem through a single specialized appellate patent court were consistently rejected due to general hostility to specialized courts. The formation of the Federal Circuit in 1982 initially appeared to solve the problem in providing uniform and predictable rules governing the enforcement of patents, an essential aspect of the court’s mission. The Supreme Court did not provide any …

Artis V. District Of Columbia—What Did The Court Actually Say?, Doron M. Kalir

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

On January 22, 2018, the Supreme Court issued Artis v. District of Columbia. A true "clash of the titans," this 5-4 decision featured colorful comments on both sides, claims of "absurdities," uncited use of Alice in Wonderland vocabulary ("curiouser," anyone?), and an especially harsh accusation by the dissent that "we’ve wandered so far from the idea of a federal government of limited and enumerated powers that we’ve begun to lose sight of what it looked like in the first place."

One might assume that the issue in question was a complex constitutional provision, or a dense, technical federal code …

Reining In A 'Renegade' Court: Tc Heartland And The Eastern District Of Texas, Jonas Anderson

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

In TC Heartland v. Kraft Foods Group Brands, the Supreme Court tightened the venue requirement for patent cases, making it more difficult for a plaintiff to demonstrate that a district court has venue over a defendant. Many commentators, however, view TC Heartland as merely a “reshuffling” of the district courts that receive patent cases. Whereas before the case, a large percentage of patent cases were filed in the Eastern District of Texas, now, after TC Heartland, various other U.S. district courts (principally, the District of Delaware) have experienced an increase in patent infringement filings. Some commentators are unconvinced that this …

Degrees Of Deference: Applying Vs. Adopting Another Sovereign's Law, Kevin M. Clermont

Cornell Law Review

Familiar to all Federal Courts enthusiasts is the Erie distinction between federal actors’ obligatory application of state law and their voluntary adoption of state law as federal law. This Article’s thesis is that this significant distinction holds in all other situations where a sovereign employs another’s law: not only in the analogous reverse-Erie resolution of federal law’s constraint on state actors, but also in the horizontal choice-of-law setting and even in connection with the status of international law. Application and adoption are different avenues by which to approach a pluralist world. Application involves the recognition of the other sovereign’s law …

Trump, The Court, And Constitutional Law, Erwin Chemerinsky

Indiana Law Journal

In this Essay, I want to offer initial thoughts on what the Trump presidency is likely to mean for constitutional law. First, I want to focus on the lost opportunity: what might have happened had Hillary Clinton replaced Scalia and filled other vacancies on the Court. Second, I want to focus on the reality of what we are likely to see as a result of Neil Gorsuch replacing Antonin Scalia and of other possible vacancies being filled by President Trump. Finally, I want to discuss how progressives should react to this and to the foreseeable future of constitutional law. These, …

The "Lower" Federal Courts: Judging In A Time Of Trump, Nancy Gertner

Indiana Law Journal

To be sure, I offer only preliminary thoughts in this Essay. The Trump presidency is young. There are multiple challenges to multiple executive decisions and orders in courts across the country. A full treatment would take the reader into the robust literature on judicial decision making about context and pragmatism, with historical comparisons to other epochs where the challenges were comparable, even to empirical analyses of judging at different periods of time. I start with judging in “ordinary” times, the period during which I served. I then describe the challenges of judging in a time of Trump, and I conclude …

Crowdsourcing & Data Analytics: The New Settlement Tools, Bernard Chao, Christopher Robertson, David Yokum

Faculty Scholarship

By protecting the right to a jury, the State and Federal Constitutions recognize the fundamental value of having civil and criminal disputes resolved by laypersons. However actual trials are relatively rare, in part because parties seek to avoid the risks and cost of trials, and courts seek to clear dockets efficiently. Even as settlement may be desirable, it is sometimes difficult to resolve a dispute. Parties naturally view their cases from different perspectives, and these perspectives often cause both sides to be overly optimistic, seeking unreasonably large or unreasonably small resolutions.
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Heretical Archives: Heterotopic Institutions And Fictive Records, Peter Goodrich

Articles

No abstract provided.

Spousal Support In Quebec: Resisting The Spousal Support Advisory Guidelines, Jodi Lazare

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Since 2005, the Spousal Support Advisory Guidelines have become an essential part of the practice of family law throughout Canada. Aimed at structuring discretionary spousal support determinations under the Divorce Act and increasing the fairness of awards, the Advisory Guidelines have been embraced by appellate courts across jurisdictions. Quebec is the exception to that trend. Despite that marriage and divorce fall under federal jurisdiction, Quebec courts resist the application of these non-binding rules, written by two family law scholars. This article responds to Quebec's resistance to the Advisory Guidelines and suggests that concerns about them may be misplaced. By reviewing …

Extradition And Trial Delays: Recent Developments (And Lessons?) From Canada, Laura Ellyson

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Extradition – the formal rendition of criminal fugitives between states – is well-known to be a time-consuming process that often has impacts, minor or major, on the ability of states to complete prosecution in a timely manner. Thus, the extradition process can sometimes be at odds with the right to trial within a reasonable time, which is part of the overall package of fair trial rights enshrined in international human rights law. In Canada, this right is implemented by paragraph 11(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In recent years Canadian courts have developed a series of principles …

A Critique Of Canadian Jurisprudence On The Therapeutic Privilege Exception To Informed Consent, Michael Hadskis

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The Supreme Court of Canada’s landmark decisions in Hopp v Lepp and Reibl v Hughes furnished a general analytical framework for informed consent actions that remains fully intact today. This article sets its gaze on a specific aspect of the framework, dubbed “therapeutic privilege,” that permits physicians to deviate from their general duty to disclose material, treatment-related risks to competent patients. Specifically, the privilege allows information about material risks to be withheld or generalized if physicians believe their patients are “unable to cope” with receiving such information. It is argued that the Supreme Court’s terse and vaguely-articulated exception to truth …

Informal Justice: An Examination Of Why Ontarians Do Not Seek Legal Advice, Matthew Dylag

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Modern access to justice scholarship takes as its premise that the focus of legal reform must be on the legal problems experienced in the day-to-day lives of the public; not just those problems that are brought before the formal court system for adjudication. In 2014, the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice [CFCJ] completed a comprehensive survey for the Cost of Justice Project inquiring into the civil legal needs among ordinary Canadians. One of the many conclusions that can be drawn from the survey data is the finding that most Ontarians do not go to lawyers in order to resolve their …

Courts In Federal Countries: Federalists Or Unitarists?, Hannah Steeves

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This book is the product of a comparative research project completed by the Forum of Federations and supported by the Government of Quebec. The Forum of Federations has the goal of linking academic research to real world practices and is supported and funded by international partners. Courts in Federal Countries: Federalists or Unitarists? contributes directly to this goal by providing a well-rounded, highly informed, comparative approach to the topic of the structural issues of federalism. This text is the first of a larger, forthcoming, seven volume series on federalism to be developed by the Forum of Federations.

More Than 'Revenge Porn' Civil Remedies For The Nonconsensual Distribution Of Intimate Images, Suzie Dunn, Alessia Petricone-Westwood

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The non-consensual distribution of intimate images, or “revenge porn” as it is colloquially known, is a growing phenomenon in the digital era that has devastated the lives of countless individuals. Targets of this conduct have suffered both short and long-lasting harms that have had serious repercussions on their mental health, physical well-being, and safety. Once their intimate images have been shared without their consent, they can face damage to their personal and professional reputations. There are reported cases where individuals have lost their jobs, have had to relocate, were stalked and harassed, experienced some form of emotional trauma, and had …

The Curious Origin Of Texas Pleading, Justice Jason Boatright

SMU Law Review

For 150 years, judges and legal scholars said that the Texas pleading system came from Spain. They explained that Mexico used a simple Spanish pleading system that English-speaking immigrants to Mexican Texas liked more than the complicated procedure they had known in the United States. After separating from Mexico, the story goes, Texas retained the Spanish system.

But that story is probably wrong. The Republic of Texas enacted its first pleading law in 1836. It does not look like Spanish pleading laws; it looks like an 1824 law written by Stephen F. Austin for his colony’s alcalde courts. Austin’s law …

Comparative Approaches To Constitutional History, Jamal Greene, Yvonne Tew

Faculty Scholarship

An historical approach to constitutional interpretation draws upon original intentions or understandings of the meaning or application of a constitutional provision. Comparing the ways in which courts in different jurisdictions use history is a complex exercise. In recent years, academic and judicial discussion of “originalism” has obscured both the global prevalence of resorting to historical materials as an interpretive resource and the impressive diversity of approaches courts may take to deploying those materials. This chapter seeks, in Section B, to develop a basic taxonomy of historical approaches. Section C explores in greater depth the practices of eight jurisdictions with constitutional …

Curing The Federal Court Vacancy Crisis, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

The federal judiciary has experienced a vacancy crisis, which has intensified over President Donald Trump's tenure when judicial openings significantly increased from the 105 vacancies at his inauguration. Despite these concerns, analysts hail court selection as Trump's paramount success. This Article canvasses the rise and expansion of the crisis and scrutinizes the practices which Trump and the I 15th Senate instituted, as Republican concentration on quickly appointing many conservative appeals court judges resulted in departures from longstanding precedents and undermined the presidential discharge of constitutional responsibilities to nominate and confirm impressive jurists as well as senatorial duties to advise and …

Could Official Climate Denial Revive The Common Law As A Regulatory Backstop?, Mark P. Nevitt, Robert V. Percival

Faculty Articles

This Article makes two core arguments. First, it maintains that the common law of nuisance remains an essential backstop when existing regulatory authorities fail to address significant environmental problems. Second, reconnecting nuisance law to its historical roots, the Article maintains that common law litigation has served as an effective prod to help spur the development and implementation of new pollution control technology and to stimulate regulatory action to require its use, rather than serving as a vehicle for the judiciary to impose its own solutions for environmental problems.

This Article proceeds in four parts. Part I reviews the history of …

Diversity, Tenure, And Dissent, Joanna Shepherd

Faculty Articles

Although academics have long recognized that institutions such as opinion-assignment procedures and voting order might influence the propensity to dissent, empirical studies have failed to consider the impact of collegiality and personal relationships on dissent rates. Thus, in this short Essay, I empirically test whether some of the judges’ assertions are consistent with the data. I test whether various measures of diversity are associated with dissent rates in state supreme courts. I find that diversity in many areas—gender, race, age, religion, home state, and political affiliation—is associated with higher levels of dissent. In contrast, diversity in the jobs that judges …