Authoruclalaw

Under the search incident to arrest doctrine, police may search the entire body and immediate grabbing space of an arrestee, including the contents of all containers, without any probable cause. Because almost all traffic infractions are arrestable offenses, police have enormous opportunity to conduct such searches incident to arrest. In the near future, these already high-stakes searches will...

This Article critically examines the applicability of law and economics, or wealth maximization theory, to contract law by examining this theory from within the consequentialist framework of utilitarianism. Roughly speaking, wealth maximization theory is a consequentialist theory of justice holding that those actions that increase wealth are just and should be allowed, whereas those actions that...

Congress and more than a dozen states have statutorily expanded the scope of religious liberty beyond that provided for in the U.S. Constitution. These Religious Freedom Restoration Acts (RFRAs), modeled closely after the federal progenitor, afford heightened protection to religious objectors by mandating that laws substantially burdening religious exercise pass strict scrutiny. In this Comment...

The issue of compensating the wrongfully convicted has recently been thrust into public awareness. Over one hundred and fifty people have been exonerated through DNA evidence since 2000. Only half have received compensation for their time behind bars. While twenty-two states have enacted statutes that provide a direct legal right to compensation, these statutes require victims of wrongful...

A bedrock principle of patent law is that an applicant must sufficiently disclose the invention in exchange for the right to exclude. Essential to the disclosure requirement is enablement, which compels a patent applicant to enable a person having ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA) to make and use the full scope of the claimed invention without undue experimentation. Enablement may be...

Our almost forty-year experience with landmark federal environmental statutes, demonstrates unequivocally that implementing grand and noble environmental goals is an arduous and difficult experience. California is now embarking on a similar project: implementing the country’s most ambitious greenhouse gas emissions limitations, including rolling back the state’s emissions to 1990 levels by 2020...

Standing doctrine is well-known to be a quagmire, plagued by inconsistent results and judicial dissension. Worse, leading scholars have cast doubt on its historical pedigree and conceptual underpinnings. Yet, there seems to be little prospect for a radical change in direction. This Article proposes a more modest doctrinal shift. The proposed approach is much simpler than the current test, but...

Climate change will increase risks significantly in many areas of society, and also will make many risks more uncertain and harder to measure. If our society is to survive climate change without significant human costs, we must develop robust institutions and practices to manage these risks. The insurance industry is our society’s primary financial risk manager and needs to play a leading role in...