Nearly 90 percent of the opinions issued by the federal courts of appeal are unpublished and lack precedential effect, and where these cases lay out new legal rules, this phenomenon cannot be reconciled with the Supreme Court’s settled retroactivity jurisprudence. This article highlights this inconsistency and proposes use of the “new rule” construct as a mechanism for differentiating those...
The article focuses in on the experiences of policing faced by Somali Muslims within a larger Black Muslim community. It examines how federal “Countering Violent Extremism” program has been used against this group of Black Muslims and puts it in the broader historical context of Black Muslims in America, revealing inherent racialization of religion, and the antiblack origins of American...
This comment explores questions regarding declarations of innocence that surface in light of the Pimentel-Lopez opinion holding that the sentencing court is bound by the jury’s factual determination within the special verdict. The comment concludes that the optimal use of declarations of innocence should be limited to determination of specific offense characteristics and adjustments under the...
In response to Professor Rutschman’s questioning of the patent system’s preparedness to address the unique challenges posed by outbreak diseases like Ebola and Zika, Professor Lichtman offers a solution of his own: to recognize that, in this setting, government funding, prize systems, and other innovation-producing mechanisms should fully displace the normally attractive market-based patent...
The article addresses the role of IP in the development of vaccines for outbreak diseases like Ebola and Zika. It concludes that IP inefficiencies result in a lack of “IP preparedness” that weakens our ability to respond to outbreaks. The author proposes a new legal mechanism: a dormant license, agreed upon in the pre-outbreak period, that would become active once a public health emergency is...
The article examines crime-free housing ordinances (CHOs) as an outgrowth of the federal one-strike policy and argues that they are significantly more harmful to tenants than the one-strike policy has been. The article suggests that, before adopting or enforcing CHOs, municipalities should consider legal problems raised by CHOs in conjunction with the crime problem that they purport to address.
This Article supplements stagnating class action debates and the traditional law and economics account of class action law with behavioral psychology. It draws on a litany of behavioral tendencies, biases, and pathologies and considers their application to class action practice and Rule 23.
The article argues that the ambient focus of the Clean Air Act, which requires the monitoring and regulation of large air districts, masks pollution hotspots with poor microclimate. States and the Environmental Protection Agency may be able to address microclimate pollution using existing statutory authority by electrifying the transportation fleet, which reduces not only hotspot pollution, but...
Over the past decade, a number of well-publicized data leaks have revealed the secret offshore holdings of high-net-worth individuals and multinational taxpayers, leading to a sea change in cross-border tax enforcement. This article examines the important benefits and risks of tax leaks and provides suggestions and cautions for leak-driven lawmaking.
In an earlier work entitled Regulating Cybersecurity, Sales argued that cyber defense should be understood not just as a matter for law enforcement and the armed forces, but as a regulatory problem in need of regulatory solutions. This companion article proposes a series of market-based responses to complement those governmental responses.
In defining Fourth Amendment rights, the Supreme Court has repeatedly turned to the archetype of an idealized citizen—the “rugged individual” who will unflinchingly stand up to government authority. This article examines the Court’s use of the archetype, demonstrating how instead of promoting dignity and autonomy, it created an unrealistic threshold for exercising one’s Fourth Amendment rights.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) prohibits schools from providing financial aid to student-athletes beyond the costs of attending school and forbids student-athletes to receive compensation related to their athletic ability from third parties. This comment argues courts have failed to properly scrutinize this rule and it should be rejected because such compensation restrictions...
The inheritance system is beset by formalism. Probate courts reject wills on technicalities and refuse to correct obvious drafting mistakes by testators. These doctrines lead to donative errors, or outcomes that are not in line with the decedent’s donative intent. This article argues that formalistic wills doctrines should be reformed because they harm those who attempt to engage in estate...
In private mergers and acquisitions deals, parties enter into non-binding preliminary agreements, such as term sheets and letters of intent. These agreements are not contracts—rather, they are signposts for when enough momentum has accumulated that a deal is likely to go forward. Using interviews with deal lawyers, this article provides a rich and layered account of how sophisticated parties use...