It is a remarkable fact that rhetorically the state is gendered male, while state-on-state violence is continually represented as sexual violence. This Article applies the insights of queer theory to examine this rhetoric of sexual violation. More specifically, it analyzes the injury of colonialism as a kind of homoerotic violation of non-Western states’ (would-be) sovereignty. It does so by...
In a 1999 assessment, New York Times journalists Dudley Clendinen and Adam Nagourney stated that “it seems likely that the movement for gay identity and gay rights has come further and faster, in terms of change, than any other that has gone before it in this nation.” The evidence supports their claim. The Encyclopedia of Associations, for instance, shows that the number of organizations devoted...
Each year, the UCLA School of Law hosts the Melville B. Nimmer Memorial Lecture. Since 1986, the lecture series has served as a forum for leading scholars in the fields of copyright and First Amendment law. In recent years, the lecture has been presented by many distinguished scholars. The UCLA Law Review has published these lectures and proudly continues that tradition by publishing an Article...
In the past decade, debate on the fairness of pre-dispute agreements to arbitrate has intensified. Recently, Congress has joined the chorus of opposition to these agreements and is attempting to outlaw them via the proposed Arbitration Fairness Act (AFA). Both proponents and critics of the AFA, including certain members of Congress, take hard-line stances on the perceived ills or benefits of...
Intellectual property law exists because exclusive private rights provide an incentive to innovate. This is the traditional upside of intellectual property: the production of valuable information goods that society would otherwise never see. In turn, too much intellectual property protection is typically viewed as counterproductive, as too much control in the hands of private rightsholders...
Since 1970, mixed-income (inclusionary) housing projects have proliferated in the United States. In a community of this sort, only some of the dwelling units, perhaps as few as 10 to 25 percent, are targeted for delivery of housing assistance. Eligible households that successively occupy these particular units pay below-market rents, while the occupants of the other units do not. This article...
Judicial and scholarly descriptions of the deterrent power of civil rights damages actions rely heavily on the assumption that government officials have enough information about lawsuits alleging misconduct by police officers that they can weigh the costs and benefits of maintaining the status quo. But no one has looked to see if that assumption is true. Drawing on extensive documentary evidence...
For decades, courts and commentators have debated the normative implications of contract procedure. Conservatives argue that mandatory arbitration clauses reduce the burden on the judicial system and that class arbitration waivers, choice-of-law clauses, and jury trial waivers allow businesses to pass litigation savings to their consumers in the form of lower prices. In response, liberals object...
This Article examines more than three hundred promissory estoppel cases decided between January 1, 1981, when the Restatement (Second) of Contracts was published, and January 1, 2008, when research for this project began, to explore the manner in which courts conceptualize, decide, and enforce promissory estoppel claims under § 90 of the Restatement (Second) of Contracts. Specifically, because...
This Article considers a question rarely addressed: What is the role of the lawyer in a manifestly unjust procedural regime? Many excellent studies have considered the role of the judge in unjust regimes, but the lawyer’s role has been largely ignored. The analysis in this Article draws on two case studies: that of lawyers representing civil rights leaders during protests in Alabama in the 1950s...
In the darkest depths of a corporate merger agreement lies the MAC clause, a term that permits the acquirer to walk away from a transaction if, between signing and closing, the target company experiences a “Material Adverse Change.” Multibillion-dollar deals rise or fall based on the anticipated interpretation of a MAC clause, and invocation of the clause in a sensitive transaction could trigger...
This Comment addresses whether the First Amendment restricts a litigant’s or the government’s ability to compel disclosure of information about protected First Amendment activities. In evaluating whether such speech-related information may be subpoenaed, courts have struggled to balance a speaker’s right to anonymous or confidential speech with the evidentiary needs of prosecutors or plaintiffs...