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This Article makes the case for the fundamental right of U.S. citizens to leave their country and return home again. Surprisingly, Americans do not enjoy such a fundamental right. Under current U.S. Supreme Court precedents, the right to travel abroad is merely an aspect of liberty that may be restricted within the bounds of due process. The controversial No Fly List is one such result. Anyone...

Several state legislatures now require that before a woman may consent to an abortion, she must first undergo an ultrasound and be offered the image of her fetus. The justification is that without an ultrasound, her consent will not be fully informed. Such legislation, the latest move in abortion regulation, supposes that a woman who sees the image will be less likely to abort. This Article...

In a groundbreaking deal closed in May 2007, Oaktree Capital Management LLC, a leading private U.S. hedge fund advisory firm, sold a 15 percent equity stake in itself for $880 million. The deal is groundbreaking because it was not structured as an initial public offering (IPO), traditionally the only option for an equity offering of this size by a private company. Instead, it was structured as a...

Much scholarly work has been written detailing the shift away from the original congressional intent behind the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), starting with the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Sutton v. United Air Lines. While the U.S. Congress intended the protections under the ADA to be broad, courts have interpreted the act very narrowly, denying protections for many whom...

Should bias crime perpetrators who, for personal gain, intentionally select victims from social groups that they perceive to be more vulnerable be punished similarly to typical bias crime perpetrators who are motivated by group hatred? In this Comment, I apply unfair advantage theory to argue that enhancing the punishment of opportunistic bias crimes is proper because of the perpetrators’...

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 distinguished scholars such as Lawrence Lessig, David Nimmer, Robert Post, Mark Rose, Kathleen Sullivan, and Jonathan Varat. The UCLA Law...

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...