Pro bono has undergone a profound transformation. Whereas for most of American legal history, pro bono was ad hoc and individualized, dispensed informally as professional charity, within the last twenty-five years it has become centralized and streamlined, distributed through an elaborate institutional structure by private lawyers acting out of professional duty. Pro bono has thus emerged as the...
Twenty-five years have passed since courts first adopted “market share liability,” a theory under which a plaintiff unable to identify the manufacturer of the product that caused his injury can recover on a proportional basis from each manufacturer that might have made the product. Courts have severely restricted the reach of this potentially powerful theory by insisting that it can apply only to...
A debate continues to rage in the academy and on the U.S. Supreme Court about the propriety of originalism as a methodology of constitutional interpretation. In federalism cases both the majority and the dissent on the current Court appear to have embraced originalism, yet their agreement ends there: The Court has consistently divided 5–4 in such cases. What explains the disagreement among...
In this Comment, the author considers the popular critique of the Great Case of Johnson v. M’Intosh as racist myth-making. After unpacking Johnson’s uncomfortable marriage of conquest and discovery, Seifert juxtaposes the opinion with Virgil’s Aeneid, western literature’s most famous, and famously ambivalent, establishment narrative. This comparison compels a different theoretical approach to the...
Courts have regularly relied on the “special characteristics” of radio and television broadcasts to justify government regulation of the content in those media that has never been allowed for the print media. However, the convergence of media delivery platforms (print, broadcast, telephone, cable, and Internet) has put a severe strain on the viability of this medium-centric model for speech...
In the administration of a state or federal probation system, a criminal defendant who is placed on probation often signs a "consent-to-search" agreement. This agreement contains a clause in which the probationer consents to suspicionless, warrantless searches of his person and residence for the duration of his probationary term. Searches pursuant to these agreements have generated a number of...
Thirty-five years ago, in the context of a church-property dispute, Justice William Brennan observed that government interpretation of religious doctrine and judicial intervention in religious disputes are undesirable because, when "civil courts undertake to resolve [doctrinal] controversies .... the hazards are ever present of inhibiting the free development of religious doctrine and of...
Since the tragedy of September 11, the federal government's actions have resulted in a serious erosion of liberties. In expanding authority for electronic eavesdropping and in claiming unprecedented authority to detain individuals without due process, the government has taken powers that previously have been limited to foreign intelligence gathering and activities in foreign countries and has...
In 1999, California enacted legislation allowing same-sex couples to register with the State as domestic partners. Although the new legal status initially entailed few legal rights or obligations, incremental 2001 legislation granted some significant legal rights of marriage to registered domestic partners. In 2003, the legislature acted again, extending almost all the state law incidents of...
Ever since the prison reform movement ended in the early 1980s, it has become increasingly difficult for inmates to challenge their conditions of confinement under the Eighth Amendment. Supreme Court rulings, statutes, and lower courts' conservative applications of precedent have worked together to create a culture of deference that constrains federal courts from intervening in prison affairs. At...
Over the past few decades, the number of Americans living in condominiums, master-planned communities, and other types of Common Interest Communities (CICs) has climbed to fifty million. In many of these communities, gates, leafleting bans, or no-solicitation rules prohibit solicitors from speaking or distributing written information to residents. In some, CIC governing boards reserve the...
One of the central tenets of fiscal federalism is that redistributive policies should be undertaken by the most central level of government rather than state or local governments. This Article highlights and critically examines the ways in which the current federal deduction for state and local taxes (SALT) frustrates this goal. The federal SALT deduction, as presently designed, encourages state...
The UCLA Law Review has been proud to present Articles based on the annual tribute to Professor Melville B. Nimmer that takes place at the UCLA School of Law. The Review continues that tradition by publishing an Article by this year's presenter, Professor David Nimmer. In the form of a tribute to the author's father, the Article evaluates each provision of the Copyright Act of 1976 and each...
In 2001, it was revealed that Enron and other American corporate giants had engaged in misleading and corrupt practices. The result was that investors lost hundreds of billions of dollars, and more importantly, their faith in corporate governance and the stock markets. As a result of this crisis, Congress, the SEC, and the major stock exchanges proposed new securities laws and regulations. There...