Unpacking Patent Assertion Entities (PAEs)
By Christopher A. Cotropia, Jay P. Kesan, & David L. Schwartz. Full text here. There is tremendous interest in a certain type of patent litigant—the often-called patent assertion entity (PAE), non-practicing entity (NPE), patent monetization entity (PME), or simply patent troll. These PAEs are the subject of a recent Government Accountability Office report, a possible Federal…
Continue ReadingDeath Delayed Is Retribution Denied
By Russell L. Christopher. Full text here. Does death row incarceration for upwards of thirty years or more impermissibly impose the suffering of additional punishment or permissibly bestow the benefit of death delayed and thus the enjoyment of life extended? Most commentators conceive of it as an unconstitutional additional punishment that is either cruel and unusual…
Continue ReadingDisclosing Big Data
By Michael Mattioli. Full text here. This Article reveals that the law is failing to adequately encourage producers of “big data” to disclose their most innovative work to the public. “Big data” refers to a new industrial and scientific phenomenon that holds the potential to transform diverse industries—from medicine, to energy, to online services. At the…
Continue ReadingMore Is More: Strengthening Free Exercise, Speech, and Association
By John D. Inazu. Full text here. Prominent scholars have suggested that one important means of strengthening the First Amendment is by limiting its protections to “core” interests. Philip Hamburger has asserted the argument most forcefully. His generalized worry is that expanding the coverage of First Amendment rights can shift absolute protection of a defined core…
Continue ReadingBondholders and Securities Class Actions
By James J. Park. Full text here. Prior studies of corporate and securities law litigation have focused almost entirely on cases filed by shareholder plaintiffs. Bondholders are thought to play little role in holding corporations accountable for poor governance that leads to fraud. This Article challenges that conventional view in light of new evidence that bond…
Continue ReadingTruthiness: Corporate Public Figures and the Problem of Harmful Truths
By Ashutosh Bhagwat. Full text here. This paper is an invited response to Deven Desai’s article, Speech, Citizenry, and the Market: A Corporate Public Figure Doctrine.
Continue ReadingThe Death of Tax Court Exceptionalism
By Stephanie Hoffer & Christopher J. Walker. Full text here. Tax exceptionalism — the view that tax law does not have to play by the administrative law rules that govern the rest of the regulatory state — has come under attack in recent years. In 2011, the Supreme Court rejected such exceptionalism by holding that judicial…
Continue ReadingLaw at the End of War
By Deborah N. Pearlstein. Full text here. As the United States continues to withdraw troops from Afghanistan in the coming year, courts will increasingly face the task of interpreting the dozens of federal laws whose operation depends on the existence of war. The 2009 Military Commissions Act (MCA), for instance, makes offenses triable by military commission…
Continue ReadingLaw's Remarkable Failure to Protect Mistakenly Overpaid Employees
By Jim Hawkins. Full text here. Employers frequently make mistakes and overpay their employees. For instance, the federal government alone, which makes up only around 2% of the U.S. workforce, will likely overpay its employees by $2 billion this year. After discovering the error, employers often recoup the mistaken overpayments without the supervision of the courts…
Continue ReadingA Corporate Right to Privacy
By Elizabeth Pollman. Full text here. The debate over the scope of constitutional protections for corporations has exploded with commentary on recent or pending Supreme Court cases, but scholars have left unexplored some of the hardest questions for the future, and the ones that offer the greatest potential for better understanding the nature of corporate rights.…
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