Note: Clarifying the Standards for Personal Jurisdiction in Light of Growing Transactions on the Internet: The Zippo Test and Pleading of Personal Jurisdiction
By Annie Soo Yeon Ahn. Full text here. Currently, despite the vast and attractive Internet market, the Supreme Court has not ruled definitively on which test should govern personal jurisdiction in cases involving transactions on the Internet. As a result, different tests and diverging results have developed concerning the constitutionality of specific jurisdiction on the Internet,…
Continue ReadingPrivacy and Organizational Persons
By Eric W. Orts & Amy Sepinwall. Full text here. This Article responds to an argument made recently by Elizabeth Pollman that corporations should not be deemed to have “constitutional privacy rights” in “most circumstances.” Setting forth an alternative conception of organizational rights and examining different meanings of “privacy,” the Article contends that courts should tread…
Continue ReadingStrengthening Federalism: The Uniform State Law Movement in the United States
By Robert A. Stein. Full text here. This Article addresses the importance of uniform state laws in maintaining and strengthening federalism in the United States. The federal system of government established by the Constitution depends on an appropriate balance of federal and state law. Under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, powers not delegated to…
Continue ReadingSue To Adapt?
By Jacqueline Peel & Hari M. Osofsky. Full text here. Climate change litigation has influenced regulation substantially in the United States. Most notably, the Supreme Court’s decision in Massachusetts v. EPA serves as the basis for federal Clean Air Act regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles and power plants. However, most U.S. litigation thus…
Continue ReadingShould Agencies Enforce?
By Max Minzner. Full text here. This Article explores an important but understudied structural choice: the decision to vest enforcement authority in administrative agencies. Each year, agencies routinely bring enforcement actions producing billions of dollars in civil penalties and industry-reshaping consent decrees. Where do they get this power? Congress grants enforcement authority to administrative agencies because…
Continue ReadingGood Faith and Fair Dealing as an Underenforced Legal Norm
By Paul MacMahon. Full text here. American contract law includes a duty of good faith and fair dealing in the performance of every contract. The duty appears, on first reading, to authorize judges to attach sanctions whenever one party to a contract acts unreasonably towards another. But judicial practice very often falls short of such an…
Continue ReadingNote: No Longer Available: Critiquing the Contradictory Ways Courts Treat Exclusive Arbitration Forum Clauses when the Forum Can No Longer Arbitrate
By Nicole Wanlass. Full text here. A number of contracts contain clauses mandating that any disputes arising under the contract must be resolved through arbitration by a particular forum. However, disputes over these contracts can end up in court when the exclusive arbitration forum cannot, or will not, arbitrate them. Under 9 U.S.C. § 5, a…
Continue ReadingNote: Inter Partes Review: Ensuring Effective Patent Litigation Through Estoppel
By Ann E. Motl. Full text here. Inter partes review (IPR) is a relatively new proceeding before the Patent and Trademark Office in which a petitioner requests administrative patent judges to review an issued patent and declare its claims invalid. After IPR, the petitioner can continue to litigate patent validity in federal court. However, this second…
Continue ReadingNote: The Case Against Self-Representation in Capital Proceedings
By Max S. Meckstroth. Full text here. In 1972, the Supreme Court decided Furman v. Georgia, holding that the death penalty was being applied arbitrarily and capriciously—rendering its application unconstitutional. Three years later, while the death penalty was still considered unconstitutional, the Supreme Court in Faretta v. California held that the Sixth Amendment implied the right…
Continue ReadingCivil Death in Modern Times: Reconsidering Felony Disenfranchisement in Minnesota
By Mark Haase. Full text here. Civil death is a legal status with roots in ancient Greece and brought to the American colonies from England. It deprived individuals convicted of certain offenses, often those with capital or life sentences, of all of their legal rights. Although civil death mostly disappeared in the mid-twentieth century, one of…
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