Lawyers, Not Widgets: Why Private-Sector Attorneys Must Unionize to Save the Legal Profession
By Melissa Mortazavi. Full text here. The Article argues that practical labor issues and ethical issues are inherently intertwined in the legal profession. Despite the widespread acknowledgment that there is an underlying tension between how private practice is conducted and the values lawyers hold, the issue of how to remedy modern legal practice ethically is misunderstood…
Continue ReadingWhen Copyright Law and Science Collide: Empowering Digitally Integrated Research Methods on a Global Scale
By Jerome H. Reichman & Ruth L. Okediji. Full text here. Automated knowledge discovery tools have become central to the scientific enterprise in a growing number of fields and are widely employed in the humanities as well. New scientific methods, and the evolution of entirely new fields of scientific inquiry, have emerged from the integration of…
Continue ReadingThat's Not Discrimination: American Beliefs and the Limits of Anti-Discrimination Law
By Katie R. Eyer. Full text here. Empirical studies have shown that discrimination litigants face difficult odds. Indeed, less than five percent of all discrimination plaintiffs achieve any form of litigated relief. These odds are far worse than those faced by virtually any other category of federal litigants and extend to every conceivable procedural juncture, from…
Continue ReadingBeyond Best Interests
By I. Glenn Cohen. Full text here. As Justice Douglas wrote in Skinner v. Oklahoma, procreation is one of the “basic civil rights of man.” Along with marriage it is “fundamental to the very existence and survival of the race” and the state’s interference with it “threatens to have subtle, far-reaching and devastating effects.” And yet…
Continue ReadingNote: Class Certification as a Prerequisite for CAFA Jurisdiction
By Kevin Lampone. Full text here. The Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 (CAFA) expands federal diversity jurisdiction to include many class actions asserting only state law claims; however, the statute fails to spell out if its jurisdiction continues after a court denies class certification, thereby determining that the putative class is not, in fact, a…
Continue ReadingNote: Making Pesticides Public: A Disclosure-Based Approach to Regulating Pesticide Use
By Brian Jacobson. Full text here. Many states currently classify pesticide application records as private under state data practices law, thereby shielding such information from the public. This means that families living in rural areas where agricultural chemicals are in frequent use cannot access information about where and when pesticides are applied. Though government officials generally…
Continue ReadingNote: Armchair Jury Consultants: The Legal Implications and Benefits of Online Research of Prospective Jurors in the Facebook Era
By Adam J. Hoskins. Full text here. Jury consulting is a longstanding practice in American courtrooms. The advent of the Internet and social networking, however, has moved the practice away from high-paid professionals, and has allowed practicing attorneys to become amateur jury consultants. It is now common practice for attorneys, either before or during jury selection,…
Continue ReadingA Shareholders' Put Option: Counteracting the Acquirer Overpayment Problem
By Afra Afsharipour. Full text here. Acquisition transactions are often the most significant activity undertaken by corporations. Despite the plethora of acquisition transactions, numerous empirical studies find that large-scale acquisition transactions involving public companies result in significant losses for acquiring firms and their shareholders. Finance scholars have attributed these losses to managerial agency costs (such as…
Continue ReadingWaiving Innocence
By Samuel R. Wiseman. Full text here. The exceptional accuracy of DNA, and the exonerations it has produced, have led to a reconsideration of cherished, but empirically untested, notions of the reliability of the criminal justice system. They have also, albeit incompletely, provoked a renewed commitment—reflected in new ethical rules, compensation schemes, and the testing statutes…
Continue ReadingThe Interagency Marketplace
By Jason Marisam. Full text here. Federal agencies routinely trade money, regulatory power, and governmental services with each other. Collectively, these interagency exchanges create a vast public institution that the author calls the interagency marketplace. The Article offers a comprehensive descriptive and normative account of the legal rules governing the interagency marketplace. The Article’s overarching claim…
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