Note: Blight and Its Discontents: Awarding Attorney's Fees to Property Owners in Redevelopment Actions
By Noreen E. Johnson. Full text here. The public response to the now notorious 2005 Supreme Court decision Kelo v. City of New London changed the landscape of redevelopment law in the United States. In Kelo, the Court held that eminent domain could be used to transfer property from one private party to another private party…
Continue ReadingThe Bill of Rights in the Early State Courts
By Jason Mazzone. Full text here. The Bill of Rights originated as a constraint only on the federal government. As every law student learns, therefore, in the 1833 case of Barron v. Baltimore, the Supreme Court dismissed a Fifth Amendment takings claim against a state. This Article shows, however, that early state courts regularly invoked and…
Continue ReadingBeyond Liability: Rewarding Effective Gatekeepers
By Lawrence A. Cunningham. Full text here. This Article adds to the emerging literature on rewards to promote effective capital market gatekeeping. Capital market gatekeeping theory traditionally relies heavily on threats of legal liability for failure to perform legally mandated functions (along with a presumed constraint imposed by reputation effects). The ineffectiveness of many gatekeepers in…
Continue ReadingBeyond Incoherence: The Roberts Court's Deregulatory Turn in FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life
By Richard L. Hasen. Full text here. With the recent personnel changes on the Supreme Court, the pendulum has swung sharply away from deference in campaign finance regulation toward perhaps the greatest period of deregulation since before Congress passed the important 1974 Amendments to the Federal Election Campaign Act. In the 2006 Randall v. Sorrell decision,…
Continue ReadingBeyond the Article I Horizon: Congress's Enumerated Powers and Universal Jurisdiction Over Drug Crimes
By Eugene Kontorovich. Full text here. The United States routinely apprehends foreign drug traffickers in international waters. It prosecutes many of them under the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act, which allows for jurisdiction even over foreign-flagged vessels with no demonstrable intent of bringing their cargo to the United States. This assertion of universal jurisdiction—a doctrine generally…
Continue ReadingExchange: The Behavioral Economics of Consumer Contracts
By Oren Bar-Gill. Full text here. In the past decade, behavioral economics has established itself as a contender to the throne of neoclassical economics in the economic analysis of law. The pros and cons of behavioral as compared to neoclassical economics have been vigorously debated at the general, methodology level. But the success or failure of…
Continue ReadingAvalanche or Undue Alarm? An Empirical Study of Subpoenas Received by the News Media
By RonNell Andersen Jones. Full text here. For more than thirty years, proponents and opponents of a federal reporter’s shield law have debated the necessity of a privilege for members of the news media and have disagreed sharply about the frequency with which subpoenas are issued to the press. Most recently, in the wake of several…
Continue ReadingAre Patents on Interfaces Impeding Interoperability?
By Pamela Samuelson. Full text here. Commentators and policymakers have frequently expressed serious concerns about the exclusionary potency of patents on communications protocols and interface designs for information and communications technologies (ICT). Among the proposed policy responses to potential harms arising from the exercise of such interface patents are excluding interfaces from patent protection, immunizing use…
Continue ReadingThe Anticompetitive Effects of Underenforced Invalid Patents
By Christopher R. Leslie. Full text here. Courts and scholars have long debated the proper balance between antitrust law and intellectual property rights. Proponents of strong intellectual property rights and those of vigilant antitrust enforcement often find themselves at opposite ends of the debate. Some scholars and intellectual property owners resist the encroachment of antitrust law…
Continue ReadingAn Anti-Authoritarian Constitution? Four Notes
By Patrick O. Gudridge. Full text here.
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