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Volume 109 - Issue 6

Property Rhetoric and the Public Domain

By David Fagundes. Full text here. Those who prefer broad intellectual property rights often deploy the rhetoric of physical property. By contrast, those who are concerned about maintaining public entitlements in information resist that rhetoric. In this Article, I take this dichotomy as a starting point for investigating the power of property rhetoric as a tool…

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American Trust Law in a Chinese Mirror

By Frances H. Foster. Full text here. Comparative law scholars use the term “legal transplant” to refer to the transfer of legal rules, institutions, and norms from one legal system to another. This Article identifies a valuable, previously unrecognized, feature of legal transplants. The transplant process can generate intensive study of the donor legal system by…

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Corporate Control and the Need for Meaningful Board Accountability

By Michelle M. Harner. Full text here. Corporations are vulnerable to the greed, self-dealing, and conflicts of those in control of the corporation. Courts traditionally regulate these potential abuses by designating the board of directors and senior management as fiduciaries. In some instances, however, shareholders, creditors, or others outside of corporate management influence corporate decisions and,…

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Note: In re the Welfare of Due Process

By Kristin K. Zinsmaster. Full text here. The juvenile justice system is not the same as when it started. This Note argues that the juvenile court has become as punitive, as public, and as formalistic as the adult system from which it was supposed to differ. Furthermore, the modern juvenile court suffers from the precise problems…

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Note: Credit Rating Agencies and the First Amendment: Applying Constitutional Journalistic Protections to Subprime Mortgage Litigation

By Theresa Nagy. Full text here. The First Amendment should not protect credit rating agencies for their grossly inaccurate ratings of residential mortgage-backed securities. The rating agencies played a significant role in the subprime mortgage crash and resulting financial market crisis. In past litigation, rating agencies have been successful in defending lawsuits involving claims of inaccurate…

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Why Did the Incorporation of the Bill of Rights Fail in the Late Nineteenth Century?

By Gerard N. Magliocca. Full text here. This Article examines the failure of the incorporation doctrine following the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment and draws some lessons from that experience for the live issue of whether the Second Amendment should apply to the States. The analysis reaches three main conclusions. First, the opinion in the Slaughter-House…

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Reconfiguring Estate Settlement

By John H. Martin. Full text here. Probate, the judicial process for settling a decedent’s estate, has been vilified and shunned for nearly five decades. Its cost, delay, and lack of privacy motivate the public and their advisors to utilize a multiplicity of title formats and alternative devices to transfer assets at death. For some time…

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Note: The Protective Scope of the Fair Debt Collection Practice Act: Providing Mortgagors the Protection They Deserve from Abusive Foreclosure Practices

By Eric M. Marshall. Full text here. The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) is intended to provide consumers broad protection from abusive and harassing practices of debt collectors. However, courts disagree over whether mortgage foreclosure constitutes debt collection under the Act. Several circuit courts hold that mortgage foreclosure is debt collection under the FDCPA, but…

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Note: Deterring Fraud to Increase Public Confidence: Why Congress Should Allow Government Employees to File Qui Tam Lawsuits

By Barry M. Landy. Full text here. Contractor fraud against the government is rampant as contractors regularly inflate the cost of their services and overcharge the government for their work. The federal False Claims Act (FCA) is the government’s most successful litigation tool for combating fraud, resulting in recoveries of approximately $22 billion since 1986. Traditionally,…

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