Note: Copyrighted Laws: Enabling and Preserving Access to Incorporated Private Standards
By James M. Sweeney. Full text here. Traditional laws—statutes, judicial opinions, and regulations—are not eligible for copyright protection. This principle is firmly established in over one hundred years of case law, despite the Copyright Code not expressly addressing the eligibility of laws. This has caused little controversy. In the last few decades, however, federal agencies have…
Continue ReadingNote: Embracing Ambiguity and Adopting Propriety: Using Comparative Law To Explore Avenues for Protecting the LGBT Population Under Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court
By Charles Barrera Moore. Full text here. The International Criminal Court (ICC) was initially lauded for expanding the scope of crimes considered to violate international norms; however, as inclusive as the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court has been for gender-based crimes, the ICC has yet to extend the same benefits to the lesbian,…
Continue ReadingNote: Getting Back to Basics: Recognizing and Understanding the Swing Voter on the Supreme Court of the United States
By Kristin M. McGaver. Full text here. There is an extensive history and tradition of labeling Supreme Court Justices as “swing voters” and “swing Justices.” And yet, the content of these labels remain woefully unclear. Modern uses of the terms fall on a continuum, conveying negative to positive sentiments with no clear definition. Complicating things further,…
Continue ReadingThe Value of the Standard
By Norman V. Siebrasse & Thomas F. Cotter. Full text here. Standard-setting organizations (SSOs) often require member firms to license their standard-essential patents (SEPs) on undefined “fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory” (FRAND) terms. Courts and commentators in turn have proposed various principles for calculating FRAND royalties, among them that the royalty should not reflect “the value of…
Continue ReadingThe Substantially Impaired Sex: Uncovering the Gendered Nature of Disability Discrimination
By Jennifer Bennett Shinall. Full text here. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 was a landmark piece of legislation that prohibited private-sector employers from discriminating against qualified disabled workers. Although the Act is over a quarter-century old, legal scholars have never considered whether it has been uniformly efficacious—that is, whether the Act has served…
Continue ReadingCracking the Code: An Empirical Analysis of Consumer Bankruptcy Outcomes
By Sara S. Greene, Parina Patel & Katherine Porter. Full text here. Chapter 13 is a cornerstone of the bankruptcy system. Its legal requirements strike a balance between the rehabilitation of debtors through keeping assets and reducing debt, and the repayment of creditors over a period of years. Despite the accolades from policymakers, the hard truth…
Continue ReadingThe Death of the Firm
By June Carbone & Nancy Levit. Full text here. This Article maintains that the decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, which referred to the corporation as a legal fiction designed to serve the interests of the people behind it, signals the “death of the firm” as a unit of legal analysis in which business entities are…
Continue ReadingMisclassification and Antidiscrimination: An Empirical Analysis
By Charlotte S. Alexander. Full text here. This Article investigates misclassification and antidiscrimination. Misclassification is employers’ practice of classifying workers as independent contractors whom the law would categorize as employees. Misclassified workers are exempt from most federal antidiscrimination statutes, unless they file a discrimination lawsuit and seek reclassification by the court for purposes of the litigation.…
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