Note: Presuming Innocence: Expanding the Confrontation Clause Analysis to Protect Children and Defendants in Child Sexual Abuse Prosecutions
By Anna Richey-Allen. Full text here. When a child is suspected of being sexually abused, child advocacy centers provide a supportive environment where social workers, doctors, and psychologists may assess the child’s needs. Forensic interviews are a specialty of the centers. The interviews are often video recorded, and the videotape may later be introduced into evidence.…
Continue ReadingNote: Sweetening the Deal: Strengthening Transnational Bribery Laws Through Standard International Corporate Auditing Guidelines
By Timothy W. Schmidt. Full text here. Despite the existence of laws on the books against transnational bribery in most developed nations, prosecution of the crime is oftentimes half hearted. This Note explores a number of options to promote the punishment of corrupt businesses that bribe foreign officials, even when the prosecution of these businesses might…
Continue ReadingNote: Prosecutorial Use of Forensic Science at Trial: When Is a Lab Report Testimonial?
By Joe Bourne. Full text here. Since Crawford v. Washington, the Confrontation Clause has protected criminal defendants from testimonial hearsay statements. Less clear is what “testimonial” means. Lower courts have split on the question of whether scientific evidence is testimonial, struggling to apply Supreme Court cases decided in very different contexts to the generation of laboratory…
Continue ReadingDo Courts Create Moral Hazard?: When Judges Nullify Employer Liability in Arbitrations
By Michael H. LeRoy. Full text here. State courts are creating conditions for moral hazard in the arbitration of employment disputes. The problem begins when employers compel individuals to arbitrate their legal claims, denying them access to juries and other benefits of a trial. This empirical study identifies a disturbing trend: state courts vacated many arbitration…
Continue ReadingNatural Laws and Inevitable Infringement
By Alan L. Durham. Full text here. According to well-established principles, one cannot patent natural laws or phenomena per se, but one can patent new and useful applications of those laws and phenomena. Justice Breyer’s opinion in Laboratory Corp. of America Holdings v. Metabolite Laboratories, Inc. applies this distinction to inventions exploiting natural relationships, such as…
Continue ReadingPrivatizing Ethics in Corporate Reorganizations
By A. Mechele Dickerson. Full text here. For several years, bankruptcy and corporate governance scholars have discussed “control rights” in bankruptcy cases and have debated how those rights should be allocated. Data indicate that, as a positive matter, creditors effectively have the ability to decide the fate of an insolvent firm. The scholarship does not, however,…
Continue ReadingReclaiming International Law from Extraterritoriality
By Austen L. Parrish. Full text here. A fierce debate rages among leading international law theorists that implicates the role of national courts in solving global challenges. On one side of the debate are scholars who are critical of international law and its institutions. These scholars, often referred to as Sovereigntists, see international law as a…
Continue Reading