Note: 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…
Continue ReadingConviction Without Conviction
By Talia Fisher. Full text here. The decision-making processes underlying the determination of guilt and punishment in criminal trials are governed by the threshold model. Under this model, conviction is construed as a binary, on-off decision leading to an all-or-nothing sentencing regime. Failure to meet the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt evidentiary threshold results in categorical acquittal and no punishment.…
Continue ReadingVeblen Brands
By Jeremy N. Sheff. Full text here. The trademark doctrine of post-sale confusion is a creation of the lower federal courts that has never been accepted, or even considered, by the Supreme Court. The Article argues that the doctrine should be discarded. Courts use the term “post-sale confusion” inconsistently to refer to three different species of…
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