More than five years have passed since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, yet images from Katrina’s aftermath continue to haunt the American mind. Many of the most shocking and disturbing images that remain with us today are not from photographs or news footage, but images constructed and seared in… Read More »
One of the most important relationships in constitutional law is that between two concepts at the heart of the American legal system: property and speech. Yet despite increased scholarly attention, the relationship remains largely mysterious. Does property simply enable speech acts, or can it have its own expressive content? And… Read More »
In recent decades, research in behavioral psychology and experimental economics has undermined some of the fundamental principles of the “rational choice” model of neoclassical economics—in particular, the assumption that decision-makers have stable preferences. A large volume of data shows that people’s preferences are subject to a variety of cognitive biases… Read More »
Sarah, an eight-year-old girl, could not wait for her third-grade field trip to the Museum of Natural History. Best of all, her mother, Jill, who normally worked both a full-time job during the week and a part-time job on the weekend, took the day off to chaperone the trip. Just… Read More »
Patenting is the procedure by which novel scientific inventions become protected by an intellectual property right. The United States Constitution provides the foundation for patent law and vests the power and duty of its implementation in Congress. Congress fulfilled its constitutional duty by granting inventors an intellectual property right… Read More »
The notion of the inviolate home and the paramount importance of constraining government search of the home are cherished tenets of constitutional law and scholarship. The doctrinal solicitude and judicial rhetoric surrounding the home reflect a belief that residential privacy rights are both psychologically and politically vital. This “housing exceptionalism”… Read More »
The Maine lobster fishery is a successful example of a managed natural resource commons. To ensure an ongoing supply of lobsters in the face of threats to the fishery from unregulated over-fishing, over a period of years Maine lobster fishermen crafted a set of formal and informal rules to determine… Read More »
Place matters. No matter one’s income, and no matter one’s status as a renter or homeowner, the communities where we spend our lives strongly affect our daily enjoyment of life. The appearance of these communities is a strong component of this satisfaction. Concerns about the physical appearance of neighborhoods and… Read More »
The dominant theoretical frame for conceptualizing uses of copyrighted works is the First Amendment’s protection for free speech. Despite numerous calls for greater First Amendment scrutiny in copyright cases, there has been an almost unrelenting rejection of independent First Amendment review in copyright cases. Even when free speech values are… Read More »
By writing a series of James Bond novels, Ian Fleming qualified for American copyright protection, pursuant to which works created by others without license and found by courts to be substantially similar to the novels would generally infringe his copyright. Imagine instead that Fleming would have had to draft a… Read More »