Tag: Article

Commercializing Patents

Ted Sichelman - University of San Diego Law School

About half, probably more, of all patented inventions in the United States are never commercially exploited. Many of these undeveloped inventions are commercially worthless ab initio, such as the anti-eating face mask, beer bottle mini-umbrella, and weed-cutting golf club.

Yet, for several reasons, the patent “underdevelopment” problem arguably applies to… Read More »

Rethinking The Federal Role in State Criminal Justice

Joseph L. Hoffman & Nancy J. King

It is time for Congress to end its fifty-year experiment in post hoc federal court enforcement of constitutional criminal procedure. By clinging to ineffectual federal habeas review of state criminal cases, Congress is pouring tax dollars down the drain and overlooking a more effective way to enforce the Constitution: helping… Read More »

Pregnancy, Work, and the Promise of Equal Citizenship

Joanna L. Grossman - Hofstra University School of Law

Can women capture the benefits of equal citizenship in a legal system that does not mandate accommodations for pregnant workers?  This Article argues that they cannot.  Current pregnancy discrimination law, which bases the right to work on full capacity, systematically deprives women of equal opportunity to make use of their… Read More »

The Costs Of Judging Judges By The Numbers

Marin K. Levy & José A. Cabranes & Kate Stith

What is to be gained by using empirical evidence to rank or “judge” judges? These empirical studies claim two major benefits. First, because the criteria are assertedly apolitical, the resulting rankings will identify the “best” judges across the political spectrum and thereby improve, for instance, the Supreme Court nomination process. Second,… Read More »

Breaking the Law to Enforce It: Undercover Police Participation in Crime

Elizabeth E. Joh - UC Davis School of Law

Covert policing necessarily involves deception, which in turn often leads to participation in activity that appears to be criminal. In undercover operations, the police have introduced drugs into prison, undertaken assignments from Latin American drug cartels to launder money, established fencing businesses that paid cash for stolen goods and for… Read More »

Evaluating Judges and Judicial Institutions: Reorienting the Perspective

Mitu Gulati & David F. Levi & David E. Klein

In September 2009, we hosted an unusual workshop at Duke Law School. The workshop focused on the empirical evaluation of judges, judging, and judicial institutions. Most work in this area has been driven by the agendas and constraints of empirical researchers, and empiricists from multiple disciplines—including history, sociology, anthropology, political… Read More »

Differential Formalism in Claiming Intellectual Property: A Response to Fromer

Henry Smith - Harvard Law School

This article is a response to an earlier posted piece by Jeanne C. Fromer: Claiming Intellectual Property.
Claiming intellectual property is an act of communication, but as with all communication not everything can be spelled out with exactitude all the time—far from it. By drawing out an additional distinction between… Read More »

Protect Us, Lord, from Richard Epstein

Jonah Gelbach & Lesley Wexler & Jonathan Klick

This article is a response to an earlier posted piece by Richard Epstein: Protect Us, Lord, from Title VII: A Response to Gelbach, Klick, and Wexler.
We thank Richard Epstein for commenting on our online Article. He brings a unique perspective to the field of employment discrimination and pushes other scholars… Read More »

The Rights of Immigrants: An Optimal Contract Framework

Adam B. Cox & Eric A. Posner

It is bedrock policy that the government can treat citizens and noncitizens differently. Virtually no one believes that noncitizens should have the right to vote or to run for office. Many noncitizens—including tourists, business people, and the spouses of certain visa holders—do not even have the right to work or… Read More »

Nonlethal Self-Defense, (Almost Entirely) Nonlethal Weapons, and the Rights to Keep and Bear Arms and Defend Life

Eugene Volokh - UCLA School of Law

Owning a stun gun or Taser is a crime in seven states and several cities. Carrying irritant sprays, such as pepper spray or Mace, is probably illegal in several jurisdictions. Even possessing irritant sprays at home is illegal in Massachusetts if you’re not a citizen.
Yet in most of these… Read More »