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Her Honor: Stories of Challenge and Triumph from Women Judges
No full textAt a time when surveys reveal declining trust in our courts, this book offers reasons for hope and even pride. Her Honor features a collection of personal stories by and about some of the country’s most respected female judges. Each chapter author openly shares nuanced stories of challenges and successes, including the inequality, bias, and other barriers they faced and overcame in their lives.
The 25 judges featured in Her Honor are from all levels of the state and federal courts, including Chief Judges and two Supreme Court Justices. Their moving stories will be all too recognizable by women who may currently be experiencing similar challenges and biases in their own career.Her Honor also demonstrates how the best of our judges share a passion for ensuring an accessible and fair system of justice, without a political agenda. They reveal a deep compassion for humanity along with an abiding respect for the law, respecting precedent but acting with courage if the law offers a way forward.
All the judges in this book have lived lives of deep influence. The stories shared will extend that influence further and inspire future generations to persevere in their careers during even the most difficult times.https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/justin_miller_awards_books/1019/thumbnail.jp
Wave Your Little Hand and Whisper So Long Dearie: Proffering an Overdue Goodbye to Microunits in the Performing Arts
Get PDFThe Many State Doctrines of Forum Non Conveniens
Get PDFForum non conveniens is not as ancient or monolithic as U.S. courts often assume. The doctrine, which permits judges to decline to hear cases they believe would more appropriately be heard in another sovereign’s courts, was only adopted by the U.S. Supreme Court for use in nonadmiralty cases in 1947; the doctrine’s “deep roots in the common law” are thought instead to have grown in the states.
This Article tests that account by surveying the forum non conveniens doctrines of all fifty states and the District of Columbia. What we found should change how judges, practitioners, and scholars view the doctrine. First, forum non conveniens in the states does not have a “long history”—it is a twentieth-century phenomenon. Second, before the 1950s, no states permitted dismissal of claims brought against local defendants. Third, state experience with forum non conveniens has been and continues to be highly variable. Most states adopted a forum non conveniens doctrine only after the Supreme Court did; many initially rejected it, and half a dozen still prohibit its use in cases involving in-state plaintiffs or in-state causes of action. Idaho has yet to adopt the doctrine.
In addition to these doctrinal lessons, the states’ experience with forum non conveniens provides a useful case study for examining what we term “procedural federalism,” meaning the interactions between state and federal institutions that affect procedural development. Procedural federalism reminds us that the procedure we have is not necessarily the “best” procedure we could conceive while simultaneously drawing our attention to pockets of divergence that may offer promising reforms. More broadly, it suggests a different approach to history than the one currently ascendant in federal courts and commentary. The iterative nature of procedural federalism makes clear that doctrines like forum non conveniens do not have perfect pasts, needing only to be rediscovered to be understood properly. Rather, procedural history is useful because it can help us understand how we ended up with the doctrines we have today, in order to better evaluate where we should go next
Walden
No full textPart of the Norton Library series
The Norton Library edition of Walden and Other Writings features the complete text of the 1906 edition of Walden and a selection of Thoreau\u27s most famous antislavery writings: Civil Disobedience, Slavery in Massachusetts, and A Plea for Captain John Brown. An introduction by Jedediah Britton-Purdy offers historical and biographical context for Thoreau\u27s writings and prepares readers to engage with his spiritual and activist reflections on a modern life freely lived.
The Norton Library is a growing collection of high-quality texts and translations--influential works of literature and philosophy--introduced and edited by leading scholars. Norton Library editions prepare readers for their first encounter with the works that they\u27ll re-read over a lifetime.
Inviting introductions highlight the work\u27s significance and influence, providing the historical and literary context students need to dive in with confidence. Endnotes and an easy-to-read design deliver an uninterrupted reading experience, encouraging students to read the text first and refer to endnotes for more information as needed. An affordable price (most $10 or less) encourages students to buy the book and to come to class with the assigned edition.
About the Editor: Jedediah Britton-Purdy is the Beinecke Professor at Columbia Law School and a scholar of environmental and constitutional law. His books on environmental themes include After Nature and This Land Is Our Land. He has also written about Henry David Thoreau in venues including The Atlantic, The Nation, and n+1.https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/faculty_books/1027/thumbnail.jp
Building Trust(s): Rethinking Asset Return in Kleptocracy Forfeitures
Get PDFKleptocracy, literally meaning “rule by thieves,” is a major destabilizing force in an already unstable world. Every year, corrupt government officials plunder billions of dollars rightfully belonging to their citizens and export them overseas. When these funds—often parked in luxury assets—reach the United States, federal prosecutors can seize them using a procedure known as nonconviction-based forfeiture. But after every such seizure, a question arises: How does the United States give stolen assets back to whom they belong? The United Nations Convention Against Corruption strongly encourages (or, in some circumstances, requires) forfeited assets to be returned to their state of origin or prior legitimate owners. Accordingly, the United States Department of Justice often executes sharing agreements with cooperating states. But asset return proves a more formidable challenge when the forfeiture was executed at the behest of a victim state whose government would likely misappropriate the assets again. This Note proposes a new type of fund, modeled on the charitable trust, that could provide an alternative mechanism to return assets in those cases. Depositing the assets in an independently managed trust would relieve the Justice Department of the administrative burden of managing a complex return and would bypass sovereigns to ensure benefits from the stolen assets accrue to the citizens to whom they belong
Token Wars: How the SEC Can Learn to Embrace Utility Tokens
Get PDFTired of the power that mega platforms wield over the web, a growing chorus of internet users has hailed the arrival of blockchain technology, believing it can be used to build a new internet. Called “Web 3.0” by some, the new internet would allow users to exchange goods and services—digital currencies, cloud computing power, data storage—without needing a central intermediary to validate transactions. Instead, users would transact through decentralized platforms that use consensus-based mechanisms to verify users’ exchanges. And rather than rely on fiat money, users would use the platforms’ native currencies, called “utility tokens,” as the media of exchange.
Utility tokens also serve another purpose. Because rebuilding the internet is a costly endeavor, the groups developing decentralized platforms have turned toward selling utility tokens to fundraise their efforts. However, the issuance of utility tokens has caught the eye of the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”)—the federal agency in charge of enforcing the nation’s securities laws—which has asserted its authority over utility token issuances. Unfortunately, the SEC’s oversight lacks transparency, and the agency’s rules do not protect investors against the risks they face in the digital economy. This Note calls for a bright-line test that would entitle issuers of utility tokens to a rebuttable presumption that the securities laws do not apply to sales of the issuers’ utility tokens if their tokens meet each of the test’s factors. This Note also advocates for modernizing the Regulation D private placement exemption so that it can address the realities implicit in token purchases. The changes pushed by this Note aim to quell developers’ uncertainty and foster the ingenuity behind Web 3.0
Rethinking the Presumption of Enablement in Nonpatent Prior Art
Get PDFThe rising popularity of tools such as preprint servers, open-access data sources, and generative artificial intelligence has resulted in a proliferation of prior art that has never been seen before under the current patent system. In a rapidly changing world, patent law is slow to catch up, and the current system is not equipped to handle the flood of incoming prior art. In the academic research setting in particular, while the use of preprint servers and open-source data has allowed researchers to participate in widespread information exchange, these tools have also generated a new, large class of prior art dedicated to early-stage research.
This creates a tension with patent law, which assigns a presumption of enablement to nonpatent prior art, including preprint disclosures. Essentially, the law presumes that any public disclosure of an invention contains enough detail to instruct the public to make and use it. Thus, any public disclosure “starts the clock” on an applicant’s time to get to the patent office. This Note explores how that presumption artificially incentivizes premature patent filing, decreasing the overall quality of patents entering the patent system
Extreme Risk Protection Orders in the Post-Bruen Age: Weighing Evidence, Scholarship, and Rights for a Promising Gun Violence Prevention Tool
Get PDFExtreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPOs) are civil court orders that temporarily prohibit gun purchase and possession by people who are behaving dangerously and at risk of committing imminent violence. As of September 2023, ERPOs are available in 21 states and the District of Columbia. This Article presents an overview of ERPO laws, the rationale behind their development, and a review and analysis that considers emerging constitutional challenges to these laws (under both the Second Amendment and due process protections) in the post-Bruen era. This Article notes that the presence of multiple constitutional challenges in many ERPO-related cases has confused judicial analysis and argues that, especially in light of Bruen’s novel text, history, and tradition test, courts should be especially careful to clarify how cumulative-rights arguments are impacting their analysis. An examination of Second Amendment court decisions concerning another type of civil protection order, Domestic Violence Protection Orders, informs the approach used to further consider ERPO rights deprivation claims and the constitutionally relevant distinctions among different civil dispossession proceedings.
The Article further considers the state of ERPO law in the context of the evolving evidence documenting the uptake and impact of ERPOs on gun violence in the United States, including a review of scholarship that seeks to understand how ERPO statutes are being implemented and to determine whether the laws prevent interpersonal gun violence and suicide. Finally, this Article concludes with a commentary and set of recommendations to inform the practice and future scholarship of ERPO as a tool for preventing gun violence in the United States, in accord with constitutional protections in the post-Bruen age
“A Map Is Not the Territory”: The Theory and Future of Sensitive Places Doctrine
Get PDFIn the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, courts are now confronted with new questions about where guns can be restricted and what justifications support those regulations. This Essay urges that the development of the doctrine governing location-based prohibitions should focus as much on the why as the where. Instead of simply isolating each location and considering the historical pedigree of gun restrictions in that place, judges should evaluate the reasons behind the sensitive places doctrine itself. We aim to recenter these first order questions to avoid haphazard doctrinal development that threatens to leave Second Amendment law incoherent and unpredictable.
Judges developing the doctrine will need to avoid several hazards. Among them: pitching historical analogies too narrowly, neglecting sensitive location mobility, and excessively focusing on locational features rather than regulatory justifications. Whatever values ultimately underpin the doctrine, they should direct the shape of location-based challenges. Whether the doctrine is grounded in safeguarding the exercise of other constitutional rights, protecting the vulnerability of specific populations, recognizing the inhibited judgment or discretion of those gathered, or other values altogether, this Essay shows why justificatory and constitutional foundations must be set before the doctrinal structure is completely built