bepress Legal Repository
Not a member yet
645042 research outputs found
Sort by
NDLS Communicator: Week of 09.23.24
No full textThe Latest News Four first-year students named 2024-25 Murphy Fellows at Notre Dame Law School ND Law’s Program on Law and Economics establishes new competition to select Law and Economics Student Fellows, names five students as inaugural Fellows Professor Stephen Tierney appointed Honorary King\u27s Counsel In the latest episode of the DEI Podcast, Max Gaston sits down with New York Times bestselling author and Notre Dame alumnus Jemar Tisby, PhD.
Faculty News Briefs Mary Ellen O\u27Connell was quoted in articles by AP News, PBS News Hour, The Week, Times Malta, and Flagler Live about Israel\u27s use of exploding devices in its war against Lebanon. Paolo Carozza delivered the Convocation Address at Providence College, with the title, A Friar for the Digital Age. Avishalom Tor presented “Personalized Digital Nudges” at the 41st Annual Conference of the European Association of Law and Economics on September 12-13. Jennifer Mason McAward has published a new paper, Understanding Brady Violations that will be published in the Vanderbilt Law Review this spring. The paper is the largest-ever study of adjudicated violations of Brady v. Maryland and provides a detailed and nuanced understanding of who suppresses material evidence in criminal cases, why, how, where, and how often. Diane Desierto was quoted in an article about Mexico\u27s judicial reform and its effects on democracy. Sam Bray will present his paper, “Preliminary Injunction Realism,” at a symposium honoring Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, Douglas Laycock at the University of Texas at Austin on September 27. Last week, Derek Muller presented at the 2024 Indiana Judicial Conference at the Indianapolis Convention Center.
Student/Alumni News ND Law J.S.D. candidate Nicolás Buitrago-Rey and LL.M. alumnae Angélica Suárez and Paloma Núñez publish insightful article on specificity in human rights reparations
Events
Monday, September 23 Law and Economics Workshop: Assaf Hamdani (Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law), Will Systematic Stewardship Save the Planet? 12:30 p.m., Faculty Meeting Room Voting Rights and Election Administration with Derek Muller, 6:00 p.m., Geddes Hall Coffee House
Tuesday, September 24 Faculty Colloquia: Maria Lucia Passador (Bocconi University), 12:30 p.m., Faculty Meeting Room Book Discussion: “Freedom Undone: The Assault on Liberal Values and Institutions in Hong Kong” with author Michael Davis Noon, 1050 Jenkins Nanovic Hall Co-Sponsored by Human Rights LLM Program and the Global Human Rights Clinic.
Wednesday, September 25 Faculty Meeting, 12:30 p.m., Faculty Meeting Room CLE: Effective Supervision of Legal Externs, 4:00 - 5:00 p.m., Faculty Meeting Room, and 5:15 - 6:30 p.m., Cocktail Reception at the Morris Inn, Smith Ballroom Salon A
Thursday, September 26 Dean\u27s Staff Update Noon, Faculty Meeting Room
Friday, September 27 Rooney Center Democracy Initiative: American Democracy and the 2024 Election, 2:30-3:30 PM, McCartan Courtroom, overflow in rooms 1130 and 1140, Marcus Cole will moderate. Law School Advisory Council on campus
Saturday, September 28 Notre Dame vs. Louisville, 3:30 p.m.
Tuesday, October 1 Red Mass 5:15 p.m. Mass at the Basilica 6:15 p.m., reception to follow in Eck Commons. Principal Celebrant, Bishop McClory (Diocese of Gary, Indiana)
Future Event Notre Dame Law School\u27s Alumni Homecoming will take place on October 11-12, Faculty and Staff are invited to the ND Law Homecoming Tailgate on Saturday, October 12 12:00 - 3:00 PM, Outdoor tent in DeBartolo Quad, Free for faculty and staff
Around the Watercooler Congratulations to Jason and Mary Stoller on the birth of their daughter, Dana Margaret Stoller! September Birthdays were celebrated in the beautiful South Reading Room of the Law Librar
Blood Drive with the Notre Dame Law School
No full textMonday, October 14, 2024 | 9:00 AM | Bloodmobile On-Site at Eck Hall of Law
Join the Notre Dame Law School and the South Bend Medical Foundation for a blood drive. Sign up with the QR code on the poster or visit www.GiveBloodNow.com. The Bloodmobile will be parked between Eck Hall of Law and McKenna Hall from 9:00 am to 2:00 pm on 10/14/2024.
Sponsors: Notre Dame Law School South Bend Medical Foundationhttps://scholarship.law.nd.edu/ndls_posters/1925/thumbnail.jp
Economic Consequences of the COVID-19 crisis
No full textThe year 2020 will be remembered as the year of the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 crisis has, by June 15, 2021, taken almost 600,000 U.S. lives and more than 3.8 million lives globally. The crisis has also imposed crushing economic hardship both in developing countries and in developed countries alike. Most developed countries, and many prominent developing countries, designed and implemented policies to contain the crisis and mitigate the economic impact. The United States stands out in the world for its inability to contain the COVID-19 virus and the economic impact is both profound and lasting. This chapter has three goals. The first goal is to describe the economic impact of the crisis with a particular focus on U.S. labor markets, low-wage workers, and workers in the restaurant industry. The second goal is to describe the implications of the pandemic on developing countries because the world is increasingly interconnected and, thus, the crisis in the U.S. has important implications for developing countries. The third goal is to describe the main policy lessons that emerge from a review of more than eighty academic papers and in-depth interviews focusing on the economic effects of the COVID-19 crisis
Withdrawal of Life-Sustaining Treatment: Patients\u27 Rights—Privacy Rights
No full textAs medical expertise and technologies improve, many patients who would otherwise die of their illnesses or injuries survive. For many of these patients and their families, the knowledge and therapies that save their lives are a blessing. Unfortunately for some, survival means not recovery, but rather a severely limited existence dependent on some form of life-sustaining treatment, such as a ventilator or feeding tube. For some of these patients, such an existence is not a blessing, but a curse, not a triumph over death, but rather a cruel prolonging of their dying. These patients, or their families, seek to have their life-supporting therapies withdrawn, allowing them to complete the process of dying which their bodies have already begun. Many patients are successful in having such treatments withdrawn. Success comes to others, though, only as the result of lengthy legal battles, which add to the grief of the patients and families involved. Most state courts confronted with withdrawal-of-support problems have found that patients do indeed have the right to demand the termination of life-supporting therapies, and most state courts have found that right to be derived from the federal constitutional right of privacy. The Supreme Court of Missouri, however, in its 1988 decision Cruzan v. Harmon, came to the opposite conclusion.Nancy Cruzan is a young woman in a persistent vegetative state as the result of an automobile accident. Her parents and co-guardians sought an order allowing them to authorize the removal of the feeding tube through which Ms. Cruzan receives the necessary nutrition and hydration to remain alive. The Missouri court noted over four dozen withdrawal-of-support cases from other states that had nearly unanimously respected the patients\u27 requests to have treatment halted. Despite that, the court found that Ms. Cruzan has no right of privacy or self-determination that can outweigh the immense, clear fact of life in which the state maintains a vital interest. The most troublesome aspect of the Cruzan decision was the court\u27s assertion that because Ms. Cruzan feels no pain, the treatments she receives are not burdensome to her. The court reached this conclusion despite evidence that Ms. Cruzan had said she would not want to be maintained in such a condition and that she would not want her family to suffer the pain of seeing her in such straits. The court\u27s statement shows a stunning lack of sensitivity to Ms. Cruzan\u27s human dignity, a dignity that is given meaning by, among other things, individual rights of self-determination, the right to be let alone. Ms. Cruzan\u27s parents and co-guardians appealed the Missouri decision to the United States Supreme Court. The Court heard arguments in Cruzan, its first withdrawal-of-support case, in December, 1989. This case gives the Court a chance to conclusively resolve the issue of how and by whom withdrawal-of-support decisions are made. A patient\u27s decision to order the cessation of treatment is a personal medical decision and should be made, like any other personal medical decision, in the privacy of the doctor-patient relationship, not in a courtroom. A clear and definitive ruling by the Court that every patient has a right, guaranteed by the federal Constitution, to order treatment discontinued will return these treatment decisions to their proper place, the patient\u27s bedside. This Comment will discuss the problems created by the current state of affairs, which all too frequently forces patients and their families into the courts to have fundamental questions of medical treatment decided. It will then discuss the foundation of a patient\u27s federal constitutional right to order the withdrawal of life-sustaining therapies. It is imperative that the Court clearly enunciate this right for many reasons; these will be discussed in the final section of this Comment
Forgive and Forget: Honoring Full and Unconditional Pardons
No full textWith few words, the Great Bard summarized the popular understanding of full and unconditional pardons as unrestrained acts of mercy which approximate, as best as humans can, the divine ability to forgive and forget. Perhaps in light of that sentiment, the common law held that a royal pardon blotted out any guilt or infamy resulting from commission of a crime, as well as the legal existence of the conviction itself. Following much discussion of the issue, the Supreme Court adopted the forgive-and-forget rule in a series of decisions following the Civil War. Yet, despite clear common law and Supreme Court precedent holding that full and unconditional pardons blot out both the legal existence of a conviction and any resulting guilt or infamy, state and lower federal courts, with notable exceptions, frequently take a rather tight-fisted view as to the operation and effect of full and unconditional pardons. In so doing, those courts overlook the fact that the pardon power involves the exercise of the executive\u27s unlimited constitutional authority to convey the full measure of mercy that the people were capable of placing in the constitution. This Article argues that a full and unconditional pardon actually does blot out any guilt or infamy resulting from a criminal conviction, and that it restores the character and standing of the pardoned individual in the eyes of the law. State and lower federal courts rejecting the forgive-and-forget rule hold or imply that a full pardon does not close the judicial eye to an individual\u27s past crime. That conclusion, however, ignores the following considerations which are analyzed in this Article: (1) the pardon power implicates the principle of separation of powers because the exercise of the executive\u27s exclusive and unlimited constitutional authority to grant pardons serves as a check and balance on legislative and judicial errors and excesses; (2) the executive exercises judicial or quasi-judicial functions in evaluating the merits of individual pardon petitions and thus implicitly finds that the person pardoned is either innocent or rehabilitated; (3) the judiciary does not enjoy an exalted or exempt status as to the operation and effect of full pardons, and thus is not immune to all other acts of governmental mercy except its own; and (4) the executive does not suffer an inferior status in granting governmental mercy so that, as a result, the courts are required to honor full pardons at least to the same extent as legislative amnesties, especially since pardons involve a judicial-like sifting of the merits of individual cases while broad-based legislative amnesties do not. Whether expressly stated in a pardon warrant or not, the executive traditionally determines an individual\u27s innocence or rehabilitation when deciding whether to grant a pardon. Furthermore, the executive\u27s pardon-deliberation process is quasi-judicial in nature, much like an appellate court\u27s review of a trial court\u27s record for error or a judge\u27s consideration of a defendant\u27s present rehabilitation and plea for mercy in a sentencing hearing. The contempt with which many courts seem to hold full pardons may be traceable to an incorrect or incomplete understanding of the careful, quasi-judicial deliberation which precedes the executive\u27s exercise of the pardon power, and such contempt is unwarranted as a matter of law. By treating full and unconditional pardons as having little, if any, legal significance beyond that of lesser forms of executive clemency such as restorations of civil rights and conditional or partial pardons, the judiciary has virtually eviscerated the distinction between full pardons and those lesser forms of executive clemency. Indeed, the traditional operation and effect of a full and unconditional pardon under the forgive-and-forget rule is the major and perhaps only real difference between it and lesser forms of executive clemency such as restorations of civil rights and conditional or partial pardons. This Article reviews the relevant case law and concludes that a full and unconditional pardon blots out both the legal existence of a conviction or crime and any resulting guilt or infamy, subject to four well-defined common law exceptions or limits to the operation and effect of full pardons. The Article also discusses the scope of the executive\u27s nearly unlimited pardoning authority under the constitution and separation-of-powers doctrine. It concludes that since the executive has virtually unlimited power to convey every bit of mercy contained in the constitution itself by the mere act of issuing a full pardon without expressly stating that a conviction was erroneous or that an individual has been rehabilitated, legislative and judicial attempts to regulate or limit the exercise of that power such as Federal Rule of Evidence 609 may encroach on the executive\u27s constitutional power
A Reply to David Jones
No full textDuring my years of practice in Maine, I had the pleasure of litigating most of the issues discussed in my book, Maine Debtor-Creditor Law, with many members of Maine\u27s fine commercial and bankruptcy law bar. Among the lawyers with whom I litigated these questions is David Jones. In fact, one of the cases we litigated, a particularly thorny foreclosure action, was the impetus of an article that became portions of two of the chapters in my book. It is against this background that I was pleased to learn that one of my old adversaries from practice had agreed to review my book. In the course of his review, which includes positive comments I very much appreciate, Mr. Jones advances several criticisms to which I would welcome a more extensive response than I am able to provide here. These fall into one of two categories: (1) a misreading, in one form or another, of what I have said; and (2) a criticism based on oversimplification of complex issues. Given the prescribed limits of this reply, I concentrate in what follows on the most interesting of Jones\u27 oversimplifications
A New Approach to Patent Reform
No full textScholars and policy makers have tried for years to solve the tenacious and harmful crisis of low quality, erroneously granted patents. Far from resolving the problem, these determined efforts have resulted in hundreds of conflicting policy proposals, failed Congressional bills, and no way to evaluate the policies’ value or impact or to decide between the overwhelming multiplicity of policies.
This Article provides not only new solutions, but a new approach for designing and assessing policies both in patent law and legal systems more generally. We introduce a formal economic model of the patent system that differs from existing scholarship because it permits us to (1) determine how a policy change to one part of the patent system affects the system as a whole; and (2) quantify the impact of policy changes. Existing scholarship typically analyses a policy by assessing its effect on just the targeted element of the patent system, but legal systems are complex with interrelated components and players react along multiple margins, so these analyses are incomplete and sometimes incorrect. Our approach fixes this problem, providing a comprehensive understanding of how a policy change affects the patent system from beginning-to-end. It also permits us to conduct complex analyses such as varying multiple policies at once. Further, much existing scholarship fails to quantify the magnitude of a policy’s effect, and even empirical scholarship can only measure the effect of an already-implemented policy, not predict the effect of a proposed change. Quantification is critical because policies generally have multiple effects, often in countervailing directions. Quantification—as shown using our model—permits scholars to determine the overall direction and size of a theoretically ambiguous effect. Quantification also allows us to compare the social welfare effects of different reforms so that policy-makers know where to focus their efforts.
We apply our model to several of the most prominent policy debates in patent law. We conclude that certain reforms such as regulation of settlement licenses and increased examination intensity yield large gains in social welfare and should be prioritized. Other reforms that are popular with scholars, including decreasing the availability of injunctions and reducing litigation costs produce surprisingly small gains in social welfare. Often existing scholarship operates too much on intuition, which, we show, can be wrong. Our new approach to patent reform provides an approach that offers deeper understanding and a more effective evaluation framework
E. Scarborough, III v. Court of Common Pleas of Northampton County
No full textUSDC for the Eastern District of Pennsylvani
Bible Study
No full textPlease join the Christian Legal Society for Bible study, prayer, and fellowship. Coffee and bagels will be provided. When: Every Tuesday, 8:30 AM Where: Eck Commons (couches and chairs near the entrance)https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/ndls_posters/1783/thumbnail.jp