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Darian Ibrahim on Crypto Angels and Devils
No full textDarian Ibrahim, professor of law at the College of William & Mary, joins the Business Scholarship Podcast to discuss his article Angels and Devils: The Early Crypto Entrepreneurs. In this article Ibrahim provides a typology in which crypto entrepreneurs are “angels” or “devils” and explains why these categories are analytically useful for framing the regulation of crypto assets, including under the Howey test for investment-contract securities
Understanding Mass Incarceration in the US is the First Step to Reducing a Swollen Prison Population
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Demonstrating Law Library Value Through Mission-Centered Assessment
Get PDFThis article presents a history of evaluation in U.S. academic law libraries, shares survey results about our collective professional mindset, and offers practical steps for law libraries that are ready to abandon a pervasive culture of evaluation
Blockchains as Infrastructure and Semicommons
Get PDFBlockchains are not self-executing machines. They are resource systems designed by people, maintained by people, and governed by people. Their technical protocols help to solve some difficult problems in shared resource management, but behind those protocols there are always communities of people struggling with familiar challenges in governing their provision and use of common infrastructure.
In this Article, we describe blockchains as shared, distributed transactional ledgers using two frameworks from commons theory. Brett Frischmann’s theory of infrastructure provides an external view, showing how blockchains provide useful, generic infrastructure for recording transactions and why that infrastructure is most naturally made available on common, nondiscriminatory terms. Henry Smith’s theory of semicommons provides an internal view, showing how blockchains intricately combine private resources (such as physical hardware and on-chain assets) with common resources (such as the shared transactional ledger and the blockchain protocol itself). We then detail how blockchains struggle with many of the governance challenges that these frameworks predict, requiring blockchain communities to engage in extensive off-chain governance work to coordinate their uses and achieve consensus. Blockchains function as infrastructure and semicommons not in spite of the human element, but because of it
Direct-to-Consumer Advertising of Prescription Drugs: Constitutionally Protected Speech or Misinformation?
Get PDFThis Note will argue that the United States can and should regulate direct-to-consumer (DTC) prescription drug advertisements on television more strictly—preferably by proscribing them altogether. In Part I, this Note will discuss the issues of soaring drug prices, disappointing health care outcomes, a glut of misleading drug advertisements affecting the doctor-patient relationship and personal health, and the problem with the current approach to prescription drug advertising. Part I will also discuss the misleading nature of DTC prescription drug advertisements and some examples of the harm they have caused. Additionally, Part I will propose a solution that focuses on limiting the influence of DTC advertising to reduce consumer confusion and deception. Part II will introduce and discuss the constitutional test for restrictions on commercial speech. In Part III, this Note will apply the constitutional test, enunciated in the Central Hudson case, to demonstrate that proscribing DTC prescription drug ads or confining them to certain, more fitting places would be a constitutional policy. Part III will also explain how the Note’s proposed solutions fit into the existing statutory framework and refute some anticipated counterarguments to this Note’s proposed solutions.
This abstract has been taken from the author\u27s introduction
Sola Scriptura: Slavery, Federalism and the Textual Power to Provide for the General Welfare
Get PDFThis Article argues specifically that under the text of the Constitution, Congress has the general power to provide for the welfare through tax and any other necessary and appropriate means. Clause 1 of the description of powers of Congress in Article I, Section 8, gives Congress the power to tax and spend to provide for the common defense and general welfare. Common defense and domestic welfare are parallel in the text and equally plenary, subject only to restrictions protecting individual rights. The final clause of Section 8 then allows Congress to reach the goal of general welfare by any necessary and appropriate means, that is, by the lesser auxiliary powers beyond tax. The constitutional text is a loyal codification of the binding resolutions previously passed on the floor of the Constitutional Convention, which for this issue provided that the Congress would be able to legislate in any case for the general interests of the Union. Close reading of the text—combined with the drafting history now available, and the evidence of the expressed rationale for the text—supports the argument that the general power in the Constitution provides for the general welfare including the power to abolish slavery. If we are to treat the constitutional text alone, Sola Scriptura, as the exclusive source of constitutional authority, then Congress has the general power to provide for the general welfare.
This abstract has been taken from the author\u27s introduction