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Half Past Inexcusable: The Lanham Act Needs to Disassociate with the Doctrine of Laches
Get PDFWho condones time’s ability to place such an incessant stranglehold on one’s emotions? Well, no one, but it is inevitable: time dictates every facet of life. For example, a brief glance at the clock elicits a myriad of potential responses. One possibility is anticipation: painstakingly watching the clock count down the hours, minutes, and seconds until the weekend. The feeling is excruciating. However, the instant the minute hand aligns with that pesky 12 provides an instantaneous, captivating sense of relief. There is no feeling like 5 PM. Conversely, no amount of begging or pleading with Father Time can change the reality that time waits for no man. Father Time couldn’t care less about oversleeping or missing a deadline. Instead, Father Time remains unbothered by such mishaps. He continues about his regularly scheduled programming, unaffected by the consequences of his own actions
AI, ADR, AND ANXIETY
Get PDFThis post discusses AI generally, growing anxiety about it and modern life generally, and how we can manage this anxiety. Anxiety about AI may be feeding into a more general anxiety about events in the US and around the world. We can address anxiety by focusing on what we actually can control. Regarding AI and ADR, I suggest that the machine mediation “glass” will be partly empty and partly full – as is human mediation. It’s important to recognize our own reactions to and fears about AI, have as accurate and balanced an understanding of what’s happening as possible, acknowledge th
TEACHING STUDENTS TO FOCUS ON PARTY DECISION-MAKING
Get PDFThis post describes why law schools don’t teach students very much about helping clients make decisions and suggests techniques for doing so. It suggests (1) focusing on parties’ roles throughout relevant courses, (2) including meaningful party roles in simulations and competitions, (3) using simulations focusing solely on preparation, (4) using multi-stage simulations, (5) helping students focus on parties’ intangible interests in simulations and Stone Soup interviews, (6) using the terms “pre-mediation-session” or “before mediation sessions,” (7) taking advantage of the litigation interest and risk assessment framework and materials, and (8) recommending that schools offer a course on strategic case evaluation and management
PROBLEM-RESOLUTION LAWYERING ACROSS THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY LAW CURRICULUM
Get PDFThis post highlights an article by Kris Franklin and F. Peter Phillips. They argue, “Framing lawyers’ professional role as helping clients resolve problems – and therefore in turn, conceiving law school coursework as preparation for that role – should alter teaching, learning, and law practice in ways that inevitably improves each.” The article includes “exemplars” of ways to shift the legal curriculum to focus on lawyers as problem resolution partners
Solving the Valuation Challenge: The Ultra Method for Taxing Extreme Wealth
Get PDFRecent reporting based on leaked tax returns of the ultra-rich confirms what experts have long suspected: for the wealthiest Americans, paying taxes is mostly optional. Some of the country\u27s richest have reported annual incomes that would be modest for a school teacher, even as the share of wealth held by the top .1% is at its highest in nearly a century.Experts have long understood that one problem sits at the root cause of many of the tax system\u27s failures to reach the very rich: valuation. Because it is difficult to appraise complex or unique assets, modern tax systems instead wait until an asset is sold to impose tax. In combination with an American rule that wipes away income tax on inherited profits, and a highly porous estate tax system, this realization approach has deeply undermined U.S. efforts to tax extreme wealth.This Article proposes a new approach: governments should take payments from the wealthy in the form of notional equity interests, which we call ULTRAs, for unliquidated tax reserve accounts. Simply put, the ULTRA is economically equivalent to a government claim on a portion of the stock of a business, but because it is notional it does not provide the tax authority with any governance rights or minority shareholders protections. Because the ULTRA represents a set share of an asset, whatever that asset\u27s worth, it does not require valuation.We explain how the ULTRA proposal builds on existing components already in use by wealth taxes around the globe, as well as prior academic proposals. By combining select features from predecessors, the ULTRA addresses many of the shortcomings those tools face individually. For example, unlike the retrospective system proposed by the economists Alan Auerbach and David Bradford, the ULTRA solution ensures that taxpayers who expect to outperform the market with their investments will still have no incentive to delay paying tax.We then set out a variety of ways in which ULTRAs can be used to close the loopholes that wealthy taxpayers use to minimize their tax burdens. Most obviously, our proposal helps to make an annual tax on extreme wealth viable, and we detail how the ULTRA features in our proposal, developed more comprehensively elsewhere, for a state-level wealth tax. ULTRAs can also be used to reform the income tax system, most ambitiously as in the recent Billionaires Income Tax proposal to eliminate the realization approach for the very rich. We also show that valuation is at the core of many other common income-tax dodges, and detail ways that ULTRAs can be used to curtail them
Finding the Goldilocks of Employment Discrimination: The Confusing Approaches to Temporal Proximity.
Get PDFThere has been substantial discourse between federal circuit courts in determining causality for employment discrimination cases. The article begins with a real-life case of a woman diagnosed with potentially cancerous tumors who, after filing an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) complaint, faced adverse actions by her employer. The central question is how temporal proximity, the time between the complaint and adverse actions, plays a role in determining causality. The article examines the varying approaches of different circuit courts, some of which rely solely on temporal proximity to establish a causal connection, while others demand additional evidence. It also discusses the widespread use of summary judgment, which often results in the dismissal of employment discrimination cases. The article argues that the burden on plaintiffs should be lightened, and more cases should go before juries where juries can make informed decisions. The article proposes modifications to the McDonnell Douglas framework to eliminate the requirement for additional evidence and reduce the burden of proof for plaintiffs. This is to ensure that more cases are heard by juries, potentially offering a fairer outcome for plaintiffs in employment discrimination cases. The article sug-gests that these changes may require action from lawmakers or judges and high-lights the importance of addressing this issue in the current legal landscape
EASY AS PI
No full textThis post presents some interactions with Pi, an AI system that is more conversational than others. It illustrates that, in the foreseeable future, AI systems almost certainly will become a lot more sophisticated and be incorporated into much of our lives, often in ways we will not notic
