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Accidental Brady Violations
Full text linkProsecutors are often seen as the villains of the criminal justice system. And the most villainous thing a prosecutor can do is to commit an intentional Brady violation by withholding favorable and material evidence from the defense. Not surprisingly, there is a wide literature criticizing prosecutors for flagrant misconduct.
But not all Brady violations are intentional. Prosecutors sometimes—perhaps often—commit accidental Brady violations by inadvertently failing to recognize favorable evidence. Because many prosecutors are inexperienced, overworked, and under-trained, they do not recognize exculpatory or impeachment evidence when it is in their files. Additionally, prosecutors also fail to disclose evidence that is in the hands of police, sheriffs, crime laboratories, and other government agencies. Because the criminal justice “system” is riddled with communication breakdowns, prosecutors are sometimes unaware of Brady evidence that they were obligated to disclose.
The breadth of the Brady doctrine and the dysfunction of the criminal justice system do not make Brady violations acceptable or harmless. To the contrary, Brady errors are serious violations of a defendant’s constitutional rights. To reduce future violations, however, we cannot simply condemn prosecutors for intentional misconduct. Instead, it is important to understand why accidental Brady violations occur. Drawing on nearly two-dozen recent cases, this article builds a typology of situations where accidental Brady violations occur, and it sets forth solutions for reducing accidental violations in the future
Keep the Home Fires Burning: The Enduring Embers of Pennsylvania Fire
Full text linkPrior to the Supreme Court’s decision in Ford Motor Co. in 2021, what characterized the Court’s personal jurisdiction jurisprudence was a desire to restrict access to the courts for plaintiffs seeking redress for injuries and to protect large corporate defendants by limiting the available jurisdictions in which they could be sued. For example, in Daimler, the Court rejected the traditional understanding of general jurisdiction based on a defendant corporation’s activities within the forum state and, in so doing, turned years of lower court decisions developing the understanding of general jurisdiction on its head.
However, more recently, the Court has begun to realize how its overly restrictive approach to personal jurisdiction has unnecessarily prejudiced individual plaintiffs and benefited corporate defendants. In Ford, for example, the Court indicated that a finding that a court had specific personal jurisdiction over a corporate defendant did not require a causal relationship between the defendant’s contact with the forum and the injury giving rise to the cause of action. Rather, the Court noted that the analysis for specific jurisdiction had always required either that the cause of action arise out of the defendant’s contacts with the forum or that the cause of action be closely related to the cause of action. In Ford, the Court, for the first time, put some meat on the bones of the “closely related” prong of specific jurisdiction analysis, thus expanding the reasons under which a court might find it has personal jurisdiction over an out-of-state corporate defendant.
More recently, in Mallory, the Supreme Court revisited the issue of whether compliance with state corporate registration statutes may connote consent on the part of a corporation to the exercise of personal jurisdiction. This was the first time since its 1917 decision in Pennsylvania Fire that the Court addressed the issue. The decision in Mallory warrants a renewed look at the question of consent to personal jurisdiction by corporate registration. In Mallory, the Court also further addressed the problems raised by its restrictive approach to personal jurisdiction.
This Article traces the historical development of the Court’s personal jurisdiction jurisprudence, from the territorial limitations of Pennoyer v. Neff rooted in understanding the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the abandonment of this overly restrictive approach and the establishment of the modern development of the personal jurisdiction doctrine in International Shoe Co. v. Washington. This Article then reviews the concept of registration-based consent to personal jurisdiction from Pennsylvania Fire to the recent decision in Mallory, which found that this application of consent was not a due process violation. In conclusion, the Article examines the preconditions for the imposition of registration-based consent to personal jurisdiction and the limitations imposed by the Dormant Commerce Clause on the reach of registration-based consent to personal jurisdiction
A Constructive Trust is Not Enough - Enacting a Slayer Statute to Better Protect a Decedent’s Heirs
Full text linkThis Comment explores how Texas’s common law constructive trust solution used to address the “slayer problem” (the problem that occurs when a person kills an individual they would inherit from) has some substantial limitations and explains how this system would be enhanced by enacting a complementary slayer statute. The current constructive trust doctrine fails to adequately protect a victim’s heirs, is too variable in its application, and creates too much uncertainty. By adopting the slayer statute proposed in this Comment, or one similar, the Texas Legislature can better protect a victim’s estate and their heirs. The overall aim of this Comment is to create a hybrid solution to the slayer problem by combining the strengths of a slayer statute with the flexibility of the constructive trust doctrine
Should Copyright Protect Racist Works? A Review of Intellectual Property and Immorality: Against Protecting Harmful Creations of the Mind By Ned Snow
Full text linkThis Essay reviews Ned Snow’s provocative book, Intellectual Property and Immorality: Against Protecting Harmful Creations of the Mind, and critically examines the intersection of copyright law and morality. It explores the ethical dimensions of copyright protection and examines whether works which fail to advance societal progress, as defined by Snow, should be ineligible for copyright. Drawing parallels between pornography and offensive and racially insensitive classic children’s literature and films, this Essay considers the broader implications of denying copyright to immoral works, including the potential for increased dissemination of harmful content, the challenge of aligning copyright with evolving moral standards, and the risk of infringing on free speech principles. Ultimately, while the Essay explores potential consequences of Snow’s proposal to deny copyright to immoral works, it echoes the book’s advocacy for a more ethically conscious approach to copyright that balances the rights of creators with the need to protect societal welfare
The Handbook of Fashion Law
No full textOver the past few years, \u27fashion law\u27 has emerged as a vibrant field of inquiry. The legal and policy issues affecting the fashion sector have been investigated with increasing intensity, while a growing number of private practice lawyers and in-house counsel regard themselves as practising fashion law. But what is fashion law? And what are the specific legal challenges facing the fashion sector, as well as related solutions? The Handbook of Fashion Law seeks to answer these questions by bringing together multiple voices, approaches, and jurisdictions./= / \u3e/= / \u3eIts contributions are organized into four thematic areas. Part I considers the legal infrastructure or the fashion and luxury industries, addressing issues related to intellectual property (IP) as well as the demands of the circular economy, protection of cultural heritage, and freedom of expression and information. Part II maps the IP dimensions of fashion by reviewing the application of design rights, copyright, trademarks, geographical indications, plant variety rights, and trade secrets. Part III analyses specific contractual issues arising in the fashion sector. It examines the application of principles and rules found in regulatory frameworks, including those governing advertising, competition, consumer, and tax laws. Finally, Part IV dissects and evaluates the role of new and emerging technologies in the fashion sector from a legal perspective. It considers concepts such as ecommerce, 3D printing, counterfeiting, artificial intelligence, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), the metaverse, gaming, and wearable technology./= / \u3e/= / \u3eThe Handbook of Fashion Law offers readers a multidisciplinary and multijurisdictional understanding of legal challenges facing the fashion sector. Bringing together a diverse range of experts, its contributions offer readers an in-depth, critical, and strategic understanding of the fashion industry\u27s legal intricacies
Volume 11 Executive Board
No full texthttps://scholarship.law.tamu.edu/property-law-slideshow/1035/thumbnail.jp
Autonomy Now?: Is It Time to Start Integrating (Autonomous) Urban Air Mobility Vehicles into the National Airspace System?
Full text linkUrban Air Mobility has the potential to radically change the fundamental nature of transportation within the United States. But challenges abound—from critical shortages of air traffic controllers and pilots and gaps in key technologies and infrastructure to the negative public perception of autonomous vehicles. FAA and industry, employing an evolutionary and safety-focused approach, can overcome these challenges through a combination of creative regulation, targeted technology development, and leveraging lessons learned through the FAA’s drone integration efforts. However, if drone integration is any guide, industry should be prepared for a long integration timeline, with autonomy still on the horizon
Self-regulation in Emerging and Innovative Industries
Full text linkSelf-regulation—governance of firm behavior by private entities—has a long history both in the United States and globally, and there is an extensive literature on the topic. But there has been far less attention paid to the role self-regulation can play in spurring and enabling innovation and growth within emerging industries. These industries—both currently ascendant ones such as hydrogen and artificial intelligence, as well as formerly new (but now well established) activities in hydraulic fracturing and Internet communications—plausibly benefit from self-regulation’s ability to coordinate economic actors and reassure often skeptical publics. Examining the ways that self-regulation impacts this special type of industry is important both to expand the self-regulation literature to account for an explosion of innovative industries in recent years and to strengthen the innovation literature, which explores how other factors, such as intellectual property rights and public incentives, spur or stifle innovation.Relying on a comprehensive analysis of existing literature and our own case studies, we identify the attributes of self-regulatory regimes that seem to support innovation and the scaling up of operations. Our case studies show that innovative, emerging industries rely on self-regulation to provide an important balance of certainty and flexibility; fill substantive and jurisdictional regulatory gaps as industries emerge; provide healthy competition among standards to produce effective and efficient standards; and simultaneously produce standards within multiple components of a networked. We also show that the best self-regulatory regimes are complemented by public governance, since pure self-regulation can leave substantive gaps and pose risks of capture and anti-competitive behavior that can lead to more heavy-handed public regulation or reputational crises. Overall, our research draws attention to the need for careful coordination of a public-private standards strategy for the many industries we will need to solve many of the world’s problems