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My Body, My Choice: Should Physician-Assisted Suicide Be Legalized in the United States for Individuals with Chronic Mental Illness?
Get PDFMany individuals with mental illness wish to die because the symptoms of their illness are unbearable. They shoot, suffocate, and poison themselves to make their pain go away. Because this is a statistical reality, a more certain and less violent means of death should be legalized. This Comment advocates for the legalization of physician-assisted suicide (“PAS”). As of 2022, nine states and the District of Columbia have legalized PAS for terminal illness, but this Comment argues that all fifty states should legalize PAS and not only for terminal illness, but for chronic mental illness as well. To do so, this Comment suggests minimum requirements legislators can adopt regarding which mental illnesses the PAS legislation should cover, how to assess competence to consent, and in what form that consent must be offered
Wartime challenges for trade marks: how long will Russia continue to protect famous foreign marks?
No full textSince Russia launched a military attack on Ukraine in early 2022, hundreds of foreign companies have left the Russian market, making lawyers wonder what may happen to these entities’ trade marks in the country. There have not been any consistent actions from the Russian state towards these assets so far, despite populists’ statements and selected judges’ hesitance to enforce trade marks of companies from “unfriendly” states. Still, in the environment of weakened rule of law, several private persons attempted to commercialize on fleeing brands by filing parasitic trade mark applications that copied or imitated foreign famous marks.
On this background, the authors review current trends and describe what legal instruments in the international and national Russian law are at disposal of foreign owners to maintain protection and guarantee successful enforcement of their famous marks on the Russian territory. The main inference is that the functioning legal setting is in place with respect to trade marks, but the general unpredictability of conditions under the authoritarian Russian regime hints that private corrupt interests may prevail over foreign entities’ rights at any moment.
In addition, by comparing the present case with some historical examples involving limitations of aggressors’ marks, it is important to remember that any restraints to trade marks of politically rival parties will, first and foremost, harm consumers and commercial actors, preventing the formation of a free market, which is for now antithetical to the regime in Russia
Three Megatrends in the International Intellectual Property Regime
Get PDFSince the establishment of the Paris and Berne Conventions, the international intellectual property regime has encountered two world wars, struggled with several global pandemics, welcomed dozens of newly independent nations and interacted with a wide variety of technologies and innovative practices. Although this regime progressed only slowly for the larger part of its first century, it saw major transformation in the past four decades, including the adoption of the WTO TRIPS Agreement.Written in commemoration of the centennial of the American Branch of the International Law Association, this article identifies three megatrends to illuminate the magnitude and ramifications of such transformation: (1) the rise of emerging countries; (2) the increased complexity of the international intellectual property regime; and (3) spatial transformation brought about by the proliferation of new technologies. Focusing on the myriad of impacts that changing actors, institutions and technologies have brought to the international intellectual property regime, this article discusses each megatrend in turn and explores its significance for the ongoing and future development of the international intellectual property regime
Should Prosecutors Be Expected to Rectify Wrongful Convictions?
Get PDFIn 2008, the American Bar Association amended the Model Rules of Professional Conduct to address prosecutors’ post-conviction conduct. Model Rules 3.8(g) and (h) establish the remedial steps a prosecutor must take after achieving a criminal conviction when confronted with significant new evidence of an injustice. They require prosecutors to disclose the new exculpatory evidence and to take reasonable steps to initiate an investigation, and if clear and convincing evidence then establishes the convicted defendant’s innocence, the prosecutors’ office must take reasonable steps to rectify the injustice. Since then, 24 state judiciaries have adopted versions of one or both rules. Although prosecutors in those states have not reported problems with the rules, state and federal prosecutors often oppose their adoption in the remaining states, including in Texas where the model provisions have been under consideration for over a year.
Prosecutors’ objections generally sound one of three themes. First, some prosecutors contest that they should be responsible for investigating and rectifying wrongful convictions. Second, some assert that because they can be counted on to rectify wrongful convictions, the rules serve no useful purpose but instead simply impugn prosecutors’ ethics. Third, some insist that the rules will unduly burden them—the rules demand too much of prosecutorial time and resources; they are too imprecise; or they will provoke unfounded disciplinary complaints to which prosecutors must respond. After providing background into the rules’ development, this Article examines prosecutors’ objections to adopting Model Rules 3.8(g) and (h) and explains why those objections are unpersuasive
Employment-at-Will: Too Simple for a Complex World
Get PDFFor Professor Epstein, the distinctively American rule of employment-at-will (“EAW”) in its original, harsh form—which allowed either party to terminate employment at any time for good reason, bad reason, or no reason at all—is an exemplar of “simple rules for a complex world.” This Essay will reflect on a few ways in which EAW, plain and simple, is too simple for our complex world—too simple in light of the complexities of labor markets and of human and organizational behavior, and too simple in light of evolving societal conceptions of justice. As things now stand, given the legal complexity that has been layered atop the EAW rule in this complex world, the “just cause” rival of EAW would bring greater simplicity along with its primary virtues of fairness, economic security, and dignity for workers
Toward Principled Background Principles in Takings Law
Get PDFOversights by lawyers, judges, and legal scholars have caused the Supreme Court’s opinion in Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid to be deeply misunderstood. In Cedar Point, the Court rewrote much of takings law by treating temporary and part-time entries by the government or third parties onto private property as per se takings. Prior to Cedar Point, these sorts of government-authorized physical entries would have been evaluated under a balancing framework that almost invariably enabled the government to prevail. As it happens, there was a well-established rule of black letter law that California’s lawyers and amici failed to invoke in defending the Cedar Point union organizer’s access regulation: A physical takings claim accrues when a regulation authorizing third parties to enter private property is promulgated, not when the third party actually enters the land. A second timing rule was plausibly applicable too: Only the party that owned the land at the time the physical taking cause of action accrued can prevail, and Cedar Point Nursery acquired the land at issue decades later. As a result, Cedar Point Nursery’s lawsuit was filed decades too late. Quite possibly by the wrong plaintiff. California’s mistakes were probably outcome determinative.
Moving beyond Monday-morning quarterbacking, we argue that the statute of limitations arguments available to governments in future cases help provide the essential limiting principles that went unmentioned in Cedar Point. In the aftermath of Cedar Point, prominent scholars denounced the opinion as a vehicle for gutting antidiscrimination law, labor law, environmental law, rent control, and other parts of the regulatory state. Our analysis reveals that these concerns are likely exaggerated because defenders of those longstanding limits on the right to exclude can invoke the statute of limitations arguments that California’s lawyers failed to raise. On the other hand, new restrictions on owners’ rights to exclude are vulnerable to legal challenge. Properly understood, contemporary takings law grandfathers in many longstanding limits on the right to exclude while constraining governments that wish to tackle collective action problems by restricting property rights in new ways. Moreover, statutes of limitations and related doctrines can provide courts with something that has been elusive since the Supreme Court’s 1992 takings decision in Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council: a principled and coherent account of what restrictions on owners’ rights are impervious to takings claims because they qualify as background principles of state property law
A Look at America – Part 3 – The Dynamism of the Field of Private Arbitration
No full textWith significant encouragement from the U.S. Supreme Court, corporations and employers are regularly inserting mandatory pre-dispute arbitration clauses into contracts of adhesion with their consumers and employees. Many of these clauses include class action waivers, and both commentators and consumer advocates have expressed concerns regarding the clauses\u27 potentially chilling effect on employees\u27 and consumers\u27 assertion of claims. In response to these concerns, Congress has recently passed legislation limiting the enforcement of arbitration clauses for claims of sexual assault or harassment while federal regulators have also attempted (not always successfully) to protect consumers. Entrepreneurial plaintiffs\u27 lawyers, meanwhile, have found other ways to weaponize class action-barring arbitration clauses. Not surprisingly, companies and employers have responded with countermeasures.
Last, as dispute resolution service provision has become quite lucrative, there are parties objecting that arbitrators\u27 ownership stake in for-profit dispute resolution firms creates evident partiality
Research Handbook on the Law and Economics of Trademark Law
No full textThis discerning and detailed Research Handbook examines the law of trademarks, unfair competition, and dilution from a variety of law and economics perspectives. With a comprehensive exploration of trademarks and trademark law, it provides an excellent illustration of the analytical diversity that the law and economics approach can bring to legal issues
Outlawing Corporate Prosecution Deals When People Have Died
Get PDFTwo Boeing 737 MAX aircraft crashes, occurring less than five months apart in 2018 and 2019, resulted in 346 deaths—possibly the deadliest corporate crime in U.S. history. The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) used an alternative dispute resolution tool called a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) to resolve criminal charges against Boeing and to immunize the company’s senior-level managers from prosecution. In the end, the company admitted to engaging in the criminal behavior, paid a monetary fine, and agreed to cooperate fully with the government—meaning there would be no courtroom trial, no formal adjudication of guilt, and no possibility of jail time or other serious punishment for wrongdoers. DOJ also decided it would not appoint an independent monitor to ensure Boeing’s compliance with terms of the DPA agreement. These results are profoundly unjust. In response, the United States Congress should immediately outlaw the use of DPAs in addressing federal allegations of corporate misconduct when the wrongdoing leads to one or more human fatalities. To date, Congress has failed to draw any boundaries limiting DOJ’s use of DPAs as a tool in resolving allegations of corporate malfeasance. This Article argues that banning DPAs when there is loss of human life is a legal and moral imperative—a line both reasonable and necessary for Congress to draw, even if legislators wish to continue exploring additional ways of reforming the DPA legal land-scape. The Article concludes by proposing specific legislation drawing the boundary needed to address the current problem, and by engaging in a thought exercise, hypothesizing and analyzing how the Boeing case might have turned out if the legislative proposal had been enacted into law before the disastrous airplane crashes occurred
By the Numbers, 2022-2023
Get PDFA compilation of data and statistics highlighting the activities and services of the Dee J. Kelly Law Library at Texas A&M University School of Law for 2022-2023.https://scholarship.law.tamu.edu/documents/1001/thumbnail.jp