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Renegade Riders and the Marks They Love: Can the Government Tear That Patch Right Off Your Leather Jacket?
Get PDFA collective membership mark is a type of non-commercial trademark used to identify and associate with something or someone. In February 2019, a California district court ruled that the government could not forcibly seize from the Mongols Motorcycle Club their prized collective membership marks, seemingly halting a ten-year legal tug of war. The court held that forfeiture of these marks was not only unconstitutional, it was illogical.
This Comment explains how and why expressive marks like the Mongols’ should not be automatically deemed off limits to the government. It proposes a trademark-specific doctrine to help courts draw a constitutional line between free speech and commercial speech, and a change to the Lanham Act to address trademark forfeiture. Clear guidelines for forcible transfers of marks are needed in order to balance law enforcement objectives, fundamental rights, and the goals of trademark laws in the foreseeable future
Nuisance Most Fowl: The Problem With Chicago\u27s Permissive Livestock Ordinance And How To Fix It
Get PDFZoning On Holy Ground: Developing A Coherent Factor-Based Analysis For RLUIPA\u27s Substantial Burden Provision
Get PDFVol. 37, No. 4
Get PDFOne Lawyer\u27s Perspective on 2020 Public Sector Labor Relations and the Impact of Covid-19 and Race Relations
By Karl R. Ottosen
Recent Devlopementshttps://scholarship.kentlaw.iit.edu/iperr/1116/thumbnail.jp
Predatory Cities
No full textBetween 2011 and 2015, the Wayne County Treasurer completed the property tax foreclosure process for one in four properties in Detroit, Michigan. No other American city has experienced this elevated rate of property tax foreclosures since the Great Depression. Studies reveal that the City of Detroit systematically and illegally inflated the assessed value of most of its residential properties, which led to inflated property tax bills unaffordable to many homeowners. Extraordinary tax foreclosure rates and extensive dispossession resulted. Consequently, Detroit has become a “predatory city”—a new and important sociolegal concept that this Article develops. Predatory cities are urban areas where public officials systematically take property from residents and transfer it to public coffers, intentionally or unintentionally violating domestic laws or basic human rights. Detroit is not alone. Ferguson, Missouri, New Orleans, Louisiana, and Washington, D.C. are among the other US cities where state actors have used illegal methods to augment public coffers. Although this practice affects many urban areas, US legal scholarship has almost completely overlooked the phenomenon of predatory cities.This Article is the first attempt to understand the intersecting economic, social, and political factors that have caused these struggling cities to become predatory. Through an ethnographic study of illegal property tax assessments in Detroit, I find that predatory systems, rather than a few predatory people, initiated and perpetuated the illicit practices. More specifically, several factors made the City and its residents extremely vulnerable, and thus susceptible, to predation. Against this backdrop of vulnerability, certain legal and governance failures created structural opportunities for predation to advance at scale. Using the Detroit case, this Article identifies, defines, and examines the phenomenon of predatory cities, which scholars and policy makers must begin to better understand and address
Ideology, Coercion, and the Proposed Restatement of the Law of Consumer Contracts
No full textThe Restatement of the Law of Consumer Contracts (RLCC) has been the subject of much controversy and debate. To those who are unfamiliar with the RLCC, the issues may seem abstract or even trivial. But to those who care about consumers and consumers’ rights, the issues are real, critical and of enormous consequence. The outcome of this discussion determines what rights consumers will have, how they will enforce them and the extent to which unread fine print can alter societal and marketplace norms for decades.This Essay focuses on two provisions of the RLCC: § 2 – Adoption of Standard Contract Terms, which adopts the standard of notice-and-manifestation; and §3 – Modification, which permits modifications with notice-and-manifestation of assent (referred to as “notice-and-manifestation.”) This Essay argues that the current draft of the Restatement of Consumer Contracts engages in ideologically motivated rule-making by implementing two normative shifts. First, it changes the law of electronic contracts of adhesion by interpreting and adopting a standard as a rule. The law of electronic adhesion contracts is currently in flux. The RLCC, however, assumes a coherence and stability with respect to the law of electronic contracts that is belied by the case law. Second, it treats all consumer form contracts as electronic contracts of adhesion. The RLCC misreads the current state of the law governing contracts and specifically, the law of consumer contracts. It does this by confusing the law of consumer contracts with the law of electronic adhesion contracts
