8353 research outputs found
Sort by
Civil Servant Disobedience
Get PDFBureaucratic resistance is a historically unexceptional feature of the administrative state. What is striking is the extent to which it has become publicly defiant under the Trump Administration. Civil servants are openly defying executive directives in their official capacity, despite strong norms to the contrary. The social practice raises both parallels and contrasts to civil disobedience by private citizens; it thus similarly raises the need for sustained scholarly debate. This article seeks to isolate the phenomenon of civil servant disobedience conceptually and begin an exploration into its normative implications. In particular, it considers the ideal of a reciprocal hierarchy, whereby political appointees consult the expertise and experience of career staff as required by statute. This ideal may help to inform evaluations of civil servant disobedience as a form of bureaucratic process-perfection alongside other legitimating criteria. These factors, however, might actually suggest that disobedience is usually difficult to justify in practice
Is DNA Really a Natural Product? It\u27s Time to Separate Fact from (Legal) Fiction: An Examination of DNA Patentability as a Biological Algorithm in the Post-\u3cem\u3eMyriad\u3c/em\u3e Era
Get PDFIn 2013, the United States Supreme Court delivered its landmark decision in Ass’n for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., holding isolated DNA unpatentable, thereby invalidating the claims of thousands of DNA patents in the process. The opinion, delivered by Justice Thomas, reasoned that the act of separating DNA from the body did not sufficiently transform the molecule beyond what naturally exists. Yet the Court found that line to be crossed when it held certain artificially synthesized complementary DNA molecules coding for the exact same gene patentable. Unlike the Federal Circuit, the Court focused its analysis not on the structural differences in DNA molecules but on the genetic information held within Myriad’s BRCA genes. Since genetic information is not a tangible quantity, categorizing isolated DNA unpatentable as a product of nature causes tension with the Court’s current characterization of DNA. Should the patent law continue to view DNA as a physical entity and base patentability on those differences? Or should it instead view DNA as an abstract idea based on the application of a gene’s information to an invention?
This note adopts the latter approach and proposes a test for DNA patentability as a biological algorithm, using the Myriad case as an example. As biotechnology continues to evolve, scientists are increasingly concerned about the coding information in genes. The patent law accordingly should accommodate this shift in principle, even if it means crafting a new legal fiction by no longer treating DNA as a purely tangible entity. By doing so, this note seeks to reconcile the tension in Myriad and provide a standard for future DNA patentability
Precedential Opinion Panel Resolves Conflicts in PTAB Opinions on Joinder: The Role of Amicus Briefs
Get PDF
Using a \u3ci\u3ePhillips\u3c/i\u3e Construction in all PTAB Trials: The Impact on District Court Patent Actions and PTAB Proceedings
Get PDFRegulatory Review in Anti-Regulatory Times
Get PDFThis article investigates the role of cost-benefit analysis during an antiregulatory period. The period since 2016 has seen several new developments, including the first vigorous use by Congress of its power to overturn recently issued regulations and the creation of novel deregulatory mechanisms layered on top of cost-benefit analysis. This period also contains important examples of sharply reversed CBAs, in which regulations that were said to have large net benefits under Obama are instead said to have net costs under Trump. The Trump Administration’s regulatory review initiatives focus heavily on costs, with limited attention to benefits. Case studies of three high-profile regulations show that the economic analysis of one is seriously defective, another admits to having severe limitations, and a third systematically reduces the scale of benefits. Some of these characteristics may be analytically defensible, others seemingly are not. It is even harder to connect Congress’s recent uses of the Congressional Review Act to either a concern about net benefits or even a desire to reduce the economic burdens of regulation. Thus, cost-benefit analysis seems overall a marginal part of current regulatory policymaking