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When Is Hate Speech Wrongful? A Comment on Alexander Brown’s Hate Speech as Degradation and Humiliation
No full textLiability for Mass Sexual Abuse
No full textWhen harm is caused to victims by multiple injurers, difficult issues arise indetermining causation of, legal responsibility for, and allocation of liability forthose harms. Nowhere is this truer than in child pornography and sex traffickingcases, in which individuals have been victimized over extended periods oftime by hundreds or even many thousands of injurers, with multiple and oftenoverlapping victims of each injurer. Courts (and lawyers) struggle with thesesituations for a simple reason: they insist on applying tests of causation thatfail when the effect was over-determined by multiple conditions. The failure toproperly understand the causation issue has exacerbated failures to properlyunderstand and distinguish the injury, legal responsibility and allocation ofliability issues.All of these issues, plus other significant issues, arose in Paroline v. UnitedStates (2014), in which the Supreme Court considered the statutory liability of aconvicted possessor of child pornography to a victim whose images he possessedfor the pecuniary losses that she suffered due to her knowledge of the widespreadviewing of those images. In this article we critique the Justices’ opinions inParoline as part of a broader discussion that is intended to clarify and distinguishthe causation, injury, legal responsibility and allocation of liability issuesin general and especially in situations involving mass sexual abuse, while alsocriticizing the Court’s ill-considered dicta that would make any compensatoryaward in civil as well as criminal cases subject to the constitutional restrictionson criminal punishment
Outgrowing Its Usefulness: Seventh Circuit Limits the Application of the Common Actor Inference in Title VII Discrimination Cases
Get PDFCan a person harbor discriminatory views toward protected minority groups, yet still hire a member of that group as an employee? Under Title VII jurisprudence, the “common actor inference” holds that if the same supervisor hires and fires an employee in a short time period, that supervisor likely did not have a discriminatory reason for the employment decision. The common actor inference has been accepted and used across all U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeal, but was recently criticized and limited by the Seventh Circuit
Dignity Takings and Dignity Restoration: A Case Study of the Colombian Land Restitution Program
Get PDFOver the past 50 years, Colombia has experienced intense socio-political violence associated with its internal armed conflict. As a result of this violence, long and complicated processes of land dispossession have taken place throughout the country, and more than seven million people have been internally displaced. Currently, the Colombian state is implementing a Land Restitution Program, which aims to restitute the dispossessed lands and to transform deep inequalities associated with massive forced displacement. This case study on both the complexities of the land takings in Colombia and the Land Restitution Program’s ambitious goals contributes to strengthening the socio-legal concepts of dignity takings and dignity restoration.
In this study, I develop a set of variables to empirically assess the extent to which a property takings case involves dignity takings. Applying this set of variables, I find that land dispossession victims in Colombia have suffered different forms of dignity deprivation and yet, only some of them reach the level of dehumanization or infantilization. Moreover, my analysis shows that paying more attention to the context, historical processes leading to property loss, and the particular position of the land-taking victims in a community can capture fundamental elements to achieve a deeper understanding of dignity deprivation. Therefore, the interaction between widespread violence, deep inequalities, and land dispossession is critical to comprehend the effects of dignity takings processes.
By using a content analysis of judicial rulings and semi-structured interviews with officials, I analyze the Land Restitution Program’s transformative goals and foster a conversation between the concepts of dignity restoration and transformative reparation. Based on this conversation, I suggest that dignity restoration can play a significant role in transitional contexts beyond those that fit the concept of dignity takings, particularly if dignity restoration is considered a remedy for massive human rights violations
Complex Innovation and the Patent Office
Get PDFAs the universe of available information becomes larger and innovation becomes more complex, the task of examining patent applications becomes increasingly difficult. This Article argues that the United States Patent Office has insufficiently responded to changes in the information universe and to innovation norms. This leaves the Patent Office less able to adequately assess patent applications, and more likely to grant bad patents. After first demonstrating how innovation has been responsive to contemporary innovation norms for hundreds of years, this Article uses information and data science methods to empirically demonstrate how innovation has drastically changed in recent decades. After empirically demonstrating the changed innovation system and the inadequate response to these changes by the USPTO, this Article concludes with policy prescriptions aimed to help the Patent Office implement examination procedures adequate to assess 21st century innovation. These prescriptions include more granular crediting for the time spent by examiners assessing applications, an increased focus on teamwork at the Patent Office, improvements to the inter partes review process, and alterations to the analogous art doctrine
