This Article accomplishes two key goals. First, it offers a novel lens through which to reconsider how best to promote meaningful choice in family form. Second, this Article draws on nonmarital parentage law, as well as the almost entirely overlooked body of what I call “interstitial marriage cases,” to demonstrate that courts are capable of applying more capacious rules that give effect to...
Regulating Bot Speech
Concerns over bot speech have led prominent figures in the world of technology to call for regulations in response to the unique threats bots pose. This work is the first to consider how efforts to regulate bots might run afoul of the First Amendment.
The Problem With Nostalgia (or In Defense Of Alternative Facts)
Language lives in the present, though we often approach it as though it was settled in the past. But those yearning for the meanings of some bygone era, like those endeavoring to deduce a single, correct meaning from the words on a page, are deluded. The intractable problem of induction scuttles these projects, and reveals that we cannot ask “What does it mean?” without also asking, “To whom?”
Black Twice: Policing Black Muslim Identities
The article focuses in on the experiences of policing faced by Somali Muslims within a larger Black Muslim community. It examines how federal “Countering Violent Extremism” program has been used against this group of Black Muslims and puts it in the broader historical context of Black Muslims in America, revealing inherent racialization of religion, and the antiblack origins of American...
No Mere Acquittal: Pimentel-Lopez and the Use of Declarations of Innocence to Clarify Sentencing
This comment explores questions regarding declarations of innocence that surface in light of the Pimentel-Lopez opinion holding that the sentencing court is bound by the jury’s factual determination within the special verdict. The comment concludes that the optimal use of declarations of innocence should be limited to determination of specific offense characteristics and adjustments under the...
The Central Assumptions of Patent Law: A Response to Ana Santos Rutschman’s IP Preparedness for Outbreak Diseases
In response to Professor Rutschman’s questioning of the patent system’s preparedness to address the unique challenges posed by outbreak diseases like Ebola and Zika, Professor Lichtman offers a solution of his own: to recognize that, in this setting, government funding, prize systems, and other innovation-producing mechanisms should fully displace the normally attractive market-based patent...
IP Preparedness for Outbreak Diseases
The article addresses the role of IP in the development of vaccines for outbreak diseases like Ebola and Zika. It concludes that IP inefficiencies result in a lack of “IP preparedness” that weakens our ability to respond to outbreaks. The author proposes a new legal mechanism: a dormant license, agreed upon in the pre-outbreak period, that would become active once a public health emergency is...
One-Strike 2.0: How Local Governments Are Distorting a Flawed Federal Eviction Law
The article examines crime-free housing ordinances (CHOs) as an outgrowth of the federal one-strike policy and argues that they are significantly more harmful to tenants than the one-strike policy has been. The article suggests that, before adopting or enforcing CHOs, municipalities should consider legal problems raised by CHOs in conjunction with the crime problem that they purport to address.