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?”
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...
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...
Behavioral Class Action Law
This Article supplements stagnating class action debates and the traditional law and economics account of class action law with behavioral psychology. It draws on a litany of behavioral tendencies, biases, and pathologies and considers their application to class action practice and Rule 23.
Rethinking the Nonprecedential Opinion
Nearly 90 percent of the opinions issued by the federal courts of appeal are unpublished and lack precedential effect, and where these cases lay out new legal rules, this phenomenon cannot be reconciled with the Supreme Court’s settled retroactivity jurisprudence. This article highlights this inconsistency and proposes use of the “new rule” construct as a mechanism for differentiating those...
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.
Remote Killing and the Fourth Amendment: Updating Constitutional Law to Address Expanded Police Lethality in the Robotic Age
This comment focuses on the Fourth Amendment implications of the remote use of lethal force. It examines the current constitutional standard for analyzing the reasonableness of the use of force under Graham v. Connor and discusses why it falls short in situations in which the officer has time to consider her options, as any officer engaging an individual via remotely controlled vehicle...