Authoruclalaw

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.

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.

The Clean Air Act’s Blind Spot: Microclimates and Hotspot Pollution

The article argues that the ambient focus of the Clean Air Act, which requires the monitoring and regulation of large air districts, masks pollution hotspots with poor microclimate. States and the Environmental Protection Agency may be able to address microclimate pollution using existing statutory authority by electrifying the transportation fleet, which reduces not only hotspot pollution, but...

Leak-Driven Law

Over the past decade, a number of well-publicized data leaks have revealed the secret offshore holdings of high-net-worth individuals and multinational taxpayers, leading to a sea change in cross-border tax enforcement. This article examines the important benefits and risks of tax leaks and provides suggestions and cautions for leak-driven lawmaking.

Privatizing Cybersecurity

In an earlier work entitled Regulating Cybersecurity, Sales argued that cyber defense should be understood not just as a matter for law enforcement and the armed forces, but as a regulatory problem in need of regulatory solutions. This companion article proposes a series of market-based responses to complement those governmental responses.