The passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) brought vast changes to the world of health insurance. Although much of the focus has been on the individual mandate provision’s constitutionality, this Comment explores a less- mentioned but equally important implication of PPACA: a change to the rationales behind the common law collateral source rule. The collateral source...
A New Strategy for Neutralizing the Gay Panic Defense at Trial: Lessons From the Lawrence King Case
This Comment contributes to the legal scholarship on the gay panic defense by proposing that, in light of social science research on implicit bias and the foundational clinical data on gay panic as a psychological phenomenon, prosecutors highlight the inconsistencies between the psychology underlying gay panic and gay panic as a legal claim in the presence of the jury. This Comment recognizes...
On DOMA, Proposition 8, and the Implications of Their Potential Unconstitutionality for Equal Protection and Substantive Due Process Jurisprudence
In her article Marriage This Term: On Liberty and the “New Equal Protection,” Katie Eyer suggests that this term will likely provide a crucial test determine whether due process or equal protection guarantees will be the preferred basis on which minorities will be able to protect themselves from majoritarian discrimination. Assuming that the Court reaches a protective result on the merits in...
On the “Considered Analysis” of Collecting DNA Before Conviction
For nearly a decade, DNA-on-arrest laws eluded scrutiny in the courts. For another five years, they withstood a gathering storm of constitutional challenges. In Maryland v. King, however, Maryland's highest court reasoned that usually fingerprints provide everything police need to establish the true identity of an individual before trial and that the state's interest in finding the perpetrators...
Edifying Thoughts of a Patent Watcher: The Nature of DNA
In the pending case Myriad Genetics v. Association for Molecular Pathology, the U.S. Supreme Court will consider the patentability of human genes under the “product of nature” doctrine. Patentable subject matter is generally held to encompass materials and artifacts created by humans, and not that which exists independently in nature. However, it is not clear that this is a meaningful or helpful...
Discovery From the Trenches: The Future of Brady
The so-called “due diligence” rule, which excuses prosecutors’ compliance with Brady v. Maryland if the defense could have obtained the exculpatory evidence on its own, is only a symptom of the greater problem ailing the American criminal justice system. The real problem is that prosecutors and defense counsel generally do a terrible job collaborating because of the basic nature of our...
Forthcoming Symposium [UPDATE]: Twenty-First Century Litigation: Pathologies and Possibilities A Symposium in Honor of Stephen Yeazell
We are now accepting RSVPs to the 2013 UCLA Law Review Symposium, "Twenty-First Century Litigation: Pathologies and Possibilities, A Symposium in Honor of Professor Stephen Yeazell." The Symposium will be held on Thursday, January 24, and Friday, January 25, 2013 at UCLA School of Law. This year’s topic will explore the state of modern civil litigation, and how the substantive areas of both...
Sweeping Up Guideline Floors: The Misguided Policy of Amendment 767 to the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines Manual
Amendment 767 to the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines Manual (Guide-lines), effective November 1, 2012, significantly modified the calculation of Guidelines ranges for federal defendants convicted of multiple counts where at least one of the counts is subject to a mandatory minimum sentence. The amendment, which altered section 5G1.2 of the Guidelines and its commentary, provides that the minimum...