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?”
Keeping Consumers Out of the Crossfire: Final-Offer Arbitration in the Pharmaceutical Market
Social value in the drug industry comes from ensuring that consumers get the drugs they need, but also from encouraging new drug development. In the United States, where new drug development is largely in the hands of drug manufacturers, these objectives directly conflict. To achieve a suitable balance, this Comment proposes two changes to the pharmaceutical market that ensure reasonable coverage...
Disability, Discipline, and Illusory Student Rights
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act contains provisions that ostensibly guard against disproportionate suspending and expelling school students with disabilities. This article demonstrates that these provisions are woefully inadequate to achieve their goal. It argues that current flaws can be mitigated by altering the burden of proof and expanding the type of data that schools must...
Rethinking the Nonprecedential Opinion
Nearly 90 percent of the opinions issued by the federal courts of appeal are unpublished and lack precedential effect, and where these cases lay out new legal rules, this phenomenon cannot be reconciled with the Supreme Court’s settled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...
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...