Introduction In 1971, when Peter Bond was about twenty years old, he was convicted of a drug offense.[1] He served his penalty: one year probation.[2] By fifty-nine years old, Bond had become a district manager of a food service company and was responsible for supervising the food operations of “nearly 100 schools.”[3] After spending thirty-nine…
Category: Notes
Infringing Influencers: How to Fairly Protect Brands’ Trademarks on Social Media
Introduction Over the past two decades, social media has increasingly become a fundamental component of Americans’ lives, with more than seven out of ten adults using at least one social media site in 2021.[1] Within this digital landscape, certain people have cultivated thousands, or even millions, of followers to become “influencers” who build their careers…
WIPO Arbitration: A Promising Solution to the Injunction Chaos of Frand Disputes
Introduction The legal battles in the telecommunications industry are fierce. The fact that no single industrial player is the single global leader in 5G technologies stimulates a sweeping wave of patent cross-licensing throughout the industry.[1] Standard-setting organizations and standard development organizations play important roles in developing 5G technical standards, which provide technical specifications for equipment…
Turning Around America’s Traffic Crisis One Roundabout at a Time: Why More Roundabouts Means Safer Roads and Fewer Automobile Deaths
Introduction Henry Ford’s early twentieth-century breakthroughs in automotive mass production merged the United States into the fast lane toward motor vehicles becoming a dominant mode of personal travel.[1] Today, for an hour a day, ninety percent of Americans over the age of sixteen will buckle into motorized, multi-ton projectiles and propel themselves along a vast…
Actions Speak Louder Than Words: Compelled Biometric Decryption is a Testimonial Act
Abstract Most Americans can open their personal device using only their finger, not to type the password, but as the password itself. Using features like Touch ID or Face ID—forms of biometric decryption—to unlock a personal device provides several benefits, including heightened information security. Yet biometric decryption has also created a modern loophole for law…
Addressing the Supreme Court’s Half-Baked Eighth Amendment Majoritarianism: How States Can Use Advisory Ballot Questions to Give More Legitimacy to the Court’s Death Penalty Decisions
Introduction Over its half-century-long struggle[1] with how to determine whether a particular application of the death penalty is unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishments,”[2] the Supreme Court has arrived at a two-part approach for how to answer these questions. The first part of this approach requires the Court to assess…
A Privacy Torts Solution to Postmortem Deepfakes
Introduction In 2021, Road Runner, a documentary about late celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain, became embroiled in controversy for using AI-generated voice technology to create a voiceover of Bourdain reading an email which he wrote but never spoke aloud.[1] In response to the director’s claim of having received a blessing from Bourdain’s loved ones to do…
Digitize or Die: The Quixotic Battle for Camouflage Patterns in the United States Military
Abstract Military uniforms serve a multitude of purposes in the twenty-first century. In the United States, they are a ubiquitous symbol of patriotism and military might. Individual military service branches use military uniforms to distinguish each from the other. In its quest for distinctiveness, the Marine Corps initiated a power struggle for unique uniform designs…
The Stock Act Ten Years Later: The Need for a New Congressional Insider Trading Regulatory Scheme
Abstract A recent Pew Research poll indicated only 20% of Americans trust the federal government to “do the right thing.”[1] Although falling trust in government began in the mid-1960s and must be attributed to many factors,[2] a belief that members of Congress (“Members”) exploit their access to confidential information in order to enrich themselves certainly…
The $500 eBook: How Copyright and Antitrust Law Failed America’s Libraries Extending First Sale Doctrine Protections To Libraries’ eBook Purchases Or Implementing Price Caps As Alternative Solutions To Lower eBook Costs
INTRODUCTION Libraries are a fixture in American communities that people sometimes take for granted. People expect to find books on the shelves, computers for public use, children gathered for story times, and, increasingly, ebooks available to be checked out and read on personal devices. However, libraries face distinct financial disadvantages in purchasing and lending ebooks…
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