Notes

Eyewitness testimony is an important, persuasive, and often pivotal element in American trials. Jurors are strongly inclined to believe eyewitnesses, even in the face of other contradictory evidence, such as fingerprints. However, thirty years of psychological research into the workings of human memory have revealed that eyewitness accounts are frequently flawed, either because the witness’s original perception of the event was flawed, or because the memory was subconsciously altered prior to testifying at trial. This, combined with jurors’ inclination to trust eyewitnesses, leads juries to overcredit eyewitness testimony, resulting in false convictions. To help avoid such erroneous outcomes, the legal system must find a way to close the gap between eyewitness accuracy and juror belief in eyewitness accuracy. One controversial option is the use of expert psychological testimony to educate the jury about eyewitness fallibility. In this Note, Jennifer L. Overbeck draws on recent psychological research indicating that while expert testimony may be the best way of educating the jury, it is not successful in all circumstances. The Note argues that lawyers must harness psychological research to determine the circumstances that contribute to effective eyewitness expert testimony and incorporate this into their trial strategies. The Note concludes by suggesting some concrete ways of doing so.

Although it is widely accepted that the Eighth Amendment operates as a broad prohibition against excessive criminal sanctions, neither the courts nor the academic community have presented a unified account of what excessiveness means in the Eighth Amendment context. This absence of any larger theory of the Amendment has produced an increasingly disjointed body of case law, and left the legal community without a method of analyzing excessiveness claims as they arise. The purpose of this Note is to lay the initial groundwork for such a theory. This Note argues that the reason why no comprehensive theory of the Eighth Amendment has been developed is because courts and scholars have not framed their discussion in terms of the two theoretical questions raised by the Amendment’s sweeping prohibition of “excessive” criminal sanctions: (1) what substantive standard of decision should determine the outcomes of specific cases, and (2) what standard of review should courts apply when examining sentencing schemes enacted by the legislative branches? In examining these questions, this Note makes two important insights about the nature of the Eighth Amendment: first, that the substantive standard of decision governing the excessiveness prohibition is necessarily tied to an underlying theory of punishment that provides the normative baseline needed for the excessiveness inquiry; and second, that the appropriate standard of review for a criminal sanction adopted by the legislative branches ultimately must be derived from a theory of judicial review that defines the appropriate role of the courts in a democratic society. By structuring the inquiry in this way, this Note contends that it becomes possible to see the competing policy preferences that are implicated by the selection of one standard over another, and thereby forces us to undertake the difficult task of deciding which of these social values should inform interpretation of the Eighth Amendment.

In this Note, Joi Lakes argues that the 1976 Copyright Act and the rules set forth by the Copyright Office are flawed with respect to defining what constitutes expressive, copyrightable material in a choreographic work. This ambiguity creates an imbalance between the public and private domains, which acts to stifle choreographic innovation instead of encouraging it. In particular, the movements comprising choreographic building blocks that properly belong in the public domain are not defined expansively enough. Current copyright doctrine also fails to emphasize the role of flow—or movement through time—in describing choreography’s expressive element, which is the sine qua non of copyright protection. Erroneous understandings of choreography’s expressive element can result in overprotection of dance works by finding copyright infringement where it does not truly exist. Finally, copyright law’s fixation requirement as currently understood could lead to under-protection for choreography, which is particularly difficult to “fix” in a tangible medium. Lakes argues that these imbalances between copyrightable and public domain material in the current Copyright Act can be rectified by amending it both to clarify the definition of a choreographic work and to liberalize the fixation requirement.

The current notice regimes under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Family and Medical Leave Act provide insufficient notice to two groups of employees who might avail themselves of the Acts’protections: those who are ignorant or misinformed about their rights under the Acts and those who remain “in the closet” about their disability, consciously choosing to hide their need for accommodation or leave in order to avoid the accompanying stigma. To address these dilemmas, the author proposes a multi-part solution: First, employers should provide individual notice to their workers at regular intervals. Second, employers should notify employees of the Acts’ protections when an employee demonstrates a performance problem resulting from lack of accommodation or leave, as it is at that point that the employee might wish to come “out of the closet” to enjoy the Acts’ protections.

This Note considers prosecutorial charging discretion and its interaction with the no-contact rule. Charging delays instituted in order to continually question suspects outside the presence of counsel have racial and social class implications. The no-contact rule should be modified to prevent prosecutors, once they reasonably believe they have enough evidence to pursue a successful conviction, from continuing to question suspects without charging them. Disciplinary sanctions, however, are a more appropriate remedy for such improper questioning than is suppression of the resulting statements.

In this Note, Lauren Vicki Stark argues that the Supreme Court’s approach to overruling precedent based on “unworkability” is flawed and should be discarded. The Court has listed several factors that may constitute special justifications for overruling, including whether the precedent is “unworkable.” This Note examines each of the cases in which the Court has relied on unworkability to overrule and highlights the problems with the Court’s analysis. The author concludes that, rather than relying on unworkability to overrule its precedents, the Court could have clarified them or, in limited situations, applied the doctrine of justiciability instead.

The Supreme Court’s decision in Verizon Communications, Inc. v. Law Offices of Curtis V. Trinko, LLP marks a significant doctrinal shift in the long struggle to develop standards for exclusionary conduct prohibited by Section 2 of the Sherman Act. Yet Trinko‘s incautious treatment of exclusionary conduct and its uncertain scope threaten to add more confusion to Section 2 jurisprudence. In this Note, Frank X Schoen examines the manner in which Trinko has narrowed the grounds for stating a claim for exclusionary conduct and argues that Trinko should be interpreted as signaling a doctrinal departure from traditional frameworks for determining unlawful exclusionary conduct in favor of a short-term profit-sacrifice standard. However, the doctrinal tensions within the decision itself counsel a much narrower reading than might otherwise seem appropriate. This Note concludes that Trinko must be read narrowly to apply only to unilateral refusals to deal where prior courses of dealing or dealings with third parties provide the appropriate baseline for evaluating the conduct. Limiting Trinko to these circumstances addresses the Court’s concerns regarding the identification of and remedy for illegal exclusionary conduct and, moreover, accords with the rationales underlying the Court’s deferential treatment of price competition and innovation.

The ability to thrive in America’s mainstream financial economy is interwined with the ability to maintain a bank account. Yet, recent studies show that millions of American families do not own a bank account. While studies have pointed to various reasons behind this phenomenon, relatively little attention has been given to the banking industry’s own exclusionary policies regarding bank accounts. This Note critiques financial institutions’ use of an obscure credit reporting agency called ChexSystems. A bank reports an account to ChexSystems if it deems the account to be a “problem.” Each bank has discretion as to what constitutes a “problem” account. Research has shown that this discretion has permitted banks to report accounts to ChexSystems for very modest sums. Problematically, if an applicant appears in ChexSystems when attempting to open a new account, evidence has shown that most banks would deny that applicant a checking account for a five-year period, effectively blacklisting the applicant from mainstream financial institutions. In turn, these rejections force many families to rely on expensive alternatives to meet their day-to-day financial needs. In this Note, James Marvin Pérez posits that we must seriously question the banking industry’s use of ChexSystems. In light of historical banking practices, Mr. Pérez argues that ChexSystems may act as a pretext for discriminatory behavior among banks to exclude unwanted clientele. Additionally, Mr. Pérez explains that ChexSystems disproportionately punishes many consumers who have made only trivial mistakes. He offers additional factors for a bank to consider other than an applicant’s ChexSystems report when evaluating that applicant for an account. Finally, exploring federal legislation, Mr. Pérez ultimately advocates employing the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) as a legislative tool to combat the apparent deficiencies with ChexSystems in order to bring millions of families back into America’s mainstream financial economy.

The link between environmental degradation and international security has attracted new attention due to the publication of the United Nations report A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility, authored by the High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, a group of experts assembled by Kofi Annan and tasked with advising the Security Council about new global threats. The panel specifically focuses on desertification, deforestation, and climate change as urgent global environmental threats possibly requiring Security Council action because of their potential to cause massive loss of life and undermine state functions. The report provokes important questions: If,fo r example, a nation embarked upon a massive deforestation campaign which upset the ocean currents and threatened to send an entire continent into a deep freeze, would the Security Council be able to take measures against the offending nation to counteract this massive environmental threat? In this Note, Alexandra Knight argues that it is legally justified and legitimate for the Security Council, acting under the provisions of Chapter VII, Article 41 of the United Nations Charter, to impose measures to counter regional or global threats to the environment which pose a grave threat to human life and living conditions. While Chapter VII measures also include the use of force, Knight argues that only Article 41 measures—non-military measures like sanctions or interruption of communications—are appropriate to counter environmental threats.

Large industrial livestock and poultry farms, known as “factory farms” or “confined animal feeding operations” (CAFOs), pose serious threats to regional air and water quality. Because the widespread existence of factory farms post-dates our nation’s environmental laws, they remain largely exempt from emissions regulation. In recent years, the Environmental Protection Agency, the states, and environmental groups—via citizen suits—have begun to bring CAFOs into the regulatory fold. However, scientific challenges, political gamesmanship, and the time and cost required to craft traditional regulation make the success of these programs uncertain at best.

This Note argues that proponents of factory farm regulation should adopt a new approach, focusing on information-based regulatory tools (so-called “reflexive law”). Reflexive law policies mandate the public disclosure of information, whether in the form of raw data, hazard warnings, or environmental labels. In practice, well-crafted reflexive law programs have had a powerful shaming effect on polluters, while also enabling consumers, business partners, and even shareholders to exercise their displeasure with polluting industries and their support for more environmentally responsible companies. Reflexive law is also faster and cheaper to implement than command-and-control regulation, and it represents a more politically palatable approach to the problem of CAFO pollution.

The Note explains why reflexive law is well-suited to factory farm pollution, identifies the key elements of a successful reflexive law program, and then proposes a series of reflexive law approaches for factory farms that could be enacted independently or in conjunction with more traditional regulation. It ecommends immediately supplementing ongoing efforts with reflexive law programs.