Notes

Embryonic stem cells present novel questions of patentable subject matter eligibility. This Note examines the patentability of two types of patents: embryonic stem cells and methods of differentiating embryonic stem cells. After explaining patentable subject matter doctrine and ways of testing whether an invention is patentable, the Note posits that neither type of invention is patentable because the biological principles involved in both types of inventions are almost identical to the biological phenomena that occur naturally in the developing embryo. Additionally, the Note explains that, from a normative standpoint, patents should not be granted over these inventions.

What normative principles animate our laws on the conferral of citizenship? The present literature is divided between two competing ideas: the Consent Principle, which holds that citizenship stems from the mutual consent of the prospective citizen and the existing polity; and the Responsiveness Principle, which holds that citizenship is extended by the government in fulfillment of its duty to be responsive to the governed. In this Note, I argue that the Consent Principle is best understood as a background political theory and the Responsiveness Principle as an interpretive theory of law, and that thus understood, these principles are functionally complimentary rather than competitive. I then contribute a third idea called the Allegiance Proviso. The Allegiance Proviso says that, notwithstanding any affirmative obligations to the contrary, a government may withhold citizenship if it reasonably believes that a prospective citizen will not undertake the duties of citizenship— obedience to the laws and assistance in the common defense—in good faith. Taken together, the Consent Principle, Responsiveness Principle, and Allegiance Proviso form a coherent theory that fits our intuitions and illuminates the hard issues of citizenship today.

In the recent case Doe v. Reed, the Supreme Court announced the test for associations to get exemptions for their members from membership disclosure laws under the First Amendment. The Doe test requires an organization to “show ‘a reasonable probability that the compelled disclosure of personal information will subject [its members] to threats, harassment, or reprisals from either Government officials or private parties.’” However, the Court’s stated test is inconsistent with its membership disclosure cases, including Doe’s own dicta. In response to this inconsistency, this Note identifies the secret two-part purposivist test the Court has actually applied in its eighty years of membership disclosure case law—one that focuses only on “Government officials.” Under its actual test, the Supreme Court asks (1) whether the association deserves judicial protection from the disclosure law at issue because the government has targeted it, and (2) whether the association’s activities are economic or criminal such that disclosure is outside the realm of paradigmatic—and therefore deeply felt—First Amendment harm. This Note then argues that the Supreme Court’s secret test is more consistent with existing doctrine than its announced Doe test, once the private parties that target associations are understood to be like a hostile audience.

The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) is an innovative criminal and civil statute drafted by Congress to combat whole criminal organizations. Section 1962(c) of RICO, its most used provision, prohibits an individual from conducting or participating in the conduct of an enterprise’s affairs through a pattern of racketeering activity. In Reves v. Ernst & Young, the Supreme Court sought to resolve a circuit split over the interpretation of this section and ultimately held that the “operation or management” test would determine liability under § 1962(c). However, the Reves Court did not fully define the operation or management test, nor have the lower courts applied it in a consistent manner. Recently, Justice Stevens, dissenting in Boyle v. United States, alleged that the Court’s interpretation of RICO’s associated-in-fact enterprise element conflicted with Reves and the operation or management test. Justice Alito, writing for the majority, denied such a conflict. This Note continues that conversation by examining whether a conflict exists between the operation or management test and the Court’s interpretation of RICO’s associated-in-fact enterprise element. Finding that a strict conception of the operation or management test does conflict with the Court’s recent interpretation of associated-in-fact enterprise in Boyle, this Note proposes a less restrictive interpretation of § 1962(c), and thus a more flexible application of the Reves operation or management test, that more consistently interacts with a broad understanding of enterprise as defined in Boyle. Simply put, this Note argues that courts can hardly require that a RICO defendant play a role in the leadership of an enterprise itself, while readily applying RICO to enterprises that have no real leadership structure.

In the last decade, anti-bullying legislation has rapidly proliferated, motivated in part by a string of highly publicized suicides by bullying victims—many of whom were targeted because of their sexual orientation. Despite heightened attention to the issue of anti-gay bullying, few statutes extend explicit protection to sexual minorities. In this Note, I argue that statutory proscriptions against bullying speech targeted at LGBT youth are necessary to ensure full protection for this particularly vulnerable group. Such limitations are constitutional under Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, the Supreme Court’s seminal case on student speech. Just as importantly, explicit prohibitions on anti-gay speech place state authority behind a clear message that LGBT students are just as important as their heterosexual peers. This message helps construct a reality that leaves no room for anti-gay bullying—where full equality for sexual minorities is the norm, rather than the exception.

What motivates substantive presumptions about how to interpret statutes? Are they like statistical heuristics that aim to predict Congress’s most likely behavior, or are they meant to protect certain underenforced values against inadvertent legislative encroachment? These two rationales, fact-based and value-based, are the extremes of a continuum. This Note uses the presumption against extraterritoriality to demonstrate this continuum and how a presumption can shift along it. The presumption operates to diminish the likelihood that a federal statute will be read to extend beyond the borders of the United States. The presumption has been remarkably stable for decades despite watershed changes in the principles—customary international law and conflict of laws—that once supported it. As the presumption’s normative justifications have diminished, a new justification has grown in importance. Today, the presumption is often justified as a stand-in for how Congress typically legislates. This Note argues that this change makes the presumption less defensible but even harder to overcome in individual cases.

The Trademark Counterfeiting Act (TCA) has been widely applied to cases of postsale confusion, which occurs when someone buys a knock-off luxury item knowing that it is fake. When liability is predicated on post-sale activity, the only people that are confused are the members of the general public who observe someone wearing what looks like a genuine brand item—a Rolex watch or Louis Vuitton bag for instance—and think it is real when in fact it is not. While every circuit that has dealt with knock-off goods has held that post-sale confusion is criminalized by the TCA, this Note argues that this conclusion relies on an improper reading of the statute. The TCA was only designed to make criminal those actions that were clearly actionable civilly in 1984, when it was enacted. This Note will show that post-sale confusion was far from uniformly accepted civilly in 1984 and argue that, therefore, it should not be read into the TCA. Furthermore, this Note argues that the harms of post-sale confusion are identical to the harms of dilution, which was not covered in the Lanham Act until 1996 and was never included in the TCA. The Note then examines the statutory scheme to argue that Congress had only point-of-sale confusion in mind when it enacted the TCA. The statute unambiguously fails to cover more typical dilutive sales, which is strong evidence that, contrary to the courts’ collective reasoning, Congress did not have the harms of dilution in mind when it added criminal penalties to trademark law. Finally, this Note argues that, from a policy perspective, post-sale confusion should not be criminalized. The harms are small, and companies have had a great deal of success combatting knock-offs with civil actions. There is no need to impose severe fines and long prison terms for selling knock-offs. This Note concludes by stating that there are serious harms from counterfeits that create point-of-sale confusion, but the public does not take these seriously because they think only of knock-offs when they think about counterfeits. The decriminalization of the sale of knock-offs will allow the public to be more willing to accept the true dangers of “real” counterfeits and to become more vigilant in the marketplace.

This Note builds on the work of Professor William Berry, who has proposed a concept called “procedural exceptionalism” to explain the persistence of the death penalty in the United States in an age of abolition elsewhere in the West. Berry argues that there is a distinctive American faith in the procedural protections afforded defendants, such as the jury trial and multiple levels of appeal, which helps legitimize the institution of capital punishment in the United States. This analysis, however, only takes into account the conviction and sentencing aspect of the death penalty. This Note contends that the actual method by which executions are carried out is equally important in explaining the retention of capital punishment. This Note applies Berry’s idea of “American procedural exceptionalism” to method of execution in the particular context of judicial decisions governing the administration of lethal injection. It argues first that lethal injection as a method of execution perpetuates the notion of a more “humane” death penalty, and second that judicial faith in the perfectibility of the procedures governing lethal injection serves to reinforce this notion. This faith in the perfectibility of the procedure of lethal injection works in conjunction with a similar faith in the procedures governing conviction and sentencing to create an equilibrium that allows for the continued use of capital punishment in the United States.

Federal preemption is one of the most powerful defenses that a product liability defendant can raise. If a court finds that federal law preempts a state law product liability claim, it must dismiss the claim. Dismissal of the state tort claim may eliminate the only source of private liability of defendants and the only source of compensation for plaintiffs. If the applicable federal statute does not contain an express preemption provision, most courts find federal preemption only if a “conflict” exists between the state and federal laws. However, in some areas, courts have held that all state product liability claims in a particular “field” are preempted because an aspect of the field is subject to federal regulation. This Note argues that this broad “field-based” preemption framework, referred to as implied field preemption, should not be invoked to preempt state law product liability claims, despite the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Kurns v. Railroad Friction Products Corp. The case against the field-based framework is strong when viewed from doctrinal, theoretical, and historical perspectives. The case studies presented in this Note illustrate the problems that result when an appellate court finds implied field preemption. Field preemption prevents lower courts from determining whether the state claims in question and federal law are actually incompatible. In some cases a field-based framework defeats the purposes behind both state tort law and federal preemption by eliminating product liability law’s deterrence and compensation functions without providing a corresponding benefit to the federal regulatory structure.

International indicators are widely used as diagnostic tools for global governance. For the developing world, with scarce resources and complex social problems, indicators can help businesses, donors, and policymakers identify issues, tailor solutions, and measure impacts. This Note studies the dynamics between global and domestic indicators in Vietnam, particularly the ways they influence Vietnam’s policy processes. It finds that while global indicators have advanced the notion of competitiveness and made it a priority of the national government, sub-national indicators—here, a ranking of Vietnam’s provinces—play a significant role as a more tailored and focused tool to motivate internal competition for pro-business reforms. This Note therefore confirms the dominant viewpoint that global indicators influence a country’s development agenda, but concludes that this effect is even more pronounced in the presence of robust local indicators.