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In April 2024, the Federal Trade Commission announced a Final Rule that effectively bans all noncompete agreements, as well as provisions that function as noncompetes, between employers and workers as unfair methods of competition. Immediately following the issuance of the Final Rule, lawsuits were filed in Texas and Pennsylvania, challenging the validity of the Final Rule. The Texas court invalidated the Final Rule and issued a nationwide injunction prohibiting its implementation. This article analyzes the substance of the Final Rule and recommends how it can be navigated by employers, particularly in light of the nationwide injunction and the ongoing litigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using three exogenous shocks to ex ante litigation risk, including federal judge ideology and two influential judicial precedents, we find that lower shareholder litigation risk reduces a firm's propensity to delist from the U.S. stock markets. The effect is at least partially driven by indirect costs of litigation and that being a private firm can significantly reduce the threat of litigation. Overall, the results suggest that mitigating excessive litigation costs for public firms is crucial to ensure the continued vibrancy of the U.S. stock market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study introduces a new measure of ex ante litigation risk using scrutiny of SEC filings by the source of securities litigation (plaintiffs' lawyers) to reduce measurement error, relative to existing measures. We show that plaintiff-lawyer views proxy for the largely unobservable factors that make firms more likely to face litigation risk. Lagged views precede the public bad news revelation that triggers litigation and predicts future realized litigation risk (i.e., securities class actions filings and plaintiff-lawyer investigations) and stock market outcomes. Finally, we provide new insights into the plaintiff-lawyer case selection process that otherwise cannot be observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Patent litigation is an important component of a strong appropriability regime, critical for ensuring that firms can effectively protect their patented inventions. An issue that has mostly gone unnoticed in the innovation literature is the role of the rules and procedures of patent litigation in helping to create unintended knowledge spillovers. Using an inductive approach, we examine where, what, and how spillovers occur in the litigation process. Our findings demonstrate that knowledge spillovers can happen throughout the litigation process, and benefit not only the defendant but also the plaintiff. Furthermore, we show that the knowledge spilled over is often about proprietary methods and procedures utilized by a litigant to bring about an innovation, above and beyond the knowledge already in the patent. Based on these findings, we develop a framework for how knowledge spillovers happen during litigation, offering a more nuanced perspective on how strong appropriability regimes work. Finally, we suggest a number of directions for future policy development in this arena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Studies tracking changes in physical education (PE) policy adherence after an intervention are scarce. In California, successful litigation against 37 school districts for not providing adequate PE time compelled district schools' teachers to post PE schedules online or on-site for 3 years. We performed a follow-up study 4 years after the expiration of lawsuit settlement stipulations to determine the level of adherence in the absence of external accountability. Methods: We reexamined the websites of all 37 school districts, 106 schools' websites that posted time information in spring 2018 (Time 1), and a proportionate 20% random sample of schools' websites (n = 150) that posted no information at Time 1. We used descriptive statistics and paired t tests to detect differences between Times 1 and 2. Discussion/Conclusion: District websites mostly maintained postings of PE time documents and information, while the proportion of Time 1 posting school websites with such content dropped by 58%–67%. At the school level, compliance to policy mandates was positively, but not permanently impacted by a lawsuit intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We find that firms with preliminary earnings that are expected to just meet analyst forecasts are more likely to only disclose (i.e., not accrue) litigation loss contingencies, claiming that the litigation event falls below the qualitative thresholds necessitating accrual. We also find that this opportunistic treatment of a subjective estimate is reduced when firms' auditors have expertise in the defendant's industry or have experience auditing litigation contingencies. Furthermore, we find that opportunistic disclosure usage increases when firms are more economically important to auditors' client portfolios. Our results are robust to a series of additional tests. We provide evidence to support the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board's (PCAOB) call for increased auditor professional skepticism toward management bias and opportunism when evaluating subjective estimates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Contemporary Accounting Research is the property of Canadian Academic Accounting Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Contemporary Accounting Research is the property of Canadian Academic Accounting Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Based in First Amendment principles, the Noerr-Pennington doctrine immunizes parties petitioning the government from antitrust liability, even when such petitioning may be considered anticompetitive. Within the doctrine exists a narrower "sham exception" which eliminates Noerr-Pennington antitrust immunity when petitions are merely shams meant to interfere with a competitor's business. The Supreme Court has examined the sham exception in two cases which have produced differing standards for when and how to apply it. As a result, circuit courts have had to grapple with this uncertainty and a circuit split has developed as they have disagreed on the proper approach to applying the sham exception. This Comment proposes that the Supreme Court revisit its Noerr-Pennington jurisprudence and clarify the scope under which immunity shall attach. Furthermore, this Comment advocates for the adoption of a new "holistic evaluation" rule akin to the rule of reason in which patterns of lawsuits are evaluated, not on their individual chance of success, but collectively based on intent. As part of this inquiry, this Comment argues that courts should analyze whether the legitimate gains a party stands to win from such lawsuits (i.e. damages) is less than the anticompetitive effects of bringing those lawsuits (i.e. litigation costs and attorney fees) such that the lawsuits, collectively, should not enjoy Noerr-Pennington antitrust immunity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The published reports of 88 cases mentioning Private Acts of Parliament (PAs), heard in the higher courts of England and Wales and Scotland were analysed to assess the courts' current approach to PAs. Fifty-six English and eight Scottish cases were considered suitable for further assessment. Encyclopaedias and textbooks stress the application of contractual approaches, the contra proferentem rule and the judicial use of the preamble when the courts interpret PAs. These texts also suggest that the approach to cases promoted by public bodies differs to that where the promoter is a corporation and that there is a different approach to PAs involving London which are regarded as Public/General Acts of Parliament. The validity of these suggestions was assessed. English and Scottish judges approached the interpretation of PAs similarly. It was of interest that a number of cases dealt with Acts that were confirming provisional orders, a type of legislation still used in Scotland. Although the judges often considered contractual principles of interpretation or applying the contra proferentem rule, in practise they were not invariably applied and when used there was no apparent difference to those Acts promoted by public bodies or in the case of "London" PAs. The preamble was used to confirm the judges construction of the PA and to establish its purpose. The general principle however seemed to be that the courts adopted the method best suited to give the Act efficacy. The numbers of PAs enacted has declined over the period studied reflecting the passing of Public General Acts whose provisions rendered the further enactment of some types of PA unnecessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Outgassing of human-landed objects on the Moon create high-density local atmospheres. • Airlocks, rovers, landers, backpacks, mining of ice, and trash were considered. • Backpacks, airlock releases, and landers can create locally collisional atmospheres. • Anthropogenic water makes an assessment of the natural environment difficult. • Gas releases from mining operations and trash to gas are uncertain at present. Outgassing from materials, whether through the ascent/descent stages of lunar vehicles, airlock depressurizing, rover or astronaut suit outgassing, may cause an effect of unwanted accumulation of volatiles at the surface and exosphere. This is especially important at (or proximal) to permanently shadowed regions (PSRs) at the lunar poles. Herein, we provide estimates of expected outgassing from various human-landed objects on the Moon, including backpacks, airlocks, rovers, landers, trash and mining operations. Astronaut suits produce some level of oxygen outgassing (Helou et al., 2022), which may transport and condense in these PSRs, even in micro- cold traps (Glavin et al., 2010).We estimate the outgassing from drill mining and trash-to-gas conversion assuming a specific technology is operating. These outgassing systems can create local, temporary atmospheres in the vicinity (∼100 km radius) of the sources. The atmosphere may be particularly high within meters of the source. To obtain column densities for these temporary atmospheres, we first bracket ranges for the gas number loss as a function of time. We then derive the maximum distance traveled and the time the released molecules remain in the exosphere for a single ballistic hop, assuming the molecules are ejected from the surface of the object at its surface temperature. In some cases, such as the astronaut backpack and the rover, the temperature is that of the source. Given this information, an average and peak local exospheric density and column density can be estimated. We find that backpacks, airlock releases, and the Starship lander can create relatively high-density local atmospheres, with local near-lander outgassing water densities exceeding 107/cm3. This local water exosphere is over 106 times greater than the LADEE-derived lower limit of the natural water exosphere at ∼3/cm3. Thus, the anthropogenic temporary water exosphere will likely dominate the environment near the lander, making an assessment of the natural exospheric water environment difficult. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Entitlement assignment is unimportant if transaction cost is sufficiently low, as post‐litigation bargaining can redress allocative inefficiency, or so goes the Coase theorem. Ward Farnsworth, based on interviews with lawyers, argues that animosity created during litigation, a key mechanism to (re)allocate entitlement, will hinder the conclusion of any deal following litigation. Using a laboratory experiment, we test whether animosity generated before negotiations reduce the rate at which deals are successfully concluded and find evidence for a lower deal rate under one of the treatment conditions (the raw difference being three percentage points). The small practical effect may be attributed to rationality carrying the day and/or the limited degree of animosity we can generated in the lab with human subjects. The Coase theorem holds, while Farsworth's observation should not be ignored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses attention on individual provisions of the implementation of the principle of competition in criminal proceedings. The article considers some debatable issues regarding the possibilities and means of collecting and presenting evidence by a lawyer at a pre-trial investigation. The lawyer’s function of gathering and presenting evidence to the investigator, prosecutor, and investigating judge stems from the principle of competition between the prosecution and the defense, which ensures a balance of interests and a fair decision in court. The content and features of the capabilities and means of the defense in collecting and providing evidence in accordance with the current Criminal Procedure of Ukraine are indicated. The tasks and functions of the prosecution and defense parties are compared. The lawyer’s actions, which are directly aimed at collecting and presenting evidence, and those that have an indirect direction of actions to obtain evidentiary information are distinguished and analyzed. Attention is drawn to the problematic issues that arise during the lawyer’s collection of evidence and their submission to the prosecution, in particular, the lawyer’s right to independently decide on the timing and expediency of providing the prosecution with access to documents and physical evidence that he must use in court. Separate tactical methods of defense of the suspect, the accused during the implementation of the lawyer’s activity at the pre-trial investigation are analyzed. An opinion was expressed about the need for a clearer and more specific wording in the law of actions of the defense side, aimed at gathering and presenting evidence, and guarantees of ensuring their implementation in the practical activities of the lawyer, investigator, prosecutor, court. It is proposed to formalize the course and results of the collection and presentation of evidence - the lawyer’s investigation, as well as the lawyer’s actions to ensure compliance with the rights, freedoms and legitimate interests of the suspect, the accused in the form of a lawyer’s proceeding, which ends with a conclusion, which is submitted to the court at the same time as the indictment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzing and evaluating legal case reports are labor-intensive tasks for judges and lawyers, who usually base their decisions on report abstracts, legal principles, and commonsense reasoning. Thus, summarizing legal documents is time-consuming and requires excellent human expertise. Moreover, public legal corpora of specific languages are almost unavailable. This paper proposes a transfer learning approach with extractive and abstractive techniques to cope with the lack of labeled legal summarization datasets, namely a low-resource scenario. In particular, we conducted extensive multi- and cross-language experiments. The proposed work outperforms the state-of-the-art results of extractive summarization on the Australian Legal Case Reports dataset and sets a new baseline for abstractive summarization. Finally, syntactic and semantic metrics assessments have been carried out to evaluate the accuracy and the factual consistency of the machine-generated legal summaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The scientific article examines established approaches in private law doctrine to understanding the concept of «fulfillment of contractual obligations». The essence of the fulfillment of obligations is revealed, in particular, that it is revealed through those actions that the party commits to achieve the results for which the deed was concluded. It has been proven that active fulfillment of obligations takes place in timeshare contracts, as actions are assumed by both counterparties, the consumer must pay on time, and the timeshare founder must provide access to property suitable for quality recreation during the reserved period. It was found that the fulfillment of obligations under the timeshare agreement: aims to achieve the purpose of the timeshare agreement; is a manifestation of consistent factual and legal actions of the parties to the contract, which, on the one hand, achieve the goal, and on the other hand, provide for the exercise of subjective rights. It is justified that the principle of good faith plays an important role in fulfilling the obligations under the timeshare agreement, which is the appropriate standard of actions of the parties to the agreement, a measure of honesty, openness, and respect for the interests of the counterparty. A timeshare contract will be properly executed if the parties to the contract act in good faith. It was found that good faith is closely related to the principle of obligation of the parties to fulfill their contractual obligations, which definitely limits the freedom of contract. This is also followed in judicial practice. In addition, good faith helps prevent possible abuses of contractual freedom. Fulfillment of obligations under the timeshare agreement must be proper, which is directly related to the will of the parties, as well as the quality of the provided services for accommodation for recreation of the consumer and his family members. In our opinion, the quality of services under timeshare contracts should be one of the essential conditions of the contract, the feature that characterizes its subject. It was revealed that when considering the problem of proper performance of the obligation, scientists also note the principle of real performance, which means the need for the debtor to perform those actions that correspond to the content of the obligation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the possibilities for data gathered by individuals and communities to demonstrate climate impacts on people's lives in domestic and international climate litigation, as well as the likely procedural constraints that such evidence may encounter. Building on recent decisions of domestic, regional and international courts and bodies, and looking in particular at cases related to climate displacement, we consider the potential for civic evidence to provide valuable testimony in climate litigation, for example, grounding abstract and diffuse harms in personal and locally relevant frames. The article concludes by advancing a research agenda to test, and support or disprove, the argument developed that civic evidence from climate‐affected people could be more robustly deployed in climate litigation and could have a complementary and reinforcing, rather than competing, role alongside institutional evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Civil procedure plays a pivotal role in shaping litigation, including some of the most divisive and politically consequential cases heard in federal court--those seeking nationwide injunctions to block federal policies. But we know very little about how such cases are actually litigated. It is often assumed that procedural rules, crafted to apply to many types of cases, work equally well in the nationwide-injunction context. This Article challenges that view. In fact, procedural rules are having a critical substantive effect on the outcomes of these cases. And they are undermining the very values they were designed to serve. This Article examines over five hundred nationwide-injunction cases and shows that a surprising participant is influencing the results: an outsider who has joined as an intervenor. Intervenors can stand on equal footing with the original parties, so a decision to grant or deny intervention has real-world stakes for the entire life cycle of a case. Judges also have an immense amount of discretion to allow an intervenor to join. That discretion has led to intervention in nationwideinjunction cases being common, contested, unpredictable--and enormously consequential. Judicial discretion over intervention functionally gives courts control over how nationwide-injunction cases proceed, or whether they proceed at all. With few principles guiding that discretion, procedural rulings can appear to be influenced by the court's own political leanings, undermining public confidence in the court's decision on the merits. What's more, intervenors can keep cases alive even after government officials have withdrawn, thereby increasing the odds that high-stakes, politically salient questions will be resolved by the courts rather than the democratic process. This Article represents the first scholarly examination of the significant role that intervention plays in nationwide-injunction suits. More broadly, this Article uses intervention to explore the function of procedural rules and the federal courts in a democratic system. And it analyzes how procedural rules influence notions of judicial neutrality and judicial minimalism. Finally, this Article offers two reforms that would promote procedural values and cabin the role of the federal courts in ideological litigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The exam on assembly law and police law deals with the topic of the Palestine demonstrations. Two German citizens with Palestinian roots, A and B, demonstrate for Palestine. There is a confiscation of an Israel-critical banner and a dispersal of the assembly in front of a synagogue. A's lawsuit against the confiscation of the banner is rejected due to its legality. The dispersal of the assembly and the detention of B are deemed lawful. [Extracted from the article]

In the 1991 case Hernandez v. New York, the United States Supreme Court characterized bilingualism as a race-neutral trait that can be used to exclude individuals from jury service. This Note proceeds by demonstrating how the current state of the law undermines the interests of bilingual individuals and then proposes a solution. Focusing specifically on Hispanic bilingual Spanish speakers, this Note first employs Professor Jennifer Lackey's multi-directional credibility model to show that bilingual Spanish speakers suffer injustice in the courtroom due to both credibility deficits and excesses. Following this analysis, it proposes a possible solution to this issue: an adaptation of procedures currently employed in New Mexico state courts to accommodate monolingual Spanish speakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last decade, the international community has become increasingly aware that some negative impacts of climate change cannot be prevented. During the COP19 in Warsaw in 2013, the parties who agreed to the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM) acknowledged that there were already greater climate impacts than could be reduced by adaptation (UNFCCC, 2014). These impacts have been called "loss and damage", and the policies and measures that deal with them are usually referred to as L&D, or L&D measures or policies. Since then, examples of loss and damage have unfortunately become abundant, but we lack a systematic approach to the ethical issues surrounding loss and damage. This article provides an overview of some of the ethical issues surrounding loss and damage in the context of climate change. We discuss what should count as loss and damage, how access to justice for loss and damage should be granted and their different rationale, as well as issues of noneconomic and nonanthropocentric loss and damage. This article is categorized under:Climate, Nature, and Ethics > Ethics and Climate Change [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Violations of the rights of migrants by state actors at the EU's external borders, including through the use of pushbacks and indiscriminate violence, both on land and sea, have resulted in NGOs, lawyers and citizen activists engaging in forms of humanitarian action and legal mobilization aimed at contesting inhumane state policies. State actors can similarly rely on various legal tools to create a chilling effect and a hostile environment for migrants' rights activism. Such practices can be considered to constitute a form of lawfare against migrants' rights activism, an instrumental and hegemonic use of the law in order to weaken support for migrants. The use of criminal law has been a common tool of lawfare at the European Union's external borders. However, administrative law is increasingly being used to bring activists into compliance with states' interests, creating compliant environments through the use of regulatory instruments and administrative sanctions. To critically assess the instrumental use of administrative law as a form of lawfare, it makes sense to review their application at the EU's external borders. A good opportunity for such a review is being provided by looking at the administrative regulation of search and rescue (SAR) operations in the Mediterranean creating a hostile environment for SAR NGOs in the case of Italy, and the instrumental use of administrative regulations to limit access for activists to the Polish-Belarusian border in the case of Poland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This note presents and analyses the Centre for Applied Legal Studies' (CALS) considerations regarding whether to intervene as an amicus curiae or a co-applicant in Embrace v. Minister of Justice and Correctional Services (Embrace), a legal case which questions the constitutionality of the mistaken belief in consent defence in relation to rape (and other sexual offences). To present CALS' litigation considerations, which formed the decision of whether to intervene in Embrace as an amicus curiae or co-applicant, this note presents the legal context around the mistaken belief defence. It then expands on CALS' position around the framing of mistaken belief, which differs from the two applicants in Embrace. Finally, it presents CALS' considerations that were required around entering the Embrace case as an applicant as opposed to entering as an amicus curia. The considerations included the benefit of co-applicants to raise new legal issues, and the forms of recourse available to amici versus co-applicants, the principle of the 'low-hanging fruits', and finally, potential liability around costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I use the staggered adoption of mandatory environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosure regulations around the world to explore the impact of ESG disclosure on initial public offering (IPO) underpricing. I find robust evidence that underpricing is substantially lower in countries with ESG disclosure mandates. High‐quality disclosure environments moderate and tougher liability standards amplify the negative association between ESG disclosure mandates and underpricing, which suggests that ESG disclosure mandates reduce information asymmetry and litigation risk. The impact of ESG disclosure mandates on underpricing is stronger in countries with more pronounced environmental, social, and governance concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Wirtschaft und Wettbewerb is the property of Fachmedien Otto Schmidt KG and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Wirtschaft und Wettbewerb is the property of Fachmedien Otto Schmidt KG and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Article I, Section 19 of the New York State Constitution--often referred to as the Green Amendment--guarantees each New Yorker's right to "clean air and water, and a healthful environment." This Note considers the possibility that Green Amendment litigation will slow the development of renewable energy projects in the state. New Yorkers have long worried about the environmental impact of renewables, and they have frequently used litigation and local politics to delay, modify, or block projects they believe will cause more harm than good. In August 2023, New York saw its first Green Amendment lawsuit over a solar energy facility. There will likely be more. I argue that New York courts should think of Green Amendment cases that pit climate action against fundamental environmentalist values such as community input, process, and conservation as involving conflicts of essentially incommensurate environmental rights, and that they should leave the question of how to balance them largely to the political branches. In doing so, I demonstrate the Green Amendment can accommodate the environmental tradeoffs that accompany rapid renewables development without reducing the provision to a constitutional triviality, leaving room for the robust judicial enforcement of Green Amendment rights in other cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As AI adoption expands, so does the landscape of related legal liability. Lawyers, policymakers, and business executives should become AI-literate with respect to the potential harms and litigation risks associated with this technology as it grows in capabilities and adoption. This Article provides a brief introduction to the legal landscape to consider when developing, licensing, or using AI systems. While the regulatory and legal landscapes are rapidly evolving, this Article aims to provide a foundational understanding to help mitigate liability and avoid the associated harms to companies, individuals, and communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Article uses a massive collection of data to document, for the first time, the interplay between the substantive subject areas, the intensity, and the procedural complexity of federal civil litigation. The results indicate that like substance, intensity and complexity are pivotal features of litigation. These findings suggest that what might be termed "our uniformity"--the de jure uniform applicability of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and other procedural law--should be understood as a broader phenomenon than the traditional focus on transsubstantivity. The Article documents extensive variation in measures of intensity and complexity among cases sharing the same broad substantive legal subject matter, such that intensity and complexity may vary more importantly within than across substantive areas. For example, it is true that patent cases have comparatively high average intensity as measured by their numbers of docket entries, but there are also plenty of patent cases that terminate without having enormous docket activity. It is also true that patent cases are much more likely than, say, contract cases to be extremely intense, but because there are so many more contract than patent cases, my data have nearly twice as many highly intense contract cases as highly intense patent cases. The Article's twin key conclusions are, thus: (1) even for cases in areas thought to be especially intense or complex, there are cases with both high and low intensity and complexity, and (2) intensity and complexity are transsubstantive--e.g., there are highly intense and highly complex cases in most substantive areas of litigation, not just the usual suspects such as patents, antitrust, or securities. The Article closes by treading gingerly into normative waters. One unavoidable consequence of our uniformity with respect to formal procedural rules is that judges exercise enormous case-level discretion. Further, in part due to legislative forays in the securities and patent arenas, we have some degree of substance-specificity in our procedure. The Article suggests considering formal procedural tracking as an alternative to each of these approaches. That approach, which has been suggested in the past and is used in some states and other countries, might allow us to break out of some of our ossified debates about matters such as the rancor set off by the pleading revolution the Supreme Court effected a decade and a half ago in Twombly and Iqbal. If the plausibility standard is here to stay because of its role in limiting intense and complex litigation, perhaps it could be revisited in simpler cases that don't pose the challenges the Supreme Court first flagged in Twombly. Whether this is possible depends on our capacity to identify cases' likely intensity and/or complexity early in the litigation life cycle, which is a topic beyond the scope of this Article. Still, we ought to consider the possibility of a certification process for intense, complex cases, like the one we have for class actions, so that procedure might be adjusted where doing so makes sense. The Article's contributions include its use of docket-level data on more than 500,000 cases whose dockets could be followed for at least seven years. In addition, the Article offers a novel approach to measuring procedural complexity by showing how links between entries in docket reports may be viewed as mathematical networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the impact of age simulation suits on nursing students’ empathy, attitudes, and willingness to care for older adults. An experimental trial with a mixed-method design was conducted during the spring semester of the 2023–2024 academic year, involving 43 third-year nursing students. The intervention group (n = 23) wore age simulation suits, while the control group (n = 20) wore placebo clothing. Pre- and post-testt assessments measured empathy, attitudes toward older adults, and willingness to work with them. Content analysis was performed on the intervention group’s experiences. Results indicated a significant increase in the intervention group’s willingness to work with older adults after the simulation (Z = –3.232, p < .001; Hedges’ g: 0.819). However, no significant changes were observed in empathy or attitude scores (p > .05), and the control group showed no significant changes in any measured variables (p > .05). Content analysis revealed four key themes related to students’ feelings: (i) isolation and dependency, (ii) physical challenges and limitations, (iii) emotional responses and empathy, and (iv) changes in behavior and perception. Additionally, four main themes regarding new learnings were identified: (i) understanding and empathy, (ii) patience and communication, (iii) practical challenges and adaptation, and (iv) long-term impact and reflection. Two themes emerged on how nursing students can best approach older adults in their future practice: (i) enhancing care through empathy and training and (ii) promoting safety and well-being through preventive measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In its 2022 Bruen opinion,** the Supreme Court characterized the Heller opinion*** as having applied a "methodological approach"**** for interpretation of the Second Amendment. However, Bruen's description and summary partially omitted, and was materially misaligned with, Heller's actual reasoning. In Heller's first step of constitutional interpretation, which addressed the first clause of the sentence comprising the Second Amendment, the opinion had selectively not applied the methodological approach described in Bruen; Heller's first step had applied a different, incompatible methodological approach. Bruen's description was aligned only with the second step of Heller's constitutional reasoning, which had addressed the sentence's second clause. Heller's inconsistent, selective application of incompatible methodological approaches had altered the step one outcome and the subsequent step two reasoning. If Heller's step one reasoning had applied the methodological approach described in Bruen, then that would have resulted in an opposite step one interpretation that in turn would have required different step two reasoning. This Article recommends a reasonable change that the Supreme Court should male to correct the current material misalignment between Bruen's characterization of Heller's reasoning and Heller's actual reasoning and to eliminate Heller's practice of impacting an outcome through selective, inconsistent use of incompatible methodological approaches when interpreting a constitutional sentence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Supreme Court in Kennedy v. Bremerton finally laid the three-pronged Lemon test to rest. Instead of Lemon and its progeny, Establishment Clause cases are now to be decided based upon the historical practices and understandings of our Founding Fathers. Subsequently, the Eleventh Circuit instructed the Middle District of Florida to revisit its analysis in Rojas v. City ofOcala. In Rojas, a prayer vigil occurred in the City's public square and featured uniformed police chaplains singing and engaging in Christian prayers. After this Note was written and submitted for publication, the district court issued its decision in Rojas on remand granting the plaintiffs motion for summary judgment which is consistent with the analysis provided in this Note. Following a careful review of the history of the Lemon test and its progeny, this Note examines the roots of the "new" historical-reference test. Upon examination, this test appears to be nothing more than a collection of minority opinions that focus chiefly on the idea of coercion. When formulating the historical-reference test, the Supreme Court relied upon key language from Justice Anthony Kennedy. Despite Justice Kennedy's warnings to limit the use of history and tradition to validate only certain government expressions of religion, it appears that the current rule focuses on vague and generalized notions of a long national tradition about tolerating diverse religious activities and living in a pluralistic society. Instead, this Note argues that the historical-reference test should be modified to include a narrow inquiry regarding the specifically challenged government practice. Otherwise, the test will continue to defy modern attitudes towards the separation of Church and State held by many Americans today and weaken Establishment Clause protections. To that end, this Note proposes an application of the historical-reference test to the Rojas case. It also reviews a sample of scholarly research in order to shed light on the original meaning of the Establishment Clause and guide lower courts in utilizing the historical-reference test. Ultimately, there should be few valid traditional government religious practices which constitute the fabric of society, or else the government moves closer to breaching the inviolable citadel of the individual heart and mind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Justice Clarence Thomas, dissenting in Murr v. Wisconsin, suggested the Supreme Court take a "fresh look" at its regulatory takings jurisprudence and see "whether it can be grounded in the original public meaning of the Takings Clause." He repeated this request in Bridge Aina Le'A, LLC v. Hawaii Land Use Commission, but also sharply criticized the existing takings analysis developed in Penn Central Transportation Co. v. City of New York, stating: "If there is no such thing as a regulatory taking, we should say so. And if there is, we should make clear when one occurs." This article responds to Justice Thomas and contends that the original and current public meaning of the term "property" as used in the Takings Clause is a group of rights, the most essential being the right to possess, the right to exclude others, the right to alienate, and, most saliently, the right to beneficial use. Contrary to assertions by the Court and commentators that the Takings Clause was originally limited to direct appropriations or physical takings of property, many early 19th century cases found takings based on destruction of the right of beneficial use, cases that today we call regulatory takings. The development of takings jurisprudence leading to the 1922 decision by Justice Holmes in Pennsylvania Coal Company v. Mahon is based on protection of these rights. This Article focuses on the essential rights that define property and thereby exposes the flaw of Penn Central which bases a taking on diminution in value, rather than substantial interference with a property right. Drawing on the original public meaning and early takings jurisprudence, as well as recent precedent in Lingle v. Chevron USA and Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, this article proposes a takings framework based on formal or functional transfer of rights, rather than diminution in value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article "The daring to narrate the intimate" in the chronicle Where I do not stand (2021), by Belén López Peiró, highlights the denunciation of sexual abuse that the author suffered at the hands of her uncle, a police commissioner in Argentina. López Peiró narrates her experience in the judicial system when reporting and taking her case to trial, emphasizing the destructive force of a Justice system that revictimizes her. Through the chronicle, the author shares both judicial documents and her own emotions and sensations, creating an affective counter-archive about her legal case. López Peiró questions the treatment of sexual violence complainants by the Argentine judicial system and shares her feelings of shame, anger, anguish, and pain, revealing the devastating impact of the malfunctioning of Justice. [Extracted from the article]

In the early 1900s, the country's 1,100 auto clubs did far more than provide the roadside assistance, maps, and towing services familiar to the American Automobile Association members of today. Auto clubs also provided--free to their members--a wide range of legal services. Teams of auto-club lawyers defended members charged with driving-related misdemeanors and even felonies. They filed suits that, mirroring contemporary impact litigation, were expressly designed to effect policy change. And they brought and defended tens of thousands of civil claims for vehicle-related harms. In the throes of the Great Depression, however, local bar associations abruptly turned on the clubs and filed numerous lawsuits, accusing them of violating nascent legal-ethics rules concerning the unauthorized practice of law (UPL). In state after state, the bar prevailed, and within a few short years, auto clubs' legal departments were kaput. Drawing on thousands of pages of archival material, this Feature recovers the lost history of America's auto clubs, as well as their fateful collision with the bar. It then surveys the wreckage and shows that the collision's impact continues to reverberate throughout the legal profession and law itself. For one, we show how the bar's litigation campaign against auto clubs--as well as the era's many other group-legal-service providers, including banks, unions, and homeowners' associations--helped establish the so-called "inherent-powers doctrine," which cemented courts, rather than legislators, as the ultimate arbiters of legal-practice regulation. The result was a profound power shift, with the authority to regulate legal services consequentially placed in politically insulated courts, not politically accountable legislators. More practically, the bar's concerted campaign decimated a once-thriving system for the provision of group legal services to ordinary Americans, which, we argue, ultimately helped consign millions of individuals with legal problems to face them alone, or not at all. Finally, in the rise and fall of America's auto clubs, we find new, untapped evidence that contributes to a range of critical contemporary debates. In particular, our story uncovers fresh evidence to support the value of corporate practice, currently--but controversially--banned by the American Bar Association's Model Rule 5.4. In the bar's relentless campaign to shutter auto clubs--not because they harmed members, but because they threatened lawyers' livelihoods--we unearth direct proof that today's UPL bans, which continue to stymie the delivery of affordable legal services, have fundamentally rotten roots. And ultimately, we show that the present-day access-to-justice crisis--a crisis that dooms the vast majority of Americans to navigate complex legal processes without any expert assistance--is not a product of inattention or inertia. The crisis was, rather, constructed by the legal profession of which we are a part. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Professor Clare Huntington's scholarship advances a theoretical "Reparative Model" of family law that seeks to deemphasize adversarial decision-making and decrease litigation. Building off that scholarship, this Article considers the family law attorney's role and argues that the current Model Rules of Professional Conduct already support--and should be understood to require--a "reparative" advisory role for the family law attorney. Put simply, the harsh realities of the adversarial court system demand that family law attorneys presumptively provide information on litigation's harmful impacts on families and children and encourage the possibility of pursuing goals via means less detrimental than litigation. To encourage a reparative practice norm-shift, comments to the Model Rules of Professional Conduct should include language addressing family law attorneys' contextualized role. Although far from a panacea for the family court system's shortcomings, a presumptive reparative advisory role, if widely adopted, would curb much of family law attorneys' gratuitous contributions to the harmful dynamics facing clients and families in the court system, thereby protecting society and the legal profession, and fostering the possibility of a more satisfying legal practice for family law attorneys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Litigation abuse is a pattern of conduct that misuses the Family Court process in a way that could reasonably be expected to cause emotional or financial harm to the other party or their children which is greater than would occur with the proper use of the family justice process. Litigation abuse may be motivated by a perpetrator's desire to gain an unfair advantage in the litigation or to control a former partner, or may be the result of anger, vengeance, or mental health issues. Litigation abuse is a particular concern in cases of coercive controlling violence that may victimize women and their children, or in cases that involve parental alienation. Previous empirical research has mainly involved studies of women who report that they have been victims of litigation abuse, with one study focusing exclusively on male victims. No previous study has considered both men and women as possible victims (or perpetrators) of litigation abuse, or the perspectives of neutral professionals like judges for assessing whether there has been litigation abuse. This empirical research project is based on an analysis of Ontario Family Court decisions over a three‐year period dealing with litigation costs, which under provincial law may be awarded at a higher level against a party whom the judge considers acted unreasonably, vexatiously or in bad faith during litigation (n = 222). Men were somewhat more likely to have engaged in litigation abuse than women (53% vs 47%). Self‐represented litigants were roughly twice as likely to engage in litigation abuse, though most cases of litigation abuse involved parties with lawyers. Women were more likely be victims of litigation abuse in economic cases, while men were more likely to be victims of litigation abuse in cases focused on parenting. Key points for the family court community: Family justice professionals often fail to recognize litigation abuse, which is a pattern of conduct that misuses the Family Court process in a way that could reasonably be expected to cause emotional or financial harm to the other party or their children which is greater than would occur with the proper use of the family justice process.Litigation abuse often causes victims of intimate partner violence to give up claims or agree to outcomes that impoverish them or expose them and their children to risk.Although men are somewhat more likely to engage in litigation abuse than women, especially to gain economic advantages, women also engage in litigation abuse.While self‐represented litigants are more likely to engage in litigation abuse than those with lawyers, there are many cases where litigants with lawyers engage in litigation abuse, raising ethical issues for lawyers.Judges should recognize cases of litigation abuse, and respond with single judge case management, orders for payment of legal costs, and take account of this form of abuse in making orders regarding parents and economic issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Associational standing is a widely used doctrine that has never been subject to serious academic scrutiny. It allows an organization that has not suffered any injury in fact to sue in its own name to assert its members' causes of action. Though the doctrine is often associated with public interest groups, major corporations have usurped it to be able to sue, through trade groups or entities created solely to pursue a particular lawsuit, without becoming party litigants to the case. The Supreme Court first recognized associational standing as an offshoot of third-party standing to allow an organization that had suffered institutional harm to assert its members' rights concerning their relationship with the organization itself. The Court has since extended associational standing to allow an uninjured group to pursue any of its members' claims relating to the group's purpose, including claims completely unconnected to their membership in the group. The Court has likewise allowed associational standing to be invoked by both zero-member groups and compulsory groups whose members are not free to quit. This anomalous exception to Article III's injury-in-fact requirement stands in tension with the fabric of U.S. law in ways that have been generally overlooked. Statutes, procedural rules, and most judge-created requirements were not crafted with associational standing in mind, repeatedly creating unnecessary quandaries throughout the litigation process. Associational standing allows plaintiff groups to circumvent Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 by enabling them to effectively craft their own classes without judicial approval or satisfying the Rule's requirements. The doctrine also violates Rule 17(a)'s real-party-in-interest requirement, triggers disputes over potential asymmetric claim preclusion, and offers a backdoor method for courts to inappropriately issue nationwide defendant-oriented injunctions. Moreover, it undermines public policy goals by impacting how statutes such as the Equal Access to Justice Act apply to a rights holder's claims, and violates traditional equitable principles. While courts may adopt ad hoc solutions to address each of these difficulties individually, such patches underscore the poor fit between associational standing and the structure of litigation in the United States. This Article calls for the abandonment, or at least serious modification, of associational standing. Even without associational standing, groups may still sue to enforce their own rights. And they could continue to help vindicate their members' rights by providing legal representation for member plaintiffs in individual or class action suits (filed anonymously, if necessary), covering members' litigation costs, and providing expert witnesses and other guidance. In short, associational standing is a largely unnecessary deviation from both Article III's injury-in-fact requirement and the fundamental principles underlying our justice system. Eliminating associational standing would not limit public law and other important collective litigation, but rather ensure that such cases proceed through the proper channels (i.e., Rule 23) while preventing a range of unnecessary procedural, preclusive, remedial, and other complications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much ink has been spilt on the errors and lapses of juridical pronouncements by the higher judiciary in India. Such commentary is valuable for tracing changes in the politico-juridical and social context, as well as, the impact of such errors and lapses on fundamental rights and related laws. However, perhaps, more important are the cases where the judiciary has not spoken, sometimes for years, despite having been petitioned by numerous affected parties and other times under public-interest litigation. The impact of such 'juridical pocket veto' is that legal liminality is allowed to operate and thus, a situation of autocratic legalism is produced wherein the action of the executive or legislature is seen as legal in its technicality but in the absence of adequate judicial review, creates an autocratic outcome for the polity at large, which in turn reinforces governmentalisation and undermines the liberal script. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article advances debates on the limits of judge-made law to palliate legislative failure to respond to changing practice. Canadian judges have adjusted the general private law to address the situation of unmarried cohabitants. In Kerr v Baranow, the Supreme Court of Canada continued its adaptation of unjust enrichment to this end. The article reports on the first empirical inquiry into how the judgment is operating, including outside the courtroom. Interviews with family lawyers in Quebec show that bringing claims under the adapted doctrine is complex and costly. Variable and unpredictable outcomes impede fair and efficient private ordering. Cohabitation agreements do not seem a satisfactory solution. The study highlights shortcomings in the leading Canadian judgment, which recognizes some cohabiting couples as partnerships but stops short of presuming an equal sharing of gains during the union. But, since the participating lawyers pointed to factors that would reduce the efficacy of reform by judges or by legislatures, the study does not yield a broad preference for legislative reform over judicial reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of digital tools that enhance communications, security and decision making have caught the attention of international development agencies, national governments, civil society organizations, and the private sector. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has highlighted the importance of digital tools as a means "to improve justice sector efficiency, transparency and access to justicel, 1-1 while the European Commission has aligned them with "a new push for European democracy in line with the political priority of a Europe fit for the digital aget." With these observations in mind, this article focuses on the unique advantages and challenges presented by the ongoing efforts of digitalization as they pertain to litigation. I provide examples drawn from dilferent jurisdictions, policies, strategies, and success stories regarding this important phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to identify the concrete content of three rights deriving from the principle of adversariality in the civil litigation, i.e. the right to know, the right to information and the right to understand and, consequently, to establish a logical correlation between them. Next, the article aims to establish the concrete content of the right to know together with the requirements that the right to information must meet, with the analysis of the temporality of this right. We used as methodological pillars the bibliographic research, the comparative method using French doctrine and regulation, the inductive method to highlight the existence of the triplet right to know - right to information - right to understanding within the construction of the principle of adversariality and to extract the conditions associated with the right to information. The article tends to highlight the need to be aware of the importance of the right to information regarding reasons, defences and claims in the civil process, often disregarded in practice. It warns the participants in the civil process, be they parties or the Court, that the basis of the right to an effective adversarial litigation is necessarily the right to information and that its requirements must be met. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Fake reviews have become an increasingly relevant issue in electronic commerce. Regulators and platform operators have begun to take action against fake reviews through regulation and litigation. While there has emerged an ample body of research on fake reviews in open reputation systems (i.e. where everyone can write reviews), little is known about the frequency and nature of fake reviews in closed reputation systems (i.e. where the completion of a transaction is a necessary precondition for reviewing). This article assesses the frequency of fake reviews in this particular domain of the platform economy. To do so, we draw on data from Airbnb and investigate systematic differences between first and second rating score distributions, estimating the proportion of potentially fake five-star ratings using KL-divergence. In doing so, we advance the understanding of fake reviews in closed reputation systems, offering theoretical insights into review dynamics and practical strategies for detecting fraudulent behavior using score distributions and user attributes. This shows that early-on reputation is crucial for complementors to overcome the cold-start problem, and platform operators will have to think of ways to allow them to do so (e.g. reputation imports) in order not to jeopardize the overall credibility of their reputation systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines whether securities litigation and sell‐side equity analysts play a substitutive versus complementary role as an external governance mechanism. We expect the 1999 ruling on the stricter interpretation of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act to make it easier for firms headquartered in the Ninth Circuit to defend against securities class actions filed by shareholders, resulting in weaker protection from a litigation channel and stronger demand for analyst activity. Using a difference‐in‐differences research design, we find that analyst coverage increases as litigation risk decreases in the Ninth Circuit firms. Moreover, we find that analyst earnings forecast accuracy increases for firms in the Ninth Circuit following the ruling, consistent with analysts exerting greater efforts to perform their monitoring role. In cross‐sectional tests, we find that the substitution relation between litigation risk and analyst research is more pronounced in firms with a high level of ex‐ante litigation risk. We conduct extensive robustness tests, including another legal event exogenously increasing the risk of litigation, to gain confidence in our interpretations. We contribute to the literature by documenting causal evidence that analysts have greater incentives to provide meaningful equity research as gatekeepers in times of weaker investor protection by securities litigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the number of high-density buildings has increased, the management of property with complex condominium ownership has become an ongoing challenge in property registration and management. The three-dimensional (3D) modeling of condominium ownership has emerged as an effective means of meeting this challenge and has attracted great attention from fields such as geographical information science, urban planning and management, and property administration. Much progress has been made in building 3D models of condominium ownership; however, existing studies are all on a case-by-case basis and have left some critical issues unsolved, such as vague ownership boundaries, spatial rights without physical counterparts, and the unfixed spatial extent. The purpose of this study is to construct a 3D building ownership model with multiple levels of detail in the context of Chinese law to overcome the defects of 3D models above. This 3D model is presented in a case study of China by subdividing ownership boundaries based on clarifying the internal structure of condominium ownership, embedding the apportionment mechanism, and integrating the semantics, attributes, and geometry associated with the physical and legal entity of the condominium. The proposed 3D model is implemented by extending Building Information Modeling (BIM) based on the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) and inheriting legal information from Land Administration Domain Model (LADM). In this study, examples of condominium ownership from three real legal dispute cases in China are analyzed and tested. The study clearly demonstrates that the proposed model can provide a better cognitive understanding of the legal space of property by rendering unambiguous ownership boundaries and presenting the spatial internal structure of ownership, which offers solid technical support for dealing with property registration and many legal dispute cases about condominium ownership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Background: Trend of medico legal cases is a fundamental part of the prevention of avoidable causalities in future and to study the crime rate in area. In present study an attempt is made to know the burden of medico legal cases. The aim of present study is to describe the profile, pattern and trend of medico-legal cases and identify errors in the medico-legal reports. Method: This is a Retrospective, descriptive, non-interventional study, conducted in emergency department of Government Medical College and Hospital Jalaun during the period from 1st January 2023 to 31th December 2023. This is a tertiary care teaching hospital where patients are referred from most of private hospitals. Patients from district hospitals of the region are also admitted in this college. Conclusions: In majority of places, duty of casualty medical officer is accomplished by MBBS doctor who is not expert in handling of medico legal cases. Therefore medico-legal work should be done under the direction of forensic medicine expert to avoid inaccuracy in giving the opinion. The present study showed that male out numbered female and maximum cases were of younger generation. Most common aetiology was of road traffic injuries. Such incidences can be prevented by giving awareness through proper education and training of safety standards by administrators through road safety programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article advances debates on the limits of judge-made law to palliate legislative failure to respond to changing practice. Canadian judges have adjusted the general private law to address the situation of unmarried cohabitants. In Kerr v Baranow, the Supreme Court of Canada continued its adaptation of unjust enrichment to this end. The article reports on the first empirical inquiry into how the judgment is operating, including outside the courtroom. Interviews with family lawyers in Quebec show that bringing claims under the adapted doctrine is complex and costly. Variable and unpredictable outcomes impede fair and efficient private ordering. Cohabitation agreements do not seem a satisfactory solution. The study highlights shortcomings in the leading Canadian judgment, which recognizes some cohabiting couples as partnerships but stops short of presuming an equal sharing of gains during the union. But, since the participating lawyers pointed to factors that would reduce the efficacy of reform by judges or by legislatures, the study does not yield a broad preference for legislative reform over judicial reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]