On May 3, 2014, C|M|LAW Professor Michael Davis spoke at the Society of American Travel Writers annual conference at the Cleveland Convention Center. The title of his presentation was “Copyright and Fair Use.” The discussion centered on the internet. Writers and editors who participated in the discussion expressed confusion regarding whether posted pictures or text are free when taking them from the internet, or whether aggregators have a right to aggregate material found there. In addition, the question was raised whether editors could freely take from the internet as well. Professor Davis explained that the answer to almost all the questions was no: legally, all those copies are copyrighted.  With very few exceptions, and depending upon how much material they took, the context of the taking, the nature of the work, and effect on the original author’s potential market, material might or might not be available for fair use.

Legal Writing Professor Claire Robinson-May

C|M|LAW Legal Writing Professor Claire Robinson-May presented “Enhancing Understanding by Inviting Student Creativity into the Legal Writing Classroom,” on April 26, 2014, at the Southeastern Legal Writing Conference held at Stetson University College of Law.  In her presentation, May noted that teachers of legal writing rarely offer students an opportunity to be creative. Rather, they regularly ask students to produce research logs, memos, motions, and other documents that are similar to those produced by their peers. But, in addition to teaching legal writing, May is also pursuing an M.F.A. in creative writing. She brought that experience into her legal writing classroom and invited her law students to bring in their creativity as well. May’s presentation described an assignment in which she required students to outline and analyze a statute and then convey the information to the class through a creative presentation. Student group presentations included an original song, an interactive game, a comic strip, a public service announcement, an original children’s book, and more. May believes the assignment enhanced student understanding of the material by engaging student creativity in the learning process.

Professor Browne Lewis

On April 9, 2014, C|M|LAW’s Leon and Gloria Plevin Professor of Law Browne Lewis presented a lecture at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.  The lecture dealt with the of impact reproductive technology on legal parentage.  Professor Lewis discussed the factors courts consider when determining the legal mother of a child conceived as the result of a surrogacy arrangement.  She also explained the manner in which the court adjudicates the paternity of a man whose wife is artificially inseminated with donor sperm and with an anonymous sperm donor.  Lastly, she analyzed the public health consequences of creating designer children using reproductive technology.

In addition, Professor Lewis was recently elected to the AALS Women in Legal Education Archives Subcommittee.  This Committee is charged with reviewing the contents of the current archives; creating a mechanism to share the archival information with our members; adding oral histories and other additional data to the archives; and maintaining the Schlesinger Archives.

Professor John Plecnik

C|M|LAW Professor John Plecnik’s article, The New Flat Tax: A Modest Proposal For a Constitutionally Apportioned Wealth Tax, was published in the Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly at 41 Hastings Const. L.Q. 483 (2014).  As usual, Professor Plecnik begins with a flourish:

“Eat the poor children,” proposes Jonathan Swift.
“Nay,” protests Occupy Wall Street, “Eat the rich!”

His Article does not really propose eating the rich with draconically high taxes. However, he says, the United States has experienced years of multi-billion dollar deficits. Many liberals have proposed a European-style value added tax or VAT to balance the budget. Many conservatives have proposed a “fair” or flat tax. Like the Devil, regressive consumption taxes go by many names. Whether they know it or not, liberals and conservatives are proposing essentially the same thing — a federal sales tax, which disproportionately impacts the poor and middle class. Plecnik’s article counters with a truly modest proposal for the New Flat Tax on wealth rather than consumption.

Congressional power to “lay and collect Taxes” is subject to two rules. Indirect taxes must be uniform, whereas direct taxes must be apportioned so that states pay in proportion to their population. Under the Obamacare decision, there is little doubt that wealth taxes are direct taxes. However, levying a wealth tax based on population has the unfair result of different tax rates in different states.

For some time, scholars have debated ways to skirt the Apportionment Clause. For the first time, this Article demonstrates how a wealth tax may comply with Apportionment and still be fair. Under this Article’s proposal, the federal government would collect a wealth tax at a uniform rate and retain each state’s constitutionally apportioned share of the tax. The excess unapportioned share would be refunded to the state of origin via a state-level “pick up” tax. This revenue sharing arrangement — inspired by the pre-EGTRRA credit for state death taxes — ensures a uniform state and federal tax burden without redistributing wealth among the states. Thus, horizontal equity is achieved and both the letter and spirit of the law are satisfied.

You can read the full article on SSRN at:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2423803

Professor Patricia J. Falk

On March 29, 2014, C|M|LAW Professor Patricia J. Falk presented Is VAWA Enough?:  The Epidemics of Rape on College Campuses and in the Military at a conference presented by Dusquesne Law School in Pittsburgh– The Violence Against Women Act and Its Impact on the U.S. Supreme Court and International Law.

Professor Falk explained that on January 22, 2014, President Barack Obama created a special task force to combat the epidemic of rape on college campuses.  She noted that the statistics are alarming:  one in five college women is either sexually assaulted or the victim of an attempted sexual assault during her college years, and only 10-12% of those who are sexually assaulted reported the attacks.  Less than a month earlier, in December of 2013, President Obama had issued a warning to the military – that it had to decrease the number of sexual assaults experienced by service members within one year.  The President stated that if improvement were not forthcoming, he would have to step in and take more aggressive measures himself.  The statistics are also alarming.  In Fiscal Year 2010, 19,000 service members were victims of sexual assault, and only about 14 percent of the victims reported the crime.  A recent VA study indicated that nearly one in four women sent to Iraq or Afghanistan reported being sexually assaulted.

Professor Falk indicated that within the past few months, the Obama administration had identified two specific sites in our society that are in urgent need of reform in terms of sexual assault.  In this talk, she explored whether these very different spaces have some things in common that make the crime of rape more likely to occur.  She asked whether, if we can understand the characteristics that make these spaces fertile ground for sexual assault (i.e., more rape-prone), we might be able to turn the tide on these epidemics and make progress toward their eradication.   In particular, she examined victims’ accounts, the juxtaposition of non-legal actors in decision making regarding the prosecution of rape, conflicts of interest in those to whom sexual assault is reported, motivated offenders and a surfeit of potential victims, the role of alcohol and drugs, and the current legal rules or systems.