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Articles

Articles

Volume 109, Issue 5

More Accommodation, Less Technicality for Workplace Whistleblowers

Craig R. Senn

A critical element in workplace retaliation claims is the whistleblower’s protected activity. This activity often consists of “opposition” activity where an employee internally complains about workplace conduct to a supervisor or Human Resources department. . . .

Gaining or Losing Control? An Empirical Study on the Real Use of Data Control Right and Policy Implications

Ella Corren

Privacy concerns are on the rise, and lawmakers and regulators around the world are responding with widespread legislative action led by the United States and the European Union. The California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) and many other state laws across the United States, together with congressional proposals, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, and similar laws in the rest of the world, all provide people with new data control rights. . . .

The Effect of Police Quota Laws

Griffin Edwards & Stephen Rushin

This Article examines the effect of state laws restricting the use of police quotas. Police quotas describe the establishment of a predetermined number of traffic stops, citations, or arrests that officers must make within a particular time period. Some police supervisors have historically used quotas to ensure adequate productivity by officers. . . .

Taxation of Information and the Data Revolution

Yariv Brauner

Existing and universal income tax rules are inherently incompatible with an economy in which information-based transactions play a significant role. This Article contends that income taxation is incapable of taxing information effectively. . . .

Police Mental Health

Mihailis E. Diamantis

Mental health intervention is a critical tool for preventing police violence. In recent years, activists have pointed to a tragic pattern of police misinterpreting civilian mental health crises and responding with deadly force. People with untreated mental illness are sixteen times more likely to die at the hands of police. . . .

An Empirical Analysis of Permanent Injunction Life in Trade Secret Misappropriation Cases

Lynda J. Oswald

This empirical study explores the disconnect between doctrine and practice in the calculation of the life of permanent injunctions issued in trade secret misappropriation cases. The study draws upon findings from a content analysis of cases decided in federal trial court in the fourteen-year period between January 1, 2009 and December 31, 2022. . . .

Notes

Student Notes

Volume 109, Issue 5

Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer in the River: Why Iowa's Broken Bottle Bill Needs Major Reform

Ethan J. Dunn

Iowa’s bottle bill needs major reform. For years the bottle deposit system made Iowans happy while also keeping land across the state litter-free. However, the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated deep cracks that formed in the system over years of neglect. With no signs of improvement, dealers and distributors alike began blatantly breaking the law without any repercussions, leaving citizens with few options for container returns. . . .

A Simple Solution to a Complicated Problem: Giglio Disclosures in Iowa Criminal Cases

Samantha N. McCort

“What mama doesn’t know won’t hurt her” does not apply in the criminal justice system. To the contrary, the U.S. Supreme Court’s holdings in Maryland v. Brady and Giglio v. United States make clear that what criminal defendants do not know may very well hurt them. The Supreme Court has held that criminal defendants are constitutionally entitled under the Sixth Amendment to favorable, material information about government witnesses that may be used to impeach those witnesses. This includes information that may impeach a police officer’s credibility. . . .

Extending Protections for CAFOs is the Wrong Move for Iowa Courts and the Legislature to Make

Halle B. Kissell

On June 30, 2022, the Iowa Supreme Court, in a 4–3 decision, overruled 18-year-old precedent to find that Iowa’s right-to-farm statute, Iowa Code section 657.11, does not violate the Inalienable Rights Clause of the Iowa Constitution, overruling the test set out in Gacke v. Pork Xtra, L.L.C. This decision will have a large impact on Iowa’s right-to-farm laws and could potentially lead to the overturning of other right-to-farm cases, specifically Bormann v. Board of Supervisors. . . .

The Crucial but Overlooked Role of State Decision-Making in Family Based Immigration Matters

Alexa R. Stechschulte

Family and immigration law are inevitably linked as children and families continue to cross borders. In the United States, state actors routinely make family law decisions that can have determinative effects on whether certain immigration opportunities are opened or foreclosed to noncitizens. . . .

Recent Online Edition:

Recent Online Edition:

How the Supreme Court Ghosted the PHOSITA: Amgen and Legal Constructs in Patent Law

Timothy R. Holbrook & Mark D. Janis

This Essay is an invited response to The Ghost in the Patent System: An Empirical Study of Patent Law’s Elusive “Skilled Artisan,” by Professors Laura Pedraza-Fariña and Ryan Whalen. In their piece, Pedraza-Fariña and Ryan Whalen offer an empirical study and use it to argue for a new conception of the Person Having Ordinary Skill in the Art (“PHOSITA”), patent law’s nod to the “reasonable person” construct. . . .

The Game, the Players, and the Board

Bruce E. Boyden

109 Iowa L. Rev. Online 105 (2024)

Christopher Seaman and Thuan Tran’s fascinating article, Intellectual Property and Tabletop Games, raises important questions about the role of intellectual property (“IP”) in developing and distributing innovative products. The market for tabletop games, Seaman and Tran argue, is able to sustain a high level of creativity at a high up-front cost, all while protected by some but not all of the IP rights that other industries’ outputs receive. Is that evidence of IP’s necessity or its superfluousness? . . .

Interpreting Textualist Slogans

Guha Krishnamurthi

109 Iowa L. Rev. Online 15 (2023)

Slogans are a blunt instrument—they may convey something of the truth, but they rarely do so undented. So too is the case with the influential textualism slogans “the text is [the] law,” “only the text [is] the law,” and “[o]nly the written word is the law.” In his insightful Article, Professor Erik Encarnacion shows why these statements are false, as they are category errors. He then observes that these slogans are unnecessary to establishing the core theses of textualism and that these slogans misunderstand and confuse features of textualism. And he is right about all of that. . . .

Should the Recent Timbs and Dobbs Decisions Revive Interest in the Excessive Fines Clause as the Constitutional Basis . . .

N. William Hines

109 Iowa L. Rev. Online 46 (2024)

In a series of cases in the early 1990s, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment implicitly enabled federal courts to review state punitive damages awards for unconstitutional arbitrariness and excessiveness. Before settling on the Due Process Clause as the basis of federal regulation of punitive damages, in a 1989 decision the Court considered and rejected the claim that the Excessive Fines Clause of the Eighth Amendment, as incorporated into the Fourteenth Amendment, could provide the constitutional foundation for federal regulation of state punitive damages awards. . . .

The Racism of Immigration Crime Prosecution

Ingrid V. Eagly

109 Iowa L. Rev. Online 27 (2023)

Eric Fish’s Article, Race, History, and Immigration Crimes, explores the racist motivation behind the original 1929 enactment of the two most common federal immigration crimes, entry without permission and reentry after deportation. This Response engages with Fish’s archival work unearthing this unsettling history and examines how his research has informed a series of legal challenges seeking to strike down the modern federal border crossing law as violating the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. . . .

Does DARC Really Matter?: A Response to Wright & Moore

Troy A. Rule

109 Iowa L. Rev. Online 1 (2023)

Danaya Wright and Ethan Moore’s Article, DARC Matters: Repurposing Nineteenth-Century Property Law for the Twenty-First Century, is a valuable contribution to a growing body of legal academic literature focused on property law obstacles to the deployment of commercial drone technologies. Wright and Moore rightly acknowledge landowners’ long-held rights to exclude objects from the low airspace immediately above their land–rights that some major retailers have aggressively sought to weaken in recent years to facilitate drone delivery services. . . .

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