Sorry for the overdose of IP law recently, I plan to return to local-government topics ASAP. But my recent article discussing criminal enforcement of copyright caused me to wonder about why patent infringement is not a crime in the United States (aside from falsely asserting a product is patented or forging the seldom-used “letters patent”). …
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I’m just catching up on a swarm of recent cases filed against Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. (MERS), the privately owned mortgage registry that has, for some time now, been used by the mortgage industry in lieu of municipal recording systems (which were generally voluntary anyway). Gretchen Morgenson described the rationale for MERS in 2009: …
Our electronic age has decidedly outdated our courts’ go-to analyses for questions about the Fourth Amendment, leaving courts to reach for nondigital analogs for new technology. In my opinion, this reaching has produced some shaky results, leading to unclear guidelines for local police officers. To demonstrate, I present in no particular order three of the most-questionable …
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A recent article in the Southtown Star estimates that it cost Will County (on the Southside of Chicago) nearly $600,000 to obtain the high-profile murder convictions of Drew Peterson and Christopher Vaugh. Some of the charges were for evidence that wasn’t even used: since 2009, the county paid $75 per month for a storage locker to house the …
The FCC has issued new rules for cell-signal boosting devices. Because these devices use the same spectrum as normal cell signals, the cellphone industry was very concerned that these devices would hurt their services to regular users. Thus, creating these new rules took many years. But as the head of boosting-device-manufacturer Wilson Electronics explained to …
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In light of the Supreme Court’s decision today in FTC v. Phoebe Putney Health System, Inc., I’d like to address why antitrust law matters to urban innovation, as I’ve done in addressing how municipal law and admin law matter to City 2.0. The Court’s decision reaffirmed some important constraints on local authority, but to explain the …
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I apologize for not posting for awhile, more will be coming soon. I have a new article coming out in the BYU Education and Law Journal in which I argue that Congress should give more control to the U.S. Department of Education in reauthorizing the No Child Left Behind Act (something that could happen any …
Continue reading ‘A Concise History of the Federal Role in Education’ »
Yesterday, the city of Chicago approved a plan to collect unpaid parking fines from state tax refunds. As the Chicago Tribune pointed out, this “power to dip into tax refunds before they’re sent out comes from a little-noticed state law that took effect two months ago that allows cities and school districts to go to …
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If a city has a Facebook page, can it remove distasteful comments? profane ones? racist ones? As professor Lyrissa Lidsky explains in her recent article, Public Forum 2.0, the answer to those questions isn’t always easy because the Supreme Court’s public forum and government speech is complex. As she points out, the Supreme Court has …
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The State of Michigan recently appointed an emergency manager for my hometown of Flint, ousting the mayor and other public officials. The manager, Michael Brown, held his first public meeting last week and defended the legality of his position against residents questioning whether it was constitutional, perhaps because of high-profile criticism of Michigan’s emergency managers …
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