Postscript | Technology
Strategic Law Avoidance Using the Internet: A Short History
by Tim Wu

We are now some twenty years into the story of the Internet’s bold challenge to law and the legal system. In the early 2000s, Jack Goldsmith and I wrote Who Controls the Internet, a book that might be understood as a chronicle of some the early and more outlandish stages of the story. Professors Pollman and Barry’s excellent article, Regulatory Entrepreneurship, adds to and updates that story with subsequent chapters and a sophisticated analysis of the strategies more recently employed to avoid law using the Internet in some way. While Pollman and Barry’s article stands on its own, I write this Article to connect these two periods. I also wish to offer a slightly different normative assessment of the legal avoidance efforts described here, along with my opinion as to how law enforcement should conduct itself in these situations.

Postscript | Constitutional Law
Sex, Videos, and Insurance: How Gawker Could Have Avoided Financial Responsibility for the $140 Million Hulk Hogan Sex Tape Verdict
by Christopher C. French

On March 18, 2016, and March 22, 2016, a jury awarded Terry Bollea (a.k.a Hulk Hogan) a total of $140 million in compensatory and punitive damages against Gawker Media for posting less than two minutes of a video of Hulk Hogan having sex with his best friend’s wife. The award was based upon a finding that Gawker intentionally had invaded Hulk Hogan’s privacy by posting the video online.

Postscript | Litigation
“Fair, Reasonable, and Adequate” According to Who? Cy Pres Distributions That Result in Cheap Settlements and Generous Attorney Fees, but No Financial Benefit to Class Members
by Linda Sandstrom Simard

In her recent article, Professor Rhonda Wasserman argues that class action settlements that distribute funds cy pres raise a very serious risk of prejudice to absent class members. The problem, she asserts, is the temptation for class counsel to sell out the interests of absent class members in exchange for a discounted settlement for the defendant and a generous fee for class counsel. To illustrate her concern, she cites the $9.5 million settlement in Lane v. Facebook, Inc. that directed approximately $6.5 million to a nascent charity that was controlled—at least partially—by the defendant, $3 million to class counsel and nothing to the three million absent class members. Professor Wasserman argues that courts cannot have a laissez faire attitude toward protecting absent class members and she proposes a number of procedural reforms to ensure that cy pres distributions are only used when absolutely necessary. While her proposals are likely to provoke increased judicial scrutiny of cy pres distributions, the article stops short of addressing the principal question: when, if ever, is a settlement that distributes funds cy pres “fair, reasonable and adequate” to the absent class members?

Postscript | Constitutional Law
The New York Safe Act: A Thoughtful Approach to Gun Control, or a Politically Expedient Response to the Public’s Fear of the Mentally Ill?
by Mattew Gamsin

This Note will first review the historical development of gun-control laws in the United States, including those referred to by the Supreme Court as “longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by . . . the mentally ill.” It will then analyze the extent to which the SAFE Act differs from such longstanding prohibitions and whether the Act is constitutional. Finally, this Note will consider whether, regardless of its constitutionality, the SAFE Act is an appropriate legislative response to gun violence or whether a recent proposal by a group of national experts on mental illness and gun violence might be more effective and more likely to pass constitutional muster.

Postscript | Administrative Law
Ring-Fencing and Its Alternatives
by David Zaring

Steven Schwarcz’s “Ring-Fencing” gets much of its impact from its broad definition of the term, which is usually heard these days when thinking about whether a multinational bank ought to be forbidden from removing the assets of its branches in one country to support its activities in another.

One of the singular contributions of the article lies in its willingness to look beyond that use of the term to think about what ring-fencing means more broadly and conceptually. As Schwarcz observes, ring-fencing is nothing less than a way to allocate resources, regulate firms, and reassure stakeholders that could be applied any enterprise. The ring-fencing metaphor posits the separation of assets within a firm—some are inside the ring fence, and others are not. To Schwarcz this amounts to “legally deconstructing a firm in order to more optimally reallocate and reduce risk,” which could include any restructuring involving holding companies, off-balance sheet entities, and even the creation of corporate subsidiaries.

Postscript | Administrative Law
Narrow Banking as a Structural Remedy for the Problem of Systemic Risk: A Comment on Professor Schwarcz’s Ring-Fencing
by Arthur E. Wilmarth, Jr.

In Ring-Fencing, Professor Steven Schwarcz provides an insightful overview of the concept of “ring-fencing” as a “potential regulatory solution to problems in banking, finance, public utilities, and insurance.” As Professor Schwarcz explains, “ring-fencing can best be understood as legally deconstructing a firm in order to more optimally reallocate and reduce risk.” Ring-fencing has gained particular prominence in recent years as a strategy for limiting the systemic risk of large financial conglomerates (also referred to herein as “universal banks”). Professor Schwarcz describes several ring-fencing plans that have been adopted or proposed in the United States, United Kingdom, and European Union.

This Comment argues that “narrow banking” is a highly promising ring-fencing remedy for the problems created by universal banks. Narrow banking would strictly separate the deposit-taking function of universal banks from their capital markets activities. If properly implemented, narrow banking could significantly reduce the safety net subsidies currently exploited by large financial conglomerates and thereby diminish their incentives for excessive risk-taking.

Postscript | Criminal Law
Running Afoul of the Non-Refoulment Principle: The [Mis]interpretation and [Mis]application of the Particularly Serious Crime Exception
by​ David Delgado

Envision living with the constant fear of being tortured or killed for no other reason than having a different political opinion than those in power. While that may be difficult to imagine for those who live in the United States, unfortunately, many around the world must live with that fear or flee from their homes. That fear has mobilized an estimated 11,000 to 15,000 refugees to flee from Syria. The mass exodus followed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s siege of the western city of Homs, which is “the heart of an 11-month uprising against his rule.” In those early months of violence, only around 7000 Syrian refugees had registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (“UNHCR”). However, given the persistent violence and the recent allegations that President al-Assad has used chemical weapons on or near civilian populations, it is unsurprising that current UNHCR projections estimate that there are over two million Syrian refugees. And according to the UNHCR, if current trends persist, there may be well over three million Syrian refugees by the end of 2013.

Postscript | Criminal Law
Our Broken Misdemeanor Justice System: Its Problems and Some Potential Solutions
by​ Eve Brensike Primus

Although misdemeanors comprise an overwhelming majority of state criminal court cases, little judicial and scholarly attention has been focused on how misdemeanor courts actually operate. In her article, Misdemeanors, Alexandra Natapoff rights this wrong and explains how the low-visibility, highly discretionary decisions made by actors at the misdemeanor level often result in rampant discrimination, incredible inefficiency, and vast miscarriages of justice. Misdemeanors makes a significant contribution to the literature by refocusing attention on the importance of misdemeanor offenses and beginning an important dialogue about what steps should be taken going forward to fix our broken misdemeanor justice system.

Natapoff amasses an impressive amount of data and material to explain both the prominence of misdemeanor convictions in our justice system and the many problems with how our misdemeanor system operates. She rightly points out that legislative overcriminalization coupled with conflicting police responsibilities and vast police discretion has created a system in which poor people of color are routinely arrested for misdemeanor offenses even when there is little evidence to support their arrests.

Postscript | Criminal Law
Bulk Misdemeanor Justice
by​ Stephanos Bibas

Postscript | Antitrust Law
Determining the Optimal Antitrust Standard: How to Think About Per Se Versus Rule of Reason
by​ Abaraham L. Wickelgren

Andrew I. Gavil presents a thoughtful and illuminating portrait of the evolution of the rule of reason in United States antitrust law since Standard Oil. While the rule of reason, as initially embodied in Standard Oil Co. v. United States and Board of Trade of Chicago v. United States (“Chicago Board of Trade”), may have once been an invitation to make any and all arguments about the competitive nature of a given restraint, Gavil rightly points out that this is no longer the case. As currently employed, the rule-of-reason analysis is typically quite structured. The plaintiff must first show that the defendant’s action had an anticompetitive effect. If she can do this, then the defendant has the burden to prove that its action has a procompetitive benefit. If, and only if, the court finds that both sides have met their initial burden, will the court proceed to balance the two effects.

Of course, the evidence of anti- and procompetitive effects for any particular conduct is always far from perfect. Whenever evidence is imperfect, we know from decision theory (Bayes’ rule) that one’s prior beliefs about the plausibility of anti- or procompetitive effects will be important (and will be more important the less perfect the evidence). Thus, one can think of the per se rule in antitrust as just an extreme form of the rule of reason, in which the court’s prior beliefs dictate the decision. For example, a court’s prior belief that price-fixing is anticompetitive may be so strong that the evidence required to overcome that prior belief (establishing a procompetitive effect on balance) would have to be enormously powerful. One way to express the justification for the per se rule is that the probability that such evidence will exist is so small that it is not worth examining it. In that light, one can also view the structured rule of reason approach as one that should (although, in practice may not) reflect a similar paradigm in less extreme cases: we require stronger evidence of anticompetitive effects for conduct that we think are less likely to be anticompetitive and are more receptive to procompetitive effects arguments in such cases.

Postscript | Antitrust Law
Tarring the Trust: The Political Economy of Standard Oil
by​ Michael Reksulak & William F. Shughart II

It has been well established in the economics literature that the antitrust laws have been used strategically to undermine the competitive market process, whether the alleged abuses were based in fact or not. It should, then, come as no surprise that the origins of one of the most famous decisions in antitrust jurisprudence, the 1911 judgment by the Supreme Court against Standard Oil, can be traced back to an alliance of rivals that had seen their business interests hurt by John D. Rockefeller, Sr.’s innovative entrepreneurship. In fact, the judgment seemed to confirm early fears attributed to “[m]ost economists in the late 19th century . . . [that] the law would impede attainment of superior efficiency promised by new forms of industrial organization.” Others concluded later that “the enforcement of the Sherman Act over the past 95 years has probably reduced industrial competitiveness.”

On that occasion more than a century ago–an event that has been called “the mother of all monopolization cases”–the Court decided unanimously (with Justice Harlan concurring in part and dissenting in part ) that the U.S. government had the right to impose “broader and more controlling remedies,” including the dissolution of an entire corporate entity, in announcing that they henceforth would apply a “rule of reason” in evaluating alleged antitrust law violations.

Postscript | Antitrust Law
Occupy Wall Street and Antitrust
by​ Maurice E. Stucke

Even its more stalwart defenders are concerned that capitalism is in crisis. Alan Greenspan conceded a “flaw” in his free-market beliefs. The Financial Times, in 2012, invited Arundhati Roy and Occupy Wall Street to share a dialogue with high-level officials and leading economists over the crisis in capitalism.

The crisis in capitalism might have come as a shock to some, but not to many middle- and lower-income households. Well before 2008, middle-class Americans saw little gains in income, despite gains in productivity. When mass unemployment came, the middle class shrank further. America’s social net, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders described in his historic speech, is threadbare. America’s infrastructure is crumbling. Primary and secondary education for many families is inadequate. Incarcerations, home foreclosures, underwater mortgages, the number of people in poverty, and the public’s dissatisfaction with Congress are at record highs. With America’s debt in the trillions of dollars, a larger fiscal crisis looms. Many Americans in 2012 were dissatisfied with the United States’ moral and ethical climate (68 percent surveyed), the federal government’s size and power (69 percent), and the state of America’s economy (83 percent). Given the dissatisfaction, it is a wonder why more people are not protesting.

Postscript | Computer & Internet Law
From Bombs and Bullets to Botnets and Bytes: Cyber War and the Need for a Federal Cybersecurity Agency
by​ Danielle Warner

In September 2010, Iranian engineers detected that a sophisticated computer worm, known as Stuxnet, had infected and damaged industrial sites across Iran, including its uranium enrichment site, Natanz. In just a few days, a sophisticated computer code was able to accomplish what six years of United Nations Security Council resolutions could not. Not a single missile was launched, nor any tanks deployed, yet the computer worm effectively set back the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program by two years and destroyed roughly one-fifth of its nuclear centrifuges. The worm itself included two major components. One was designed to send Iran’s nuclear centrifuges spinning out of control, damaging them. The other component seemed right out of the movies; “the computer program . . . secretly recorded what normal operations at the nuclear plant looked like, then played those readings back to plant operators, like a pre-recorded security tape in a bank heist, so that it would appear that everything was operating normally while the centrifuges were actually tearing themselves apart.”

Postscript | Family Law
Of Financial Rights of Assisted Reproductive Technology Nonmarital Children and Back-Up Plans
by​ Dara E. Purvis

Responding to Courtney G. Joslin, Protecting Children (?): Marriage, Gender, and Assisted Reproductive Technology, 83 S. Cal. L. Rev. 1177 (2010).

In her article, Courtney G. Joslin persuasively argues that the children born via assisted reproductive technology (“ART”) are placed at a serious financial disadvantage under the law. Joslin is right to point out that parentage provisions that apply only to children born to heterosexual married couples disadvantage nonmarital children of ART financially as well as emotionally and developmentally. Joslin’s solution is to propose extending to such children what she terms the “consent = legal parent” rule, meaning that “any individual, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, or marital status, who consents to a woman’s insemination with the intent to be a parent is a legal parent of the resulting child.” Such a rule removes a period of time during which a child is unprotected by the lack of legal recognition of a parent. This response identifies an ambiguity in and proposes a clarification of Joslin’s consent = legal parent rule with regard to conception, and with regard to consent during the period after conception and before birth.

Postscript | Constitutional Law
Can Congress Make You Buy Broccoli? And Why It Really Doesn’t Matter
by​ David Orentlicher

Critics of the individual mandate to purchase health care insurance make a simple but seemingly compelling argument. If the federal government can require people to buy insurance because that would be good for their health, then the government can require people to buy all sorts of things that are good for their health, like broccoli or membership in an exercise club.

To avoid the prospect of the ultimate nanny state, U.S. district court judges in Florida and Virginia concluded that while the federal government may regulate economic activity, it may not regulate economic inactivity. Thus, once you decide to purchase health care insurance, the government can regulate the terms of your insurance policy. However, you cannot be forced to purchase the policy in the first place. To breach the activity-inactivity line, wrote Judge Roger Vinson, would invite all kinds of well-intended, but liberty-destroying, laws.

Postscript | Constitutional Law
The Nonconstitutional Character of Ineffective Assistance of Counsel Claims in Immigration Proceedings: A Brief Comment on Afanwi v. Mukasey
by​ Patrick J. Glen

On May 19, 2008, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held that an alien was foreclosed from establishing that alleged ineffective assistance of counsel deprived him of his right to due process, as aliens do not possess any constitutional right to effective assistance of counsel in immigration proceedings, and thus any ineffectiveness of privately retained counsel cannot be imputed to the government for purposes of establishing a violation of the Fifth Amendment. On its face, the holding of the Fourth Circuit regarding this issue seems spectacularly uninteresting—immigration proceedings have long been recognized to be civil in nature, and thus the Sixth Amendment does not provide any right to counsel. Without a constitutional right to counsel, there can be no constitutional violation if privately retained counsel performs ineffectively, as there will be no nexus in those circumstances between the counsel’s ineffectiveness and the state action required for invoking the Constitution. Notwithstanding this seemingly straight-forward analysis, the Fourth Circuit joined just one other court, the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in finding that ineffective assistance of counsel in immigration proceedings does not constitute a violation of an alien’s right to due process. Every other court of appeals that addressed this issue has found that, although the Sixth Amendment does not guarantee a right to counsel in immigration proceedings, ineffective assistance of counsel may render the proceedings so fundamentally unfair and so impeding the presentation of an alien’s case that the ineffectiveness could deprive an alien of his right to due process under the Fifth Amendment. These courts have reached this conclusion in a perfunctory fashion, without squarely reconciling Supreme Court precedent that seems to argue strongly against the possibility that the ineffective assistance of counsel may constitute a violation of due process in circumstances where the Constitution does not provide a right to counsel.

Postscript | Employee Benefits Law
Interpretive Bulletin 08-1 and Economically Targeted Investing: A Missed Opportunity
by​ Edward A. Zelinsky

In the waning days of the Bush administration, the Department of Labor (“DOL”) issued Interpretive Bulletin 08-1 (“IB 08-1”) concerning the legal obligations of employee benefit plan fiduciaries when they invest the plan assets they control. Specifically, IB 08-1 addresses plan fiduciaries’ duties in the context of “economically targeted investing,” the investment of plan assets in pursuit of benefits for third parties rather than for plan participants and their beneficiaries. IB 08-1 revises prior regulations on economically targeted investing issued early in the Clinton administration.

The assets held in trust by employee benefit plan fiduciaries represent compensation earned by plan participants. In accordance with the duty of loyalty codified by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (“ERISA”), such assets must be invested with single-minded concern for the welfare of the participants and their beneficiaries. Economically targeted investing contravenes ERISA’s duty of loyalty by permitting, indeed encouraging, plan trustees to invest plan assets to generate ancillary benefits for persons other than the participants whose labor is embodied in those assets.

Postscript | Constitutional Law
Would Californians Have the Courage of Their Convictions in the Face of a Fully Functioning Death Penalty?
by​ Jean Rosenbluth

Responding to Judge Arthur L. Alarcón, Remedies for California’s Death Row Deadlock, 80 S. Cal. L. Rev. 697 (2007).

Postscript | Constitutional Law
Response to Courage of Their Convictions
by​ Yael V. Levy

Responding to Jean Rosenbluth, Would Californians Have the Courage of Their Convictions in the Face of Fully Functioning Death Penalty?, 81 S. Cal. L. Rev. Postscript 1 (2008).