Academic Round-Up

Brad Joondeph (Santa Clara Law School) has posted “Practical Consequences, Institutional Competence, and Department of Revenue of Kentucky v. Davis” on SSRN, see here. As you may remember, I have recently highlighted a couple of papers by Brian Galle (Florida State University College of Lawl) and Ethan Yale (Georgetown University Law Center) on the Davis case, see here and here, which will be argued on November 5 before the Court. Professor Joondeph responds in part to those two prior articles by Galle and Yale and further argues that the Court should find the Kentucky taxation scheme constitutional for two reasons: (1) the preference at issue here is virtually indistinguishable from the United Haulers decision last Term; and (2) the 42 states that have a similar taxation scheme for municipal bonds would be forced to endure billions of dollars in losses transitioning to a system in which all municipal bonds would be taxed equally. As a matter of full disclosure, Joondeph also served as a consultant for the State and Local Legal Center in the preparation of its amicus brief for the Government Finance Officers of America et al.

In response to Scott Dodson’s piece on Bowles v. Russell that I highlighted last week, see here, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch (Cumberland School of Law) has written a response in Northwestern Law Review Colloquy entitled “Nonjurisdictionality or Inequity,” see here . Although Burch sees some merit in Dodson’s alternative proposal to making the fourteen-day time limit for filing a notice of appeal “mandatory” rather than “jurisdictional,” she “part[s] company” with Dodson and would resurrect the “unique circumstances” doctrine or some other equitable principle to permit exceptions to the fourteen-day filing rule. As a side note, I am seeing a clear trend in the use of online companion journals by the leading law journals: more and more of them are putting discussions and debates about recent Supreme Court decisions online. Because there is often a six- to eight-month delay before a printed issue of a law journal is published, this seems to me to be an excellent use of the online medium and an excellent opportunity for young scholars to write short pieces on the Court’s recent decisions. I will continue to watch these developments in the use of online journals closely.

Another excellent use of online companion journals is for hosting mini-symposia on timely legal issues. Although Ben beat me to the punch this morning in highlighting Michigan Law Review’s First Impressions symposium on the Supreme Court and patent law, I want to make a couple brief comments about some of the articles. First, John Duffy (George Washington University Law School) always does top-notch work on the Supreme Court’s treatment of patent law and the Federal Circuit and his short piece in First Impressions is no exception. Second, for those of you who follow the Court’s increasing interest in patent jurisprudence, Rebecca Eisenberg’s (University of Michigan Law School) piece dedicates quite a bit of attention to some observations about the Court’s recent grants in the patent law area. I particularly recommend those two articles in the mini-symposium.