Comparative law research reaches prisoner rights; women's rights; tech patents; internet, drug reg

Law Offices of James L. Arrasmith CC BY-NC 4.0

In fall 2024, I had the privilege of teaching Comparative Law for the sixth time.

For my time and energies, the course is the best one to teach, because it offers the best opportunity for a lifelong learner. Law teaching usually requires mastering a broad and deep range of content so that one can guide students capably through it. Not so in Comparative Law, in which the teacher cannot possibly know the substantive content of all of the legal systems of the world. Rather, the course is about arming students with the tools of comparative methodology, and then savoring the opportunity to learn from them, what they find in their own research.

This year was not lacking in the savory. As I have in the past, I am proud and pleased to share a collection of abstracts representing the yeoman work of my students in the fall semester. You will see that the students devised some wonderfully innovative theses. The subject matter that researchers tackled spanned prisoner legal rights, marijuana and gambling regulation, black women's representation in the legal profession, women's rights in Afghanistan and in Dutch sex work, semiconductor patents, and regulation of online misinformation.

Alayna Wageman, Prisoners Are Human Too: A Comparative Analysis of Prisoners' Right to Legal Assistance in Chile and the United States. Both Chile and the United States guarantee, through their constitutions, the right to legal counsel for individuals who cannot afford a lawyer during criminal prosecutions. However, prisoners lack resources to access legal assistance when their basic human rights are violated while incarcerated. This project seeks to show how the extreme traumatization of citizens in the United States from the years of slavery and the extreme traumatization of citizens in Chile from the years of dictatorship continue to impact the treatment of prisoners today. This paper begins with an overview of the history of slavery in the United States, specifically in Massachusetts, and an overview of the history of dictatorship in Chile. Next, the paper will explain the laws that define the right to legal assistance for prisoners in Chile and Massachusetts. Finally, the paper compares two programs designed to improve prisoners' access to legal resources: the Prisoners' Legal Services (PLS) of Massachusetts in the United States and the Penitentiary Defense Program (Programa de Defensa Penal Pública Penitenciaria) in Chile. This analysis demonstrates how the influence of the historical extreme traumatization of societies continues to impact the treatment of prisoners in both countries, with focus on the limitation of access to legal assistance in prisons. The paper concludes by acknowledging the efforts of the PLS and the Penitentiary Defense Program, which are working to further protect the rights of prisoners.

Bryce Mayo, Comparing the Impact of Sports Gambling Advertising: A Legal Exploration of the United States and Australia. The recent legalization of sports gambling has taken the United States by storm, and as a result, an influx of advertising has taken over every commercial break. Sports fans, avid and casual viewers alike, cannot help but notice sportsbooks like BetMGM, FanDuel, and DraftKings attempt to entice an already invested community into raising the stakes of a game or match. These companies use tactics such as celebrity endorsements, sign-up promotions, and "can't lose bets" on your first wager. This paper compares how the United States and Australia have approached the regulation of sports gambling advertising since its legalization in 2018 and 1983, respectively. Although both countries follow the common law system, the legalization of sports gambling came about in drastically different ways. The United States struck down a longstanding congressional act, while Australia codified sports gambling, even making the first sportsbooks state owned and operated. Recently, Australia has issued licenses to private or publicly owned sportsbooks and their advertising regulations have changed as a result; whereas in the United States, private and publicly owned sportsbooks are the primary recipients of licenses, yet the regulations mirror that of Australia in 1983. Legalizing sports gambling in the United States is in its infancy, and growing pains are inevitable. It appears to be the wild west, quite reminiscent of tobacco advertising in years past. The United States can learn from Australia's experience and seek a balance between maintaining a profitable market and minimizing the creation of degenerate gamblers.

Carson Powell, Quality Over Quantity: A Comparative Analysis of Marijuana Quality Control Regulations Between the Netherlands and the United States. This paper compares the law and regulations of the United States and the Netherlands, on the regulations that are used to ensure the quality of marijuana sold legally. First, the paper focus will be on the Dutch marijuana policy, and its past, current and future regulation protecting the quality of the marijuana sold in "coffee shops." Next, the focus will shift to the United States and specifically Colorado regulations when testing the quality of marijuana. The paper views policies implemented to ensure quality and safety within the production, testing, distribution and the sale of cannabis/marijuana products. Finally, the paper compares Netherlands regulations on marijuana quality assurance and with Colorado laws and regulations that establish the safety of state citizens. The paper compares the laws and regulations, how they relate to each other, and the social results. The paper concludes with recommendations based on the comparisons drawn from the two parties, and whether each can become more effective and efficient with its own processes.

Kennia Joseph, A Comparative Analysis of Gender and Racial Equality for Black and Nigerian Women in the Legal Profession. This paper compares the laws in the United States and Nigeria that address gender and racial equality and their effect on black and Nigerian women in the workforce, specifically in the legal profession. One of the key issues in ensuring gender equality in employment lies in enforcing existing laws and policies. The comparison between Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and the overturned affirmative action practices thereunder, Article 11 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and the failed Nigerian Gender and Equal Opportunity Bill of 2016 highlight underrepresentation in the legal field. Despite developing systems to support and encourage race and gender equality, black women from different cultures, and political, societal, and economic climates share experiences in the same profession with similar laws, initiatives, and policies.

Nick Saathoff, A Comparison Between Patents on Semiconductors in Germany and the United States. Patent law in Germany and the United States protects those who invent or discover patentable processes. Ideologies between the two countries differ in the field. In the United States, a patent is mainly a monetary protection. In Germany, in addition to monetary protection, there is an honor and prestige associated with inventing. This paper discusses patent law in each country specific to the field of semiconductors. Semiconductors are one of the most technologically significant patentable items in the world today. The paper initially provides an overview of patent law in each country and what role semiconductors play. This paper identifies similarities and differences between patent protections, patent quality, and patent strategies in the United States and Germany. In doing so, the paper discusses key requirements of obtaining a patent. The paper discusses one requirement at a time, discussing the interpretation in the United States and the interpretation in Germany. The paper then notes patent statutes in each country specific to the semiconductor industry. Additionally, the paper will discuss nuances in each country’s patent laws in the semiconductor industry.

Rebecca Stump, A Comparative Look at Sex Work in the United States and the Netherlands. Sex work, historically, has been a controversial occupation for a variety of reasons, including religious beliefs, women’s rights, bodily autonomy, and the extent to which the state should regulate an individual's choices over their own bodies. During this period, sex work has been considered a shameful profession, one which must be criminalized to deter human trafficking or coercion. However, as understanding and advocacy for bodily autonomy and freedom to self, and countries such as the Netherlands reform and change their sex work laws, there are movements for change to law in the United States. The aim is for a discussion, through comparison of the legal systems of Nevada and the Netherlands and the main avenues for reform, partial decriminalization and full decriminalization or legalization, the social and legal implications of legalization of sex work to further investigate reform in the United States. Within research regarding sex work, there are critical biases that must be acknowledged prior to engaging in discussion. First, and foremost, is the moral and ethical considerations of sex work. Sex work is not merely seen as an occupation free from moral implication, but an occupation for which every person may offer their individual consideration as to the ethical value of the work. To engage in substantive discussion, morality must be stripped away. Instead, one must be willing to engage in discussion solely on the legal ability of an individual to make a choice regarding the services they offer using their person, and the role of the state in legislating that decision. To that point, a discussion regarding the legality of sex work is necessarily a discussion of the extent to which the state should regulate labor. There exist various viewpoints as to the question of federalism and the role of the state to regulate. This bias must also be considered.

Sean Pillai, Afghan Women's Human Rights: A Legal Analysis of Constitutional Governance vs. the Taliban Rule. Afghanistan’s history of political turbulence and violent turmoil have repeatedly challenged the legal and social status of women. Afghanistan attempted to rebuild as a democratic nation and included rights to protect women. Under the 2004 constitution, women gained significant legal rights, such as access to education, safety and freedom of movement and employment opportunities, marking a stark contrast to the Taliban's earlier reign (1996-2001). However, the progress made was curtailed with the withdrawal of U.S. forces in 2021 and the Taliban return to power. This analysis will address the shift in legal protections and the impact on societal roles for women contrasting the two eras: the 2004 constitutional government and the Taliban regime 2021 to present. By comparing the legal frameworks and implementation of women's rights in key domains such as women's access to education, safety and freedom of movement, and women's access to employment, this paper seeks to provide an understanding of the impact the two legal systems have on women.

Shiloh Worthington, The Digital Services Act vs. Section 230: The Western Hemisphere's Battle Against Misinformation. The European Union and the United States have both recognized the disparate effects of rampant and unchecked misinformation spreading across the internet. However, each has a distinct approach to combatting this epidemic of troublesome content. The EU battle against misinformation is best exemplified by the recently passed Digital Services Act (DSA), which places the primary responsibility of stopping the spread on the platforms themselves. Meanwhile, in the United States, the struggle to fight misinformation is at odds with the First Amendment rights of the platforms. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act offers platforms total immunity for their misinformation content-removal practices, no matter how it conflicts with individual freedom of expression. Further conflict arises as the EU's DSA attempts to force American-based platforms with European audiences to comply with its content-removal practices under misinformation-related pretenses, even if doing so would remove American citizens' content otherwise protected by the U.S. Constitution.

Watch for these students on upcoming bar pass lists in a state near you!

Flags from Flagpedia, except Afghanistan Taliban from Wikimedia Commons, all public domain.

'Fisk' is the civil-practice lawyer you've been looking for

If you're looking to fill that Netflix queue as the writers' strike drags on, check out the Australian sitcom, Fisk.

When I put together a church message on ethics recently, I was looking to fill out a line about civil practice attorneys and coming up short. I wanted to make the point that when someone says "personal injury lawyer," we are quick to think of iconic unethical characters, and it's harder to conjure up the ethical ones. I didn't at first realize how much harder.

I ran the thought experiment on myself first. Even for me, a torts prof, it's hard, first, to filter out criminal lawyers. When I work the problem chronologically, the first character lawyer I remember adoring in my youth is Star Trek's Samuel T. Cogley (Elisha Cook), who defended Captain Kirk in a court-martial: criminal. The first civil selection that comes to mind is Boston Legal's Alan Shore (James Spader). But even he first appeared on The Practice, a criminal-law show.

Solidly on the civil side, unethical characters do come to mind quickly. For the message, I settled on My Cousin Vinny's Vinny Gambini (Joe Pesci), who was a civil-practice attorney out of his depth in a criminal-law storyline, and, to cross generations, Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul's Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk). 

Then the ethical characters....  There are plenty in criminal, both prosecution and defense. Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston) is most often cited as admired when I survey 1L students. Ben Matlock (Andy Griffith) and Atticus Finch are classics.

Civil? Alas, so few people remember Alan Shore. I briefly considered Victor Sifuentes (Jimmy Smits). But on close inspection, nobody on L.A. Law holds up well as memorable and consistently ethically. There was Ally McBeal (Calista Flockhart), but she had a lot of balls (and dancing babies) in the air besides law practice. I interrogated the staff of The West Wing; none of the leads was a lawyer. I'm fond of Madam Secretary's Mike B. (Kevin Rahm), but he was as often as not a devil's advocate to test Elizabeth McCord's righteousness. Erin Brockvich? Real-life hero, but, to be technical, paralegal and consultant, not lawyer. Maybe Ralph Nader, though then it gets political.

John Calvin (1509-1564)
Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

For the church message, I settled on the real-life John Calvin, the 16th-century French theologian. He trained as a lawyer before he got caught up in the Reformation. It's a reach, I know.  But the bench is not deep, and Calvin was a stalwart for his faith.

So I come back around to Fisk, the title character of which is lawyer Helen Tudor-Fisk, created and played by comedian Kitty Flanagan. Tudor-Fisk was a high-powered corporate lawyer in Sydney until a bitter divorce and a workplace meltdown prompted her to upend her career and move to Melbourne. There she struggled to find a bed and a job, landing as a temporary fill-in for a suspended trusts-and-estates lawyer at a scrappy two-partner shop.

Fisk is not about law or legal ethics. The show, and its comedy, derive from Flanagan's delightfully dry-witted character as she navigates the ups and downs of her shattered life. The law practice is setting and background. But then—I don't think it's a big spoiler to say—her quiet diligence in her new job suddenly and gratifyingly comes to the fore in the finale of the six-episode season 1.

When I finished Fisk s1 last week, my own biases were laid bare. I had tried to think of what an ethical civil-practice attorney looks like. I pictured a renowned, tough-as-nails civil litigator, a silver-haired Matlock analog, dazzling jurors in the courtroom in "ripped from the headlines" cases.

Forget all that. Helen is the real deal.

I fell for Fisk.

Season 1 of Fisk is streaming now on Netflix. Season 2 ran on Australian Broadcasting last year; to my knowledge, it has not yet been licensed to stream in America.

UPDATE Oct. 22, 2023: Fisk s2 is now available to purchase in America from services including Amazon Prime.

Nike, Puma stop making shoes with kangaroo leather

Nike and Puma both announced this year that they will stop using kangaroo leather to make shoes.

I didn't know that kangaroo leather was used to make shoes. Or anything. I didn't know "kangaroo leather" was a thing. So this news was simultaneously stomach-turning and a relief to me.

Kangaroo leather is a thing, apparently prized for its strength and durability. According to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), somewhere between 1.5 and 5 million kangaroos are killed annually for "k-leather" clothing and accessories. (NPR reported 1.3m in Australia in 2021, per a government count there.) PETA described violent killing of adults and joeys by hunters; I'll refrain from sharing the horrifying details. 

PETA named Nike, Puma, Adidas, Diadora, Versace, and Prada as companies that used kangaroo leather, though all except Adidas have now announced that they'll stop. Footy Headlines reported in March that Adidas will offer 2024 kangaroo football (soccer) boots.

Nike was under pressure from more than NGOs. Nike World Headquarters is in Beavorton, Oregon, and a bill introduced in the Oregon legislature would have banned kangaroo leather products, NPR (and Oregon Public Broadcasting) reported in January. California has since the 1970s. The Oregon bill died in March, but not without having left a mark in public consciousness.

A California representative proposed a federal ban on kangaroo leather in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2021. ESPN gave some press to the Kangaroo Protection Act during the FIFA World Cup in Qatar in December, but the bill never made it out of committee.

Photos: Kangaroos at the Australia Zoo in 2005, RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

'Don't panic,' lawyers say, as Oz High Court clears way for website liability over defamatory user comments

The High Court of Australia last week greenlit defamation claims against website operators for user comments, the latest evidence of crumbling global immunity doctrine represented in the United States by the ever more controversial section 230.

There is plenty news online about the Aussie case, and I did not intend to comment.  For the academically inclined, social media regulation was the spotlight issue of the premiere Journal of Free Speech Law.

Yet I thought it worthwhile to share commentary from Clayton Utz, in which lawyers Douglas Bishop, Ian Bloemendal, and Kym Fraser evinced a mercifully less alarmist tone when they wrote, "don't panic just yet."

The Australian apex court extended the well known and usual rule of common law defamation, when not statutorily suspended: that the tale bearer is as responsible as the tale maker.  In the tech context, in other words, "[b]y 'facilitating, encouraging and thereby assisting the posting of comments' by the public," the defendants, notwithstanding their actual knowledge or lack thereof, "became the publishers," Bishop, Bloemendal, and Fraser wrote.

But it's a touch more complicated than purely strict liability.  "What is relevant is an intentional participation in the process by which a posted comment may become available to be accessed by other Facebook users," Bishop, et al., opined.  "So does that mean you should take down your corporate social media pages? That would be an over-reaction to this decision."

The lawyers emphasized that this appeal was interlocutory.  On remand in New South Wales, the media defendants may assert defenses, including innocent dissemination, justification, and truth.  Bishop, et al., advise:

In the meantime, if your organisation maintains a social media page which allows comments on your posts, you should review your monitoring of third-party comments and the training of your social media team in flagging and (if necessary) escalating problems to ensure you can have respectful, non-defamatory conversation with stakeholders.

Funny they should say so.  Coincidentally, I gave "feedback" to Google Blogger just Friday that a new option should be added for comment moderation, something like "archive," or "decline to publish for now."  The only options Google offers are spam, trash, and publish.

I have two comments posted to this blog in recent years that I hold in "Awaiting Moderation" purgatory, because they fit none of my three options.  Every time I go to comment moderation, I have to see these two at the top.  The comments express possible defamation: allegations of criminality or otherwise ill character about third parties referenced on the blog.  I don't want to republish these comments, because I do not know whether they are true.  But I don't want to trash them, because they are not necessarily valueless.  Moreover, they might later be evidence in someone else's defamation suit.

I moderate comments for this blog, so I don't think it's too much to ask the same of anyone else who publishes comments, whether individual, small business, or the transnational information empires that peer over my shoulder.  

I do worry, though, about how that works out for the democratizing potential of the internet.  I'm trained to recognize potentially defamatory or privacy invasive content; I've done it for a living.  Are we prepared to punish the blogger who contributes valuably to the information sphere, but lacks the professional training to catch a legal nuance?  Or to pay the democratic price of disallowing dialog on that writer's blog?  As a rule, ignorance of the law is no excuse, in defamation law no less than in any other area.  But understanding media torts asks a lot more of the average netizen than knowing not to jaywalk.

I don't profess answers, at least not today.  But I can tell that the sentiment of my law students, especially those a generation or more younger than I, is unreticent willingness to hold corporations strictly liable for injurious speech on their platforms.  So if I were counsel to Google or Facebook, I would be planning for a radically changed legal future.

Automatic-door failures fuel injuries, tort claims, but road to recovery in litigation can be bumpy

Pixabay by djedj

An Australian woman struck by a malfunctioning airport security door was denied recovery in April after failing to prove that the malfunction caused her injury.  The outcome strikes me as questionable, and the case is instructive of tort principles anyway.

If you travel much, as I do, you probably have passed through those one-way transparent security doors that whip open and closed to allow only a person at a time to pass.  They frighten me a bit, and I never linger on the threshold.  The plaintiff in the instant case likewise denied having paused upon egress from Wagga Wagga City Airport arrivals in New South Wales, yet was struck by one of the doors.  She complained of shoulder and back injury, requiring surgery, and the court confirmed that the impact of the door at least worsened a preexisting condition.

Arrivals at Wagga Wagga Airport
(2012 photo by Bidgee CC BY-SA 3.0 AU)

The doors were in fact malfunctioning.  There are two batteries, at different heights, of photoelectric cells that sense a person in the way and prevent the doors from closing.  The lower set were out of commission.  However, tests and maintenance on the doors showed that the non-functioning cells were not essential for safety; the higher set still kept the doors open when so much as a person's leg was in the way.  The plaintiff therefore failed to show a causal connection between her injury and the malfunction, nor any alleged misfeasance by the airport defendant, such as a failure to warn.

The outcome strikes me as questionable, because there seems to be no dispute that the 44-year-old plaintiff was struck by the door, and that that's never supposed to happen.  Even if the photoelectric cell failure cannot be blamed, the case seems well suited to res ipsa loquitur, which, to the best of my knowledge, is recognized in New South Wales common law, and is not mentioned by the court.  Maybe the plaintiff failed to plead the theory.  Or maybe this is a Palsgraf-esque scenario in which the court concealed skepticism of the plaintiff's injury.  Of 100,000 arriving passengers annually, there were no other reported incidents, the court troubled to say.

Anyway, the case reminds me of one that I use sometimes in torts class to teach punitive damages with a dash of professional responsibility.  In 2015, 61-year-old James Hausman won a $21.5m verdict against the Holland America Line (HAL) after being hit by an automatic sliding door on a cruise ship, in an incident captured on camera.

There's plenty to inform a class discussion just there.  Hausman's injury did not look too bad in the video, but traumatic brain injury is tricky.  And the court awarded $16.5m in punitive damages after hearing about 16 other sliding-door injuries on HAL ships.  The plaintiff's lawyer accused HAL of trying to save on air conditioning, which HAL denied, the ABA Journal reported.

Then the case took a turn.  In 2016, the district court threw out the verdict after revelations of spoliation.  The ugly dissolution of an employment relationship between Hausman and a personal assistant led to an undiscovered personal email account and deleted messages that cast doubt on Hausman's veracity (ABA Journal, Seattle Times).  The court ordered a new trial and clarified that there was no evidence the plaintiff's attorney was complicit in wrongdoing.  The docket suggests that the case ended in settlement later that year.

The Australian case is Gray v. Wagga Wagga City Council, [2021] NSWDC 108, 07 April 2021 (Wolters Kluwer).  Simon Liddy at HWLEbsworth published commentary.  The American case is Hausman v. Holland America Line-USA, No. 2:13-cv-00937 (W.D. Wash. 2016) (Court Listener).

Terra Nullius: Named for legal doctrine, novel dives deeply into human identity

I'm not easily moved by fiction, so I don't make recommendations lightly.  And you need to read this book.

Terra Nullius by Claire G. Coleman (Amazon) has been a hit in Australia and thankfully was picked up for U.S. circulation by a small, Massachusetts-based publishing house, Small Beer Press.  The book has been shortlisted or nominated for a bunch of prestigious awards and won the Norma K. Hemming for exploration of themes of race in speculative fiction.  The book is a product of the Queensland "black&write!" indigenous writing fellowship.  Coleman identifies with the Noongar people of the southwestern coastal region of Australia.  A poet and writer, this is her debut novel, and she wrote it while exploring indigenous lands in a caravan.

The "speculative fiction" element of Terra Nullius is not immediately obvious in the telling of the story.  I won't spoil it here, and I urge you to avoid spoilers so that you can experience it yourself.  Even so, being married to a librarian, who recommended this book to me, I knew something of the novel's secret.  I was gripped early nonetheless, and the reveal was still richly enchanting.  For a while I had to ponder, why did Coleman tell the story this way?  But I got it, and the author interview in my Small Beer Press edition confirmed: Coleman's narrative delivers empathy for the indigenous experience in a way that I have never before witnessed.

There are countless parallels between Coleman's take on indigenous life and British colonization and the experiences of other marginalized groups, including Africans amid European colonization and First Nations in the United States.  The title, "terra nullius," refers to the Latin term and legal doctrine meaning "nobody's land."  Specifically the term was employed by the British to legally rationalize claim to Australia, as if the continent had been uninhabited.  The term turns up in American law, too, to justify claims to this continent and the displacement of native peoples.  Coleman states that she has not yet been to the United States, but would welcome the chance to compare notes on our reservations.  I would love to witness that conversation.  In ironic coincidence, I read Terra Nullius while exploring the reputed landing sites of Christopher Columbus on the Samaná Peninsula of la República Dominicana.  There are scarcely few more apt places on earth to consume this book.

While the focus might be on the indigenous perspective, this novel, in its sum, speaks even more ambitiously to the whole of our human experience.  It demands that we interrogate who we are as a species; that we ask whether confrontation and violence—might makes right—are intrinsic to our human identity, or a choice that we make, something we can change.  It comes clear that our survival may well depend on the answer.