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Volume 66, Issue 5


Article

Probable Cause, Constitutional Reasonableness, and the Unrecognized Point of a “Pointless Indignity”

by  Josh Bowers

A police officer needs probable cause to make an arrest. But, almost always, he needs no more. In this way, an arrest may be constitutionally reasonable even if it is entirely unreasonable by any plausible moral or instrumental measure. Indeed, the Court has upheld even an arrest that it termed a “gratuitous humiliation” and a…

Article

Boards-R-Us

Reconceptualizing Corporate Boards
by  Stephen M. Bainbridge & M. Todd Henderson

State corporate law requires that “natural persons” provide director services. This Article puts this obligation to scrutiny, and concludes that there are significant gains that could be realized by permitting firms (be they partnerships, corporations, or other business entities) to provide board services. We call these firms “board service providers” (BSPs). We argue that hiring…

Article

Does Familiarity Breed Contempt Among Judges Deciding Patent Cases?

by  Mark A. Lemley, Su Li & Jennifer M. Urban

We offer the first comprehensive look at how a district judge’s experience affects decisionmaking in patent cases. We find that there is a strong, statistically significant relationship between a judge’s experience and case outcome: more experienced judges are less likely to rule for the patentee. Notably, the relationship exists only for rulings finding noninfringement; judicial…

Note

A New Approach to the Teague Doctrine

by  Kendall Turner

Teague v. Lane generally precludes the retroactive application of new constitutional rules of criminal procedure to collateral review of criminal convictions. When federal courts reviewing state convictions apply this rule, it has a certain amount of logic: it protects society’s interest in federalism and finality. But courts apply this rule to cases in myriad procedural…