A trade secret, according to the conventional understanding, “expires” only once it is no longer kept secret. Keep the secret for decades or even centuries, as with the formula for Coca-Cola, and you can potentially protect it forever. That conventional wisdom is wrong. A company can “abandon” its trade secrets by failing to derive economic…
Marriage has long been a recognized limit on the right to contract. Wives were once prevented from contracting entirely, and now gender-neutral rules prevent spouses from contracting over matters that are considered integral to the marital relationship. Outside of marriage, then, scholars have generally assumed that individuals experience no similar impediments in exercising their rights…
Drawing on claims about the supposed powers wielded by the King of Great Britain at the time of the Framing, proponents of the “unitary executive” theory of the presidency have long contended that the powers to remove and direct all executive-branch officials are inherent components of the “executive Power” vested in the President by Article…
The Administrative Procedure Act (APA) permits agencies to bypass notice-and-comment procedures when justified by “good cause.” The APA’s drafters intended that exception to be reserved for rare instances when exigency outweighed strong interests in public participation and agency deliberation. But today, agencies claim good cause to skip notice-and-comment requirements in a significant percentage of rulemakings.…
