"Curiouser and Curiouser!"--The Fallout from Alice

Firearms are the leading cause of death in US children and adolescents, but little is known about whether the overall legal landscape was associated with excess mortality after a landmark US Supreme Court decision in 2010. To measure excess mortality due to firearms among US children aged 0 to 17 years after the McDonald v Chicago US Supreme Court decision (2010). An excess mortality analysis was conducted using the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Wide-Ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research (WONDER) database before and after McDonald v Chicago, the landmark 2010 US Supreme Court decision on firearms regulation. States were divided into 3 groups based on legal actions taken before and since 2010, most permissive, permissive, and strict. Firearm mortality trends before (1999-2010) and after (2011-2023) were determined and compared across the 3 groups for all intents and by intent (homicide and suicide). Subgroup analysis by observed race and ethnicity was conducted. For each US state, pre-and post-McDonald v Chicago all-intent pediatric firearm mortality incident rates were compared. These data were analyzed January 2011 through December 2023. The pre- and post-McDonald v Chicago legal landscape. Excess mortality during the post-McDonald v Chicago period. During the post-McDonald v Chicago period (2011-2023), there were 6029 excess firearm deaths (incidence rate [IR], 158.6 per million population; 95% CI, 154.8-162.5) in the most permissive group. In the permissive group, there were 1424 excess firearm deaths (IR, 107.5 per million person-years; 95% CI, 103.8-111.3). In the strict group, there were -55 excess firearm deaths (IR, -2.5 per million person-years; 95% CI, -5.8 to 0.8). Non-Hispanic Black populations had the largest increase in firearm mortality in the most permissive and permissive state groupings. Four states (California, Maryland, New York, and Rhode Island) had decreased pediatric firearm mortality after McDonald v Chicago, all of which were in the strict firearms law group. States in the most permissive and permissive firearm law categories experienced greater pediatric firearm mortality during the post-McDonald v Chicago era. Future work should focus on determining which types of laws conferred the most harm and which offered the most protection.

Letters from Vienna: Reflections on the Coffee House Debate on Whether Arbitration is Appropriate for the Resolution of Mass Claims in the Aftermath of the US Supreme Court Decision in At&T Mobility V. Concepcion

Experimentation, Learning, and Appropriability in Early-Stage Ventures

In a landmark decision, MedImmune v. Genentech, the US Supreme Court held that a patent licensee does not have to terminate or be in breach of its licence agreement before filing a lawsuit to challenge the validity or enforceability of the licensed patent in a declaratory judgement action. This paper reports on the state of the law before MedImmune, the MedImmune decision itself, and the impact of MedImmune on technology transfer and licensing, including the new leverage US patent licensees now enjoy in challenging their licensors. The paper also discusses possible ramifications as to license agreements in the future, including the antitrust implications of restrictive licence provisions in the USA, as well as various international aspects of technology licensing in Europe and Japan.

Editorial/Letters

In the past 8 years, the US Supreme Court has issued landmark opinions in three cases that involved the criminal culpability of juveniles. In the most recent case, in 2012, a ruling prohibited states from mandating life without parole for crimes committed by minors. In these cases, the Court drew on scientific studies of the adolescent brain in concluding that adolescents, by virtue of their inherent psychological and neurobiological immaturity, are not as responsible for their behaviour as adults. This article discusses the Court's rationale in these cases and the role of scientific evidence about adolescent brain development in its decisions. I conclude that the neuroscientific evidence was probably persuasive to the Court not because it revealed something new about the nature of adolescence but precisely because it aligned with common sense and behavioural science.

Dövme, insanlık tarihi kadar eski bir sanat dalı ola-rak kabul edilmektedir. Dövmeler ise türlerine ve özelliklerine göre fikri hukuk bakımından genel ola-rak korunmaya uygun bulunan figüratif eserlerdir. Dövme sanatçısının hakları ile dövmenin vücuduna yapıldığı kişinin haklarının arasında atipik bir çekiş-me söz konusudur. Zira diğer fikri ürünlerden farklı olarak dövmenin uygulandığı yer insan vücududur. Dövmenin hususiyet arz eden bir figür olduğu veya dövme yaptıran kişinin milyonlarca takipçisi bulunan, şöhretli bir kişi olduğu durumlarda bu menfaat çatış-ması daha fazla ve daha belirgin bir önem kazanmak-tadır. Zira bu özgün dövmeler veya şöhret sahibi bir kişinin yaptırdığı dövmeler son derece popüler ola-bilmektedir. Bu şöhretli kişilerin dövmelerinin sinema eserleri veya bilgisayar oyunlarında görünür şekilde konumlandırılması halinde ise durum giderek daha karmaşık bir hal almaktadır. Dövme sanatçılarının şirketi olan Solid Oak Sketchers LLC’nin, NBA2K oyununun yapımcısı Take-Two Interactive Software ve 2K Games Inc’ye telif hakkı ihlali iddiasıyla açtığı dava bu bakımdan dikkat çekicidir. Mahkemenin bu davayı reddederken yaptığı değerlendirmeler dövme sanatçılarının telif haklarının anlaşılması bakımından önem taşımaktadır. Sony v Grand Turismo kararında kabul edilen mekânsal gerçeklik algısı istinası, dövme sanatçılarının oyun yapım şirketine açtıkları bu davada, kendisini oldukça farklı bir şekilde tekrar göstermiştir. ABD Yüksek Mahkemesi, daha evvel Sony’nin Gran Turismo isimli bilgisayar oyununu tanımlayıcı eser (expressive work) olarak kabul et-miştir. Bu davada mahkeme, davacı VIRAG, S.R.L.’nin marka hakkına, mekânsal gerçeklik algısı istisnası kapsamında tecavüz edilmediğine karar ver-miştir. Mahkeme, Solid Oak Sketchers LLC tarafın-dan açılan davada ise bu bakış açısını çeşitli kriter-lerle olgunlaştırmıştır. Dövme sanatçılarının telif haklarını incelediğimiz bu çalışmada önce mekânsal gerçeklik algısının etki ve kriterleri bahse konu iki adet ABD yüksek mahkemesi kararlarının gerekçele-rinin ışığında ele alınarak tartışılmıştır. Tebliğde ayrıca mekânsal gerçeklik algısının fikri hukuktaki yeri, bu davaların gerekçeleriyle detaylı bir şekilde analiz edilerek aydınlatılmıştır.

This case-control study investigates the association of the US Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v Wade with mental distress among female individuals of reproductive age.

Professor Fletcher N. Baldwin Jr (University of Florida) considers the “All Funds” case – the US Supreme Court decision of 22 April 1996 to let stand the forfeiture of drug money beyond immediate jurisdiction – and its potential implications for prior safe haven bank accounts, access to the proceeds of crime and enabling international seizure. Published in the Letter from … section of Amicus Curiae - Journal of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies and its Society for Advanced Legal Studies. The Journal is produced by the Society for Advanced Legal Studies at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London.

Harold Kletschka

The US Supreme Court's decision in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v Casey both protects a woman's liberty to choose to terminate her pregnancy and permits the state to make it more difficult for her to exercise her choice. In their opinion on the case, Justices O'Connor, Kennedy, and Souter eloquently defend constitutional protection of the right to make intimate decisions like continuing or ending a pregnancy. At the same time, they permit the state to try to persuade pregnant women not to have abortions and to make abortion harder to obtain and more costly, as long as the state's methods do not create an "undue burden" on the decision. Any restriction on abortion is a burden; whether it is "undue" (and therefore unconstitutional) depends on one's circumstances. The Court appears to view the difference between an undue burden and mere inconvenience from the perspective of privilege. The restrictions that were upheld may not significantly affect middle-class access to abortion, but they could prove insurmountable for many less privileged women.

Both geographic and normative constraints restrict access to surrogate international human rights protection for those seeking a haven from serious human rights abuses. Primary among territorial restrictions has been the fall-out from the US Supreme Court's decision in Sale v. Haitian Council Centers in which the court explicitly ruled that nothing in US statutory law, or in the 1951 Convention on Refugees or its 1967 Protocol, precluded the interdiction of Haitian refugees in international waters and their return to the country of origin without an effective interview on their protection clams. This ruling is in transparent contradiction to the general international law norm of non-refoulement according to modern scholarship and emerging case law. This paper concludes that Sale should be overturned by statute as should related pre-screening practices. A new standard of “jurisdiction” should be adopted which does not depend on territorial access to a signatory state but on whether the state is exercising power in fact. Similar concerns exist with respect to safe third country agreements which often offend the international customary right of the asylum seeker to choose where his or her claim will be filed. This paper argues that the right of choice should be recognized and onward travel and admission to the country of destination allowed. This result is especially called for where return of the alien by the country of first contact raises serious concerns under the law of non-refoulement. Imbalances noted in this paper include those generated by the new terrorism related grounds of inadmissibility in the United States and the summary denial of children's asylum claims flowing from gang violence. Other questions are raised in this paper concerning work authorization and detention of asylum seekers. Access to an employment authorization document for those filing colorable claims should be recognized by statute to render US practice consistent with that of most other states. Release from detention, on the other hand, for asylum seekers has now been broadly recognized by the US Department of Homeland Security where the asylum seeker's identity can be ascertained and the claim is non-frivolous in nature. This approach is largely consistent with international law, although there have been unnecessary delays in implementing it. On the substantive law, the international customary norm of non-refoulment has been expanded considerably through the development of opinio juris by scholars and the practice of states. This paper traces efforts in Europe to develop a law of temporary refuge for those fleeing civil war situations characterized by humanitarian law violations. Similarly, case law under the European Convention of Human Rights has now come to focus on the harm the claimant would suffer as the result of conditions in the country of origin without identifying an explicit agent of serious harm. Related to these developments has been the notion of complementary protection under which relief can be conferred where the alien would suffer serious harm upon return to the home state but not for a Convention reason. These approaches have now received approval in the European Union Asylum Qualification Directive so that international protection may now be conferred either because the alien would suffer serious harm on account of the intensity of human rights violations taking place in the country of origin, or those conditions, taken in conjunction with the claimant's personal situation, support a finding that the claimant would be impacted. This paper argues that this latter standard has now been made a part of the customary norm of non-refoulement and that it should be recognized by statute as a basis for non-return and coupled with status where the new standard can be met. Such a measure would help restore the nation's commitment to human rights and humanitarian concerns.

Dobbs v Jackson and access to fertility care among newly diagnosed adolescents and young adults with cancer in the USA.

Peer Effects on the United States Supreme Court

Cites that the Supreme Court has played a significant role in shaping the meaning and scope of employment discrimination legislation through a handful of significant cases. Stresses that these decisions are important for managers to be aware of, in order to enforce employment legislation within their companies. Discusses three very important cases which are recognized as the most significant employment discrimination rulings, often used as precedent in other cases. Covers other, more recent cases, which also offer some significant decisions in dealing with issues that have evolved recently.