Apr 3, 2026 Sean CoyleJurisprudence
The Nature of Law is an insightful and engaging book that challenges almost every touchstone of modern jurisprudence. Proceeding from the thesis that laws must be understood after all as commands rather than rules, the book defends the thesis that law itself must be understood by reference to the common good. The view that the law consists of commands does not take us back to the Austinian jurisprudence that preceded H. L. A. Hart’s (the author maintains that John Austin’s theory is indeed radically defective), but challenges the modern consensus that Hart’s conception of law as a system of rules is really the advance it is supposed to be.
The book’s central sections deal with the question of whether there is an obligation to obey the law, not (as Joseph Raz maintains) merely because the law consists of reasons for action that apply to the subject anyway (P. 199), but because the law secures the common good in ways that cannot be successfully contemplated or advanced by multitudes of individuals, even if those individuals steadily wish to act for the common good. This thesis is linked to that of command, for the author argues that commands generate genuine obligations, and do not simply, as Hart suggested, oblige (Pp. 93-96, 204). In fact, it is Hart who runs into trouble, for his argument is based on the idea that rules are to be theorised as practices, but these can be shown to lack a normative element. Continue reading "Modern Analytical Jurisprudence"
Apr 2, 2026 Laura Pedraza-FariñaIntellectual Property Law
Inventors and their inventions are the building blocks of patent law: There simply is no patent law without inventors who seek to patent their inventions. One might think that a concept as foundational as inventorship would be both well-settled and extensively argued in legal opinions. But that is not the case. In fact, understanding who counts as an inventor and what constitutes an invention has surprisingly flown below the radar both in patent law scholarship and judicial opinions. In her article, The Inventorship Fallacy, Amy Motomura helps us with a deeply-researched and carefully-parsed analysis of the myriad and often contradictory ways in which courts have defined the “inventor” and the “invention.”
Motomura’s article makes a number of important contributions to the literature. First, it sheds light on the inventorship doctrine’s hidden role in policing the boundaries of related patent filings (what she calls the “indirect” role of inventorship). It then provides a taxonomy for how to think about who counts as an inventor, disaggregating the concept into three strands: manner, timing and substance. Ultimately, her inquiry into how courts define the “substance” of inventorship—that is, what a participant must contribute to become a true inventor—leads her to a second key descriptive contribution: defining who counts as an inventor requires defining what counts as an invention for inventorship purposes. This task, in turn, has no clear doctrinal answer. Rather, the Federal Circuit has implicitly articulated three mutually exclusive understandings of the invention as reflected in (1) the full scope of the claims; (2) only the novel and nonobvious elements of the claims; or (3) only the “not-well-known” or “not publicly accessible” elements of the claims. Continue reading "Dynamic Inventorship"
Apr 1, 2026 Michael YuTrusts & Estates
In Tax Sheltering Death Care, Professor Victoria J. Haneman proposes the creation of tax-advantaged 529 End-of-Life (EOL) Plans to incentivize individuals to plan for death care expenses (for funeral, burial, or cremation) in a thoughtful way. Her proposed 529 EOL Plan (which operates like the existing 529 Plan for educational expenses) is “politically strategic in its subtlety” according to Professor Haneman because it “provides both a structure through which savings is incentivized for all and a targeted deathcare benefit is also delivered to our most vulnerable.” (P. 630.)
Before discussing Professor Haneman’s proposed 529 EOL Plan, a brief explanation of existing 529 plans for educational expenses is in order. Professor Haneman notes that her proposal is similar to one type of existing 529 plans (a state-administered tax-deferred investment account for educational expenses) but not to a different type of plan (a prepaid tuition program for in-state post-secondary schools. (Pp. 647-48.) Existing 529 plans allow for an account: (1) to receive contributions, (2) to treat account income as income tax-exempt, and (3) to have account withdrawals be treated as income-tax exempt if the withdrawals are made for a “qualified” educational expense. (P. 648.) Although contributions to existing 529 plans are not deductible for federal income tax purposes, around thirty states allow some type of deduction against state taxes. (P. 648.) Continue reading "A Proposal for a 529 End-of-Life Plan for Death Care Expenses"
