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The University of Iowa University of Iowa Iowa Law Review Search Submit Search Search Site Main Navigation About About the Iowa Law Review Masthead Membership Ordering Alumni Print Edition Online Edition Symposia Submit Contact Give Home The University of Iowa College of Law Iowa Law Review Print Edition Online Edition Recent Print Edition: Recent Print Edition: Volume 109, Issue 4 Articles Articles Volume 109, Issue 4 Corporate Criminal ESG J.S. Nelson As social norms around climate change shift rapidly, and the U.S. Supreme Court requires federal regulation to retreat, regulations at the state and local levels fracture into increasingly aggressive, and often diametrically opposed, enforcement. Meanwhile, business representations regarding environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG”) initiatives are being policed by traditional charges of fraud that are civil, and, increasingly, criminal. . . . Continue Reading Distinguishing Family Poverty from Child Neglect Josh Gupta-Kagan Family courts and child protective services (CPS”) agencies surveil, regulate, and separate hundreds of thousands of families for neglect annually. These families are overwhelmingly poor, and the history of this legal system reveals an expectation, if not an intention, to intervene in poor families. This raises the question whether family courts and CPS agencies are confusing poverty and neglect” or if they intervene for more than just poverty,” as a raging debate in the field is framed. . . . Continue Reading Litigating Partial Autonomy Cassandra Burke Robertson Who is responsible when a semi-autonomous vehicle crashes? Automobile manufacturers claim that because Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS”) require constant human oversight even when autonomous features are active, the driver is therefore fully responsible when supervised autonomy fails. This Article argues that the automakers’ position is likely wrong both descriptively and normatively. . . . Continue Reading The Fourth Amendment State Agency Requirement: Some Doubts David Gray The state agency requirement holds that the Fourth Amendment restricts the conduct of the Federal Government and the States; [but] does not apply to private actors.” As Justice Alito has pointed out, this rule dramatically limits the capacity of the Fourth Amendment to protect the security of the people . . . against unreasonable searches and seizures” because today, some of the greatest threats to individual privacy may come from powerful private companies that collect and sometimes misuse vast quantities of data about the lives of ordinary Americans.” . . . Continue Reading Averting Plausibility Pleading’s Threats to Novel FHA Legal Claims Tanya Pierce & Aric Short Plausibility pleading requirements articulated by the U.S. Supreme Court in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly and Ashcroft v. Iqbal continue to confound even well-intentioned courts. But for courts inclined to avoid grappling with modern applications of existing law, they provide ideal camouflage: a way of relying on procedural justifications to ostensibly side-step substantive law decisions—while in effect creating de facto law that robs litigants of their day in court. . . . Continue Reading Fundamental: How the Vote Became a Constitutional Right Bertrall L. Ross II Does the U.S. Constitution protect the affirmative right to vote? Those focusing on the Constitution’s text say no. Yet, the Supreme Court has treated the right to vote as fundamental under the Constitution since the mid-twentieth century. That discrepancy between text and precedent has taken on renewed importance now. . . . Continue Reading Notes Student Notes Volume 109, Issue 4 Volume 109, Issue 4 Interstate Electric Transmission Interference Spencer E. Culver State control over siting and permitting for various land use regimes is being used in some states to restrict the construction of interstate electric transmission lines. In a moment where the American electricity system is undergoing radical changes to the quantity and nature of its generation systems, transmission must advance to accommodate those changes. . . . Continue Reading Animal Cruelty—Because You’re Worth It”: Advocating for the Passage of Cruelty-Free Cosmetics Laws Alysha Z. Rameshk Animals have been used in testing for hundreds of years; in cosmetics, the justification for the use of animal testing is providing safe and effective products to consumers. However, animal models do not provide accurate, useful data that can be translated to provide information on how humans will respond to certain products or ingredients. . . . Continue Reading Why 501(c)(3) Tax-Exempt Status Does Not Count as Federal Financial Assistance Under Title IX William A. Jordan Two federal district courts in Maryland and California have ruled that private schools are subject to Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 because their tax-exempt status under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code counts as federal financial assistance. This major development in the interpretation of Title IX threatens to subject tax-exempt private schools not only to Title IX, but to a number of other statutes and regulations that apply to recipients of federal financial assistance. . . . Continue Reading All for Naught: McNaughton v. Chartier’s Dismantling of Iowa’s Dedication Doctrine Benjamin T. Tate Public dedication is one method by which cities, towns, and municipalities acquire new roads and highways. The common law doctrine of dedication has developed to balance the property rights of landowners and the public. When property is dedicated to the public, the landowner generally retains title to the land while the public acquires an easement. Dedications can be made expressly through official grants or by inclusion in a plat. . . . Continue Reading Recent Online Edition: Recent Online Edition: Volume 109 Volume 108 How the Supreme Court Ghosted the PHOSITA: Amgen and Legal Constructs in Patent Law Timothy R. Holbrook & Mark D. Janis This Essay is an invited response to The Ghost in the Patent System: An Empirical Study of Patent Law’s Elusive Skilled Artisan,” by Professors Laura Pedraza-Fariña and Ryan Whalen. In their piece, Pedraza-Fariña and Ryan Whalen offer an empirical study and use it to argue for a new conception of the Person Having Ordinary Skill in the Art (PHOSITA”), patent law’s nod to the reasonable person” construct. . . . Continue Reading The Game, the Players, and the Board Bruce E. Boyden 109 Iowa L. Rev. Online 105 (2024) Christopher Seaman and Thuan Tran’s fascinating article, Intellectual Property and Tabletop Games , raises important questions about the role of intellectual property (IP”) in developing and distributing innovative products. The market for tabletop games, Seaman and Tran argue, is able to sustain a high level of creativity at a high up-front cost, all while protected by some but not all of the IP rights that other industries’ outputs receive. Is that evidence of IP’s necessity or its superfluousness? . . . Continue Reading Interpreting Textualist Slogans Guha Krishnamurthi 109 Iowa L. Rev. Online 15 (2023) Slogans are a blunt instrument—they may convey something of the truth, but they rarely do so undented. So too is the case with the influential textualism slogans the text is [the] law,” only the text [is] the law,” and [o]nly the written word is the law.” In his insightful Article , Professor Erik Encarnacion shows why these statements are false, as they are category errors. He then observes that these slogans are unnecessary to establishing the core theses of textualism and that these slogans misunderstand and confuse features of textualism. And he is right about all of that. . . . Continue Reading Should the Recent Timbs and Dobbs Decisions Revive Interest in the Excessive Fines Clause as the Constitutional Basis . . . N. William Hines 109 Iowa L. Rev. Online 46 (2024) In a series of cases in the early 1990s, the U.S....