New Student Scholarship Discusses Conditional Resignations by Federal Judges and Patentability of Genes

Allison Luczak has published a new student comment in the Law Review on conditional resignations by federal judges. According to Luczak, conditional resignations – resignations of judges that are expressly conditioned upon certain terms or events such as the appointment of a successor by the President then in office – reflect the increased politicization of the appointments process. Although the power to submit a conditional resignation can be viewed as an aspect of life tenure, which in turn preserves judicial independence, Luczak points out that it may also subvert separation of powers because certain conditions may encroach upon the Executive and Legislative Branches’ powers of nomination and confirmation. Her comment discusses both the possibility of unconstitutional conditions and potential regulatory mechanisms to curb abuses.

The new issue of the Law Review also features a note by Ying Pan on the patentability of genes. Pan argues that although tens of thousands of gene patents have been granted over the past two decades, the Supreme Court’s 2007 decision in KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex, Inc. should have the effect of limiting the future patentability of genes based on the requirement of nonobviousness. The note concludes with a set of proposed criteria that would bring the USPTO’s examination guidelines for gene patents into compliance with KSR.

Both of these pieces can be accessed at the Law Review’s website.

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Federalism, Free Markets, and Free Speech

2not even-handed justiceThe Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC strikes down as unconstitutional a federal law that prohibits corporations and unions from using general treasury funds to make independent expenditures that expressly advocate the election or defeat of candidates for office.  The majority opinion, written by Justice Kennedy, ignores hundreds of years of Supreme Court history in interpreting the subjects of federalism, free markets, and free speech.  In its place, Justice Kennedy presents a textualist interpretation of the First Amendment that is divorced from any history or context.  Justice Kennedy engages in the sort of “faux originalism” (syn. “fake,” “artificial,” “false”) that has been criticized by Judge Richard Posner.  Kennedy places a historical glaze on his own personal values and policy preferences, and calls the result the “original understanding” of the First Amendment.

As such, Citizens United v. FEC stands with District of Columbia v. Heller, the Second Amendment case decided in 2008, as an example of the Justices slapping the “originalist” label on a profoundly un-originalist interpretation of the Bill of Rights.  It is appropriate to view the two cases together.  Both are exercises in raw political power employed in order to accomplish conservative objectives.  Both ignore hundreds of years of understanding about the meaning of the relevant constitutional provisions, in favor of a meaning derived by taking the words of the Amendment out of context.  And both embrace interpretations of the constitutional Amendment at issue that are inconsistent with the meaning ascribed to that same language by the intellectual father of originalism, Robert Bork.  In the same way that modern scholars deride the “Lochner era” as a misguided period in American Constitutional Law, I believe that future scholars and judges will recognize and reject the intellectual dishonesty of the “Heller era.”

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A Chemistry Lesson from the Seventh Circuit

seventh-circuit51Under the federal sentencing guidelines, sentences in drug-trafficking cases turn largely on weight — that is, how much of each type of drug was sold by the defendant — which can cause all sorts of problems in sentencing long-time dealers who were not considerate enough to keep meticulous records of their sales for the police.  Witness the case of crack dealer Joshua Hines, who admitted acquiring 1.531 kilograms of powder cocaine.  The district judge assumed that Hines cooked this powder into an equivalent weight of crack for resale, which resulted in a sentence of 168 months in prison.  Given much harsher treatment of crack than powder, the guidelines would not have resulted in nearly so long a sentence on the basis of the 1.531 kg of powder alone.  So, is it fair to assume that a crack dealer who possessed a certain weight of powder also possessed the same weight of crack?

No, said the Seventh Circuit in United States v. Hines (No. 08-3255).  Writing for the court, Judge Posner offered a little chemistry lesson, explaining that the process of cooking powder into crack removes hydrochloride from the drug.  Under ideal conditions, cooking results in an eleven-percent weight loss.  But, given the potential for careless waste during cooking, it is not clear that even the eleven-percent loss should be assumed.  The court concluded, “[If] the government wants the sentencing judge to infer the weight of the crack from the weight of the powder from which the crack was manufactured, it has to present evidence, concerning the cooking process, that would enable a conversion ratio to be estimated” (3).  (Judging by the mess on my kitchen counter most mornings, I am guessing that the “conversion ratio” when my six-year-old cooks oatmeal into hot cereal is about 2:1.  Fortunately, and notwithstanding its cholesterol-lowering benefits, the street value of oatmeal remains a lot less than cocaine.)

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