It is rare for a case from the New York Appellate Division to be as significant as People v. Hamilton.   The case, however, was the first New York appellate court decision to hold that a defendant might vacate his conviction if he could demonstrate that he was “actually innocent” of the crime of which he was charged.   Although the precedential force of the decision is limited to the Second Department, trial courts throughout the state are required to follow Hamilton unless or until the appellate court in their own Department rules on the issue.   Courts throughout the state are thus entertaining numerous “actual innocence” motions inspired by Hamilton.

While courts in some other states, including state appellate courts, have recognized actual innocence claims, whether such claims should be recognized, and if so under what circumstances, is a very live issue in the federal courts and numerous state courts throughout the country.   Examination of Hamilton, therefore, provides a useful way to consider issues that are of surpassing importance in criminal law and that will likely reoccur in cases throughout the country.  As Hamilton goes further than many other courts have in considering the implications of actual innocence claims, consideration of Hamilton may be of considerable value to courts that consider actual innocence claims.  Hamilton is a trailblazer, and its trail will repay careful study.

To commemorate our founding in 1914, the Board of Editors has selected six influential pieces published by the Law Review over the past 100 years and will republish one piece in each issue.

The third piece selected by the Board is The Special Skills of Advocacy, a lecture delivered by the late Chief Justice Warren E. Burger that is among the most cited works in the Law Review’s history. Speaking at Fordham Law School on November 26, 1973, Chief Justice Burger advocated for law schools to better prepare students for skillful courtroom advocacy, declaring that “[w]e must acknowledge, I submit, that good advocates are made . . . by study, by observation of experts and by training with experts.”

Chief Justice Burger’s address was part of the John F. Sonnett Memorial Lecture Series, which was founded to honor alumnus John Sonnett. The lecture series brought many of the finest jurists in the world to Fordham Law School, including Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court and Chief Justices of the high courts of Ireland and England and Wales. In an effort to make the remarks of these great judges and lawyers available to the broader public, the Law Review has been collaborating with prominent alumni to republish this august lecture series.

This Article identifies and addresses a growing contradiction at the heart of United States energy policy.  States are the traditional energy regulators and energy policy innovators—a role that has only grown more important without a settled federal climate policy.  Federal regulators and market pressures, however, increasingly demand integrated national and international energy markets.  Deregulation, the rise of renewable energy, the shale revolution, and new sources of motor fuel precursors like crude and ethanol have all increased interstate energy trade.

This Article shows how integrated national energy markets are driving states to regulate imported fuel and electricity based on how it was produced elsewhere.  That is, states that import energy are now exporting their energy regulations to address production in their trading partners.  But exported regulation has its own problems:  it threatens to splinter interstate markets, undercutting the federal push for integrated and efficient energy markets, and it violates the U.S. Constitution’s dormant Commerce Clause.  Indeed, these innovative exported regulations are now caught up in litigation across the country.

This Article argues that, to preserve the state role, while also maintaining a national energy market, Congress should empower the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to immunize nondiscriminatory state laws from Commerce Clause scrutiny if, and only if, they do not threaten to splinter interstate energy markets.  The Article considers how these federal regulators might assess state energy laws in three salient areas: regulation of (1) imported electricity, (2) imported fuel, and (3) energy export and supply chains.

Trade secret law arose to help companies protect confidential information (e.g., the Coca-Cola formula) from competitors seeking to copy their innovative efforts. But companies increasingly use trade secret law to block a wide swath of information from the scrutinizing eyes of consumers, public watchdog groups, and potential improvers. Companies can do this, in part, because trade secret law lacks clear limiting doctrines that consider the social benefits of unauthorized use. For example, trade secret law makes no allowance for the departing employee that uses proprietary information to create a substantially improved product or disclose public health risks.

This Article argues that trade secret law’s indifference to the social benefits of unauthorized use stands in contrast to other intellectual property doctrines, like patent and copyright. Copyright law incorporates the affirmative defense of “fair use,” which aims to protect a variety of unauthorized but socially beneficial uses of another’s copyrighted work (e.g., educational uses). To a lesser extent, patent law’s reverse doctrine of equivalents and remedies analysis direct courts to consider the social benefits of a defendant’s technological improvement. Such limiting doctrines act as safety valves to reconcile intellectual property rights with competing cumulative innovation and First Amendment interests. This Article demonstrates the merits of a similar safety valve in trade secret law and argues that courts should adopt a multi-factor “trade secret fair use” analysis to better address these competing concerns.

What constitutes an employee is a recurring issue in U.S. employment law, especially with respect to volunteers.  Under Title VII, an employee is defined as “an individual employed by an employer.”  The U.S. Supreme Court has found that this definition is circular and explains nothing.  Given the vague statutory definition of “employee,” circuit courts are split over the correct test to determine employee status for the purposes of Title VII.

Workplace discrimination is especially toxic because the majority of the adult population spends its waking hours at work.  Thus far, courts have been focused on the individual nature of workplace discrimination.  However, the harms of such discrimination are borne beyond the targeted individual and negatively impact coworkers, families, employers, and society at large.

This Note argues that courts must reconceptualize workplace discrimination as a public health issue.  Given the health implications, courts should reject the overly narrow threshold-remuneration test and adopt a broad definition of employee in the interest of public health.

In Brady v. Maryland, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the prosecution has a constitutional duty to disclose evidence favorable to the defendant’s guilt or punishment upon request.  The Court’s subsequent expansion of its holding in Brady has formed the “Brady rule,” which requires the prosecution to learn of and to disclose to the defendant all material exculpatory and impeachment information.  The Court defined “material” as information that would cause a reasonable probability of a different trial outcome had it been disclosed.

Currently, a circuit court split exists regarding whether evidence is material for purposes of the Brady rule if it is inadmissible at trial.  This split of authority reflects longstanding tension underlying the Brady doctrine but was incited by the Court’s ambiguous holding in Wood v. Bartholomew.  The conflict has substantial repercussions in practice because the U.S. Department of Justice directs federal prosecutors to follow their offices’ local disclosure precedent.  Because disclosure precedent may vary by office, prosecutors’ understanding of their constitutional disclosure duty may be inconsistent.  This could lead to the alarming result of disparate defendant treatment based solely on the jurisdiction where the defendant is charged.

This Note examines the conflict and analyzes the prosecutor’s role, concluding that the Supreme Court should resolve the conflict by ruling that inadmissible evidence may nonetheless be material if its disclosure would yield admissible evidence.  This Note ultimately argues, however, that enduring Brady disclosure reform must be affected from within the prosecutor’s office.

Called “shadowy at best,” the offsetting doctrine in partial takings has confused “even trained legal minds” and generated inconsistent decision after inconsistent decision.  The offsetting doctrine allows certain benefits, termed special, to offset condemnation awards, while general benefits may not be offset.  Courts blindly adhere to the doctrine despite its underpinnings rooted in eighteenth-century public policy, which was based on concerns of overly speculative valuation and arguably erroneous fairness, as well as incorrect interpretations of Takings Clause jurisprudence.  Such adherence dramatically increases the cost of financing a takings project.

In the face of blind adherence to the doctrine, municipalities are forced to balance the needs of their citizens against the needs of eighteenth-century courts, often resulting in the failure of municipalities to engage in takings for the public benefit.  This Note argues that new public policy concerns warrant rejection of the doctrine in favor of a rule that allows all nonspeculative benefits to offset a condemnation award.  This rule would take into account modern advances in evidence, promote fairness, simplify the judicial process, and allow municipalities to respond to twentieth-century problems while landowners receive just compensation for taken land.

When a party files suit challenging the legitimacy of an agency’s interpretation of its governing statute, Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. instructs courts to defer to the agency’s interpretation where (1) the court has found that Congress had not foreclosed the agency’s interpretation, and (2) the agency’s interpretation was a reasonable or permissible exercise of its authority.  However, sometimes Congress enacts statutes delegating authority over a given regulatory space to more than one agency.  When two agencies have shared authority under the same regulatory scheme, those agencies may disagree regarding the interpretation of certain provisions that the agencies administer.  This forces courts to consider the applicability of Chevron:  To which agency does the court owe deference?  All of the agencies?  Only one?  Does the court owe deference at all?

Some courts refuse to award any deference where multiple agencies administer a statute.  Other courts do not view deference as precluded, and they instead consider the reasonableness of the interpretations in awarding the less substantial Skidmore deference.  The courts’ differing treatments are a subsidiary problem to a more fundamental issue:  Why should the fact that multiple agencies administer a statute affect the award of deference if the interpretation is a reasonable exercise of authority?

This Note argues that courts should rely on the policies, considerations, and canons of construction that gave way to and underlie the principles of deference in determining to which agency the court should defer.  The Note offers a six-factor balancing test for courts to use in making this assessment.

Large-scale natural disasters, such as hurricanes, wreak tremendous havoc, causing billions of dollars in damages.  Those who suffer serious damage may turn to their insurance providers or the tort system for compensation.  But, both the tort and insurance systems present serious limitations to a hurricane victim’s recovery.  This Note analyzes the goals and criticisms of these two systems to determine which compensates hurricane victims best.  In light of its analysis, this Note ultimately concludes that neither system satisfactorily compensates victims.  Yet, tort could play some role in hurricane-related damage.  Tort law could effectively deter negligent behavior by imposing liability on those who negligently fail to prepare and prevent hurricane-related damage.