This Note analyzes the development of interspousal tort liability for personal harms following the enactment of the married women’s property acts. The case law is broken down into three periods (1) the 1860s through 1913, when all courts hearing interspousal torts barred them; (2) 1914 through 1920, when a trend permitting the claims developed; and (3) 1921 through 1940, a period in which the seemingly inevitable evolution toward allowing the suits stalled. The existing literature characterizes the law as illustrating a continuing judicial desire to impose patriarchal restrictions on women’s rights and blames the third-period reversal on the stagnation of the women’s movement following ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. In contrast, this Note removes the case law from the realms of conventional feminist analysis and women’s history. The women’s movement had no direct influence over judicial construction of the married women’s acts, and the alleged post-suffrage stagnation is itself questionable. Instead, this Note suggests that the trend allowing interspousal torts was complicated by the emergence of a new fact pattern: negligent automobile accidents. Following decades of willful tort suits, automobile negligence suits brought the risk of insurance fraud and collusion, which consequently halted judicial willingness to allow them. Because willful and negligent torts were legally indistinguishable based on the text of the statutes, judicial refusal to allow negligent torts translated into a complete bar on interspousal liability.
Note
Patent Claim Construction
In 1998, the Federal Circuit decided Cybor Corp. v. FAS Technologies, holding that patent claim construction was a purely legal issue subject to de novo appellate review. This highly controversial decision has since become the focus of intense scrutiny and empirical studies exposing the problematic nature of de novo review. In November 2006, the Federal Circuit issued a divided opinion indicating its most significant movement towards reconsidering Cybor, prompting some observers to forecast the impending demise of de novo review.
This Note introduces Chevron deference as the proper standard of review for patent claim construction. A default rule adopting the narrowest reasonable claim interpretation would serve as a valuable information-forcing adjunct. Together, these rules would simultaneously address the inefficiency, indeterminacy, and information costs that currently plague the patent system. Ultimately, this proposal would achieve sweeping, multi-institutional patent reform from both ex ante and ex post perspectives.
State Redistricting Law: Stephenson v. Bartlett and Judicial Promotion of Electoral Competition
This Note attempts to answer the question, “What can state courts do to solve problems in the legislative redistricting process?” To answer this question, the Note examines one recent case from the North Carolina Supreme Court, Stephenson v. Bartlett. At the time the suit was filed, the North Carolina redistricting process was already subject to many state and federal constitutional restraints, as well as the federal statutory restraints of the Voting Rights Act. Relying on a dubious interpretation of the state constitution’s equal protection clause and an elevation of “traditional redistricting principles” to the level of a constitutional mandate, the North Carolina Supreme Court took the opportunity to create even more restraints on legislative redistricting process. Whitaker examines possible justifications for the opinion, and after rejecting textualist, purposivist and partisan political explanations, explains the opinion as an attempt by the judiciary to increase electoral competition by reducing the discretion of the state legislature over redistricting.