Despite the Internet's global reach, it is the propensity of American citizens and U.S. residents to engage in e-commerce ' and of American courts and governmental agencies to accept, resolve and publish the decisions in those cases ' that makes it fair to say that American law dominates e-commerce.

When the same entertainment network that gave us Family Guy and American Idol (and soon, The Wall Street Journal) does a multi-million dollar buyout of a self-proclaimed 'spiritual Web site,' www.beliefnet.com, no one can deny that the selling of religion online has become big business. Although the Bible and the Pope may have both condemned mixing commerce and worship, today the temple appears to have firmly established itself in digital form in the e-commerce marketplace, rather than the marketplace having been set up ' and pitched out of ' the temple.

Today, a great number of U.S. companies will hire foreign national workers, scrupulously check work authorization, and maintain heightened awareness about the potential for race/nationality claims. Gone are the days when only a limited number of multinational corporations had to deal with foreign labor issues. Far from being a remote consideration for organizations, complying with the nation's immigration laws and avoiding liabilty are of growing concern.

The future of DNA evidence in civil cases is now upon us. DNA evidence is the most powerful forensic tool available to litigants today. During this decade and beyond, gene expression data developed in connection with the mapping of the human genome will provide causation proof in toxic tort cases and workers' compensation claims that epidemiology studies cannot match. Corporations and their insurance carriers are beginning to reap the financial benefits of toxicogenomic science, which tells them at an early stage whether a toxic exposure has caused an injury to a claimant.

Features

Congress just passed the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007. Congress's stated hope in passing this sweeping legislation is that it will increase public confidence in the honesty of the political process. This article explains what the Act means.

Earlier this year, Delaware's Governor Ruth Ann Minner (D) signed into law bills amending three of Delaware's four statutes that govern 'alternative entities' formed in the state. Alternative entities are not corporations, but, rather general partnerships, limited liability partnerships, limited partnerships, limited liability companies, and statutory trusts.

This article examines the conflicts that surround the so-called 'tripartite relationship' among policyholder, insurance company, and defense counsel hired by the insurance company, as well as techniques to preserve defense counsel's un-conflicted duty to its client, the policyholder. Insurance conflicts counsel is one such technique.

As experienced Chapter 11 bankruptcy practitioners know, when a company suffers severe financial distress and faces the prospect of imminent bankruptcy, its record-keeping procedures can break down, even if they were previously adequate. To prevent future litigation difficulties from arising in connection with the prosecution of avoidance actions, it is important for a practitioner advising a company heading into or newly in bankruptcy to begin to preserve all electronic data immediately.