Techdirt’s Legal Misunderstanding March Madness: Round Two!

Well, our inaugural Techdirt Legal Misunderstanding March Madness is off to quite a start. Round one ended with most of the matchups getting thousands of votes, so now we're on to round two. You can still see the official bracket to see how it matches up with your own personal bracket.

By far the biggest vote getter was the 1st Amendment against the Rules of Evidence, which ended up with just under 5,000 votes. The 1st Amendment won easily, though quite a few lawyers insisted this was the wrong result.

First round, west division. Which of the following two legal concepts is most misunderstood?

- techdirt (@techdirt) March 22, 2022

The most dominant winner was Free Speech" which won over works made for hire" with a vote ranking of 92.9% (copyright lawyers might disagree with this result).

First round, south division. Which of the following two legal concepts is most misunderstood?

- techdirt (@techdirt) March 22, 2022

We had several extremely close battles including Logan Act (51%) over State Action Doctrine (49%) and Citizens United (51.6%) over Copyright (48.4%), but the closest one was ERISA (50.3%) over Joint & Several (49.7%). Those two bounced back and forth a lot, and at moments were tied 50% each!

First round, midwest division. Which of the following two legal concepts is most misunderstood?

- techdirt (@techdirt) March 22, 2022

The biggest upsets, according to our careful seeding were Entrapment (#14) winning over DMCA (#3) (and winning easily) and the 14th Amendment (#14) winning over the Affordable Care Act (#3). For me, the biggest surprise was the GDPR losing out to Trademark law. I wasn't expecting that at all!

Also, I will note that many people were upset about various legal concepts that were left off, or the seeding. I'll note that immigrations lawyers were particularly perturbed about all of immigration law being lumped into a single category and then seeded 16th (and put up against HIPAA). They tried to rally support, but HIPAA still won easily. Perhaps next year we'll have a bit more on the immigration front...

Anyway, round two has now begun, so make sure to get in your votes. It will run through Friday morning...