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Regulating Section 527 Organizations, Gregg D. Polsky, Guy-Uriel E. Charles Aug 2005

Regulating Section 527 Organizations, Gregg D. Polsky, Guy-Uriel E. Charles

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In this Essay, we consider whether the Federal Election Commission (FEC) has the authority to regulate independent 527 organizations (e.g., Swiftboat Veterans for Truth, Moveon.org, etc.) as political committees under the Federal Election Campaign Act. This issue, which was hotly debated during the last election cycle when it was considered and ultimately tabled by the FEC, is an extremely complex one that requires a deep understanding of election, tax, administrative, and constitutional law. After considering how these areas of law intersect, we conclude that the FEC lacks the authority to regulate independent 527 organizations as political committees.


Miranda And Reasonableness, Peter B. Rutledge Jul 2005

Miranda And Reasonableness, Peter B. Rutledge

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Last term's decisions in Yarborough v. Alvarado and Missouri v. Seibert shed important light on the state of the Miranda doctrine in the Supreme Court. In Yarborough, a slim majority held that a state appellate court's failure to consider a defendant's age and history of contact with law enforcement in its “custody” determination was not “contrary to” or an “unreasonable application of” clearly established Supreme Court case law. In Seibert, a fractured majority affirmed the Missouri Supreme Court's decision to exclude a defendant's confession where police officers strategically withheld a suspect's Miranda rights at the outset of a …


Abu Ghraib, Diane Marie Amann Jun 2005

Abu Ghraib, Diane Marie Amann

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This article posits a theoretical framework within which to analyze various aspects of post-September 11 detention policy - including the widespread prisoner abuse that has been documented in the leaks and official releases that began with publication of photos made at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. Examined are the actions of civilian executive officials charged with setting policy, of judicial officers who evaluated it, and military personnel who implemented it. Abuse has been attributed to failures of training or planning. The article concentrates on a different failure, the failure of law to keep lawlessness in check. On September 11, law's map …


Causing Constitutional Harm: How Tort Law Can Help Determine Harmless Error In Criminal Trials, Jason M. Solomon May 2005

Causing Constitutional Harm: How Tort Law Can Help Determine Harmless Error In Criminal Trials, Jason M. Solomon

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This Article proceeds in four parts. Part II is a brief overview of harmless-error doctrine in the context of habeas challenges to state criminal convictions, focusing on the nature of the inquiry and the doctrinal deadlock described above. Part III is an empirical analysis of the post-Brecht cases in the federal courts of appeals. To search for a way out of the doctrinal deadlock, I started with a relatively straightforward question: what has happened to harmless-error analysis since Brecht? To answer this question, I reviewed and, with the help of a research assistant, coded all of the 315 …