Digital Commons Network^™

Sanctuary Cities And The Power Of The Purse: An Executive Dole Test, Douglas M. Spencer

Publications

A constitutional clash is brewing. Cities and counties are flexing their muscles to frustrate national immigration policy while the federal Executive is threatening to interfere with local law enforcement decision making and funding. Although the federal government generally has plenary authority over immigration law, the Constitution forbids the commandeering of state and local officials to enforce federal law against their will. One exception to this anti-commandeering principle is the Spending Clause of Article I that permits Congress to condition the receipt of federal funds on compliance with federal law. These conditions, according to more than 30 years of Supreme Court …

Environmental Law, Disrupted By Covid-19, Rebecca Bratspies, Vanessa Casado Peréz, Robin Kundis Craig, Lissa Griffin, Sarah Krakoff, Keith Hirokawa, Katrina Kuh, Jessica Owley, Melissa Powers, Shannon Roesler, Jonathan Rosenbloom, J. B. Ruhl, Erin Ryan, David Takacs

Publications

For over a year, the COVID-19 pandemic and concerns about systemic racial injustice have highlighted the conflicts and opportunities currently faced by environmental law. Scientists uniformly predict that environmental degradation, notably climate change, will cause a rise in diseases, disproportionate suffering among communities already facing discrimination, and significant economic losses. In this Article, members of the Environmental Law Collaborative examine the legal system’s responses to these crises, with the goal of framing opportunities to reimagine environmental law. The Article is excerpted from their book Environmental Law, Disrupted, to be published by ELI Press later this year.

Book Review, Aamir S. Abdullah

Publications

No abstract provided.

When We Breathe: Re-Envisioning Safety And Justice In A Post-Floyd Era, Aya Gruber

Publications

10th Annual David H. Bodiker Lecture on Criminal Justice delivered on Wed., Oct. 21, 2020 at Ohio State University Moritz College of Law.

The Fourth Amendment’S Forgotten Free-Speech Dimensions, Aya Gruber

Publications

No abstract provided.

It's About Bloody Time And Space, Lolita Buckner Inniss

Publications

Time frames relationships of power, especially in the context of law. One of the clearest ways in which time is implicated in both law and society is via discourses about women’s biological functions. This Article is an introduction to a larger project that analyzes legal discourses regarding a crucial aspect of women’s calendrically-associated biological functions: women’s menstrual periods. Over the course of the project, I explore legal discourses about menstruation through the notion of what literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin calls “chronotopes”—a connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships. Temporality, Bakhtin argues, is closely associated with certain paradigmatic spaces, and the combination …

Models, Race, And The Law, Moon Duchin, Douglas M. Spencer

Publications

Capitalizing on recent advances in algorithmic sampling, The Race-Blind Future of Voting Rights explores the implications of the long-standing conservative dream of certified race neutrality in redistricting. Computers seem promising because they are excellent at not taking race into account—but computers only do what you tell them to do, and the rest of the authors’ apparatus for measuring minority electoral opportunity failed every check of robustness and numerical stability that we applied. How many opportunity districts are there in the current Texas state House plan? Their methods can give any answer from thirty-four to fifty-one, depending on invisible settings. But …

The Right To Contest Ai, Margot E. Kaminski, Jennifer M. Urban

Publications

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly used to make important decisions, from university admissions selections to loan determinations to the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. These uses of AI raise a host of concerns about discrimination, accuracy, fairness, and accountability.

In the United States, recent proposals for regulating AI focus largely on ex ante and systemic governance. This Article argues instead—or really, in addition—for an individual right to contest AI decisions, modeled on due process but adapted for the digital age. The European Union, in fact, recognizes such a right, and a growing number of institutions around the world now call for …

A Grammar Of Legal Thought, Derek H. Kiernan-Johnson

Publications

No abstract provided.

Algorithmic Impact Assessments Under The Gdpr: Producing Multi-Layered Explanations, Margot E. Kaminski, Gianclaudio Malgieri

Publications

Policy-makers, scholars, and commentators are increasingly concerned with the risks of using profiling algorithms and automated decision-making. The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has tried to address these concerns through an array of regulatory tools. As one of us has argued, the GDPR combines individual rights with systemic governance, towards algorithmic accountability. The individual tools are largely geared towards individual “legibility”: making the decision-making system understandable to an individual invoking her rights. The systemic governance tools, instead, focus on bringing expertise and oversight into the system as a whole, and rely on the tactics of “collaborative governance,” that is, …

Decarceration And Default Mental States, Benjamin Levin

Publications

This Essay, presented at “Guilty Minds: A Virtual Conference on Mens Rea and Criminal Justice Reform” at ASU’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, examines the politics of federal mens rea reform legislation. I argue that current mens rea policy debates reflect an overly narrow vision of criminal justice reform. Therefore, I suggest an alternative frame through which to view mens rea reform efforts—a frame that resonates with radical structural critiques that have gained ground among activists and academics.

Common arguments for and against mens rea reform reflect a belief that the problem with the criminal system is one of …

Introduction To The Symposium: The Stakes For Critical Legal Theory, Elizabeth S. Anker, Justin Desautels-Stein

University of Colorado Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Pound Of Flesh: How Medical Copayments In Prison Cost Inmates Their Health And Set Them Up For Reoffense, Rachel Wiggins

University of Colorado Law Review

The attitude of acquiescence in legislatures and courts has permitted the American prison system to develop a practice of exploiting the health of its incarcerated population as an additional and excessive form of punishment. This article focuses on a practice widely used in prisons-the imposition of medical copayments- which contributes to the current culture of endangering the physical and mental health of incarcerated persons, all in the name of cost cutting and prisoner control. The problem of medical copayments could be solved by both the courts, which could recognize that the practice serves no legitimate penological interest, and the states …

Expanding The Administrative Record: Using Pretext To Show "Bad Faith Or Improper Behavior", Laura Boyer

University of Colorado Law Review

This Comment argues that courts should more readily permit extra-record discovery when preliminary signs of pretext strongly suggest "bad faith and improper behavior" by agency decision-makers. 3 1 Section L.A sets the scene by describing the basic mechanics of litigation challenging agency decisions. Section I.B shifts focus by examining two recent Supreme Court decisions that illustrate the Court's struggle to review executive action where an agency seems to have offered a pretextual justification. Part II then shows how agencies' reliance on pretextual justifications is becoming a growing and serious problem-especially within the Trump Administration-and describes a 2017 decision by the …

Contesting The Legacy Of The Nineteenth Amendment: Abortion And Equality From Roe To The Present, Mary Ziegler

University of Colorado Law Review

Beyond the question of suffrage, the Nineteenth Amendment raised the issue of what it would take for women in America to achieve equal citizenship. The meaning of both the Nineteenth Amendment and equality for women remain especially contested in broader conflicts about abortion-and of how those conflicts have changed in fundamental ways in the decades since Roe v. Wade. For some time, fetal rights were pitted against the kinds of concerns about equality for women that drove reformers to seek the vote in 1920. But by the early 1990s, the terms of the conflicts had changed, with both sides claiming …

Working Mothers And The Postponement Of Women's Rights From The Nineteenth Amendment To The Equal Rights Amendment, Julie C. Suk

University of Colorado Law Review

The Nineteenth Amendment's ratification in 1920 spawned new initiatives to advance the status of women, including the proposal of another constitutional amendment that would guarantee women equality in all legal rights, beyond the right to vote. Both the Nineteenth Amendment and the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) grew out of the long quest to enshrine women's equal status under the law as citizens, which began in the nineteenth century. Nearly a century later, the ERA remains unfinished business with an uncertain future. Suffragists advanced different visions and strategies for women's empowerment after they got the constitutional right to vote. They divided …

From Promise To Threat In Language And Law, Marianne Constable

University of Colorado Law Review

No abstract provided.

Migrant Justice Now, Leti Volpp

University of Colorado Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Common Law And Critical Theory, Charles L. Barzun

University of Colorado Law Review

No abstract provided.

Food Allergy Bullying As Disability Harassment: Holding Schools Accountable, D'Andra Millsap Shu

University of Colorado Law Review

Millions of American schoolchildren of all ages suffer from food allergies, and increasingly, bullies target these children because of their allergies. If a bully exposes a victim to an allergen, food allergy bullying can sicken or kill within minutes. Food allergy bullying is already responsible for many hospitalizations and at least one death. Most food allergy bullying happens at school, and schools play a crucial part in addressing and preventing bullying. All too often, though, schools fail to take appropriate action. Sovereign immunity and other obstacles insulate public schools from liability in many instances, but federal disability law may provide …

Whole Designs, Sarah Burstein

University of Colorado Law Review

In the past decade, there has been a renewed interest in the concept of patentable subject matter-that is, what kinds of things can you get a patent for? But this attention has, to date, been focused on utility patents, the patents that protect how things work. There has been scant attention paid to statutory subject matter and design patents, the patents that protect how things look. These patents have gained prominence in both practice and scholarship since the $1 billion verdict in Apple v. Samsung. The time has come to take the question of design patentable subject matter seriously. Today, …

When The Cat's Away: Techlash, Loot Boxes, And Regulating "Dark Patterns" In The Video Game Industry's Monetization Strategies, Scott Goodstein

University of Colorado Law Review

Part I of this Comment briefly overviews dark patterns and demonstrates how parties have needlessly focused on loot boxes' similarity to gambling rather than addressing dark patterns, the actual source of the video game industry's consumer exploitation. Part II summarizes the video game industry's techlash, showcasing ways that the industry has abused its consumers and how consumers have responded, as well as arguing why governmental intervention is necessary to stop the industry from exploiting end users. Part III first analyzes the Protecting Children from Abusive Games Act ("PCAGA"), a bill introduced in 2019 to regulate loot boxes, and explains why …

Let Cities Decide: End Colorado's Prohibition On Rent Regulation, Virginia Sargent

University of Colorado Law Review

This Comment argues that the Colorado General Assembly should overturn the broad prohibition on modern forms of rent regulation, returning to municipalities the home-rule authority to enact policies like rent stabilization and MIH as affordable housing solutions. Part I explains the emergence of rent regulation nationwide and common forms of rent regulation. Part II describes Colorado's housing crisis before analyzing the State's prohibition on "rent control" alongside the Colorado Supreme Court's broad interpretation of "rent control." Part III argues

that the legislature should overturn restrictions on municipal rent regulation because home-rule municipalities are better positioned than the legislature to (A) …

Outsourced Emissions: Why Local Governments Should Track And Measure Consumption- Based Greenhouse Gases, Jonathan Rosenbloom

University of Colorado Law Review

While many local governments track greenhouse gas ("GHG") emissions, almost all of them exclude most GHGs associated with consumption. These consumption-based emissions stem from the lifecycle production, pre-purchase transportation, sale, and disposal of goods, food, and services produced outside of a local jurisdiction but consumed inside the jurisdiction. Based on the limited data measuring extraterritorial emissions, these consumption-based emissions amount to more than half-and in some places more than threefourths- of GHG emissions directly connected to local consumption patterns and behaviors. This Article argues that local governments should track and measure these pervasive GHGs. Doing so may unlock meaningful information …

Table Of Contents (Vol. 92, Issue 3)

University of Colorado Law Review

No abstract provided.

Reloading The Canon: Thoughts On Critical Legal Pedagogy, Chantal Thomas

University of Colorado Law Review

On the first day of the first-year contracts class that I teach, I preview for the students both the general contours of the “blackletter law” that we will be learning throughout the course, and some of the perspectives that I will incorporate in developing our critical thinking and analysis of the law. My aim is to impress upon the students that their understanding of the blackletter law––the technical training that many law students think of as constituting the bulk of their educational mission––varies positively with their understanding of and capacity for critical analysis. I go about this in part by …

The Pure Theory Of Law Is A Hole In The Ozone Layer, Peter Goodrich

University of Colorado Law Review

No abstract provided.

From The Crisis Of Critique To The Critique Of Crisis, Ben Golder

University of Colorado Law Review

No abstract provided.

Past Prescient, Christopher Tomlins

University of Colorado Law Review

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents (Vol. 92, Special Issue)

University of Colorado Law Review

No abstract provided.