Law Commons^™

Tennessee's National Impact On Teacher Evaluation Law & Policy: An Assessment Of Value-Added Model Litigation, Mark A. Paige, Audrey Amrein-Beardsley, Kevin Close

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

Over the last decade or so, federal and state education policymakers embraced the use of value added models (VAMs) to evaluate teachers’ performance and make high-stakes employment decisions (e.g., tenure, merit pay, termination of employment). VAMs are complicated statistical models that attempt to estimate a teacher’s contribution to student test scores, particularly those in mathematics and reading. Educational researchers, as well as many teachers and unions, however, have objected to the use of VAMs noting that these models fail to adequately account for variables outside of teachers’ control that contribute to a student’s education performance. Subsequently, many teachers challenged the …

Pleading Guilty: Indigent Defendant Perceptions Of The Plea Process, Jeanette Hussemann, Jonah Siegel

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

Public defenders and other court actors most often engage in behind-the-scene plea negotiating to manage overwhelming workloads and to dispose of cases as quickly and efficiently as possible. In prior work, scholars have documented an increased reliance on plea bargaining and the deleterious impact of the practice on the legal process and the rights of individuals accused of a crime; however, this research has not systematically analyzed the decisions made, and the perspectives of justice of society’s most disadvantaged and arguably most important actors of the court, the defendants. Relying on data collected in a Midwestern public defense system, this …

Teaching To The Test: Determining The Appropriate Test For First Amendment Challenges To "No Promo Homo" Education Policies, Kameron Dawson

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

Under the current tests set out in Pickering and its progeny, teachers—particularly LGBT and LGBT allies— are being censored in the classroom with “no promo homo” education policies and laws. Although citizens are granted free speech protections through the First Amendment, public employees such as public school teachers generally receive less protection. The Supreme Court has yet to determine a distinct test for public school teachers, leaving discretion to school districts. Currently, in seven states, legislators explicitly prohibit teachers from positively speaking about or correcting misconceptions on homosexuality. In this current age, these policies negatively impact the teacher’s effectiveness inside …

Tennessee Journal Of Law And Policy Volume 13, Issue 2 (Winter 2019)

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Defining The Role Of Clinical Law Students, Medical-Legal Partnerships, And Pro Bono Lawyers

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Responding To The Impacts Of The Opioid Epidemic On Families

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

The Opioid Epidemic: Regulation, Responsibility, And Remedies

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Healing Appalachia: Keynote Address

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

A Rot In Heaven: A Powerful Investigative Partnership, The Opioid Crisis, Pill Profits, And A Pulitzer Prize, Becky Jacobs Professor

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Symposium Issue 2018

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Tennessee's Death Penalty Lottery, Bradley A. Maclean, H. E. Miller Jr.

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

Over the past 40 years, Tennessee has imposed sustained death sentences on 86 of the more than 2,500 defendants found guilty of first degree murder; and the State has executed only six of those defendants. How are those few selected? Is Tennessee consistently and reliably sentencing to death only the “worst of the bad”? To answer these questions, we surveyed all of Tennessee’s first degree murder cases since 1977, when Tennessee enacted its current capital punishment system. Tennessee’s scheme was designed in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Furman v. Georgia, which held that a capital punishment …

Now Is The Winter Of Ginsburg's Dissent: Unifying The Circuit Split As To Preliminary Injunctions And Establishing A Sliding Scale Test, Taylor Payne

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

The preliminary injunction is an equitable remedy that may be granted to prevent harm to a movant before adjudication on the merits can be reached. The United States Supreme Court most recently iterated in Winter v. National Resource Defense Counsel, Inc. the four factors a court must consider for a preliminary injunction to issue.[1] A movant seeking a preliminary injunction must establish that the movant is likely to succeed on the merits; that the movant is likely to suffer irreparable harm in the absence of preliminary relief; that the balance of equities tips in the movant’s favor; and that …

Rethinking Title Vii's Protections Against Sex Discrimination In An Employment Context, Tyler Corcoran

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Volume 13, Issue 1 (Summer 2018), Tennessee Journal Of Law & Policy N/A

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

The Case For Complicity-Based Religious Accommodations

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Judicial Hot Potato: An Analysis Of Bifurcated Courts Of Last Resort In Texas And Oklahoma

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

A Tribute To Professor Penny White

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Volume 12, Issue 2 (Winter 2018)

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Safe Haven Conundrum: The Use Of Special Bailments To Keep Pets Out Of Violent Households

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Tennessee Rule Of Criminal Procedure 36.1'S New Clothes: How The Tennessee Supreme Court's Opinion In State V. Brown Limited The Inherent Authority Of Trial Courts To Correct Illegal Sentences By Overlooking The Plain Language Of 36.1 And The "Jurisprudential Context" From Which Rule 36.1 Developed

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Volume 12, Issue 1 (Summer 2017)

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Summer-Wyatt Symposium: "Navigating The Complexities Of Our Melting Pot: How Immigration Affects Legal Representation"

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

The Dynamic Cycle Of Legal Change, John Martinez

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

Justice Holmes's observation that the law is a product of empirical experience, not a problem of mathematics, leaves us with the task of figuring out how the legal system actually works. Although Holmes made his statement over 130 years ago, there is still no universally accepted analytical approach for describing how the American legal system creates and changes the law. This article proposes a "Dynamic Cycle of Legal Change" as a model for understanding the structure and operation of the American legal system.

Part I first posits that we should consider the legal system from an "information systems" perspective. Part …

Front Matter

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Tjlp (Summer 2013) Volume 9 Special Edition

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Viewing Tennessee's New Photo Identification Requirements For Voters Through Historical And National Lens, Daniel Sullivan

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

In 2011, Tennessee became only the fifth U.S. state to strictly require photograph identification as a prerequisite to voting.' Over the past decade, a nationwide battle has been brewing over voter identification laws. In fact, "[s]ince 2001, nearly 1,000 bills have been introduced in a total of 46 states," with 21 states passing "major [voter identification] legislation between 2003 and 2011." In 2011 alone, 34 states took up the issue, either "proposals for new voter ID laws in states that didn't already require voter ID at the polls (considered in 20 states), [or] proposals to strengthen existing voter ID requirements …

The Necessary Opportunism Of The Common Law First Amendment, Chris Stangl

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

The First Amendment historically has been interpreted to provide greater and greater protection to more and more forms of expression. The notion of an originalist First Amendment has never commanded a majority of the Supreme Court and is unlikely to do so. Instead the development of the First Amendment has followed a common law trajectory. As the reach of its protections expands, so to do its attractiveness for arguments that may be more accurately located elsewhere in the Constitution's text. Such opportunism is a predictable, even necessary consequence of the First Amendment's common law development, and the Supreme Court tacitly …

Precedent, Fairness, And Common Sense Dictate That Padilla V. Kentucky Should Apply Retroactively, William N. Conlow

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

In 2010, the Supreme Court decided the landmark case of Padilla v. Kentucky. The Padilla Court's holding was that failure of counsel to advise a non-citizen criminal defendant about the immigration consequences of a guilty plea constitutes ineffective assistance of counsel. This article addresses whether Padilla applies to convictions that occurred before Padilla was decided, in March 2010.

First, this article provides background on relevant immigration law, Padilla v. Kentucky, and the Supreme Court's retroactivity case law. Then, this article considers how lower courts have addressed the issue of retroactivity in the approximately twenty-seven months after the Padilla decision. This …

United States V. Jones: Big Brother And The "Common Good" Versus The Fourth Amendment And Your Right To Privacy, Melanie Reid

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

In the center of the town of Siena, Italy, lays the Palazzo Publico which was built between 1297 and 1310. Inside the Palazzo Publico is the Sala della Pace, the Hall of Peace, which houses an early piece of Italian secular arta fresco that illustrates the effect government has on the city, its people, and the countryside.' The painter, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, depicted the "Common Good" as a king, sitting tall and strong above a line of smaller-sized, everyday people who are slowly making their way towards the "Common Good." This picture represents the subordination of private interest to the common …

Front Matter

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.