Law Commons^™

Pay Now, Play Later?: Youth And Adolescent Collision Sports, Vivian E. Hamilton

Faculty Publications

The routine and repeated head impacts experienced by athletes in a range of sports can inflict microscopic brain injuries that accumulate over time, even in the absence of concussion. Indeed, cumulative exposure to head impacts—not number of concussions—is the strongest predictor of sports-related degenerative brain disease in later life. The observable symptoms of disease appear years or decades after initial injury and resemble those of other mental-health conditions such as depression and dementia. The years-long interval between earlier, seemingly minor, head impacts and later brain disease has long obscured the connection between the two.

Risk of injury differs across demographics, …

Time Is Not On Our Side: Why Specious Claims Of Collective Bargaining Rights Should Not Be Allowed To Delay Police Reform Efforts, Ayesha Bell Hardaway

Faculty Publications

Many view the passage of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 as the best chance for police departments to make meaningful and lasting improvements. That legislation provides the federal government with the authority to investigate and sue local law enforcement agencies for engaging in a pattern or practice of policing that violates the rights of individuals. However, police unions have attempted to intervene in structural reform litigation designed to remedy unconstitutional policing practices. Those attempts have largely been based on employment rights conferred through collective bargaining laws and similar employment protections. The unions argue that the …

A Wall Of Hate: Eminent Domain And Interest-Convergence, Philip Lee

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Donald Trump is no stranger to eminent domain. In the 1990s, Trump wanted land around Trump Plaza to build a limousine parking lot. Many of the private owners agreed to sell, but one elderly widow and two brothers who owned a small business refused. Trump then got a government agency—the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority (CRDA)—to take the properties through eminent domain, offering them a quarter of what they had previously paid or been offered for their land.

The property owners fought back and finally won. Although the CRDA named several justifications, from economic development to traffic alleviation and additional …

From Warfare To Welfare: Reconceptualizing Drug Sentencing During The Opioid Crisis, Jelani Jefferson Exum

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

The War on Drugs officially began in 1971 when President Nixon decried drug abuse as “public enemy number one.” The goal of the war rhetoric was clear—to cast drug abuse and the drug offender as dangerous adversaries of the law-abiding public, requiring military-like tactics to defeat. Criminal sentencing would come to be the main weapon used in this pressing combat. In continuation of the war efforts, the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 was passed under President Reagan, establishing a weight-based, and highly punitive, mandatory minimum sentencing approach to drug offenses that has persisted in some form for the last …