Law Commons^™

Keep Charitable Oversight In The Irs, Philip Hackney

Articles

Critics are increasingly calling for Congress to remove charity regulation from the IRS. The critics are wrong. Congress should maintain charity regulation in the IRS. What is at stake is balancing power between the state, charity as civil society, and the economic order. In a well-balanced democracy, civil society maintains its independence from the state and the economic order. Removing charitable jurisdiction from the IRS would blind the IRS to dollars placed in the charitable sector increasing tax and political shelters and wealthy dominance of charities as civil society. A new agency without understanding of, or jurisdiction over, tax cannot …

Written Testimony Of Philip Hackney For The Hearing On Growth Of The Tax-Exempt Sector And The Impact On The American Political Landscape (U.S. House Ways & Means Subcommittee On Oversight, December 13, 2023), Philip Hackney

Testimony

In written testimony before the House Ways & Means Subcommittee on Oversight on December 13, 2023, Professor Hackney emphasized three points about tax-exempt organizations and politics: (1) a diverse nonprofit sector that fosters civic participation and engagement is a gem of the United States -- we should maintain that; (2) the IRS budget for Exempt Organizations continues to NOT be sufficient to ensure the laws are equally and fairly enforced; and (3) there are simple things the IRS could do to enforce the law that it is not doing.

A Fireside Chat With A Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

To Democratize Algorithms, Ngozi Okidegbe

Faculty Scholarship

Jurisdictions increasingly employ algorithms in public sector decisionmaking. Facing public outcry about the use of such technologies, jurisdictions have begun to increase democratic participation in the processes by which algorithms are procured, constructed, implemented, used, and overseen. But what problem is the current approach to democratization meant to solve? Policymakers have tended to view the problem as the absence of public deliberation: agencies and courts often use algorithms without public knowledge or input. To redress this problem, jurisdictions have turned to deliberative approaches designed to foster transparency and public debate.

This Article contends that the current approach to democratization is …

Law School News: A More Perfect Union Through A Diverse Judiciary 08-07-2023, Gregory W. Bowman

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

The Possible Futures Of American Democracy, Jedediah Purdy

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

When The Digital Services Act Goes Global, Anupam Chander

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The European Union’s Digital Services Act (“DSA”) establishes a “meta law”—public regulation of the private regulation conducted by internet platforms. The DSA offers an attempt to balance private technological power with democratic oversight. The DSA will likely prove an attractive model for other governments to assert control over massive global internet platforms. What happens when other countries borrow its approach, in an instantiation of the vaunted Brussels Effect? This Article evaluates the DSA using the “Putin Test”—asking what if an authoritarian leader were given the powers granted by the DSA? The Article argues that authoritarians might well exploit various mechanisms …

Public Good Through Charter Schools?, Philip Hackney

Articles

Should nonprofit charter schools be considered “charitable” under § 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code and be entitled to the benefits that go with that designation (income tax exemption, charitable contribution deduction, etc.)? Current tax law treats them as such; the question is whether there is a good rationale for this treatment. In addition to efficiency and equity, I consider political justice as a value in evaluating tax policy. By political justice, I mean a democratic system that prioritizes the opportunity for more people to have a voice in collective decisions (political voice equality or PVE). Thus, a tax policy …

A More Capacious Concept Of Church, Philip Hackney, Samuel D. Brunson

Articles

United States tax law provides churches with extra benefits and robust protection from IRS enforcement actions. Churches and religious organizations are automatically exempt from the income tax without needing to apply to be so recognized and without needing to file a tax return. Beyond that, churches are protected from audit by stringent procedures. There are good reasons to consider providing a distance between church and state, including the state tax authority. In many instances, Congress granted churches preferential tax treatment to try to avoid excess entanglement between church and state, though that preferential treatment often just shifts the locus of …

Written Testimony Of Philip Hackney For The Hearing On Laws And Enforcement Governing The Political Activities Of Tax-Exempt Entities (U.S. Senate Finance Committee Subcommittee On Taxation And Irs Oversight, May 4, 2022), Philip Hackney

Testimony

Are tax laws and IRS enforcement up to the task of overseeing the tax issues associated with the political activities of tax-exempt organizations? Though the tax laws governing the tax-exempt realm are wanting, our overall legal structure is not bad. It is justifiable at least. Where we fall down as a nation in this space is in the enforcement. We do not allocate enough resources to this arena, and we do not institutionally offer the support necessary to enforce these laws. These failures do not favor one party over the other but favor those interests in the country with the …

Law School News: Two Rwu Law Lawmakers Fight To 'Let R.I. Vote' 03-24-2022, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Written Testimony Of Philip Hackney For The Hearing On Donor Disclosure And Campaign Finance Regulations: Reviewing Recent Legal Precedents (Pennsylvania House Of Representatives, State Government Committee, February 7. 2022), Philip Hackney

Testimony

The following is written testimony provided to the Pennsylvania House State Government Committee for a hearing entitled Donor Disclosure and Campaign Finance Regulations: Reviewing Recent Legal Precedents held on February 7, 2022. In 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court in Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta struck down as facially unconstitutional under the First Amendment a law in California requiring charities soliciting donations in the state of California to disclose substantial donors identified on Schedule B to the IRS Form 990. The Form 990 is the information tax return nonprofits must file annually to maintain their tax-exempt status. Schedule B collects …

Law School News: Logan Article Central To Scotus Dissent, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Self-Determination In American Discourse: The Supreme Court’S Historical Indoctrination Of Free Speech And Expression, Jarred Williams

Honors Theses

Within the American criminal legal system, it is a well-established practice to presume the innocence of those charged with criminal offenses unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Such a judicial framework-like approach, called a legal maxim, is utilized in order to ensure that the law is applied and interpreted in ways that legislative bodies originally intended.

The central aim of this piece in relation to the First Amendment of the United States Constitution is to investigate whether the Supreme Court of the United States has utilized a specific legal maxim within cases that dispute government speech or expression regulation. …

Social Services And Mutual Aid In Times Of Covid-19 And Beyond: A Brief Critique, Dana Neacsu

Law Faculty Publications

May 19, 2021, marked a crucial point in the United States’ fight against the COVID-19 pandemic: sixty percent of U.S. adults had been vaccinated. Since then, Americans have witnessed the beginning of the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, but its long-term effects are here to stay. Ironically, some are unexpectedly welcome. Among the lasting positive changes is an augmented sense of individual involvement in community well-being. This multifaceted phenomenon has given rise to #BLM allyship and heightened interest in mutual aid networks. In the legal realm, it has manifested with law students, their educators, lawyers, and the American Bar Association …

Political Justice And Tax Policy: The Social Welfare Organization Case, Philip Hackney

Articles

In addition to valuing whether a tax policy is equitable, efficient, and administrable, I argue we should ask if a tax policy is politically just. Others have made a similar case for valuing political justice as democracy in implementing just tax policy. I join that call and highlight why it matters in one arena – tax exemption. I argue that politically just tax policy does the least harm to the democratic functioning of our government and may ideally enhance it. I argue that our right to an equal voice in collective decision making is the most fundamental value of political …

Law Library Blog (September 2020): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Lawyers Democratic Dysfunction, Leah Litman

Articles

As part of the symposium on Jack Balkin and Sandy Levinson’s Democracy and Dysfunction, this Article documents another source of the dysfunction that the authors observe—elite lawyers’ unwillingness to break ranks with other elite lawyers who participate in the destruction of various norms that are integral to a well-functioning democracy. These network effects eliminate the possibility of “soft” sanctions on norm violators such as withholding future professional advancement. Thus, rather than enforcing norms and deterring norm violations, the networks serve to insulate norm violators from any meaningful accountability.

Is This A Christian Nation?: Virtual Symposium September 25, 2020, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

From Public Health To Public Wealth: The Case For Economic Justice, Barbara L. Atwell

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article examines how we can overlay the principle of serving the common good, which undergirds public health law, onto financial well-being. It suggests that we apply public health law principles to corporate law and culture. In matters of public health, we view quite broadly states' police power to protect the public good. Government is also empowered to protect the general welfare in matters of financial well-being. Using the “general welfare” as a guidepost, this Article challenges the conventional wisdom that corporations exist solely to maximize profit and shareholder value to the exclusion of virtually everything else. It proposes two …

Decarbonization In Democracy, Shelley Welton

All Faculty Scholarship

Conventional wisdom holds that democracy is structurally ill-equipped to confront climate change. As the story goes, because each of us tends to dismiss consequences that befall people in other places and in future times, “the people” cannot be trusted to craft adequate decarbonization policies, designed to reduce present-day, domestic carbon emissions. Accordingly, U.S. climate change policy has focused on technocratic fixes that operate predominantly through executive action to escape democratic politics — with vanishingly little to show for it after a change in presidential administration. To help craft a more durable U.S. climate change strategy, this Article scrutinizes the purported …

De-Democratizing Criminal Law, Benjamin Levin

Publications

No abstract provided.

Health Care's Market Bureaucracy, Allison K. Hoffman

All Faculty Scholarship

The last several decades of health law and policy have been built on a foundation of economic theory. This theory supported the proliferation of market-based policies that promised maximum efficiency and minimal bureaucracy. Neither of these promises has been realized. A mounting body of empirical research discussed in this Article makes clear that leading market-based policies are not efficient — they fail to capture what people want. Even more, this Article describes how the struggle to bolster these policies — through constant regulatory, technocratic tinkering that aims to improve the market and the decision-making of consumers in it — has …

Whole-Of-Society Approach Needed Against Truth Decay, Eugene K. B. Tan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In an age of pervasive informationflows, governments do not defeat fake news. It's the people as a society whodo.The threatof deliberate falsehoods, or more popularly "fake news", posesserious threats to the democratic wellbeing of societies. The marketplace ofideas increasingly suffers from truth decay, propagated online or offline,imperilling an already vulnerable information ecosystem. In turn,this compromises the functioning of a democracy, which is premised on citizenshaving a shared reality rather than multiple distorted realities.

Legal Ethics And The Political Activity Of Government Lawyers, Andrew Martin

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The ability to engage in political activity is an essential feature of a democratic society. However, the ability of government lawyers to do so is unclear. While most governments have passed legislation identifying permissible political activity of their employees, it is unclear how the professional obligations of lawyers apply in this context and how these professional obligations interact with this legislation. This article answers these questions. The duty of loyalty to the client requires most government lawyers to refrain from all political activity at the same level of government. The special professional obligations of Crown prosecutors require these lawyers to …

Rwu First Amendment Blog: David Logan's Blog: Media Centralization Imperils Marketplace Of Ideas 04-05-2018, David A. Logan

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.

Law School News: 'Marketplace Of Ideas' Imperiled (04-05-2018), David A. Logan

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Newsroom: 'You Can't Help Being In Awe' 1-30-2018, Michael M. Bowden, Edward Fitzpatrick

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Facts, Values, Justification, Democracy, Don Herzog

Reviews

Equality, you might think, is the more or less universally shared value of the modern world, or the West, or anyway these United States. “We strive to ensure that the values upon which our country was built, including our belief that all people are created equal, are reflected in everything our nation does.” That’s from the 2016 Democratic Party platform. And look! “We continue to encourage equality for all citizens and access to the American Dream.” That’s from the 2016 GOP Platform. Of course, the parties disagree deeply on the demands of equality. If they share an abstract concept, as …

Newsroom: Panel: The Press & The President 3-28-2017, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.