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Full-Text Articles in Law

Newsroom: Guiding Startups Through Legal Pickles 11-14-2016, Jill Rodrigues, Roger Williams University School Of Law Nov 2016

Newsroom: Guiding Startups Through Legal Pickles 11-14-2016, Jill Rodrigues, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.


Law School News Guiding Startups Through Legal Pickles: Law Students Launch Artisan Pickler And Other Businesses To Success 11/09/2016, Jill Rodriques Nov 2016

Law School News Guiding Startups Through Legal Pickles: Law Students Launch Artisan Pickler And Other Businesses To Success 11/09/2016, Jill Rodriques

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.


Trending @ Rwu Law: Linda Tappa's Post: An Amazing Summer: Public Interest Law In Texas 11/01/2016, Linda Tappa Nov 2016

Trending @ Rwu Law: Linda Tappa's Post: An Amazing Summer: Public Interest Law In Texas 11/01/2016, Linda Tappa

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.


The Will To Prevail: Inside The Legal Battle To Save Sweet Briar, James M. Giudice, J. Westwood Smithers Iii Nov 2016

The Will To Prevail: Inside The Legal Battle To Save Sweet Briar, James M. Giudice, J. Westwood Smithers Iii

Law Student Publications

Despite the school‘s storied past and deep historical roots, on March 3, 2015, the Sweet Briar Board of Directors announced its intention to shut down the college—permanently—the following summer. The Board cited "insurmountable financial challenges," including falling enrollment, a lack of unrestricted funds in its endowment, and the century-old school‘s lack of appeal to modern generations of students. The Board claimed the school was no longer financially viable, because though its $84 million endowment was sizeable by most measures, the school needed an endowment three times that size to stay open. Students, faculty, staff, and alumnae were blindsided by the …


Rejecting Charity: Why The Irs Denies Tax Exemption To 501(C)(3) Applicants, Terri Lynn Helge Oct 2016

Rejecting Charity: Why The Irs Denies Tax Exemption To 501(C)(3) Applicants, Terri Lynn Helge

Faculty Scholarship

New charitable organizations generally must file an application for exemption (Form 1023) and await approval from the Internal Revenue Service. Unfortunately, the criteria the Internal Revenue Service uses to evaluate applications has not always been transparent. If an application is approved, the Internal Revenue Service determination letter and the application for exemption are required to be made publicly available and can be requested from the Internal Revenue Service or the organization itself. Prior to 2004, in the case of denials, neither the application nor the Internal Revenue Service’s correspondence setting forth its rationale for the denial were made publicly available. …


Look For The Helpers, Tara L. Casey Jul 2016

Look For The Helpers, Tara L. Casey

Law Faculty Publications

Mr. Rogers once said, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’“
So, as I sit and wrestle with the news stream that surrounds me, I look for the helpers. And I find ... you.
Inside of each of us is the capacity to be the helper that provides a salve to our world’s wounds. We all can be the helpers when we create,cultivate, and operate pro bono service and community engagement programs that focus on …


The Pro Bono Collaborative: Celebrating 10 Years Of Pro Bono Partnerships, Roger Williams University School Of Law May 2016

The Pro Bono Collaborative: Celebrating 10 Years Of Pro Bono Partnerships, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Pro Bono Collaborative Staff Publications

No abstract provided.


Accounting For The Government Funding Of Non-Profits And The Planned Parenthood Federation Of America, Rachel E. Brown Apr 2016

Accounting For The Government Funding Of Non-Profits And The Planned Parenthood Federation Of America, Rachel E. Brown

Senior Honors Theses

Accounting creates a framework for providing transparency in an organization. This foundation is especially important in not-for-profit entities because government grants and contributions often compose significant portions of overall revenues and receipts. An overview of non-profit standards and the government system of distributing funds provides insight into non-profits as a whole and enables the study of specific organizations. As the nation’s largest provider of abortion and family planning services, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America is an especially important organization to study and understand. It receives significant funds from federal and state governments and should receive equally significant evaluation by …


The 21st Century Fight Over Who Sets The Terms Of The Charity Property Tax Exemption, Evelyn Brody Apr 2016

The 21st Century Fight Over Who Sets The Terms Of The Charity Property Tax Exemption, Evelyn Brody

All Faculty Scholarship

Turning from the substantive issue of defining charity, this article considers the “who” question by examining the roles of the courts, legislatures, municipalities, and charities in determining exemption and payments in lieu of taxes. The three covered topics – constitutional power, statutory interpretation, and the “intermediate sanctions” of user fees and PILOTs – braid together to form the procedural framework for the financial relationship between nonprofit property owners and the taxing jurisdictions that host them. Change the parameters of one, and you change the others. Staying off the rolls or minimizing the tax bite often results from compromise – whether …


Courts, Constituencies, And The Enforcement Of Fiduciary Duties In The Nonprofit Sector, Joseph Mead, Michael C. Pollack Apr 2016

Courts, Constituencies, And The Enforcement Of Fiduciary Duties In The Nonprofit Sector, Joseph Mead, Michael C. Pollack

Faculty Articles

Directors of nonprofit organizations owe fiduciary duties to their organizations, but the content of these duties—and how and when courts should enforce these duties—has long been debated among scholars and courts. This debate emerges in several areas, including the level of deference to be shown by courts to nonprofit directors (the business judgment rule), who should be allowed to sue to enforce duties (standing), and the type of relief available to prevailing plaintiffs (remedies). Existing literature explores these legal rules in isolation and in abstraction, generally failing to consider how the rules interact with each other and ignoring the empirical …


Courts, Constituencies, And The Enforcement Of Fiduciary Duties In The Nonprofit Sector, Joseph Mead, Michael Pollack Apr 2016

Courts, Constituencies, And The Enforcement Of Fiduciary Duties In The Nonprofit Sector, Joseph Mead, Michael Pollack

All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications

Directors of nonprofit organizations owe fiduciary duties to their organizations, but the content of these duties—and how and when courts should enforce these duties—has long been debated among scholars and courts. This debate emerges in several areas, including the level of deference to be shown by courts to nonprofit directors (the business judgment rule), who should be allowed to sue to enforce duties (standing), and the type of relief available to prevailing plaintiffs (remedies). Existing literature explores these legal rules in isolation and in abstraction, generally failing to consider how the rules interact with each other and ignoring the empirical …


Developing A Pedagogy Of Beneficiary Accountability In The Representation Of Social Justice Non-Profit Organizations, Amber Baylor, Daria Fisher Page Mar 2016

Developing A Pedagogy Of Beneficiary Accountability In The Representation Of Social Justice Non-Profit Organizations, Amber Baylor, Daria Fisher Page

Faculty Scholarship

This article seeks to begin a conversation on how we teach the problem of beneficiary accountability in the representation of organizations with social justice missions: How do we guide students towards a fuller understanding of the moral responsibility to engage and respect the voices of the communities most directly affected by the non-profit organization’s mission? We look at the issue through the pedagogical lens of our experience supervising clinic students, deconstructing the problems of beneficiary accountability that students faced in the representation of two social justice organizations, surveying relevant legal scholarship on organizational representation and community lawyering, and considering alternative …


Nonprofit Oversight Under Siege: Introduction, Dana Brakman Reiser Jan 2016

Nonprofit Oversight Under Siege: Introduction, Dana Brakman Reiser

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Post-Graduate Legal Training: The Case For Tax-Exempt Programs, Philip Hackney, Adam Chodorow Jan 2016

Post-Graduate Legal Training: The Case For Tax-Exempt Programs, Philip Hackney, Adam Chodorow

Articles

The challenging job market for recent law school graduates has highlighted a fact well known to those familiar with legal education: A significant gap exists between what students learn in law school and what they need to be practice-ready lawyers. Legal employers historically assumed the task of providing real-world training, but they have become much less willing to do so. At the same time, a large numbers of Americans – and not just those living at or below the poverty line – are simply unable to afford lawyers. In this Article, we argue that post-graduate legal training, similar to post-graduate …


Leading New Lawyers: Leadership And Legal Education, Michael J. Madison Jan 2016

Leading New Lawyers: Leadership And Legal Education, Michael J. Madison

Articles

Lawyers may become leaders, but leaders also may become lawyers. The path to leadership can begin in law school. This short essay describes a leadership development course developed and implemented at a law school over the last four years.


Black Health Matters: Disparities, Community Health, And Interest Convergence, Mary Crossley Jan 2016

Black Health Matters: Disparities, Community Health, And Interest Convergence, Mary Crossley

Articles

Health disparities represent a significant strand in the fabric of racial injustice in the United States, one that has proven exceptionally durable. Many millions of dollars have been invested in addressing racial disparities over the past three decades. Researchers have identified disparities, unpacked their causes, and tracked their trajectories, with only limited progress in narrowing the health gap between whites and racial and ethnic minorities. The implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the movement toward value-based payment methods for health care may supply a new avenue for addressing disparities. This Article argues that the ACA’s requirement that tax-exempt …


Health And Taxes: Hospitals, Community Health And The Irs, Mary Crossley Jan 2016

Health And Taxes: Hospitals, Community Health And The Irs, Mary Crossley

Articles

The Affordable Care Act created new conditions of federal tax exemption for nonprofit hospitals, including a requirement that hospitals conduct a community health needs assessment (CHNA) every three years to identify significant health needs in their communities and then to develop and implement a strategy responding to those needs. As a result, hospitals must now do more than provide charity care to their patients in exchange for the benefits of tax exemption, and the CHNA requirement has the potential both to prompt a radical change in hospitals’ relationship to their communities and to enlist hospitals as meaningful contributors to community …


Social Technology & The Origins Of Popular Philanthropy, Brian L. Frye Jan 2016

Social Technology & The Origins Of Popular Philanthropy, Brian L. Frye

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The prevailing theory of charity law holds that the charitable contribution deduction is justified because it solves market and government failures in charitable goods by compensating for free riding on charitable contributions. This Article argues that many market and government failures in charitable goods are actually caused by transaction costs, and that social technology can solve those market and government failures by reducing transaction costs. Specifically, it shows that in the early twentieth century, the social technology of charity chain letters solved market and government failures in charitable contributions and facilitated the emergence of popular philanthropy.


Developing A Pedagogy Of Beneficiary Accountability In The Representation Of Social Justice Non-Profit Organizations, Amber Baylor, Daria Fisher Page Jan 2016

Developing A Pedagogy Of Beneficiary Accountability In The Representation Of Social Justice Non-Profit Organizations, Amber Baylor, Daria Fisher Page

Faculty Scholarship

This article seeks to begin a conversation on how we teach the problem of beneficiary accountability in the representation of organizations with social justice missions: How do we guide students towards a fuller understanding of the moral responsibility to engage and respect the voices of the communities most directly affected by the non-profit organization’s mission? We look at the issue through the pedagogical lens of our experience supervising clinic students, deconstructing the problems of beneficiary accountability that students faced in the representation of two social justice organizations, surveying relevant legal scholarship on organizational representation and community lawyering, and considering alternative …