Law Commons^™

Combating Substance Abuse And Violence In Jackson County, Missouri: A Public Health Approach To The "War On Drugs", Danielle Bukacheski, Grant Baker, Stephen R. Bough

UMKC Law Review

In 1989, Jackson County, Missouri, made history - voters passed the first tax solely dedicated to funding substance abuse prevention and treatment. Today, the COMmunity Backed Anti-Crime Tax ("COMBAT") continues to annually generate between $25 to $30 million that supports Jackson County courts, the Jackson County Prosecutor's Office, local law enforcement agencies, and nonprofit organizations focusing on prevention and treatment. COMBAT has achieved success through its de-emphasis on punitive law enforcement practices and emphasis on public health. Instead of focusing on the prosecution of drug-related offenses, COMBAT is leading a more holistic "War on Drugs" by funding community-based resources to …

The Model Law Enforcement Officer And Other First Responder's Deflection Act: A National Blueprint For Creating Successful Deflection Programs Across The Country, Marc Consalo

UMKC Law Review

The idea of finding alternatives to the traditional approach of arresting, prosecuting, and punishing an individual for criminal behavior in the hopes it will deter future illegal conduct is not new. In 1947, the Judicial Conference of the United States met to make recommendations for the first diversion programs focusing on youthful offenders. Approximately fifteen years later, states began to explore diversion as an option for some adult lawbreakers.

The birth of diversion generated a novel approach to addressing criminal activity. However, before any individual could participate in a diversion program, law enforcement arrested the person which imposed a host …

Legislating Courts, Michael Pollack

UMKC Law Review

Judges are ordinarily thought of as deciders of a specific sort: people who apply the rule of law to resolve disagreements between the parties appearing before them. But in every state, judges do far more. They are charged by state statutory or constitutional law with a range of quasi-administrative, quasi-legislative, and quasi-executive law enforcement functions. These roles raise a number of theoretical and practical concerns. In many states, though, legislatures have gone even further. They have either wholly delegated significant policymaking power to state court judges or have sat idle while those judges have assumed the mantle of functions that …

Building A Successful Team In A Problem-Solving Court: The Western District Of Missouri Model, Carie Allen, Stephen R. Bough, Lajuana Counts, Arthur Diaz, Jeffrey Mccarther, Katie Meister, James Parker

UMKC Law Review

Problem-solving courts work. We know that reentry programs and intensive supervision programs like drug courts are effective alternatives to incarceration that reduce recidivism. For example, the United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri's Reentry Court has an 85.7% success rate for graduates, meaning they complete their term of supervised release without any new charges. A reduction of recidivism means hefty savings of tax-payer dollars. More importantly, successful problem-solving courts mean people engage in their communities, raise families, work productive jobs, and pay taxes.

Courts and legislators and executive branches around the country are increasingly turning to problem …

Iiaas And The Montreal Protocol: The Legal Minefield Inside The Most Successful Environmental Treaty In History, Jackson Elder

UMKC Law Review

The most successful environmental treaty in history might break international law's core principle, and it all depends on who you ask. International law consists of rules and principles relating to states, international organizations, and individuals. The source of all international law is the consent of nations, and each nation is governed by the treaties they consent to. Provisions that force states to behave according to its text and do not satisfy international law's traditional consent standard are consequential. As no term exists for these provisions currently, these clauses have been termed as international imposed axiomatic alterations ("IIAA"s). IIAAs, for this …

Why U.S. States Need Their Own Cannabis Industry Banks, Christoph Henkel, Randall K. Johnson

Faculty Works

The legal cannabis trade is the fastest growing industry in the United States. In 2019, about 48.2 million Americans used the drug at least once. As such, it is easy to see why the legal cannabis trade may generate annual revenues exceeding $30 billion in Fiscal Year 2022 alone.

One inconvenient truth, however, is that the parties to any cannabis trade may face a range of difficulties due to conflicts between federal and state laws. These difficulties include the fact that many financial institutions are reluctant to handle cannabis proceeds. One reason is that a lack of alignment in terms …

Inclusiveness: Advancing Environmental Justice In A Diverse Democracy, Irma S. Russell, Alexandra D. Dunn

Faculty Works

Today, environmental justice (EJ) is more than a significant and meaningful social movement. EJ has now emerged—after at least five decades—as a major initiative for the federal government and for many state governments. Since the beginnings of the EJ movement, its proponents have sought redress for the disproportionate and negative impacts of generations of environmental policy and siting decisions that resulted in adverse effects on the health, environment, economics, and climate of disadvantaged communities. Scientific research and “big data” programs now provide evidence supporting community EJ claims, and laws such as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and the Inflation Reduction …

Ella P. Stewart And The Benefits Of Owning A Neighborhood Pharmacy, Randall K. Johnson

Faculty Works

This Essay is the first to explain how and why Ella P. Stewart, who was among the first Black women to earn a doctoral degree in Pharmacy, used her status as a small business owner to protect the limited set of legal rights that were available to African-Americans in the twentieth century. It also describes how Stewart’s early personal and professional experiences informed her subsequent public service career. Additionally, this Essay highlights the various ways that Stewart expanded the real freedoms that Black Americans enjoyed by guaranteeing they received a fair share of public goods or services. It concludes by …

Self-Intervention, Lumen N. Mulligan

Faculty Works

You cannot intervene in your own case, duh! Yet the United States Supreme Court granted certiorari on just this issue: Does Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 24(a)(2) allow state legislative leaders, seeking to represent the state’s sovereign interest, intervene when the attorney general is already representing the state’s sovereign interest. In this article, I contend that the text, history, and practice of Rule 24(a)(2) prohibits such “self-intervention.” I then explore how the fictive approach to state immunity established in Ex parte Young causes this confusion, while concluding that the doctrine, properly understood, focuses on real, not nominal, parties-in-interest. Next, I …

Frederick Douglass And The Hidden Power Of Recording Deeds, Randall K. Johnson

Faculty Works

This Essay answers a single question: What led Frederick Douglass to accept an appointment as the D.C. Recorder of Deeds, especially at the height of his public service career? A possible answer, which is informed by the historical record and more contemporary accounts, is that Douglass accepted such an appointment for three reasons. The first reason is that the D.C. Recorder has been long recognized as an exemplar of fairness, perhaps due to its ministerial obligations, even when there could be no such expectation with respect to how Black folks are treated. The second reason is this office provided Douglass …

Who Wins Residential Property Tax Appeals?, Randall K. Johnson

Faculty Works

This article explains who wins residential property tax appeals in Cook County, Illinois. It does so by collecting and combining public sector data, which has been recently released by the Cook County Assessor. The article then uses this data to compute three statistics. Lastly, it contextualizes each statistic in order to determine if some townships, or groups of townships, win more appeals than expected.

Where Schools Close In Chicago, Randall K. Johnson

Faculty Works

It is often assumed that schools close, disproportionately, in disadvantaged parts of Chicago. The assumption, however, has yet to be substantiated by research. As a result, this article tests the assumption in order to explain where schools close in Chicago. It does so by introducing a new Chicago Public School (CPS) closings dataset. The dataset sheds some light on the phenomenon by identifying 130 schools that closed, twenty-seven ZIP codes that experienced CPS closings and three demographic characteristics of these ZIP codes. In the process, this dataset helps to explain how CPS closings relate to race, income and location.

Will Grassroots Democracy Solve The Government Fiscal Crisis?, Julie M. Cheslik

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Derivatives: A Twenty-First Century Understanding, Timothy E. Lynch

Faculty Works

Derivatives are commonly defined as some variation of the following: a financial instrument whose value is derived from the performance of a secondary source such as an underlying bond, commodity or index. But this definition is both over-inclusive and under-inclusive. Thus, not surprisingly, derivatives are largely misunderstood, including by many policy makers, regulators and legal analysts. It is important for interested parties such as policy makers to understand derivatives, because the types and uses of derivatives have exploded in the last few decades, and because these financial instruments can provide both social benefits and cause social harms. This Article presents …

Symposium On Enforcing Constitutional Rights In The Twenty-First Century: Section 1983 Thirty Years After Owen, David J. Achtenberg

Faculty Works

In Owen v. City of Independence, the Supreme Court indicated that § 1983 would provide a path for all victims of civil rights violations would be able to get full compensation for their harm. However, the intervening decades saw that guarantee whittled away, as later decisions carved away the ability to recover under § 1983. The authors in this symposium discuss the challenges in enforcing constitutional rights in the twenty-first century legal environment and offers a solution.

Introduction: The Sustainability Principle, Irma S. Russell

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

From Representing Clients To Serving Recipients: Transforming The Role Of The Iv-D Child Support Enforcement Attorney, Barbara Glesner Fines

Faculty Works

Attorneys for the poor are being asked to serve more clients for less money and with more restrictions on their practice than ever before. These restrictions, both on amounts and uses of funds, influence the attorney's independent professional judgment. Determining when that influence is inappropriate becomes a difficult practical and ethical issue. Is this issue resolved if one simply reconceptualizes the role of the entities and individuals involved? What if the government becomes the client and the individual receiving legal services becomes something other than a client? Examining the development of governmental funding of child support enforcement, one finds just …

Inside The Aclu: Activism And Anti-Communism In The Late 1960s, Allen K. Rostron

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

A Kansas Approach To Custodial Parent Move-Away Cases, Steve Leben, Megan Moriarty

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Derivative Securities: Governmental Entities As End Users, Bankrupts And Other Big Losers, Robert C. Downs, Lenora J. Fowler

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

The Doctrine Of Election Of Remedies In Missouri, Barbara Glesner Fines

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Survey Of Kansas Law: Administrative Law, Steve A. Leben

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Income Taxation Of Social Security Benefits: Balancing Social Policy With Tax Policy, Christopher R. Hoyt

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Bail In Missouri Revisited, Mark Berger

Faculty Works

During the early part of the 1960's, interest in the civil rights movement generated concern over the inequities of bail administration. In the latter part of the decade the same problems were revealed in major studies of the nation's criminal justice system. Contributions to the legal literature in this period, encompassing statistical and evaluative studies as well as academic analysis, helped to focus further attention on bail. Moreover, a major effort was undertaken by the United States Department of Justice to promote the sharing of bail program information and ideas. There are signs, however, that some of the earlier interest …

Strategies For Metropolitan Stabilization, John W. Ragsdale Jr, Thomas Clark

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.