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Full-Text Articles in Law

The Constitutional Law Of Incarceration, Reconfigured, Margo Schlanger Jan 2018

The Constitutional Law Of Incarceration, Reconfigured, Margo Schlanger

Articles

On any given day, about 2.2 million people are confined in U.S. jails and prisons—nearly 0.9% of American men are in prison, and another 0.4% are in jail. This year, 9 or 10 million people will spend time in our prisons and jails; about 5000 of them will die there. A decade into a frustratingly gradual decline in incarceration numbers, the statistics have grown familiar: We have 4.4% of the world’s population but over 20% of its prisoners. Our incarceration rate is 57% higher than Russia’s (our closest major country rival in imprisonment), nearly four times the rate in England, …


Educational Equality For Children With Disabilities: The 2016 Term Cases, Samuel R. Bagenstos Nov 2017

Educational Equality For Children With Disabilities: The 2016 Term Cases, Samuel R. Bagenstos

Book Chapters

One of the most longstanding debates in educational policy pits the goal of equality against the goal of adequacy: Should we aim to guarantee that all children receive an equal education? Or simply that they all receive an adequate education? The debate is vexing in part because there are many ways to specify “equality” and “adequacy.” Are we talking about equality of inputs (which inputs?), equality of opportunity (to achieve what?), or equality of results (which results?)? Douglas Rae and his colleagues famously argued that there are no fewer than 108 structurally distinct conceptions of equality. And how do we …


Child Welfare's Scarlet Letter: How A Prior Termination Of Parental Rights Can Permanently Brand A Parent As Unfit, Vivek S. Sankaran Oct 2017

Child Welfare's Scarlet Letter: How A Prior Termination Of Parental Rights Can Permanently Brand A Parent As Unfit, Vivek S. Sankaran

Articles

In many jurisdictions, once a parent has her rights terminated to one child, the State can use that decision to justify the termination of parental rights to another child. The State can do so regardless of whether the parent is fit to parent the second child. This article explores this practice, examines its origins, and discusses its constitutional inadequacies.


Confirmation Bias, Patrick Barry Aug 2017

Confirmation Bias, Patrick Barry

Articles

Supreme Court confirmation hearings are vapid. Supreme Court confirmation hearings are pointless. Supreme Court confirmation hearings are harmful to a citizenry already cynical about government. Sentiments like these have been around for decades and are bound to resurface each time a new nomination is made. This essay, however, takes a different view. It argues that Supreme Court confirmation hearings are a valuable form of cultural expression, one that provides a unique record of as the theater critic Martin Esslin might say, a nation thinking about itself in public.


The Miranda Case Fifty Years Later, Yale Kamisar May 2017

The Miranda Case Fifty Years Later, Yale Kamisar

Articles

A decade after the Supreme Court decided Miranda v. Arizona, Geoffrey Stone took a close look at the eleven decisions the Court had handed down “concerning the scope and application of Miranda.” As Stone observed, “[i]n ten of these cases, the Court interpreted Miranda so as not to exclude the challenged evidence.” In the eleventh case, the Court excluded the evidence on other grounds. Thus, Stone noted, ten years after the Court decided the case, “the Court ha[d] not held a single item of evidence inadmissible on the authority of Miranda.” Not a single item. To use …


Disentangling Miranda And Massiah: How To Revive The Sixth Amendment Right To Counsel As A Tool For Regulating Confession Law, Eve Brensike Primus May 2017

Disentangling Miranda And Massiah: How To Revive The Sixth Amendment Right To Counsel As A Tool For Regulating Confession Law, Eve Brensike Primus

Articles

Fifty years after Miranda v. Arizona, many have lamented the ways in which the Burger, Rehnquist, and Roberts Courts have cut back on Miranda's protections. One underappreciated a spect of Miranda's demise is the way it has affected the development of the pretrial Sixth Amendment right to counsel guaranteed by Massiah v. United States. Much of the case law diluting suspects' Fifth Amendment Miranda rights has bled over into the Sixth Amendment right to counsel cases without consideration of whether the animating purposes of the Massiah pretrial right to counsel would support such an importation. This development is unfortunate …


Random If Not "Rare"? The Eighth Amendment Weaknesses Of Post-Miller Legislation, Kimberly Thomas Mar 2017

Random If Not "Rare"? The Eighth Amendment Weaknesses Of Post-Miller Legislation, Kimberly Thomas

Articles

First, this Article surveys the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to analogize life without parole for juveniles to the death penalty for adults, and discusses the Eighth Amendment law regarding the parameters around death penalty statutory schemes. Second, this Article examines the state legislative response to Miller, and scrutinizes it with the Court's Eighth Amendment death penalty law-and the states' responses to this case law-in mind. This Article highlights the failure of juvenile homicide sentencing provisions to: 1) narrow offenses that are eligible for life without parole sentences; 2) further limit, once a guilty finding is made, the categories of …


Labor And Employment Arbitration Today: Mid-Life Crisis Or New Golden Age?, Theodore J. St. Antonie Jan 2017

Labor And Employment Arbitration Today: Mid-Life Crisis Or New Golden Age?, Theodore J. St. Antonie

Articles

The major developments in employer-employee arbitration currently do not involve labor arbitration, that is, arbitration between employers and unions. The focus is on employment arbitration, arbitration between employers and individual employees. Beginning around 1980, nearly all the states judicially modified the standard American doctrine of employment-at-will whereby, absent a statutory or contractual prohibition, an employer could fire an employee "for good cause, for no cause, or even for cause morally wrong." Under the new regime, grounded in expansive contract and public policy theories, wrongfully discharged employees often reaped bonanzas in court suits, with California jury awards averaging around $425,000." Many …


What Lurks Below Beckles, Leah Litman, Shakeer Rahman Nov 2016

What Lurks Below Beckles, Leah Litman, Shakeer Rahman

Articles

This Essay argues that if the Supreme Court grants habeas relief in Beckles v. United States, then it should spell out certain details about where a Beckles claim comes from and who such a claim benefits. Those details are not essential to the main question raised in the case, but the federal habeas statute takes away the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction to hear just about any case that would raise those questions. For that reason, this Essay concludes that failing to address those questions now could arbitrarily condemn hundreds of prisoners to illegal sentences and lead to a situation where the …


How The Sentencing Commission Does And Does Not Matter In Beckles V. United States, Leah Litman, Luke C. Beasley Oct 2016

How The Sentencing Commission Does And Does Not Matter In Beckles V. United States, Leah Litman, Luke C. Beasley

Articles

Two years ago, in Johnson v. United States, the Supreme Court held that the so-called “residual clause” of the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA) is unconstitutionally vague. Last spring, the Court made this rule retroactive in Welch v. United States. Then in June, the Court granted certiorari in Beckles v. United States to resolve two questions that have split lower courts in the wake of Johnson and Welch: (1) whether an identically worded “residual clause” in a U.S. Sentencing Guideline—known as the career offender Guideline—is unconstitutionally void for vagueness; and (2) if so, whether the rule invalidating the Guideline’s residual …


The Sec, Administrative Usurpation, And Insider Trading, Adam C. Pritchard Oct 2016

The Sec, Administrative Usurpation, And Insider Trading, Adam C. Pritchard

Articles

The history of insider trading law is a tale of administrative usurpation and legislative acquiescence. Congress has never enacted a prohibition against insider trading, much less defined it. Instead, the SEC has led in defining insider trading, albeit without the formality of rulemaking, and subject to varying degrees of oversight by the courts. The reason why lies in the deference that the Supreme Court gave to the SEC in its formative years. The roots of insider trading law are commonly traced to the SEC’s decision in Cady, Roberts & Co. Cady, Roberts was only made possible, however, by the …


An Empirical Study Of Implicit Takings., James E. Krier, Stewart E. Sterk Oct 2016

An Empirical Study Of Implicit Takings., James E. Krier, Stewart E. Sterk

Articles

Takings scholarship has long focused on the niceties of Supreme Court doctrine, while ignoring the operation of takings law "on the ground" in the state and lower federal courts, which together decide the vast bulk of all takings cases. This study, based primarily on an empirical analysis of more than 2000 reported decisions ovcr the period 1979 through 2012, attempts to fill that void. This study establishes that the Supreme Court's categorical rules govern almost no state takings cases, and that takings claims based on government regulation almost invariably fail. By contrast, when takings claims arise out of government action …


Jurisdiction And Resentencing: How Prosecutorial Waiver Can Offer Remedies Congress Has Denied, Leah Litman, Luke C. Beasley Aug 2016

Jurisdiction And Resentencing: How Prosecutorial Waiver Can Offer Remedies Congress Has Denied, Leah Litman, Luke C. Beasley

Articles

This Essay is about what prosecutors can do to ensure that prisoners with meritorious legal claims have a remedy. The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) imposes draconian conditions on when prisoners may file successive petitions for post-conviction review (that is, more than one petition for post-conviction review). AEDPA’s restrictions on post-conviction review are so severe that they routinely prevent prisoners with meritorious claims from vindicating those claims.


Rescued From The Grave And Then Covered With Mud: Justice Scalia And The Unfinished Restoration Of The Confrontation Right, Richard D. Friedman Jun 2016

Rescued From The Grave And Then Covered With Mud: Justice Scalia And The Unfinished Restoration Of The Confrontation Right, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

Some years before his death, when asked which was his favorite among his opinions, Antonin Scalia named Crawford v. Washington. It was a good choice. Justice Scalia's opinion in Crawford reclaimed the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution and restored it to its rightful place as one of the central protections of our criminal justice system. He must have found it particularly satisfying that the opinion achieved this result by focusing on the historical meaning of the text, and that it gained the concurrence of all but two members of the Court, from all ideological positions.


Is Theocracy Our Politics? Thoughts On William Baude's 'Is Originalism Our Law?', Richard A. Primus Jan 2016

Is Theocracy Our Politics? Thoughts On William Baude's 'Is Originalism Our Law?', Richard A. Primus

Articles

In Is Originalism Our Law?, William Baude has made a good kind of argument in favor of originalism. Rather than contending that originalism is the only coherent theory for interpreting a constitution, he makes the more modest claim that it happens to be the way that American judges interpret our Constitution. If he is right—if originalism is our law—then judges deciding constitutional cases ought to be originalists. But what exactly would the content of that obligation be? Calling some interpretive method “our law” might suggest that judges have an obligation to decide cases by reference to that method. But the …


Disparate Impact And The Role Of Classification And Motivation In Equal Protection Law After Inclusive Communities, Samuel Bagenstos Jan 2016

Disparate Impact And The Role Of Classification And Motivation In Equal Protection Law After Inclusive Communities, Samuel Bagenstos

Articles

At least since the Supreme Court’s 2009 decision in Ricci v. DeStefano, disparate-impact liability has faced a direct constitutional threat. This Article argues that the Court’s decision last Term in Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, Inc., which held that disparate-impact liability is available under the Fair Housing Act, has resolved that threat, at least for the time being. In particular, this Article argues, Inclusive Communities is best read to adopt the understanding of equal protection that Justice Kennedy previously articulated in his pivotal concurrence in the 2007 Parents Involved case—which argued that …


Transparency And The Supreme Court—Can Employers Refuse To Disclose How Much They Pay For Health Care?, Nicholas Bagley, Christopher Koller Dec 2015

Transparency And The Supreme Court—Can Employers Refuse To Disclose How Much They Pay For Health Care?, Nicholas Bagley, Christopher Koller

Articles

For decades, the prices that hospitals and physicians charge private insurers have been treated as trade secrets. Even though inflated prices are an enormous reason why health care is so much more expensive in the United States than in other countries, we have only a hazy picture of what those prices actually are.


Resentencing In The Shadow Of Johnson V. United States, Leah Litman Oct 2015

Resentencing In The Shadow Of Johnson V. United States, Leah Litman

Articles

On June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court handed down a decision many years in the making—Johnson v. United States. Johnson held that the ‘‘residual clause’’ of the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA) is unconstitutionally vague. Although Johnson may have been overshadowed in the final days of a monumental Supreme Court term, the decision is a significant one that will have important consequences for the criminal justice system. ACCA’s residual clause imposed a severe 15-year mandatory minimum term of imprisonment, and many federal prisoners qualify for ACCA’s mandatory minimum. Johnson did away with ACCA’s residual clause such that defendants will no …


Balancing Effects Across Markets, Daniel A. Crane Oct 2015

Balancing Effects Across Markets, Daniel A. Crane

Articles

In Philadelphia National Bank (PNB), the Supreme Court held that it is improper to weigh a merger's procompetitive effects in one market against the merger's anticompetitive effects in another. The merger in question, which ostensibly reduced retail competition in the Philadelphia area, could not be justified on the grounds that it increased competition against New York banks and hence perhaps enhanced competition in business banking in the mid-Atlantic region. I will refer to the Supreme Court's prohibition on balancing effects across markets as a "market-specificity" rule. Under this rule, efficiencies that may counterbalance anticompetitive aspects must be specific to …


A Look Back At The "Gatehouses And Mansions" Of American Criminal Procedure, Yale Kamisar Oct 2015

A Look Back At The "Gatehouses And Mansions" Of American Criminal Procedure, Yale Kamisar

Articles

I am indebted to Professor William Pizzi for remembering—and praising—the “Gatehouses and Mansions” essay I wrote fifty years ago. A great many articles and books have been written about Miranda. So it is nice to be remembered for an article published a year before that famous case was ever decided.


The Nlrb, The Courts, The Administrative Procedures Act, And Chevron: Now And Then, Theodore J. St. Antoine Jul 2015

The Nlrb, The Courts, The Administrative Procedures Act, And Chevron: Now And Then, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

Decisions of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), like those of other administrative agencies, are subject to review by the federal judiciary. Standards of review have evolved over time. The Administrative Procedure Act of 1946 provides that administrative decisions must be in accord with law and required procedure, not arbitrary or capricious, not contrary to constitutional rights, within an agency's statutory jurisdiction, and supported by substantial evidence. In practice, more attention is paid to two Supreme Court decisions, Skidmore (1944) and Chevron (1984). For many years Chevron seemed the definitive test. A court must follow a clear intent of Congress, …


Dirks And The Genesis Of Personal Benefit, Adam C. Pritchard Jun 2015

Dirks And The Genesis Of Personal Benefit, Adam C. Pritchard

Articles

In United States v. Newman, the Second Circuit overturned the insider trading convictions of two hedge fund managers who received material nonpublic information from public companies via an extended tipping chain. The Newman court interpreted the Supreme Court's decision in Dirks v. SEC as requiring that the government prove: (1) that the tippee knew that the tipper was disclosing the information in exchange for a personal benefit; and (2) that if the personal benefit does not involve a quid pro quo to the tipper, that the disclosure arise from a "meaningfully close personal relationship" with the recipient of the …


No Good Options: Picking Up The Pieces After King V. Burwell, Nicholas Bagley, David K. Jones Apr 2015

No Good Options: Picking Up The Pieces After King V. Burwell, Nicholas Bagley, David K. Jones

Articles

If the Supreme Court rules against the government in King v. Burwell, insurance subsidies available under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will evaporate in the thirty-four states that have refused to establish their own health-care exchanges. The pain could be felt within weeks. Without subsidies, an estimated eight or nine million people stand to lose their health coverage. Because sicker people will retain coverage at a much higher rate than healthier people, insurance premiums in the individual market will surge by as much as fifty percent. Policymakers will come under intense pressure to mitigate the fallout from a government loss …


Residual Impact: Resentencing Implications Of Johnson's Potential Ruling On Acca's Constitutionality, Leah Litman Apr 2015

Residual Impact: Resentencing Implications Of Johnson's Potential Ruling On Acca's Constitutionality, Leah Litman

Articles

In January 2015, the Supreme Court directed the parties to brief and argue an additional question in Johnson v. United States: “Whether the residual clause in the Armed Career Criminal Act of 1984, 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(B)(ii), is unconstitutionally vague.” The order represents an unusual move because the defendant had not raised the vagueness issue and the Court issued the order after it had already heard argument on the question raised in the petition for certiorari. Commentators therefore view the order as a signal that the Court will likely invalidate the residual clause. This decision will have been several years …


Reflections On Comity In The Law Of American Federalism, Gil Seinfeld Apr 2015

Reflections On Comity In The Law Of American Federalism, Gil Seinfeld

Articles

Comity is a nebulous concept familiar to us from the law of international relations. Roughly speaking, it describes a set of reciprocal norms among nations that call for one state to recognize, and sometimes defer to, the laws, judgments, or interests of another. Comity also features prominently in the law of American federalism, but in that context, it operates within limits that have received almost no attention from scholarly commentators. Specifically, although courts routinely describe duties that run from one state to another, or from the federal government to the states, as exercises in comity, they almost never rely on …


Predicting The Fallout From King V. Burwell - Exchanges And The Aca, Nicholas Bagley, David K. Jones, Timothy Stoltzfus Jost Jan 2015

Predicting The Fallout From King V. Burwell - Exchanges And The Aca, Nicholas Bagley, David K. Jones, Timothy Stoltzfus Jost

Articles

The U.S. Supreme Court's surprise announcement on November 7 that it would hear King v. Burwell struck fear in the hearts of supporters of the Affordable Cara Act (ACA). At stake is the legality of an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) rule extending tax credits to the 4.5 million people who bought their health plans in the 34 states that declined to establish their own health insurance exchanges under the ACA. The case hinges on enigmatic statutory language that seems to link the amount of tax credits to a health plan purchased "through an Exchange established by the State." According to …


Campbell At 21/Sony At 31, Jessica D. Litman Jan 2015

Campbell At 21/Sony At 31, Jessica D. Litman

Articles

When copyright lawyers gather to discuss fair use, the most common refrain is its alarming expansion. Their distress about fair use’s enlarged footprint seems completely untethered from any appreciation of the remarkable increase in exclusive copyright rights. In the nearly forty years since Congress enacted the 1976 copyright act, the rights of copyright owners have expanded markedly. Copyright owners’ demands for further expansion continue unabated. Meanwhile, they raise strident objections to proposals to add new privileges and exceptions to the statute to shelter non-infringing uses that might be implicated by their expanded rights. Copyright owners have used the resulting uncertainty …


The Ada And The Supreme Court: A Mixed Record, Samuel R. Bagenstos Jan 2015

The Ada And The Supreme Court: A Mixed Record, Samuel R. Bagenstos

Articles

According to conventional wisdom, the Supreme Court has resisted the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) at every turn. The Court, the story goes, has read the statute extremely narrowly and, as a result, stripped away key protections that Congress intended to provide. Its departure from congressional intent, indeed, was so extreme that Congress passed a statute that overturned several key decisions and codified broad statutory protections. That statute, the ADA Amendments Act of 2008 (ADAAA). passed with widespread bipartisan support, and President George W. Bush signed it into law. The conventional wisdom leaves out a major part of the story. …


Enforcing The Fifteenth Amendment, Ellen D. Katz Jan 2015

Enforcing The Fifteenth Amendment, Ellen D. Katz

Book Chapters

This chapter examines efforts to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment in the period from United States v. Reese through Shelby County v. Holder. Reese and Shelby County expose the most rigorous stance the Court has employed to review congressional efforts to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment, while the years in-between show Congress and the Court working more in tandem, at times displaying remarkable indifference to blatant violations of the Fifteenth Amendment, and elsewhere working cooperatively to help vindicate the Amendment’s promise. Defying simple explanation, this vacillation between cooperation and resistance captures the complex and deeply consequential way concerns about federal power, …


Justice Ginsburg's Umbrella, Ellen D. Katz Jan 2015

Justice Ginsburg's Umbrella, Ellen D. Katz

Book Chapters

Near the end of her dissent in Shelby County v. Holder, Justice Ginsburg suggested a simple analogy to illustrate why the regional protections of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) were still necessary. She wrote that “[t]hrowing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”