Law Commons^™

The Student Loan Bankruptcy Gap, Jason Iuliano

Duke Law Journal

Each year, a quarter of a million student loan debtors file for bankruptcy. Of those, fewer than three hundred discharge their educational debt. That is a success rate of just 0.1 percent. This chasm between success and failure is the titular “Student Loan Bankruptcy Gap,” and it is a phenomenon that is unprecedented in the law.

Drawing upon an original dataset of nearly five hundred adversary proceedings, this Article examines three key facets of the Student Loan Bankruptcy Gap. First, it establishes the true breadth of the gap. Second, it explores why the gap has persisted for more than two …

Journal Staff

Duke Law Journal

No abstract provided.

From Overdose To Crime Scene: The Incompatibility Of Drug-Induced Homicide Statutes With Due Process, Kaitlin S. Phillips

Duke Law Journal

As the opioid epidemic ravages the United States, federal and state legislators continue to seek various ways to mitigate the crisis. Though public health advocates have successfully pushed for harm-reduction initiatives, a contrasting punitive response has emerged. Across the country, prosecutors and legislators are turning to drug-induced homicide (“DIH”) statutes as a law-and-order response to the crisis. DIH statutes, which can carry sentences as severe as life in prison, impose criminal liability on anyone who provided drugs that led to a fatal overdose. Though DIH laws are often justified as tools to target large-scale drug distributors, in reality, they more …

Checking The Purse: The President’S Limited Impoundment Power, Christian I. Bale

Duke Law Journal

The United States spends well over $700 billion annually on defense, more than the next ten countries combined and roughly half of the discretionary budget. The Department of Defense budget supports critical national security objectives, but even defense stalwarts acknowledge excessive spending, including unneeded military facilities, exponential cost overruns, outmoded weapons systems, and duplicative investments across the military services.

In the face of a congressional budget process distorted by special interest groups, this Note argues that the president possesses the constitutional authority to unilaterally curb some defense spending. In particular, the president may impound—refuse to spend money appropriated by Congress …

Regulating Derivatives: A Fundamental Rethinking, Steven L. Schwarcz

Duke Law Journal

The conventional wisdom is that derivatives are exotic and uniquely risky, although innovative, financial instruments. That perception has given rise to a regulatory patchwork described as “confusing, incomplete, [and] contradictory.”1 This Article rethinks how derivatives should be regulated. It begins by demystifying derivatives. In contrast to the arcane industry-derived categories, the Article deconstructs derivatives more intuitively, by their economic functions, into two categories of traditional legal instruments—option contracts and guarantees. Being neither exotic nor uniquely risky, most derivatives should be regulated like those traditional instruments. The Article then explains why at least one subset of guarantees—financial guarantees with systemically important …

Quasi Campaign Finance, Nicholas O. Stephanopoulos

Duke Law Journal

Say you’re wealthy and want to influence American politics. How would you do it? Conventional campaign finance—giving or spending money to sway elections—is one option. Lobbying is another. This Article identifies and explores a third possibility: quasi campaign finance, or spending money on nonelectoral communications with voters that nevertheless rely on an electoral mechanism to be effective. Little is currently known about quasi campaign finance because no law requires its disclosure. But its use by America’s richest and politically savviest individuals—the Koch brothers, Michael Bloomberg, and the like—appears to be rising. It also seems to skew policy outcomes in the …

Journal Staff

Duke Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Keeping Secrets: The Unsettled Law Of Judge-Made Exceptions To Grand Jury Secrecy, H. Brent Mcknight Jr.

Duke Law Journal

Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e) functionally binds everyone who is present during grand jury proceedings (except witnesses) to secrecy. But questions arise when courts are asked to make exceptions to grand jury secrecy outside those enumerated in the rule, such as exceptions for Congress or for the release of historically significant grand jury records.

This Note examines the propriety of judge-made exceptions to grand jury secrecy. Contrary to some courts authorizing disclosure outside of Rule 6(e), this Note argues that the text and development of Rule 6(e), along with limitations on courts’ inherent authority over grand jury procedure, caution …

Reconstructing Racially Polarized Voting, Travis Crum

Duke Law Journal

Racially polarized voting makes minorities more vulnerable to discriminatory changes in election laws and therefore implicates nearly every voting rights doctrine. In Thornburg v. Gingles , the Supreme Court held that racially polarized voting is a necessary—but not a sufficient—condition for a vote dilution claim under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The Court, however, has recently questioned the propriety of recognizing the existence of racially polarized voting. This colorblind approach threatens not only the Gingles factors but also Section 2’s constitutionality.

The Court treats racially polarized voting as a modern phenomenon. But the relevant starting point is the …

Furthering Decolonization: Judicial Review Of Colonial Criminal Law, Maryam Kanna

Duke Law Journal

Most of the world today was once colonized by a European power. Great Britain was one of the most prolific colonizers, with more than 412 million people under its rule at its height. As part of its colonial enterprise, Great Britain transplanted criminal laws into its colonies and territories, to varying degrees. Across many former Commonwealth colonies, the criminal codes implemented by the British were similar or even identical. Today, these colonial criminal codes remain largely intact in many former colonies. Some of these colonial criminal laws are notoriously used by modern postcolonial governments to infringe human rights and restrict …

Journal Staff

Duke Law Journal

No abstract provided.

In Search Of Prerogative, Ilan Wurman

Duke Law Journal

The standard formalist account of Article II’s Executive Vesting Clause is that “the executive power” refers to all the powers and authorities possessed by the executive magistrate in Great Britain prior to the Constitution’s adoption, subject to the assignment of such powers and authorities to the other departments of the national government. In recent papers, a handful of scholars have challenged this “residual vesting thesis” by amassing evidence that “the executive power” textually referred only to the power to carry law into execution and not to the bundle of other royal prerogatives—for example over foreign affairs and national security—enjoyed by …

The Gorsuch Test: Gundy V. United States, Limiting The Administrative State, And The Future Of Nondelegation, Johnathan Hal

Duke Law Journal

The future of nondelegation is uncertain. Long considered an “axiom in constitutional law,” the nondelegation principle has almost never been seriously enforced—from the founding of the country to present day. After the Supreme Court’s decision in Gundy v. United States, that truism may soon change.

For much of its recent history, the Court has approached nondelegation challenges using the “intelligible principle” test. Now, for the first time in many years, five Justices have indicated a willingness to revisit that test. In his dissenting opinion in Gundy, Justice Gorsuch proposed a new test—the “Gorsuch test”—for adjudicating nondelegation disputes. He averred …

The Executive’S Privilege, Jonathan David Shaub

Duke Law Journal

Both the executive branch and Congress claim the final word in oversight disputes. Congress asserts its subpoenas are legally binding. The executive branch claims the final authority to assert executive privilege and, accordingly, to refuse to comply with a subpoena without consequence. These divergent views stem in large part from the relative absence of any judicial precedent, including not a single Supreme Court decision on the privilege in the context of congressional oversight. In that vacuum—unconstrained by precedent—the executive branch has developed a comprehensive theory of executive privilege to support and implement prophylactic doctrines that render Congress largely powerless in …

Preclusion Of Exclusion: How Many Bites Does Dhs Get At The Deportation Apple?, Christine M. Mullen

Duke Law Journal

The common law doctrine of res judicata prevents parties from relitigating claims that were, or could have been, litigated in a previous proceeding. In the background of all civil law, the doctrine has been regularly applied to executive agency adjudications. However, recent developments have highlighted a circuit split and tension between the branches of government, as different adjudicative bodies have come to differing conclusions on whether, and to what extent, res judicata applies in removal proceedings.

This Note argues that res judicata should apply broadly and uniformly in removal proceedings, limiting the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) to only one …

The Symposium At Fifty, Randolph May

Duke Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Reckoning With Adjudication’S Exceptionalism Norm, Emily S. Bremer

Duke Law Journal

Unlike rulemaking and judicial review, administrative adjudication is governed by a norm of exceptionalism. Agencies rarely adjudicate according to the Administrative Procedure Act’s formal adjudication provisions, and the statute has little role in defining informal adjudication or specifying its minimum procedural requirements. Due process has almost nothing to say about the matter. The result is that there are few uniform, cross-cutting procedural requirements in adjudication, and most hearings are conducted using procedures tailored for individual agencies or programs. This Article explores the benefits and costs of adjudication’s exceptionalism norm, an analysis that implicates the familiar tension between uniformity and specialization …

Regulating Impartiality In Agency Adjudication, Kent Barnett

Duke Law Journal

Which should prevail—the Take Care Clause of Article II or the Due Process Clause? To Justice Breyer’s chagrin, the majorities in Lucia v. SEC and Free Enterprise Fund v. PCAOB expressly declined to resolve whether the U.S. Constitution condones SEC administrative law judges’ and other similarly situated agency adjudicators’ current statutory protection from at-will removal. The crux of the problem is that, on one hand, senior officials may use at-will removal to pressure agency adjudicators and thereby potentially imperil the impartiality that due process requires. On the other hand, Article II limits Congress’s ability to cocoon executive officers, including potentially …

Charting The New Landscape Of Administrative Adjudication, Christopher J. Walker

Duke Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Are There As Many Trademark Offices As Trademark Examiners?, Michael D. Frakes, Melissa F. Wasserman

Duke Law Journal

Federal trademark-registration rights have grown in import, and trademark owners have taken notice. In the fiscal year of 2018, over 660,000 federal trademark registration applications were filed with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (“Trademark Office”), representing a 60 percent increase from a decade prior. Yet despite the fact that there is growing concern that the Trademark Office is routinely issuing inconsistent trademark determinations, systematic empirical studies of the administrative process of obtaining federal registration rights are virtually nonexistent. This Article begins to close this gap by conducting the first large-scale study of trademark officials, known as trademark-examining attorneys, who …

Journal Staff

Duke Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Presidential Ideology And Immigrant Detention, Catherine Y. Kim, Amy Semet

Duke Law Journal

In our nation’s immigration system, a noncitizen charged with deportability may be detained pending the outcome of removal proceedings. These individuals are housed in remote facilities closely resembling prisons, with severe restrictions on access to counsel and contact with family members. Due to severe backlogs in the adjudication of removal proceedings, such detention may last months or even years.

Many of the noncitizens initially detained by enforcement officials have the opportunity to request a bond hearing before an administrative adjudicator called an immigration judge (“IJ”). Although these IJs preside over relatively formal, on-the-record hearings and are understood to exercise “independent …

Fees, Fines, Bail, And The Destitution Pipeline, Brandon L. Garrett, Sara S. Greene, Marin K. Levy

Duke Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Detention By Any Other Name, Sandra G. Mayson

Duke Law Journal

An unaffordable bail requirement has precisely the same effect as an order of pretrial detention: the accused person is jailed pending trial. It follows as a logical matter that an order requiring an unaffordable bail bond as a condition of release should be subject to the same substantive and procedural protections as an order denying bail altogether. Yet this has not been the practice.

This Article lays out the logical and legal case for the proposition that an order that functionally imposes detention must be treated as an order of detention. It addresses counterarguments and complexities, including both empirical and …

Journal Staff

Duke Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Driven To Failure: An Empirical Analysis Of Driver’S License Suspension In North Carolina, William E. Crozier, Brandon L. Garrett

Duke Law Journal

A person’s interest in a driver’s license is “substantial,” and as the U.S. Supreme Court has observed, the suspension of a license by the state can result in “inconvenience and economic hardship suffered,” including because a license may be “essential in the pursuit of a livelihood.” However, forty-four U.S. states currently require indefinite suspension of driver’s licenses for non-driving-related reasons, such as failure to appear in court or pay fines for traffic infractions. There are no systematic, peer-reviewed analyses of individual-level or county-level data regarding such suspensions. This study describes North Carolina’s population of suspended drivers and assesses how driver’s …

Toward A Demosprudence Of Poverty, Monica Bell, Stephanie Garlock, Alexander Nabavi-Noori

Duke Law Journal

This Article describes the rift between a due-process-focused jurisprudence on legal–financial obligations—the centerpiece of the current fight against criminalization of poverty—and the substantive and structural problems of poverty criminalization. It argues that judges can help address this disconnect while still operating within the scope of their authority by engaging in a demosprudence of poverty—“a democracy-enhancing jurisprudence” that actively seeks to learn from poor people themselves and movements for economic justice. This Article builds from demosprudential theory to offer guidance for judges in their reason-giving, rulemaking, and courtroom management practices.

Beyond Graduation: Economic Sanctions And Structural Reform, Beth A. Colgan

Duke Law Journal

In recent years, increased attention is being paid to the dangers of imposing economic sanctions in felony, misdemeanor, juvenile, municipal, and traffic courts because the imposition of unmanageable fines, fees, surcharges, restitution, and forfeitures can be financially devastating for people and their families. One reform that has gained traction is the graduation of economic sanctions to account for their financial effect. To date, considerations of the efficacy of graduated sanctions focus on the individual benefits that would accrue from a properly designed graduation mechanism. In other words, the value of graduation is measured by comparing it to the serious negative …

Retroactive Diplomatic Immunity, Anna Raphael

Duke Law Journal

When German tennis star Boris Becker attempted to become a diplomat of the Central African Republic in 2018 to avoid bankruptcy proceedings in the United Kingdom, much of the world ridiculed his efforts. But his actions begged a genuine question: Can an individual become a diplomat so that his or her past actions are immunized from prosecution or suit, even after the actions have occurred or court proceedings have been instituted? In the United States, the answer appears to be yes. On at least two occasions, federal courts have allowed such retroactive applications of diplomatic immunity in cases involving allegations …

“Souls Aren’T Saved Just In Church Buildings”: Defining “Religious Exercise” Under The Religious Land Use And Institutionalized Persons Act, Taylor Luckey Brennan

Duke Law Journal

Throughout its First Amendment jurisprudence, the Supreme Court has acknowledged the difficulty inherent in determining the scope of the multivalent term “religion.” The Court has repeatedly struggled to articulate workable definitions of religion, religious belief, and religious exercise. And the struggle is ongoing. The Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (“RLUIPA”) protects “religious exercise” in the land-use context. If a claimant can prove that its religious exercise is substantially burdened by a land ordinance or zoning regulation, it may receive an exemption.

Although RLUIPA offers a definition of “religious exercise,” it remains unclear just what types of land uses …