Law Commons^™

The Failure Of Anti-Money Laundering Regulation: Where Is The Cost-Benefit Analysis?, Lanier Saperstein, Geoffrey Sant, Michelle Ng

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection

Regulators have been punishing the banks not because of any actual money laundering, but rather because the banks did not meet the regulators’ own subjective vision of the ideal anti–money laundering or counter–terrorist financing program. However, no one has attempted to show that the supposedly ideal vision of an anti–money laundering or counter–terrorist financing program would actually be more effective than the programs the banks have in place.

Even if the regulators’ ideal vision of an anti–money laundering and counter–terrorist financing program would in fact be more effective than what exists now, it is unclear if the benefits of such …

A Matter Of Trial And Error, Or Betting On Appeals, Radek Goral

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection

Sampling from the actual portfolio of a leading third-party litigation financier, this Essay demonstrates that making systematic bets on pending appeals is a viable business model applicable to a wide range of cases. “Appellate investments” may include both consumer and commercial cases, including also public-interest actions where prevailing plaintiffs are permitted attorney’s fees—even if they themselves do not seek monetary relief. Additionally, the analyzed sample indicates that appellate funders buy both from plaintiffs and plaintiffs’ attorneys, often in the same case.

The overview of the business strategy of appellate financing contributes to a larger theme: the role and impact of …

A Critique Of Hobby Lobby And The Supreme Court's Hands-Off Approach To Religion, Samuel J. Levine

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection

Part I of this Essay provides a brief overview for analyzing the Supreme Court’s hands-off approach to religious doctrine. Specifically, this Part presents a summary of problems posed by the hands-off approach, followed by a brief taxonomy of different forms of judicial inquiry into religion. This Part aims to clarify which forms of inquiry are permissible—and typically necessary—for adjudication of a case involving a religious claim, and which forms of inquiry are precluded under the hands-off doctrine. Part II of this Essay applies the hands-off framework to the Hobby Lobby decision, considering the taxonomy of forms of judicial inquiry into …

Confusing Clarity: The Pregnancy Discrimination Act After Young V. Ups, Inc., Jessica M. Bretl

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection

On March 25, 2015, the Supreme Court issued an opinion in Young v. UPS, Inc.—the most recent case in the Court’s pregnancy discrimination jurisprudence. Young focused on an interpretation of one clause of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) and how that interpretation would shape claims of employment discrimination by pregnant employees seeking work accommodations. This Comment argues that the majority opinion in Young did not clarify, but only muddied the waters: the Young framework presents challenges for the lower courts tasked with applying the framework and creates uncertainty for future pregnancy discrimination litigation.

Part I of this Comment provides …

Diverse Mandates Regarding The Esop Diversification Requirement Following Fifth Third Bancorp V. Dudenhoeffer, Thomas V. Bohac Jr.

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection

In Dudenhoeffer, the Court focused on the Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) as a retirement benefit plan. However, this is only one function of ESOPs. Viewed in terms of both the original intent of Congress and contemporary corporate finance, the ESOPs are designed to meet several goals, including the alignment of employee and employer interests to facilitate a wider base of capital ownership including the average employee. As the Court has lost sight of these fundamental goals, it has drifted into the fallacy of interpreting ESOPs principally as employee retirement accounts. This has led the Court to apply ERISA fiduciary …

Testing The Geographical Proximity Hypothesis: An Empirical Study Of Citations To Nonbinding Precedents By Indiana Appellate Courts, Kevin Bennardo

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection

This Article analyzes the citation patterns of the Indiana Supreme Court and the Indiana Court of Appeals from 2012 and 2013. The research underlying this Article involved a study of 1324 opinions from that time period. In those opinions, the Indiana appellate courts cited to out-of-state judicial decisions 738 times. This Article analyzes those citations to test the hypothesis that state courts are more likely to turn to decisions of geographically proximate state courts for guidance when homespun precedent is lacking. The evidence points to the conclusion that, while geographical proximity bears on persuasiveness, it does not cross regional divides. …

Getting To Group Under U.S. Asylum Law, Jillian Blake

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection

In February 2014, the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA or the Board) issued two new precedential decisions, Matter of M-E-V-G- and Matter of W-G-R-, clarifying the legal requirements for PSG asylum. This Essay argues that the BIA’s decisions further confuse this already complex area of law and the standards established in the decisions exclude particular social groups already recognized under U.S. law. The complications and contradictions in these and other BIA decisions carry the risk of excluding valid claims to PSG protection and rely upon criteria that cannot be applied consistently. Because the new BIA PSG standards are unworkable, …

#Academicfreedom: Twitter And First Amendment Rights For Professors, Michael H. Leroy

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection

This Essay asks: is every tweet from a professor protected as a form of academic freedom by the First Amendment? Professor Salaita’s watershed case poses sharply conflicting positions on academic freedom for faculty members. In support of Professor Salaita, a faculty committee at the University of Illinois asserts: “Regardless of the tweets’ tone and content, they are political speech—part of the robust free play of ideas in the political realm that the [University] Statutes insulate from institutional sanction, even in the case of ideas we may detest.”

To answer my research question, I explore how courts rule on First Amendment …

An App For That: Local Governments And The Rise Of The Sharing Economy, Andrew T. Bond

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection

The revolution of the Internet in the late 1990s brought consumers together in unique and unprecedented ways. The evolution of the sharing economy in the early twenty-first century builds upon the Internet’s revolution by connecting consumers and unused resources in a readily accessible and efficient manner.

At the same time, the sharing economy puts new pressures on local governments in choosing how to respond to this evolution. One method of evaluating local government responses is through a paradigmatic example. In this Essay, that case study is Uber: a novel and unabashedly antagonistic transportation service that offers on-demand taxi access through …

A Hypothetical Engagement: Gatt Article Xx(A) And Indonesia's Fatwa Against Trade In Endangered Species, Lisa M. Meissner

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection

The greatest recognized threat facing biodiversity conservation today is habitat destruction. Other threats include but are not limited to global climate change, encroachment, illegal wildlife trafficking, and overexploitation through intensive agricultural and commercial uses. Although wildlife trafficking is not the main source of biodiversity loss, the pressures generated by the international demand for endangered species and their derivative products adversely affect not only individual species, but also entire ecosystems and rural livelihoods through the removal of flagship species from the environment. In response to the growing threats facing our shared natural world, environmental issues are now being incorporated into multilateral …

The Factual Reality Of Koontz V. St. Johns, Eric Dean Hageman

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection

The Court’s opinion in Koontz has elicited many negative reactions in academia, most of which focus on the expansion of Nollan and Dolan to monetary exactions. Criticisms run the gamut: some scholars argue that the Court was wrong to ignore the environmental impact of land developments, while others suggest the Court gave the same consideration too much credence. These criticisms are likely premature and necessarily speculative, since the Court decided the case less than two years ago.

Scholars have scrutinized this case’s factual and procedural history less closely, and those elements may justify the Court’s holding. Two often-overlooked facts are …

Bond V. United States, Dean M. Nickles

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection

Although the majority’s outcome was correct, the application of the clear statement rule in this situation seems incorrect. The majority misconstrues the statute not to reach Mrs. Bond’s conduct when it should have done so. The concurrences properly assert that despite the conduct here falling within the clear definition of the statute, the Court should have reversed the conviction on constitutional grounds. As a result of this decision, Congress should now plan to make clarifying statements about the scope of the statute in order to avoid the clear statement problem identified here.

Separately, although only dicta, Justice Scalia’s assertion that …