Law Commons^™

Irs Breaks With Tax Court On Deduction Limits, Kimberly Stanley

Publications

The deduction of home mortgage interest is one of the most valuable and hotly debated benefits provided in the tax code to individuals. Since 1987, the code has restricted the interest deduction based on the amount of home mortgage debt the taxpayer has incurred, and the reasons for the debt. In a recent ruling, however, the Internal Revenue Service announced it would not follow a court ruling that limited the amount of deductible home mortgage interest — noteworthy because this time the IRS ruled in the taxpayer's favor.

The Pros And Cons Of Gene Patents, Chester S. Chuang, Denys T. Lau

Publications

The debate over human gene patents was recently reignited by New York federal Judge Robert Sweet, when he found isolated human gene sequences unpatentable in Association for Molecular Pathology v. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office , 702 F.Supp.2d 181 (S.D.N.Y. 2010). An appeal of the decision is pending, and in October, the U.S. Department of Justice filed an amicus curiae brief in the case arguing that such gene sequences should not be patentable, contradicting long-standing practices of the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Given the potent impact of a possible gene patent ban on gene-based medical therapies and the …

The Pedagogical Gps Of Advocacy Teaching, Wes R. Porter

Publications

Wes Porter, a professor at Golden Gate University School of law, was inspired by Judge Tina Habas's recent View from the Bench: The Missing Link blog post. His thoughtful and responsive post follows.

The Great Rent Control War, Myron Moskovitz

Publications

No abstract provided.

Revenue And Taxation Legislative Summary - 2010, Assembly Committee On Revenue And Taxation

California Assembly

No abstract provided.

Extended Producer Responsibility (Epr): An Alternative Solution To Regulate The International Electronic Waste Trade, Tiptira Rammaniya

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the problems associated with the transboundary movement of electronic waste (e-waste), a term that refers to end-of-life or discarded electrical and electronic equipment. These problems occur mostly in developing countries where proper facilities and technology for environmentally sound management of e-waste are not sufficiently available. The Basel Convention on the Control of the Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal is the only existing international treaty governing the electronic waste trade. However, the Basel Convention, which employs the Prior Informed Consent (PIC) procedure as a control system, exempts electronic assemblies destined for direct reuse, repair, refurbishment, …

Assured Water Supply Laws In The Sustainability Context, Lincoln L. Davies

Golden Gate University Environmental Law Journal

By juxtaposing five western states’ existing assured supply laws, this Article provides a preliminary assessment of whether, and how, assured supply laws can best promote sustainability—and, by extension, make at least one area of environmental law more like sustainability law. The Article reaches three principal conclusions. First, it finds that, as they appear to, assured supply laws in fact promote sustainability. Second, the extent to which assured supply laws likely promote sustainability greatly varies by state, because these laws’ policy designs also depend on the state of enactment. Finally, additional work is needed to provide a more concrete assessment of …

Optimizing Land Use And Water Supply Planning: A Path To Sustainability?, Randele Kanouse, Douglas Wallace

Golden Gate University Environmental Law Journal

The rise of the environmental movement and the growing public embrace of ecological values roughly coincided with the end of the dambuilding era. By the 1970s, most of the good sites for dams had already been taken, and those that remained, such as California’s North Coast rivers, were increasingly valued as natural and recreational resources that should be permanently protected. At the same time, California’s population continued to swell, from under 20 million in 1970 to nearly 38 million today. How did these trends affect water supply development in California? Among other impacts, the average time a major water supply …

Alice In Groundwater Land: Water Supply Assessments And Subsurface Water Supplies, Kevin M. O'Brien

Golden Gate University Environmental Law Journal

The purpose of this Article is to explore the preparation of Water Supply Assessments in the context of subsurface water supplies. The term “subsurface water supplies” is used here rather than “groundwater” because, as discussed below, the proponent of a development project may propose to utilize a subsurface water supply (such as water produced from beneath the surface of land via a well or a flowing spring) that is not properly classified as groundwater because it falls within the legal definition of subterranean stream flow. In such a case, the supply would be subject to the water rights permitting jurisdiction …

Friant Dam Holding Contracts: Not An Entitlement To Water Supply Under Sb 610, Barry Epstein

Golden Gate University Environmental Law Journal

Nearly ten years ago, California’s Legislature enacted Senate Bill (SB) 610, a new law requiring that any proposed large development project receiving local land use approvals be supported by a Water Supply Assessment demonstrating available water supply to meet the project’s 20-year forecast water demand. While some, perhaps most, proposed large development projects are within the service territory of large, public or private municipal water purveyors whose entitlement to the water they deliver is well-established (though not necessarily adequate or secure), developments outside the service territory of such water purveyors can require more scrutiny of the underlying water rights entitlement …

Show Me The Water Plan: Urban Water Management Plans And California’S Water Supply Adequacy Laws, Ellen Hanak

Golden Gate University Environmental Law Journal

This Article reviews the effectiveness of California’s strategy of using enabling legislation and passive enforcement to encourage more integrated local water and land use planning. To shed light on the effectiveness of the current policy framework, the Article begins with a critical overview of the Urban Water Management Planning process, drawing on a detailed analysis of plans submitted in the early 2000s. It then evaluates how water supply assessments are proceeding, with a particular emphasis on steps used to identify adequacy, drawing on telephone surveys of land use authorities and water utilities conducted by the author in 2004 and 2009. …

The Relationship Between Water Supply And Land Use Planning: Leading Cases Under The California Environmental Quality Act, James G. Moose

Golden Gate University Environmental Law Journal

This Article will survey and analyze this 2007 California Supreme Court decision and the key appellate court cases leading up to and following it, all of which address the relationship between land use planning and water supply planning under CEQA. The Article will also address a subsequent California Supreme Court decision addressing the adequacy of the EIR for one of the most significant water supply programs in recent decades, the so-called CALFED Record of Decision, which reflected, as of the year 2000, a long-term strategy for addressing ecological problems occurring in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta while increasing the reliability …

Conservation Of What?: An Introduction To The Issue, Paul Stanton Kibel, Anthony A. Austin

Golden Gate University Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

How California Local Governments Became Both Water Suppliers And Planners, A. Dan Tarlock

Golden Gate University Environmental Law Journal

The paradox of California is that growth is concentrated in arid southern California but most of the state’s water supply, with the exception of the Colorado and Owens Rivers, originates in the north. This has meant that the state has had to bring massive amounts of water to the south to support the state’s celebrated continued population growth in order to compensate for California’s “bad hydrology.”1 From 1940 to 2007, California’s population increased from 6,950,000 to 37,786,000, and that growth has stressed the state’s capacity to meet the demand for water. Predicting the future is impossible, but the most conservative …

9th Annual Conference On Recent Developments In Intellectual Property Law & Policy, Marc Greenberg, William T. Gallagher, Chester S. Chuang

Intellectual Property Law

Conference agenda and booklet.

Selected Problems In The Administration Of Criminal Justice, Alvin H. Goldstein Jr.

Cal Law Trends and Developments

What follows is an effort to focus attention on certain problem areas in the day-to-day administration of justice. They are problems not so much because of their complexity, but rather because uncertainty persists despite considerable discussion of the rules governing each area. I have selected preliminary hearings, bail, appointment of counsel, sua sponte judicial dismissals, and reasonable doubt as appropriate topics for this chapter. There are, of course, numerous others entitled to treatment, but each of those selected relates to a subject over which the trial judge may exercise an extremely broad discretion. The exercise of this discretion may alter …

Welfare Law In California, Peter E. Sitkin

Cal Law Trends and Developments

In California, over 1,500,000 people are dependent on public assistance for all or part of their means of subsistence. To provide aid to these individuals, a large and complex bureaucracy has developed over the years that expends more than a billion dollars a year, and is governed by an evergrowing set of federal, state, and local rules and regulations. Notwithstanding the size of the bureaucracy and the complexity of the laws governing the system, until recently there had been few instances of judicial review of welfare practices or laws. With a few exceptions,4 the court decisions relating to welfare prior …

Juvenile Law, Kenneth Hecht

Cal Law Trends and Developments

Review of the 1969 decisions in juvenile law reveals that the courts in California, as elsewhere, have been traumatized by the recent transplant of constitutional due process into the formerly barren soil of the juvenile code. For sixty years, children in most American jurisdictions were hidden from constitutional view. The fiction persisted that they were not tried but treated. If a child carne to the attention of the juvenile court, he did so because his parents had failed to fulfill their function. The court succeeded to their role and, in the name of parens patriae, exercised only the power it …

Labor Relations, Joseph R. Grodin

Cal Law Trends and Developments

While primary responsibility for regulating labor relations affecting interstate commerce lies with the National Labor Relations Board, there are a number of significant areas in which state courts may exercise jurisdiction; during 1969, California courts had opportunity to determine a variety of issues raising fundamental conflicts of position: The State Supreme Court was called on to decide a case of classic tension between constitutional rights of free speech and private property and the Courts of Appeal passed on the issue of employees' basic right to organize, a claim of duress by an employer who contended he was "forced" to sign …

Contracts, Claude D. Rowher

Cal Law Trends and Developments

Recent decisions have brought about a number of changes in the area of contract interpretation. Although the general trends seem clear and commendable, the details are often obscure and bothersome.

Insurance, Robert A. Seligson

Cal Law Trends and Developments

No abstract provided.

Commercial Transactions And Consumer Protection, James R. Mccall

Cal Law Trends and Developments

Because the preceding edition of this publication did not contain an article on trends in commercial transactions or consumer protection in California, this article will discuss selected decisions and developments in those fields during the years 1968 and 1969. The principal focus of this article will be the significant decisions made during this period that interpret or relate to the principal statutes in the two fields: the California Commercial Code, the Rees-Levering Automobile Sales Finance Act, and the Unruh Retail Installment Sales Act. These legislative enactments establish a comprehensive statutory pattern for regulation of all aspects of commercial law in …

Real Property, Roger Bernhardt

Cal Law Trends and Developments

"Real property" as a topic exists only in a law professor's mind. Practicing attorneys may specialize in representing title companies or developers or brokers or any of the other entrepreneurs who make their living in one way or another from real estate, but none of these lawyers would claim that his proper field of expertise is real estate per se. Consequently, any article on developments in the field of real property law really becomes a series of separate articles on developments in some real estate specialties, rather than a cohesive whole. I have tried, here, to cover the three specialties …

Secured Transactions - Real Property, Marshall Cornblum

Cal Law Trends and Developments

As in most fields of the law, the law pertaining to real property security transactions is continually evolving. That evolving process is highlighted by the current trend of the California Supreme Court allowing the parties, at the inception of their transaction, to freely elect the true nature of the transaction and thereafter be bound by that election. At the inception of a security transaction, the true nature of that transaction is limited only by the imagination and relative bargaining positions of the parties. In determining this true nature, the court will look to substance rather than form. Once the true …

Trusts And Estates, James D. Hill

Cal Law Trends and Developments

The most significant development in 1969 in the area of trusts and estates was the codification of the law regarding powers of appointment. Other legislation subjects irrevocable inter vivos trusts to the jurisdiction of the Superior Court. In the area of judicial developments, there were two cases of first impression. Estate of Pernas, dealt with the allocation as to principal or income of gains distributed from mutual funds. The other, Estate of Phillips, concerned the admission to probate of a will executed by a Californian who had been adjudicated an incompetent in Illinois prior to his coming to California.

Torts, Frederick J. Moreau

Cal Law Trends and Developments

No abstract provided.

Administrative Law, Wiley W. Manuel

Cal Law Trends and Developments

The year 1969 produced little in the way of legislation affecting administrative law, and the cases reviewing administrative action noted here are not necessarily included because they indicate anything new, but because they indicate someone did not understand what is old. The decisions of the Department of Motor Vehicles, in particular, have been the subject of most of the litigation during the past year. These cases present most clearly the struggle of the courts to evolve some unifying principles in the application of the law to the driver who drinks. Not all the cases are in harmony, but trends seem …

Community Property And Family Law: The Family Law Act Of 1969, Aidan R. Gough

Cal Law Trends and Developments

The year 1969 marked the decade's principal accomplishment in family law, the passage of the Family Law Act. The last several years have seen a sharply rising discontent with our traditional procedures for handling the dissolution of marriages, and numerous reform proposals have been advanced both in this country and abroad.

The Family Law Act brings some of these proposals to fruition; it marks the first legislative eradication of marital fault as the governing principle of divorce in any American jurisdiction. Because the passage of the new law virtually eclipses the past year's decisional developments in family law and community …

Workmen's Compensation, Jack E. Goshkin

Cal Law Trends and Developments

The reviewing Courts in 1969, enjoyed an open season in reviewing Workmen's Compensation Appeals Board factual determinations, much in the manner reported in last year's article. The comments made by the legislature (and some members of the State Supreme Court) on the courts' hunting without a license have been to no avail.

The legislature, for all practical purposes, was inactive in the field of workmen's compensation. There were important developments in case law, but some of the cases that may well work important changes in the field of workmen's compensation law are presently in various stages of appeal.

Constitutional Law, James E. Leahy

Cal Law Trends and Developments

This was a year in which the reviewing courts in California were confronted with contemporary problems of constitutional law.