Law Commons^™

Compensating Victims Of Police Violence, Valena Beety

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Victims of police violence suffer physical trauma and their families suffer mental trauma “born from the violation of a certain social trust.” Their losses are also financial, including medical expenses and mental health treatment, as well as lost income. While scholars and citizens have advocated for accountability and justice, this is the first essay to advocate for the simple act of victims’ compensation for victims of police violence.

To be considered for compensation, victims must first prove that they cooperated with law enforcement and were “innocent” of wrongdoing. Yet, victims of police violence are inordinately and openly blamed for their …

Forensic Evidence In Arizona: Reforms For Victims And Defendants, Valena Beety

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Arizona is nationally recognized as a leader in forensic science. Our state court judges serve on the Legal Resource Committee for the National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) and provide guidance to NIST’s Organization of Scientific Area Committees for Forensic Science. Our Phoenix lab analysts and lab directors have national reputations. And Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law has been home to many leading academics in the field of forensics and the law, among them Michael Saks, David Kaye, and Jay Koehler. We have a robust forensic science community in Arizona and in Phoenix in particular. …

Second Thoughts On Fda's Covid-Era Mental Health App Policy, Michael Mattioli

Articles by Maurer Faculty

As the coronavirus pandemic swept across the globe in April 2020, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) made an unusual decision. The agency announced that it would relax its enforcement of compliance rules for “digital therapeutics”—smartphone apps designed to address mental health disorders. The measure was a response to widely reported upticks in symptoms of anxiety, depression, and substance abuse brought on by the pandemic. As an added benefit, the agency explained, digital therapeutics could promote social distancing by removing patients’ need to visit health care providers.

This essay explores the possible lasting effects of the FDA’s temporary suspension …

Contracts On The Seabed, Christiana Ochoa

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Four million square kilometers of seabed within the sovereignty of Pacific Island nations are currently under contract for mineral exploration or exploitation. Over a million additional square kilometers of the non-sovereign seafloor are licensed for such use. Historically, these licenses have served to establish “squatters’ rights” in anticipation of a distant future when the industry would develop the machinery to exploit oceanic mineral wealth. That moment has arrived, with the first seafloor mining machines rolling off production lines in 2015-2016. Indeed, but for failed financing, the first seabed mine would now be operating in the territorial ocean waters of Papua …

Developments In The Laws Affecting Electronic Payments And Financial Services, Sarah Jane Hughes, Steve Middlebrook, Tom Kierner

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This survey year offered developments too numerous to cover, as often is the case. We debated which developments to include and decided to showcase different types of products and services, different providers, and different regulators. Part II views issues related to stimulus payments arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. Part III reports on litigation over whether retailers must offer gift cards printed in Braille. Part IV looks at recent actions of the Federal Trade Commission ("FTC") related to payment processors and others. Part V describes amendments to the "remittance" regulation promulgated by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ("CFPB"). Part VI focuses …

La Privatización, La Desregulación Y El Interés Público: Un Análisis Comparado, Alfred C. Aman

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This Spanish-language paper analyzes the structural elements of Administrative Law in the United States of America, such as deregulation and privatization, which define the particular relationship between State and Society in that country. The analysis focuses on the limits to privatization in some sectors (prisons, water, health care) using a comparative approach with Spain. From a critical position with the marketization and hegemony of economics, alternatives are proposed for a reform of the Administrative Law that allows a more democratic and inclusive functioning of the governmental institutions.

Why A Federal Wealth Tax Is Constitutional, Ari Glogower, David Gamage, Kitty Richards

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The 2020 Democratic presidential primaries brought national attention to a new direction for the tax system: a federal wealth tax for the wealthiest taxpayers. During their campaigns, Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) both introduced proposals to tax the wealth of multimillionaires and billionaires, and to use the revenue for public investments, including in health care and education. These reforms generated broad public support—even among many Republicans—and broadened the conversation over the future of progressive tax reform.

A well-designed, high-end wealth tax can level the playing field in an unequal society and promote shared economic prosperity.

Critics have …

Fintech's Role In Exacerbating Or Reducing The Wealth Gap, Pamela Foohey, Nathalie Martin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Research shows that Black, Latinx, and other minorities pay more for credit and banking services, and that wealth accumulation differs starkly between their households and white households. The link between debt in-equality and the wealth gap, however, remains less thoroughly explored, particularly in light of new credit products and debt-like banking services, such as early wage access and other fintech innovations. These innovations both hold the promise of reducing racial and ethnic disparities in lending and bring concerns that they may be exploited in ways that perpetuate inequality. They also come at a time when policy makers are considering how …

The Fraud Triangle And Tax Evasion, Leandra Lederman

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The “fraud triangle”—a theory of why people commit fraud —is the preeminent framework for analyzing fraud in the accounting literature. It developed out of studies of fraudsters, including inmates convicted of embezzlement. The three components of the fraud triangle are (1) an incentive or pressure (usually financial); (2) opportunity; and (3) rationalization.

There is a separate, extensive legal literature on tax compliance and evasion. The fraud triangle is largely absent from this legal literature, although tax evasion is a type of fraud. This Article rectifies that oversight, analyzing how using the fraud triangle as a lens can inform the legal …

When Critical Race Theory Enters The Law & Technology Frame, Jessica M. Eaglin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Jessica Eaglin intertwines the social construction of race, law and technology. This piece highlights how the approach to use technology as precise tools for criminal administration or objective solutions to societal issues often fails to consider how laws and technologies are created in our racialized society. If we do not consider how race and technology are co-productive, we will fail to reach substantive justice and instead reinforce existing racial hierarchies legitimated by laws.

Equalizing Parental Leave, Deborah A. Widiss

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The United States is the only developed country that fails to guarantee paid time off work to new parents. As a result, many new parents, particularly low-wage workers, are forced to go back to work within days or weeks of a birth or adoption. In recent years, a growing number of states have passed laws to address this gap in American labor policy, and in December 2019, Congress enacted legislation providing paid parental leave for most federal workers. This Article offers the first detailed analysis of these new laws, and it exposes how their structure—probably unintentionally—disadvantages sole-parent families.

In America, …

Lawyers For The Undocumented: Addressing A Split Circuit Dilemma For Asylum-Seekers, Jayanth K. Krishnan

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The immigration crisis at the border, since 2016, has seen children separated from parents, the detention of noncitizens increase, and record-breaking numbers of applicants denied entry into the United States. For individuals fleeing their home countries because of persecution, the hardship has been particularly severe. To start, the chances of gaining asylum have dwindled significantly. For those who are successful, a subsequent and crucial question is whether the lawyers who represent them can recoup their legal fees from the government.

Since 1980, a federal statute known as the Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA) has allowed for a “prevailing party” …

Bursting The Auto Loan Bubble In The Wake Of Covid-19, Pamela Foohey

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, auto loans outstanding in the United States had soared to record highs. The boom in lending spanned new and used cars and traditional and subprime loans. With loan delinquencies also hitting new highs almost every quarter, predictions that the auto lending market could burst soon abounded. When the economy came to a grinding halt and unemployment skyrocketed in the wake of the pandemic, auto lenders knew they were facing a crisis. Throughout 2020, auto lenders granted more payment forbearances to consumers, while slashing interest rates on new loans. Auto manufacturers similarly made promises to buyers, such …

Judicial Power—Immigration-Style, Jayanth K. Krishnan

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Throughout this current global pandemic, but of course, even before, former President Trump advocated enacting restrictive immigration measures. Under his tenure, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) assumed enhanced judicial authority and issued decisions that often adversely affected noncitizens. However, in June 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down one of the DHS's most well-known initiatives, which sought to end the 'DACA' program. The Court held that the agency could not do so arbitrarily and had to comply with the requirements set forth in the Administrative Procedure Act.

Yet, there have been other areas where the DHS, particularly through its …

The Biopolitics Of Maskless Police, India Thusi

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Despite the recent movement against police violence, police officers have been endangering their communities by engaging in a new form of violence— policing while refusing to wear facial coverings to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Many states advise people to wear masks and to socially distance when in public spaces. However, police officers have frequently failed to comply with these guidelines as they interact with the public to enforce these COVID-19 laws. Police enforcement of COVID-19 laws is problematic for two reasons: (1) it provides a method for pathologizing marginalized communities as biological threats; (2) it creates a racialized pathway …

Nature's Rights, Christiana Ochoa

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Do forests and rivers possess standing to sue? Do mountain ranges have substantive rights? A recent issue of The Judges’ Journal, a preeminent publication for American judges, alerts the bench, bar, and policymakers to the rapidly emerging “rights of nature,” predicting that state and federal courts will increasingly see claims asserting such rights. Within the United States, Tribal law has begun to legally recognize the rights of rivers, mountains, and other natural features. Several municipalities across the United States have also acted to recognize the rights of nature. United States courts have not yet addressed the issue, though in 2017, …

Insuring Evolving Technology, Asaf Lubin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The study of the interaction between law and technology is more critical today than ever before. Advancements in artificial intelligence, information communications, biological and chemical engineering, and space-faring technologies, to name but a few examples, are forcing us to reexamine our traditional understanding of basic concepts in torts and insurance law.

Yet, few insurance professionals and scholars will identify themselves as working in the field of “law-and-technology.” For many of them, technology is “just a fact about the world like any other,” as Ryan Calo once put it, not one that always merits “special care.”

This short paper is an …

Toward A Law And Politics Of Racial Solidarity, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer, Guy-Uriel Charles

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The killings of George Floyd, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and others have occurred under different factual circumstances, in different states, at the hands of both state and private actors, and have engendered different levels of outrage on the basis of their perceived egregiousness. Collectively and cumulatively, they have forced Americans to, once again, wrestle with the visible manifestation of racism and structural inequality. This confrontation is not simply a function of the inability to avert one’s eyes when faced with incontrovertible evidence of evident inhumanity and abject degradation, though it is in part that. After all, how to justify the …

Narrowing Access To The Legal Profession: The Pandemic's Impact On First-Generation Women, Victor D. Quintanilla, Erin Freiburger

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.