Law Commons^™

Absolute Immunity: A License To Rape Justice At Will, Prentice L. White

Prentice L White

ABSOLUTE IMMUNITY: A LICENSE TO RAPE JUSTICE AT WILL BY PRENTICE L. WHITE We are all acquainted with the phrase the sanctity of marriage. We understand that the vows made by a couple at the wedding ceremony is sacrosanct, and if those vows are not taken seriously, or abused in any way, then the offending spouse will be penalized and evicted from the marital relationship. Likewise, justice should be handled in the same manner and with the same intensity. America prides itself on having the best legal system in the world. It broadcasts to all the surrounding nations that its …

The Senate Filibuster: The Politics Of Destruction, Emmet J. Bondurant

Emmet J Bondurant

The notion that the Framers of the Constitution intended to allow a minority in the U.S. Senate to exercise a veto power over legislation and presidential appointments is not only profoundly undemocratic, it is also a myth. The overwhelming trend of law review articles have assumed that because the Constitution grants to each house the power to make its own rules, the Senate filibuster rule is immune from constitutional attack. This Article takes an opposite position based on the often overlooked history of the filibuster, the text of the Constitution and the relevant court precedents which demonstrate that the constitutionality …

Down The Rabbit Hole: The Madness Of State Film Incentives As As "Solution" To Runaway Production, Adrian H. Mcdonald

Adrian H. McDonald

This working paper is a "sequel" to my first law review article on runaway productions called "Through the Looking Glass": Runaway Productions and "Hollywood Economics," published in The University of Pennsylvania Journal of Labor and Employment Law in August 2007.

Since 2007, there has been a race to the bottom as virtually every state has enacted significant, if not detrimentally generous, tax incentives to lure film and television production. The efficacy of these incentives is evaluated at length, with particular attention paid to the origin and implementation of tax incentives in California, Massachusetts and Louisiana - states with colorful backgrounds …

Ca. Gov't Code §11135: A Challenge To Contemporary State-Funded Discrimination, Danfeng S.V. Koon

Danfeng S.V. Koon

Racially disproportionate outcomes persist in our schools, hospitals, courts, and neighborhoods. While some of these disparities stem from historical inequalities, socio-economic differences, and individual behavior, considerable racial disparities persist, even after holding these factors constant. These disparities are particularly troubling because they are attributable to the unconscious biases embedded in the policies and practices of our public institutions and represent the most pernicious form of contemporary discrimination. This article argues that unlike other disparities, these “super disparities,” can and must be legally redressed. While federal redress for state-funded disparate impacts has been largely foreclosed after Alexander v. Sandoval, California Government …

Can The Federal Reserve Adopt An Inflation Targeting Regime Under The Current Statutory Arrangements?, Hong Kyoon Cho

Hong Kyoon Cho

This paper discussed legal perspectives in institutional framework of central banking, keyed to monetary policy framework. The statutory objectives of monetary policy provide an environment under which the central bank can design its monetary policy framework, in that the choice of the monetary policy framework could lie within the scope of the spirits embodied in the statutory objectives of monetary policy. Monetary policy framework could illuminate legal aspects of debate, as specifically seen in the Federal Reserve’s case that has adopted not an explicit but an implicit monetary policy framework, namely the Just-Do-It approach. Under the current legal mandate, i.e., …

Sexual Reorientation, Elizabeth M. Glazer

Elizabeth M Glazer

Bisexuals have been invisible for at least ten years. Ten years ago, Kenji Yoshino wrote about the “epistemic contract of bisexual erasure,” the tacit agreement between both homosexuals and heterosexuals to erase bisexuals. Though legal scholarship has addressed bisexuality only in rare moments, Yoshino’s epistemic contract of erasure answered Ruth Colker’s earlier call for a “bi jurisprudence” and explained why the “vast and vastly unacknowledged wall between heterosexual and homosexual identities” that Naomi Mezey identified has been so “vigilantly maintained.” While the tenth anniversary of the publication of Yoshino’s article is reason enough to revisit the topic of bisexual erasure, …

Non-Compactness And Voter Exchange; Towards A Constitutional Cure For Gerrymandering, Shlomo Angel

Shlomo Angel

No abstract provided.

Deconstructing The Marginalization Of “Underclass” Students: Disciplinary Alternative Education, I. India Geronimo

I. India Geronimo

Disciplinary alternative education programs have the potential to marginalize students by separating and permanently tracking them out of the mainstream school system into an underclass of the educational community. The students who are funneled into alternative education programs are often those students who are perceived to be undesirable and low-achieving. Marginalizing these students is attractive because it: 1) is an immediate method for relieving school administrator fatigue; 2) it is an extension of the zero tolerance and punitive approach that has plagued the criminal justice system and is a politically attractive manner for administrators and politicians to appear “tough on …

The Fiduciary Theory Of Governmental Legitimacy And The Natural Charter Of The Judiciary, Luke A. Wake

Luke A. Wake

In legal academia, there are various claims as to the proper role of the courts and the standard of review to be employed in evaluating claims of right. These competing judicial philosophies have been the subject of great debate in recent years. Yet underlying these debates is the question of rights and whether men are entitled, in justice, to assurances of personal autonomy, or whether the concept of rights is a mere legal fiction.

In a recent article in the Journal of Law and Philosophy, Evan Fox-Decent argues that individuals are entitled, at a minimum, to certain guarantees of bodily …

Is The Public Utility Holding Company Act A Model For Breaking Up The Banks That Are Too-Big-To-Fail?, Roberta S. Karmel

Roberta S. Karmel

ABSTRACT FOR “IS THE PUBLIC UTILITY HOLDING COMPANY ACT A MODEL FOR BREAKING UP THE BANKS THAT ARE TO-BIG-TO-FAIL?”

BY ROBERTA S. KARMEL

During the financial crisis of 2007-08 and the debates on regulatory reform that followed, there was general agreement that the “too-big-to-fail” principle creates unacceptable moral hazard. Policy makers divided, however, on the solutions to this problem. Some argued that the banking behemoths in the United States should be broken up. Others argued that dismantling the big banks would be bad policy because these banks would not be able to compete with universal banks in the global capital …

International Civil Religion: Respecting Religious Diversity While Promoting International Cooperation, Amos Prosser Davis

Amos Prosser Davis

International civil religion grounds moral claims that permeate and transcend traditional religious paradigms. Given the inevitability of international interactions – interactions that cross geographic, religious, and cultural boundaries – our global society is in need of a universally endorsable framework that undergirds the United Nations international human rights regime. International civil religion provides that framework.

Numerous scholars and moral theorists have incrementally discerned the parameters of civil religion including, inter alia, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Alexis de Tocqueville, Robert Bellah, Martin Marty, and Harold Berman. The tenets of international civil religion infuse the diplomatically drafted United Nations covenants and conventions on human …

Pleading Their Case: How Ashcroft V. Iqbal Extinguishes Prisoners’ Rights, Maureen Brocco

Maureen Brocco

Ashcroft v. Iqbal, decided on May 18, 2009, increased the evidentiary burden required to survive a Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) (“Rule 12(b)(6)”) motion to dismiss to a strict plausibility standard. While this decision affects almost all civil claims in the federal court system, its impact is particularly troublesome in the realm of prisoners’ rights litigation. For a prisoner, such onerous pre-litigation fact-finding requirements can turn the administration of justice into an unattainable goal. Since prisoners’ claims are often against their captors, government officials, this heightened pleading burden may leave victims of egregious unconstitutional actions by government officials without …

Engaging Law Students In Leadership, Faith Rivers James

Faith R Rivers James

The new challenge of legal education is preparing civic-minded lawyers to assume leadership roles in their communities, law firms, the legal profession, and in the public square. Defined as the process of influencing and persuading others to achieve a common purpose, leadership describes the lawyers’ task with individual and organizational clients; considered as a characteristic of people in positions of power, lawyers often assume the mantle of leading organizations. Whether defined as process or position, lawyering involves leadership in the private sector or in the public realm. This article considers the progressive structure of a comprehensive law & leadership program, …

Inheriting Inequality: Wealth, Race, And The Laws Of Succession, Palma Joy Strand

palma joy strand

The article begins by documenting deep inequality in the form of Black-White wealth disparities: While the overall wealth distribution in the United States is highly unequal from both historical and international perspectives, racial wealth disparities are particularly acute, with median Black net worth approximately a tenth of median White net worth (as compared to median Black income that is approximately two-thirds of median White income). Next, the article ties the perpetuation of this inequality to current inheritance law. It then confronts this inequality as a civil rights issue in terms of its social effects, its historical causes, and legal avenues …

May It Please The Senate: An Empirical Analysis Of The Senate Judiciary Committee Hearings Of Supreme Court Nominees, 1939-2009, Lori A. Ringhand, Paul M. Collins

Lori A. Ringhand

This paper examines the questions asked and answers given by every Supreme Court nominee who has appeared to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee since 1939. In doing so, it uses a new dataset developed by the authors. This dataset, which provides a much-needed empirical foundation for scholarship in emerging areas of constitutional law and political science, captures all of the statements made at the hearings and codes these comments by issue area, subissue area, party of the appointing president, and party of the questioning senator. The dataset allows us to quantify for the fist time such things as which …

Cost-Benefit Analysis Of The Business Judgment Rule: A Critique In Light Of The Financial Meltdown, Todd Aman

Todd M Aman

In 2008, the United States – indeed the whole world – suffered a devastating financial meltdown. We know now that a significant cause of the meltdown was that, in the face of numerous red flags, the managers of several venerable financial firms decided to take tremendous risks in the subprime mortgage market, and the directors of these firms did little or nothing to stop them. However, despite their actions, these managers and directors face little or no risk of personal liability because they are shielded by the business judgment rule and other liability reducing mechanisms, such as director exculpation statutes. …

Insulating Agencies: Avoiding Capture Through Institutional Design, Rachel E. Barkow

Rachel E Barkow

So-called independent agencies are created for a reason, and often that reason is a concern with agency capture. Agency designers hope that a more insulated agency will better protect the general public interest against interest group pressure. But the conventional approach to independent agencies in administrative law largely ignores why agencies are insulated. Instead, discussions about independent agencies in administrative law have focused on three features that have defined independent agencies: whether their heads are removable at will or for cause by the President, whether they must submit regulations to the President’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs for cost-benefit …

The Path Of Posner's Pragmatism, Edward Cantu

Edward Cantu

It is no secret that formalist methodologies like originalism are not nearly as scientific as they pretend to be. Banking on this fact, pragmatism offers a prescriptive alternative: instead of expending intellectual energy attempting “fidelity” to antecedent “authority” (precedent, Framers’ intent, etc.) judges should embrace their inevitable roles as de facto policy makers, and focus on producing the best social results they can through the cases they decide. The article discusses the current state of legal pragmatism in the form espoused by its chief proponent Judge Richard Posner, and asks whether it has proven itself capable of contributing anything useful …

What Mcdonald Means For Unenumerated Rights, Aaron Christopher Bryant

Aaron Christopher Bryant

In June a splintered Supreme Court held in McDonald v. City of Chicago that the Second Amendment applied to state and local governments. But the case was about much more than handguns. It presented the Court with an unprecedented opportunity to correct its erroneous precedent and revive the Fourteenth Amendment’s Privileges or Immunities Clause. The plurality declined the offer not, as Justice Alito’s opinion suggested, out of a profound respect for stare decisis, but rather because at least four Justices like the consequences of that ancient error, especially insofar as unenumerated rights are concerned. This observation in turn raises questions …

Stopping A Vicious Cycle: The Problems With Credit Checks In Employment And Strategies To Limit Their Use, Sharon Goott Nissim

Sharon Goott Nissim

This paper explores a new and increasingly common phenomenon: the use of credit checks by employers to evaluate potential and current employees. This practice has profound implications in this current weak economy, as those who most need jobs often are the ones turned away due to bad credit. The use of credit checks also has a disproportionate effect on racial minorities as statistically they tend to have worse credit than non-minorities. Employers often assert that credit checks are necessary, despite the lack of hard data proving a link between poor credit and poor job performance.

This paper examines two ways …

Inheriting Inequality: Wealth, Race, And The Laws Of Succession, Palma Joy Strand

palma joy strand

The article begins by documenting deep inequality in the form of Black-White wealth disparities: While the overall wealth distribution in the United States is highly unequal from both historical and international perspectives, racial wealth disparities are particularly acute, with median Black net worth approximately a tenth of median White net worth (as compared to median Black income that is approximately two-thirds of median White income). Next, the article ties the perpetuation of this inequality to current inheritance law. It then confronts this inequality as a civil rights issue in terms of its social effects, its historical causes, and legal avenues …

From Innocent Boys To Dirty Old Men: Amending The Sex Offender Registry To Actually Protect Children From Dangerous Predators, Elizabeth B. Megale

Elizabeth B. Megale

The article initially focuses on the purposes of sex offender registries: (1) to make communities safer by informing the public (2) to discourage recidivism and reoffense; and (3)to aid law enforcement in the investigation of crimes. The sex offender registry fails to protect the public because it does not offer individuals any strategies for effectively using the information provided, it can actually hinder law enforcement in the investigation of crimes because it requires individuals to register even if they do not actually present a danger to society, and it does not discourage recidivism and reoffense because it stigmatizes people convicted …

Impeding Reentry: Agency And Judicial Obstacles To Longer Halfway House Placements, S. David Mitchell

S. David Mitchell

Over 700,000 prisoners were released into their communities in 2008, at least 50,000 of those from federal custody. Once an obscure cause, nearly everyone agrees that prisoner reentry – the process by which former prisoners return to their community as free citizens – is of national importance. Absent adequate attention to transitional services, ex-offenders are often homeless, unemployed, and suffer from untreated substance abuse addictions. Accordingly, President Obama and his two predecessors have devoted considerable attention to the issue. Congress passed the Second Chance in 2007, amending two federal statutes, sections 3624(c) and 3621(b) and giving inmates a longer time …

The Law And Policy Of Online Privacy: Regulation, Self-Regulation Or Co-Regulation?, Dennis D. Hirsch

Dennis D Hirsch

The Internet poses grave new threats to information privacy. Search engines collect and store our search queries; Web sites track our online activity and then sell this information to others; and Internet Search Providers read the very packets of information through which we interact with the Internet. Yet the debate over how best to address this problem has ground to a halt, stuck between those who call for a vigorous legislative response and those who advocate for market solutions and self-regulation. In 1995, the European Union member states began to build a third approach into their data protection laws, one …

Sunlight’S Glare: How Overbroad Open Government Laws Chill Free Speech And Hamper Effective Democracy, Steven Mulroy

Steven Mulroy

SUNLIGHT’S GLARE: HOW OVERBROAD OPEN GOVERNMENT LAWS CHILL FREE SPEECH AND HAMPER EFFECTIVE DEMOCRACY Steven J. Mulroy ABSTRACT In this Article, Prof. Mulroy argues that the broadest of state “open meetings laws” violate the free speech rights of covered government officials. The Article focuses on those laws which ban substantive discussion of government business by any two or three legislators outside of a publicly noticed official meeting (far less than a quorum), and those laws which admit no exceptions for matters involving individual privacy, personnel matters, consultation with counsel, ongoing financial negotiations, or other sensitive topics where confidentiality is warranted. …

Democracy At The Corner Of First And Fourteenth: Judicial Campaign Spending And Equality, James Sample

James Sample

This Article posits that the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co., Inc., which recognized that substantial independent expenditures in support of a judicial candidate present threats to judicial impartiality similar to those posed by direct contributions, suggests that guaranteeing due process of law in state courts presents a compelling state interest justifying the regulation of spending in judicial elections.

The Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Buckley v. Valeo is understood to hold that only an “anti-corruption” rationale can justify campaign finance regulations, and to draw a rigid distinction between political campaign “expenditures” and “contributions,” holding …

The Extent To Which "Yellowstonre Injunctions" Apply In Favor Of Residential Tenants: Who Will See Red, Who May Earn Green, And Who May Feel Blue?, Hon. Mark Dillon

Hon. Mark C. Dillon

Difficulties in the residential and commercial real estate markets have caused an influx of cases in the New York State courts by which banks seek the foreclosure of delinquent mortgages and landlords seek the eviction of tenants that are in default of rent payment obligations.

New York State has long recognized "Yellowstone injunctions" in the context of commercial leases, where tenants preemptively obtain court orders enjoining their landlords from terminating their breached leases. The concept is named after its case of origin, First Nat. Stores, Inc. v. Yellowstone Shopping Center, Inc., which was decided by the state's Court of Appeals …

Pleading Their Case: How Ashcroft V. Iqbal Extinguishes Prisoners’ Rights, Maureen Brocco

Maureen Brocco

Ashcroft v. Iqbal, decided on May 18, 2009, increased the evidentiary burden required to survive a Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) (“Rule 12(b)(6)”) motion to dismiss to a strict plausibility standard. While this decision affects almost all civil claims in the federal court system, its impact is particularly troublesome in the realm of prisoners’ rights litigation. For a prisoner, such onerous pre-litigation fact-finding requirements can turn the administration of justice into an unattainable goal. Since prisoners’ claims are often against their captors, government officials, this heightened pleading burden may leave victims of egregious unconstitutional actions by government officials without …

Financial Crisis And Civil Society, Claire R. Kelly

Claire R. Kelly

International financial law institutions struggle to confront financial crises effectively and flexibly, playing the role of both regulator and rescuer. At the same time these institutions confront demands for greater legitimacy in light of the public policy implications of their actions. Some might argue that greater participation by civil society may serve to foster greater legitimacy by improving representativeness, transparency, accountability, and reasoned decision making. But greater civil society access also has costs that can undermine both regulation and rescue efforts. I argue that we should not take it as a given that greater civil society participation lends greater legitimacy …

Utilizing Rule Based Bias Filtering To Standardize Reasonable Doubt And Ameliorate Cognitive Biases, Yali Corea-Levy

Yali Corea-Levy

The standard of “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” is meant to, at least in part, ensure that the government meets the highest practical standard of proof possible before imposing a criminal penalty on a person. This article argues that the standard, as currently applied in trial settings, does not succeed in being the vanguard of prudence and equity it was meant to be. Specifically, it falls short because of its vagueness coupled with our cognitive peculiarities, including our tendency to feel certain about facts more easily than we should. This article describes the problem and ultimately suggests a relatively simple …