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University of Maine School of Law

2020

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Articles 1 - 30 of 71

Full-Text Articles in Law

Nine Justices And #Metoo: How The Supreme Court Shaped The Future Of Mandatory Arbitration And Sexual Harassment Claims, Tamra J. Wallace Nov 2020

Nine Justices And #Metoo: How The Supreme Court Shaped The Future Of Mandatory Arbitration And Sexual Harassment Claims, Tamra J. Wallace

Maine Law Review

When the Federal Arbitration Act was signed into law in 1925, none would have guessed it would be used to perpetuate a system of silence surround workplace sexual harassment. With the Supreme Court’s continued stance to liberally applying the Act to uphold arbitration agreements contained within employment agreements over the past decades, it is apparent that any change needed to protect vulnerable workers will need to come from federal legislation. The rise of the #MeToo movement across the nation, and throughout various employment sectors, may be the push needed to bring about the necessary change.


A Meeting Of The Minds: Utilizing Maine’S State Education System To Promote The Success Of Its Native Students While Maintaining Tribal Sovereignty, Jordan T. Ramharter Nov 2020

A Meeting Of The Minds: Utilizing Maine’S State Education System To Promote The Success Of Its Native Students While Maintaining Tribal Sovereignty, Jordan T. Ramharter

Maine Law Review

The United States Federal Government is failing to provide its Native American students with access to equal educational opportunities. Although “tribal sovereignty” provides tribes with the right to self-govern, a “trust relationship” is maintained between the sovereign nations and the federal government. This duality results in tribes being viewed as “domestic dependent nations” by the federal government. Due to this relationship, the federal government has long recognized not only a right, but a duty to utilize its plenary powers to develop necessary legislative and executive authority in order to support the nation’s tribes. Encompassed in this duty is the responsibility, …


Reflections On The Church/State Puzzle, Kermit V. Lipez Nov 2020

Reflections On The Church/State Puzzle, Kermit V. Lipez

Maine Law Review

No abstract provided.


Going Rogue: Independent Grand Juries Throughout America, Nino Monea Nov 2020

Going Rogue: Independent Grand Juries Throughout America, Nino Monea

Maine Law Review

Grand juries today do little more than passively approve (almost never disapprove) indictments proposed by prosecutors. But this stands in stark contrast to grand juries in the past. They investigated cases themselves and their purview went well beyond criminal matters. This Article looks in-depth at three historical cases where grand juries not only conducted major investigations but took on major additional roles. They ousted corrupt public officials, ran their cities in the interim, or booted prosecutors that failed to do their jobs. These examples demonstrate that grand juries in modern society could have a more robust role in the justice …


Reimagining State Banking Regulators: How The Principles Underlying The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Can Serve As A Blueprint For A New Regulatory Federalism, Seth Frotman Nov 2020

Reimagining State Banking Regulators: How The Principles Underlying The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Can Serve As A Blueprint For A New Regulatory Federalism, Seth Frotman

Maine Law Review

With hundreds of millions of Americans owing more than $14 trillion in combined household debt, a robust consumer financial protection framework is necessary to protect consumers when accessing critical credit markets. America relies on a complimentary system of regulatory federalism to uphold these protections, premised on robust state oversight and enforcement. However, the current implementation of this system is failing to meet the needs of this moment. Since the Great Recession, federal policymakers and regulators have devoted significant energy and resources to strengthen the oversight and accountability mechanisms of the consumer finance market—but these efforts have largely overlooked the need …


Foreword: Consumer Financial Protection Budget Proposal In California, Richard Cordray Nov 2020

Foreword: Consumer Financial Protection Budget Proposal In California, Richard Cordray

Maine Law Review

No abstract provided.


The Future Of The Public Trust: The Muddied Waters Of Rockweed Management In Maine, Sarah M. Reiter, Dillon Post, Lisa Wedding, Aaron L. Strong Oct 2020

The Future Of The Public Trust: The Muddied Waters Of Rockweed Management In Maine, Sarah M. Reiter, Dillon Post, Lisa Wedding, Aaron L. Strong

Ocean and Coastal Law Journal

Seaweeds, or more properly, intertidal macroalgae have never been easy to classify—by law or by science: they are not part of the animal kingdom, nor part of the plant kingdom (and scientific controversies about their phylogenetic placement abound), they are not completely on terra firma, nor completely submerged in ocean water. One such organism that exists at the space in between land and sea—the brown alga commonly known as Rockweed (Ascophyllum nodosum) presents an intriguing legal question with implications that extend far beyond the shoreline. Recently, in Ross v. Acadian Seaplants Ltd. , the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine (Court) …


Access For The Future: Improving Maine's Implementation Of The Public Trust Doctrine Through Municipal Controls To Ensure Coastal Access For Continuing Benefit To Maine's People And Economy, Allison M. Kuhns Oct 2020

Access For The Future: Improving Maine's Implementation Of The Public Trust Doctrine Through Municipal Controls To Ensure Coastal Access For Continuing Benefit To Maine's People And Economy, Allison M. Kuhns

Ocean and Coastal Law Journal

The public trust doctrine generally guarantees the public access to the shoreline, which is held in trust for the public by the state. In Maine, a pre-Revolutionary War ordinance limits the public trust doctrine by granting private landowners rights to the same shoreline areas. Access to the shoreline area is subject to frequent legal battles and court decisions have not cured the conflict between the public's rights and the private landowners' rights. Maine's economy relies heavily on public access to the shoreline. This comment suggests that the public's rights should be protected. First, the public trust doctrine does not violate …


Why Coastal Maine Needs A Wrap Around Drug Court, Haley K. Hunter Oct 2020

Why Coastal Maine Needs A Wrap Around Drug Court, Haley K. Hunter

Ocean and Coastal Law Journal

Opioid use and abuse is a national crisis that has taken its toll on small Maine communities. Among those hardest hit, are the small coastal communities that are the heart of Maines lobster and fishing industries. These areas are remote, and do not have the resources to deal with the opioid crisis as it continues to grow, which could have detrimental effects on an industry that makes up a large part of Maine’s economy. Further, while many lobstermen and fishermen suffer from opioid addiction, very few seek help or treatment for the disease. This comment suggests that the Maine judicial …


Ten Years Of Tidal Energy Experience With The Maine Ocean Energy Act, John Ferland Oct 2020

Ten Years Of Tidal Energy Experience With The Maine Ocean Energy Act, John Ferland

Ocean and Coastal Law Journal

The State of Maine is ten years into a compelling and sweeping economic vision, called the Ocean Energy Act. This Act was established to create a new renewable energy industry out of the Gulf of Maine. This paper focuses specifically on the tidal energy development experience under the Act. It explains the background about the Act’s intent, documents the actual experience of tidal energy development in the Maine economy, and predicts how the industry might unfold over the next decade.


Editorial Board Vol. 25, No. 2 (2020), Seth M. Adams Ii Editor-In-Chief Oct 2020

Editorial Board Vol. 25, No. 2 (2020), Seth M. Adams Ii Editor-In-Chief

Ocean and Coastal Law Journal

No abstract provided.


Uniform Maine Citations, 2020 - 2021 Edition (Superseded), Michael D. Seitzinger, Charles K. Leadbetter, Sara T.S. Wolff Sep 2020

Uniform Maine Citations, 2020 - 2021 Edition (Superseded), Michael D. Seitzinger, Charles K. Leadbetter, Sara T.S. Wolff

Uniform Maine Citations

Uniform Maine Citations is organized so that similar types of references to Maine authorities appear together. The organization is grouped by primary or secondary research materials, including subdivisions for (1) statutory and legislative materials, including constitutions, statutes, legislative documents, and municipal ordinances; (2) court decisions, rules, and documents; (3) executive agency regulations, reports, and other documents; and (4) secondary materials that analyze and interpret the primary materials, including Maine-specific treatises, practice books, and legal periodicals. Beyond guidance for proper citation, the primary and secondary sources identified in this edition constitute a useful catalog of materials available to support research into …


Democracy, Deference, And Compromise: Understanding And Reforming Campaign Finance Jurisprudence, Scott P. Bloomberg Aug 2020

Democracy, Deference, And Compromise: Understanding And Reforming Campaign Finance Jurisprudence, Scott P. Bloomberg

Faculty Publications

In Citizens United, the Supreme Court interpreted the government’s interest in preventing corruption as being limited to preventing quid pro quo—cash-for-votes—corruption. This narrow interpretation drastically circumscribed legislatures’ abilities to regulate the financing of elections, in turn prompting scholars to propose a number of reforms for broadening the government interest in campaign finance cases. These reforms include urging the Court to recognize a new government interest such as political equality, to adopt a broader understanding of corruption, and to be more deferential to legislatures in defining corruption. Building upon that body of scholarship, this Article begins with a descriptive account of …


“Do No Harm Or Injustice To Them”: Indicting And Convicting Physicians For Controlled Substance Distribution In The Age Of The Opioid Crisis, Julia B. Macdonald May 2020

“Do No Harm Or Injustice To Them”: Indicting And Convicting Physicians For Controlled Substance Distribution In The Age Of The Opioid Crisis, Julia B. Macdonald

Maine Law Review

In response to the devastating impact of the opioid crisis, the Department of Justice has in recent years launched an aggressive crackdown on what it characterizes as “fraudulent prescribers” of controlled substances. Against this backdrop, physicians, prosecutors, and defense attorneys face a number of issues. First, there is a lingering circuit court split on the issue of whether indictments against physicians and other medical professionals for illegal controlled substance distribution must allege that the physician acted “outside the usual course of professional practice and without a legitimate medical purpose.” I argue that acting without a legitimate medical purpose is an …


For Love Or For Profit? – Crafting A Suitable Securities Framework For Initial Coin Offerings, Elliot H. Brake May 2020

For Love Or For Profit? – Crafting A Suitable Securities Framework For Initial Coin Offerings, Elliot H. Brake

Maine Law Review

The spectacle of Bitcoin has largely overshadowed the development of the cryptocurrency’s underlying structure – the blockchain. The blockchain is a type of digital ledger that performs a number of traditional record-keeping functions in a more efficient and reliable manner. Organizations around the globe continue to invest heavily in blockchain technology for a myriad of purposes. To fund these innovative projects, many organizations hold an Initial Coin Offering (“ICO”) in which “tokens” -- a blockchain’s primary means of exchanging value, proving ownership, and/or paying for network services -- are sold to purchasers in exchange for U.S. dollars. In many ways, …


Judge Frank M. Coffin: An Examined Life, Dr. Richard J. Maiman May 2020

Judge Frank M. Coffin: An Examined Life, Dr. Richard J. Maiman

Maine Law Review

No abstract provided.


Digital Court Records Access: Social Justice And Judicial Balancing, Peter J. Guffin May 2020

Digital Court Records Access: Social Justice And Judicial Balancing, Peter J. Guffin

Maine Law Review

With its transition from paper to electronic records, the state court system in Maine is entering new, uncharted territory. In drafting rules regarding public access to electronic court records, a critical issue facing the court system is how to go about balancing the privacy interests of the individual and the state’s interest in providing transparency about the court’s operations. Both interests are important in our democracy, and it is critical that we take measures to preserve both. The purpose of writing this essay is to show that Judge Coffin’s judicial philosophy and rights-sensitive balancing process, although the product of a …


Fee Shifting: A Proposal To Solve Maine’S Intractable Access To Justice Problem, Donald F. Fontaine May 2020

Fee Shifting: A Proposal To Solve Maine’S Intractable Access To Justice Problem, Donald F. Fontaine

Maine Law Review

The Maine Legislature should enact a new statute to award attorney’s fees in civil cases to poor litigants against their opponents. Under the proposed statute the opponent must be a corporation or other legal entity and the poor litigant must be the prevailing party in the case. The statute proposed is needed because multiple studies show that there has been an unrelenting decline during the last four decades of the poor’s access to justice. Their numbers increase and the support of the federal government declines. For those who find themselves in legal positions opposing the poor, there is little deterrent …


Correcting Judicial Errors: Lessons From History, Louis Fisher May 2020

Correcting Judicial Errors: Lessons From History, Louis Fisher

Maine Law Review

On June 18, 2018, the Supreme Court in Trump v. Hawaii finally acknowledged that its decision in Korematsu v. United States (1944) was in error. It took seventy-four years to make that admission, even though it was widely recognized by scholars and a congressional commission that the decision was fundamentally defective. In the 1936 Curtiss-Wright decision, the Court completely misinterpreted a speech by John Marshall when he served in the House of Representatives. Although he referred to the President as “the sole organ of the nation in its external relations,” he never argued that the President controlled all of foreign …


2019 Annual Report, University Of Maine School Of Law Apr 2020

2019 Annual Report, University Of Maine School Of Law

Cumberland Legal Aid Clinic Annual Report

No abstract provided.


Maine Corporation Law & Practice, Gregory S. Fryer Apr 2020

Maine Corporation Law & Practice, Gregory S. Fryer

Maine Law Review

The scarcity of case law in Maine on corporate law issues of the day is a fact of life for corporate law practitioners in this State. While courts in more populous states fill library shelves with an ever-growing mix of corporate law decisions, we in Maine often can only wonder which way our own courts would turn if presented with those same issues. Faced with a limited amount of local case law, corporate lawyers here might rarely venture beyond well-hewn traditions were it not for two-and now three-fortunate developments. First and foremost is the Maine Business Corporation Act. The Act …


Wellman V. State: Confusing The Standard Of Excusable Neglect, Andrew L. Black Apr 2020

Wellman V. State: Confusing The Standard Of Excusable Neglect, Andrew L. Black

Maine Law Review

In Maine, as in most other states, a person convicted of a criminal offense is entitled to state post-conviction review upon proper filing of a petition. The Maine Rules of Criminal Procedure establish deadlines for such a filing and for the responsive answer by the State. Application for an enlargement of time in which to respond requires the State to show cause. If, however, the State makes this application after the initial period for response, the Rules impose a much stricter standard—a showing of “excusable neglect.” In Wellman v. State the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, sitting as the Law Court, …


Hart Failure: The Supreme Judicial Court's Interpretation Of Nonjudicial Demeanor, Harold T. Kelly Jr. Apr 2020

Hart Failure: The Supreme Judicial Court's Interpretation Of Nonjudicial Demeanor, Harold T. Kelly Jr.

Maine Law Review

Among the inherent powers of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court is the power to regulate the officers of its courts. As the court explained in Board of Overseers of the Bar v. Lee, “each of the three co-equal branches of government has, without any express grant, the inherent right to accomplish all objects necessarily within the orbit of that department when not expressly allocated to, or limited by the existence of a similar power in, one of the other departments.” It is not surprising that the Supreme Judicial Court has for many years regulated, through formal disciplinary proceedings, the conduct …


Comprehensive General Liability Policies Under Maine's Ground Water Protection Act: The Law Court's Extraordinary Definition Of Ordinary Intelligence, Andrew M. Strongin Apr 2020

Comprehensive General Liability Policies Under Maine's Ground Water Protection Act: The Law Court's Extraordinary Definition Of Ordinary Intelligence, Andrew M. Strongin

Maine Law Review

In Patrons Oxford Mutual Insurance Co. v. Marios, the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine, sitting as the Law Court, joined the current debate in the state and federal judiciaries as to whether comprehensive general liability (CGL) insurance policies obligate the insurer to indemnify the insured for cleanup costs incurred pursuant to governmentally mandated cleanup of hazardous substances. In that decision, the court held that cleanup costs incurred pursuant to court order authorized by the Maine Underground Oil Storage Facilities and Ground Water Protection Act are not covered by such policies. The explicit basis of the court's decision was that the …


Taking It Too Far: Growth Management And The Limits To Land-Use Regulation In Maine, Michael A. Duddy Apr 2020

Taking It Too Far: Growth Management And The Limits To Land-Use Regulation In Maine, Michael A. Duddy

Maine Law Review

In 1989 Maine enacted the Comprehensive Planning and Land Use Regulation Act. The Act's legislative findings declared that “ the State has a vital interest in ensuring that a comprehensive system of land-use planning and growth management is established as quickly as possible.” However, whenever the state exercises its police power to regulate private land use, it faces a constitutional limit as to how far it can go. When the land-use restriction exceeds that limit, a regulatory taking occurs. This Comment argues that the Comprehensive Planning and Land Use Regulation Act, as it is being interpreted and implemented by state …


Grinding Gears: Meshing Maine Mortgage Foreclosure Law And The Bankruptcy Code, Daniel L. Cummings Apr 2020

Grinding Gears: Meshing Maine Mortgage Foreclosure Law And The Bankruptcy Code, Daniel L. Cummings

Maine Law Review

In Maine interesting and unresolved questions often arise when a mortgagor files for bankruptcy after a judgment of foreclosure has been entered in state court but before a foreclosure sale has occurred. Specifically, what rights does the mortgagor have in the real property? And are the mortgagee's subsequent steps to complete the sale barred by the automatic stay of the Bankruptcy Code (“Code”)? These questions are made more difficult because Maine is a title theory state and because the foreclosure sale occurs after the expiration of the statutory redemption period rather than, as in most states, before it. Because a …


Gender And Specialization In The Practice Of Divorce Law, Richard J. Maiman, Lynn Mather, Craig A. Mcewen Apr 2020

Gender And Specialization In The Practice Of Divorce Law, Richard J. Maiman, Lynn Mather, Craig A. Mcewen

Maine Law Review

In the past two decades, the gender composition of the legal profession in the United States has changed dramatically. While women comprised less than five percent of the nation's lawyers in 1970, the proportion of women lawyers had increased to more than 19% by the end of 1988, and roughly 40% of new lawyers each year are now women. However, the movement of women into the legal profession has not been easy. As a consequence, considerable commentary has been focused on the significant problems of sexual harassment, discrimination, and other forms of gender bias, and on such issues as the …


Jural Entities, Real Parties In Controversy, And Representative Litigants: A Unified Approach To The Diversity Jurisdiction Requirements For Business Organizations, Charles A. Szypszak Apr 2020

Jural Entities, Real Parties In Controversy, And Representative Litigants: A Unified Approach To The Diversity Jurisdiction Requirements For Business Organizations, Charles A. Szypszak

Maine Law Review

The rules that make the federal courts available for the resolution of controversies between citizens of different states have often been described as placing an undue burden on the federal system. Congress has for the most part turned a deaf ear to calls by jurists and commentators for reform or even abolition of federal diversity jurisdiction, leaving the courts to struggle with difficult issues about the proper contours of the jurisdictional requirements. One recurring difficult issue is the manner in which citizenship is to be attributed to the investors who compose various business organizations. The general rule has been that …


The Auditor's Responsibilities For Fraud Detection And Disclosure: Do The Auditing Standards Provide A Safe Harbor?, James L. Costello Apr 2020

The Auditor's Responsibilities For Fraud Detection And Disclosure: Do The Auditing Standards Provide A Safe Harbor?, James L. Costello

Maine Law Review

Eighty-seven percent of managers recently surveyed were willing to commit financial statement fraud. More than half were willing to overstate assets, forty-eight percent were willing to understate loss reserves and thirty-eight percent would "pad" a government contract. These disturbing results are underscored by the financial miseries still brewing in the savings and loan industry, as well as by other corporate and banking financial debacles of the past decade, including Lincoln Savings & Loan, Wedtech, and the Delorean sports car venture scandal. Amidst these financial ruins we find the chronic element of management fraud. Unfortunately for investors and depositors a troublesome …


The Unmet Legal Needs Of The Poor In Maine: Is Mandatory Pro Bono The Answer?, Wendy F. Rau Apr 2020

The Unmet Legal Needs Of The Poor In Maine: Is Mandatory Pro Bono The Answer?, Wendy F. Rau

Maine Law Review

In 1989, the Maine Commission on Legal Needs was formed to study the civil legal needs of Maine's poor population and to develop a plan for meeting those needs. Similar projects have been undertaken in a number of other states and by the American Bar Association in recent years. Each study has revealed a significant unmet need among the poor for assistance with legal problems. There seems little doubt that the situation is serious and widespread. The difficulty lies in finding a solution. One proposal that has been advanced is mandatory pro bono, a program that would require attorneys to …