Law Commons^™

Foreword, Joseph Giarratano

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Taxation, Craig D. Bell

University of Richmond Law Review

This Article reviews significant recent developments in the laws affecting Virginia state and local taxation. Its Parts cover legislative activity, judicial decisions, and selected opinions and other pronouncements from the Virginia Department of Taxation (“Tax Department” or “Department of Taxation”) and the Attorney General of Virginia over the past year.

Part I of this Article addresses state taxes. Part II covers local taxes, including real and tangible personal property taxes, license taxes, and discrete local taxes.

The overall purpose of this Article is to provide Virginia tax and general practitioners with a concise overview of the recent developments in Virginia …

Strictly Speaking, What Needs To Change? A Review Of How Statutory Changes Could Bring Strict Products Liability To Virginia, Ryan C. Fowle

University of Richmond Law Review

Virginia remains one of five states that refuse to adopt strict products liability. To date, the Supreme Court of Virginia has declined to follow the path Justice Traynor set out nearly a century ago, as its recent decisions confirm its resistance to strict liability. However, given the change in control of the General Assembly following the elections of 2017 and 2019, the General Assembly is in new hands and may remain that way for some time. This new legislative majority, among its plans for new policies, may soon consider establishing strict products liability by statute. In doing so, Virginia would …

Wills, Trusts, And Estates, Katherine E. Ramsey, Sarah J. Brownlow

University of Richmond Law Review

The 2021 Virginia General Assembly did not pass any major laws governing estates or trusts this year. However, it did pass several legislative efforts related to the field and of which practitioners should be aware. Perhaps the most relevant update given the COVID-19 pandemic was the Legislature’s effort to modernize procedures for electronic notarizations and electronic recording of documents. Another new law was designed to improve retirement savings participation rates in the Commonwealth by requiring certain employers to enroll their employees by default in a new, state-facilitated individual retirement account program. The Legislature also passed several bills designed to make …

Table Of Contents

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Preface, Andy V. O'Connell

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Thank You Glenice

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Disrupting Death: How Specialized Capital Defenders Ground Virginia’S Machinery Of Death To A Halt, Corinna Barrett Lain, Douglas A. Ramseur

University of Richmond Law Review

Virginia’s repeal of capital punishment in 2021 is arguably the most momentous abolitionist event since 1972, when the United States Supreme Court invalidated capital punishment statutes nationwide. In part, Virginia’s repeal is momentous because it marks the first time a Southern state abolished the death penalty. In part, it is momentous because even among Southern states, Virginia was exceptional in its zeal for capital punishment. No state executed faster once a death sentence was handed down. And no state was more successful in defending death sentences, allowing Virginia to convert death sentences into executions at a higher rate than any …

In Memoriam Clint Andrew Nichols, Frank Talbott V

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Criminal Law And Procedure, Brittany A. Dunn-Pirio, Timothy J. Huffstutter, Mason D. Williams

University of Richmond Law Review

This Article surveys recent developments in criminal procedure and law in Virginia. Because of space limitations, the authors have limited their discussion to the most significant published appellate decisions and legislation.

Juvenile Justice, Valerie Slater

University of Richmond Law Review

This Article serves as a review of recent juvenile justice law and legislative trends in Virginia. This Article will review both codified changes and relevant proposed legislation that did not pass the Legislature to more fully identify trends in juvenile justice. While this Article does not capture every proposed or codified change to Virginia juvenile justice law, it does identify and present the most significant changes and trends over the last two legislative sessions to the laws governing the entrance of youth into the criminal legal system, the treatment of Virginia’s youth directly involved in the criminal legal system, and …

Civil Practice And Procedure, Christopher S. Dadak

University of Richmond Law Review

This Article analyzes the past year of Supreme Court of Virginia opinions, revisions to the Virginia Code, and Rules of the Supreme Court of Virginia impacting civil procedure here in the Commonwealth. On top of those changes, dealing with the pandemic certainly was a trying time for practitioners, the judiciary, and all those involved in the administration of justice and the law. The author appreciates the sacrifices made by all those individuals and sympathizes with all who lost a loved one in this time.

The Article first addresses opinions of the Supreme Court of Virginia, then new legislation enacted during …

Family Law, Rachel A. Degraba

University of Richmond Law Review

This Article provides a practical update on recent changes in Virginia law in the family law realm, including, but not limited to, divorce, custody and visitation, adoption, child support, and equitable distribution of assets and debts. There have been significant legislative amendments regarding the divorce process with the introduction of the Uniform Collaborative Law Act as well as the removal of the corroborating witness requirement for no-fault divorce matters. This succinct synopsis outlines legislative changes as well as significant judicial decisions within the past year.

How U.S. Society Has Treated Those With Mental Illnesses, Michael Mullan

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

Persons with mental illness are incarcerated in prisons across the United States at disproportionate rates compared to the general population. Under-standing why this is so requires an examination of how society in general has treated persons with mental illnesses. This article relates a history of neglect and stigmatization in examining the entities responsible for care of persons with mental illnesses, including the family, asylums and prisons. The article identifies trends of institutionalization, deinstitutionalization, and transinstitutionalisation, whereby large amounts of inpatients with mental illnesses moved out of psychiatric institutions, into the streets, and then into the criminal justice system. The article …

Prefatory Matter

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

No abstract provided.

Letter From The Editor, Eudora F.S. Arthur

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

No abstract provided.

Transformation Of The American Legal System: Permanent Measures From Covid-19, John B. Taschner

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

The COVID-19 pandemic upended virtually every aspect of everyday life, from grocery stores to judicial procedures. The American judicial process is a unique adversarial system that guarantees the right to confront, often before a live jury. Yet, the necessities of social distancing and protecting public health means that these once unshakeable tenets of the United States justice system have been forced to undergo watershed transformation throughout the pandemic. The word transformation is carefully chosen, as certain measures are no longer temporary. Rather, a fundamental shift in the formerly concrete facets of judicial procedure has occurred – almost certainly never to …

Cancelling Justice? The Case Of James Clark Mcreynolds, Todd C. Peppers

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

Over the last several years, there has been a vigorous debate as to whether monuments and memorials of Confederate leaders and controversial historical figures should be purged from the public square. These conversations have included former Supreme Court justices and have led to the removal of multiple statues of former Chief Justice Roger Taney, author of the infamous “Dred Scott” decision. Drawing on the arguments mounted for and against the removal of statues, this article explores the decision of a small liberal arts college to strip the name of former Supreme Court Justice James Clark McReynolds from a campus building. …

Pressure On The Trigger Will Now Fire The Weapon: An Examination Of How The Supreme Court, Congress, And Presidents Have Left The Legal Foundation For Executive Detention Akin To The World War Ii Era Internment Of Japanese Americans Largely Intact, Kevan F. Jacobson

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

Contrary to Chief Justice Robert's dicta, Trump v. Hawaii (2018) did not overrule Korematsu v. United States (1944) which upheld the exclusion of Japanese Americans from the West Coast during World War II. Korematsu and its related cases are still troublingly vital. Their expansive reading of the war powers justifying executive detention has been bolstered by the Court's cases addressing detainees held at Guantanamo Bay. Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (2004), which sanctioned the detention of a U.S. citizen pursuant to the Authorization for the Use of Military Force, exposed a fundamental weakness in the Non-Detention Act, the principal statutory barrier to …

From The Exception To The Rule: A Realistic Analysis And Approach For Advancing Board Diversity, Brianne Donovan

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

With companies increasingly promoting diversity and inclusion measures, how are they ensuring diversity and inclusion within their own leadership teams? The landscape for gender diversity within corporate boards is bleak and the landscape for racial diversity is worse. Throw in the intersection of race and gender and the picture becomes even bleaker. In order to combat this corporate governance issue, the U.S. and other countries have primarily focused on three regulatory approaches: (1) the quota system, (2) the disclosure method, and (3) the comply-or-explain approach. This paper addresses each approach (internationally and domestically) to implement greater board diversity for U.S. …

Federal Execution Protocols: Lessons Learned In Grammar And Reverse Federalism, Julianna Meely

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

In 2019, the Department of Justice announced that it was ready to restart federal executions and issued a press release outlining how they would proceed. The Press Release dictated that the federal inmates would be injected using a one-drug protocol comprised of the barbiturate pentobarbital. This was a source of controversy as the new federal protocol was not the same protocol used in several states and the federal statute governing executions at the federal level states that federal executions be conducted “in the same manner” as the state in which the execution occurs. This discrepancy sparked litigation in which courts …

United States Penal System: Approaches To Rehabilitating Minor Drug Offenders And The Efforts Of Governments To Reduce The Number Of Incarcerated Individuals, Thomas Tyler Moses

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

The War on Drugs drastically changed the criminal treatment of illicit drug users in the United States. Changes in the 1980s brought about stricter sentencing laws for simple possession of unlawful substances. While the intent of the legislature was to prevent repeat offenders through the imposition of harsher penalties, these sterner consequences have forced countless individuals into a vicious cycle of incarceration without being offered the rehabilitative services needed to address substance abuse or addiction. Historically, the legal system has treated minor drug offenders in the same regard as those committing violent crimes. Inmates leaving American prisons often find themselves …

How The Conflict Between Anti-Boycott Legislation And The Expressive Rights Of Business Endangers Civil Rights And Antidiscrimination Laws, Debbie Kaminer, David Rosenberg

University of Richmond Law Review

This Article examines how opponents of anti-BDS laws may extend First Amendment rights in the business context to a point at which they actually threaten the validity of much antidiscrimination legislation. Part I discusses the BDS movement and state-based initiatives that attempt to penalize businesses that actively engage in a boycott of Israel. It examines the handful of cases in which federal courts have addressed the constitutionality of laws that require state contractors to affirm that they are not actively boycotting that country. Part II transitions to a discussion of the ways the Supreme Court has historically resolved conflicts between …

Table Of Contents

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Rethinking Music Copyright Infringement In The Digital World: Proposing A Streamlined Test After The Demise Of The Inverse Ratio Rule, Christina R. Dimeo

University of Richmond Law Review

This Comment will discuss the devastating blow to musicians inflicted by the Blurred Lines verdict’s embrace of the inverse ratio rule. Then, I will examine the Stairway to Heaven decision, in which the Ninth Circuit sharply changed course and decided to abrogate the inverse ratio rule. This welcome policy change nevertheless leaves questions as to how the Ninth Circuit will balance considerations of access with substantial similarity as it assesses copying in future cases. More importantly, the explosion of access in the digital world has fatally weakened—across all circuits—the role of access within the infringement test. In that light, I …

How To Do Things With Signs: Semiotics In Legal Theory, Practice, And Education, Harold Anthony Lloyd

University of Richmond Law Review

This Article therefore broadly explores semiotics through a lawyer’s lens, hopefully simplifying as much as possible much of the complex, divergent, and, frankly, sometimes baffling terminology used by those who explore semiotics. This Article will first continue below with a general definition of signs and the related notion of intentionality. It will then address the structure and concomitants of signs, the nature of speech acts that are of interest to lawyers, the sign classifications used in legal analysis and rhetoric, the role of signs in careful legal thought and good legal rhetoric, the unfolding of the signified and the fixation …

Acknowledgments, J. Lincoln Wolfe

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Veil (Or Helmet) Of Ignorance: A Rawlsian Thought Experiment About A Military’S Criminal Law, Dan Maurer

University of Richmond Law Review

This Article loosely adapts political philosopher John Rawls’s famous social contract thought experiment to interrogate a corner of law that receives too little theoretical attention: the separate federal code at the intersection of criminal law and national security that regulates both martial and non-martial conduct of millions of citizens, invests judicial responsibility and prosecutorial authority in nonlawyer commanding officers, operates with no territorial limitations, and pulls even certain retirees within its jurisdiction: the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Employing the perspectives of four “idealized” actors—Congress, a president, a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a potential recruit—this “experiment” …

Making Federalism Work: Lessons From Health Care For The Green New Deal, Jesse M. Cross, Shelley Welton

University of Richmond Law Review

For decades, federalism had a bad reputation. It often was perceived as little more than a cover for state resistance to civil rights and other social justice reforms. More recently, however, progressive scholars have argued that federalism can meaningfully advance nationalist ends. According to these scholars, federalism allows for spaces in which norms can be contested, developed, and extended. This new strain of scholarship also recognizes, however, that these federalist structures can still shield national-level reforms from reaching all Americans. Many see such gaps as a regrettable but unavoidable feature of our federalist system. But to embrace federalism as an …

Rules And Standards In Justice Scalia's Fourth Amendment, Robert M. Bloom, Eliza S. Walker

University of Richmond Law Review

When looking at Justice Scalia’s approach to the Fourth Amendment, most would say he was an originalist and a textualist. Justice Scalia himself would like to explain, “I’m an originalist and a textualist, not a nut.” Although originalism and textualism were often prevalent in his Fourth Amendment decisions, even more important to his decision-making was his disdain for judicial activism. To limit judicial discretion, Justice Scalia frequently opted to impose bright-line rules rather than vague standards. This is apparent not only within his jurisprudence as a whole, but also specifically in his Fourth Amendment decisions.

This Article examines Justice Scalia’s …