Law Commons^™

Why (And How) States Should Tax The Repatriation, David Gamage, Darien Shanske

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This essay analyzed how U.S. state tax laws should treat the repatriation income generated by the 2017 federal tax legislation.

The Dragon-Kings’ Restraint: Proposing A Compromise For The Eez Surveillance Conundrum, Asaf Lubin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The United States and China are at it again, as naval and aerial interceptions in and around the South China Sea become a matter of disturbing routine. At the heart of the dispute stands the lingering question of whether customary international law as reflected in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (“UNCLOS”) authorizes third States to engage in surveillance and military maneuvers in coastal States’ Exclusive Economic Zones (“EEZ”) without their consent. The answer lies in interpreting Article 58(1) of UNCLOS. This paper aims to respond to the calls put forward by States, scholars, and research …

Dead Canaries In The Coal Mines: The Symbolic Assailant Revisited, Jeannine Bell

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The well-publicized deaths of several African-Americans—Tamir Rice, Philando Castile, and Alton Sterling among others—at the hands of police stem from tragic interactions predicated upon well-understood practices analyzed by police scholars since the 1950s. The symbolic assailant, a construct created by police scholar Jerome Skolnick in the mid-1960s to identify persons whose behavior and characteristics the police view as threatening, is especially relevant to contemporary policing. This Article explores the societal roots of the creation of a Black symbolic assailant in contemporary American policing.

The construction of African-American men as symbolic assailants is one of the most important factors characterizing police …

Religious Arguments, Religious Purposes, And The Gay And Lesbian Rights Cases, Steve Sanders

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Access To Print, Access To Justice, Kimberly Mattioli

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This article examines the relationship between self-represented litigants and digital literacy and how this particularly vulnerable patron group stands to be harmed by the elimination of print materials from public law libraries. An examination of the literature and a survey help to shed light on this growing problem.

Securing The Internet Of Healthcare, Michael Mattioli, Scott J. Shackelford, Steve Myers, Austin Brady, Yvette Wang, Stephanie Wong

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Cybersecurity, including the security of information technology (IT), is a critical requirement in ensuring society trusts, and therefore can benefit from, modern technology. Problematically, though, rarely a day goes by without a news story related to how critical data has been exposed, exfiltrated, or otherwise inappropriately used or accessed as a result of supply chain vulnerabilities. From the Russian government's campaign to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election to the September 2017 Equifax breach of more than 140-million Americans' credit reports, mitigating cyber risk has become a topic of conversation in boardrooms and the White House, on Wall Street and …

The Ethical Practice Of Human-Centered Civil Justice Design, Victor D. Quintanilla, Haley Hinkle

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Over the past two decades, legal professionals have increasingly engaged in a new form of professional activity: civil justice design. In the past, legal professionals handled cases and transactions for clients or served as neutrals, including mediators and arbitrators, who helped to resolve disputes between parties. Today, legal professionals increasingly play a principal design role in creating systems that resolve streams of conflicts, disputes, and grievances between parties. Lawyers regularly now create internal grievance procedures, procedures for companies to resolve disputes with customers, and court-annexed alternative dispute resolution systems. The emergence of this new role raises difficult questions about the …

Climate Change Challenges For Land Conservation: Rethinking Conservation Easements, Strategies, And Tools, W. William Weeks, Jessica Owley, Federico Cheever, Adena R. Rissman, M. Rebecca Shaw, Barton H. Thompson

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Climate change has significant consequences for land conservation. Government agencies and nonprofit land trusts heavily rely on perpetual conservation easements. However, climate change and other dynamic landscape changes raise questions about the effectiveness and adaptability of permanent conservation instruments like conservation easements. Building upon a study of 269 conservation easements and interviews with seventy conservation-easement professionals in six different states, we examine the adaptability of conservation easements to climate change. We outline four potential approaches to enhance conservation outcomes under climate change: (1) shift land-acquisition priorities to account for potential climate-change impacts; (2) consider conservation tools other than perpetual conservation …

Wayfair: Sales Tax Formalism And Income Tax Nexus, David Gamage, Adam Thimmesch, Darien Shanske

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This is the second of a series of essays wherein we analyze the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in South Dakota v. Wayfair. In this essay, we address issues related to sales tax formalism and income tax nexus.

Radical Feminist Harms On Sex Workers, India Thusi

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Sex work has long been a site for contesting womanhood, sexuality, race, and patriarchy. Its very existence forces us to examine how we think about two very dirty subjects—money and sex. The radical feminist literature highlights the problems with sex work and often describes it as a form of “human trafficking” and violence against women. This influential philosophy underlies much of the work in human trafficking courts, was evident in a letter signed by several Hollywood starlets in opposition to Amnesty International’s support for decriminalization, and is the premise of several movies and documentaries about “sex slavery.” Radical feminists aim …

Cybersecurity And The New Era Of Space Activities, David P. Fidler

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

State Imperiled Species Legislation, Robert L. Fischman, Vicky J. Meretsky, Willem Drews, Katlin Stephani, Jennifer Teson

Articles by Maurer Faculty

State wildlife conservation programs are essential to accomplishing the national goal of extinction prevention. By virtue of their constitutional powers, their expertise, and their on-the-ground personnel, states could—in theory—accomplish far more than the federal agencies directly responsible for implementing the Endangered Species Act (ESA). States plausibly argue that they can catalyze collaborative conservation that brings together key stakeholders to improve conditions for imperiled species. Bills to revise the ESA seek to delegate greater authority to states. We evaluated states’ imperiled species legislation to determine their legal capacity to employ the key regulatory tools that prompt collaborative conservation. All but four …

Empirical Environmental Scholarship, Robert L. Fischman, Lydia Barbash-Riley

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The most important development in legal scholarship over the past quarter century has been the rise of empirical research. Drawing upon the traditions of legal realism and the law and economics movement, a variety of social science techniques have delivered fresh perspectives and punctured false claims. But environmental law has been slow to adopt empirical tools, and our findings indicate that it lags behind other fields. There are several clear benefits from an empirical agenda to explore how to make environmental law more effective. But no previous article has applied the lessons from empirical scholarship in other fields to environmental …

Evolution Of The Racial Identity Of Children Of Loving: Has Our Thinking About Race And Racial Issues Become Obsolete?, Kevin D. Brown

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Access To Consumer Bankruptcy, Pamela Foohey

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This essay examines the state of access to justice in the context of consumer bankruptcy from two vantage points: (1) how people decide that their money problems are legal problems addressable by filing bankruptcy; and (2) the barriers people face in using the consumer bankruptcy system. To shed new light on how people decide to use bankruptcy to address their financial troubles, I analyze a sample of narratives accompanying consumers' complaints about financial products and services submitted to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. I also chronicle the evolution of research regarding consumer bankruptcy’s “local legal culture,” systemic racial bias, and …

Race And Representation Revisited: The New Racial Gerrymandering Cases And Section 2 Of The Vra, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer, Guy-Uriel E. Charles

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This article explores the Supreme Court's new racial gerrymandering cases and argue that those cases are on a collision course with Section 2 of the VRA. We revisit the Shaw line of cases and explain that the Shaw cases were more sympathetic to the representational rights of voters of color than are the new racial gerrymandering cases. This is primarily because the Shaw cases made room within the doctrine for the state to pursue descriptive representation for voters of color. We argue that new racial gerrymandering cases are inimical to descriptive representation. To the extent that voting rights scholars and …

State Responses To Federal Tax Reform: Charitable Tax Credits, David Gamage, Joseph Bankman, Jacob Goldin, Daniel Hemel, Darien Shanske, Kirk J. Stark, Dennis J. Ventry Jr., Manoj Viswanathan

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This paper summarizes the current federal income tax treatment of charitable contributions where the gift entitles the donor to a state tax credit. Such credits are very common and are used by the states to encourage private donations to a wide range of activities, including natural resource preservation through conservation easements, private school tuition scholarship programs, financial aid for college-bound children from low-income households, shelters for victims of domestic violence, and numerous other state-supported programs. Under these programs, taxpayers receive tax credits for donations to governments, government-created funds, and nonprofits.

A central federal income tax question raised by these donations …

Wayfair And The Retroactivity Of Constitutional Holdings, David Gamage, Adam Thimmesch, Darien Shanske

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This essay analyzes the issue of retroactivity with respect to the Supreme Court case of South Dakota v. Wayfair.

The New Writs Of Assistance, Ian Samuel

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The providers of network services (and the makers of network devices) know an enormous amount about our lives. Because they do, these network intermediaries are being asked with increasing frequency to assist the government in solving crimes or gathering intelligence. Given how much they know about us, if the government can secure the assistance of these intermediaries, it will enjoy a huge increase in its theoretical capacity for surveillance—the ability to learn, in principle, almost anything about anyone. That has the potential to create serious social harm, even assuming that the government continues to adhere to ordinary democratic norms and …

The Interpretation And Effect Of Permissive Forum Selection Clauses Under U.S. Law, Hannah L. Buxbaum

Articles by Maurer Faculty

A forum selection clause is a form of contractual waiver. By this device, a contract party waives its rights to raise jurisdictional or venue objections if a lawsuit is initiated against it in the chosen court. The use of such a clause in a particular case may therefore raise a set of questions under contract law. Is the waiver valid? Was it procured by fraud, duress, or other unconscionable means? What is its scope? And so on. Unlike most contractual waivers, though, a forum selection clause affects not only the private rights and obligations of the parties, but something of …

Debunked, Discredited, But Still Defended: Why Prosecutors Resist Challenges To Bad Science And Some Suggestions For Crafting Remedies For Wrongful Conviction Based On Changed Science, Aviva A. Orenstein

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Flawed science has significantly contributed to wrongful convictions. Courts struggle with how to address such convictions when the mistaken science (such as bogus expert claims about the differences between accidental fires and intentionally set ones) significantly affected the guilty verdict but there is no DNA evidence to directly exonerate the accused. My short piece explores why prosecutors often defend bad science. Mistakes in science tend to serve the prosecution, but there are other more subtle factors that explain prosecutors’ reluctance to address flawed forensic testimony. Such reluctance may arise from fondness for the status quo and a resistance to subverting …

La Méthode Comparative En Droit Public, Elisabeth Zoller

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Legitimate Yet Manipulative: The Conundrum Of Open-Market Manipulation, Gina-Gail S. Fletcher

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Is manipulation possible in the absence of misconduct? This is the foundational inquiry at the heart of open-market manipulation. Open-market manipulation captures the attention of lawmakers and courts because it is market manipulation effected entirely through facially legitimate transactions. Whereas traditional, well-accepted forms of market manipulation involve deception, fraud, and monopolistic prices, open-market manipulation involves no objectively bad acts and, instead, is accomplished through permissible transactions executed on the open market. As enforcement of this form of manipulation increases, the question arises—when, if ever, is a legitimate transaction manipulative?

To the Securities Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission …

Life In The Sweatbox, Pamela Foohey, Robert M. Lawless, Katherine Porter, Deborah Thorne

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The time before a person files bankruptcy is sometimes called the financial “sweatbox.” Using original data from the Consumer Bankruptcy Project, we find that people are living longer in the sweatbox before filing bankruptcy than they have in the past. We also describe the depletion of wealth and well-being that defines people’s time in the sweatbox. For those people who struggle for more than two years before filing bankruptcy—the “long strugglers”—their time in the sweatbox is particularly damaging. During their years in the sweatbox, long strugglers deal with persistent collection calls, go without healthcare, food, and utilities, lose homes and …

Judicial Intervention As Judicial Restraint, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer, Guy-Uriel E. Charles

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This paper examines the Court's decision in Gill v. Whitford. It advances two claims. First, it provides a comprehensive account of the Court's skepticism of judicial supervision of democratic politics, an account that we call the narrative of nonintervention. It situates Gill within that account and argues that the Court's reluctance to intervene is a function of the Court's institutional calculus that it ought to protect its legitimacy and institutional capital when it engages in what look like political fights. Second, the paper provides an instrumentalist account for judicial intervention. It argues that the Court should intervene to prevent partisan …

The Statutory Authority For Court-Ordered Disgorgement In Sec Enforcement Actions, Donna M. Nagy

Articles by Maurer Faculty

What empowers the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to seek, and federal district courts to order, the disgorgement of ill-gotten gains from securities law violators? The short answer, which stood largely unchallenged for 46 years, is that federal courts may award disgorgement, at the request of the SEC, pursuant to the equitable powers that Congress conferred in the jurisdictional provisions of the federal securities laws. During the 2017 oral argument in Kokesh v. SEC, however, five justices of the U.S. Supreme Court interjected statements expressing varying degrees of skepticism. The tenor of the questions during the Kokesh argument, as …

Human-Centered Civil Justice Design: Procedural Justice And Process Value Pluralism, Victor D. Quintanilla, Michael A. Yontz

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Against Seminal Principles: Ethics, Hubris, And Lessons To Learn From Illicit Inseminations, Jody L. Madeira, Steven R. Lindheim Md, Mark V. Sauer Md

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This short essay addresses the ethical implications of Illicit inseminations, instances of fertility fraud in which a physician uses his own gametes to impregnate a patient.

Jevic's Promise: Procedural Justice In Chapter 11, Pamela Foohey

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In this Response to Jonathan Lipson's article, The Secret Life of Priority: Corporate Reorganization After Jevic, 93 Wash. L. Rev. 631 (2018)), I focus on Czyzewski v. Jevic Holding Corp.'s implications for procedural justice and corporate reorganization. In his article, Lipson explicitly links the chapter 11 process with the Bankruptcy Code’s substantive rules about priority, crafting a forceful argument about what procedural values the U.S. Supreme Court sought to uphold when it penned Jevic. In doing so, Lipson expounds on a broader truth about the co-option of corporate reorganization’s process in the name of value preservation. Procedural justice teaches that …

Expanding The Artificial Intelligence-Data Protection Debate, Fred H. Cate, Christopher Kuner, Orla Lynskey, Christopher Millard, Nora Ni Loideain, Dan Jerker B. Svantesson

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.