Law Commons^™

The Sunset Of The Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act Of 2016 And The Rise Of The Demand And Refusal Rule, Fallon S. Sheridan

Fordham Law Review

During World War II, hundreds of thousands of works of art were confiscated by Nazis under the direction of Adolf Hitler or sold for less than market value by members of the Jewish community fleeing Nazi Germany. Shockingly, an estimated 100,000 of the 600,000 works that were taken are still missing today. In recognition of the need for laws that adequately assist original owners (and their heirs) in recovering these works of art, the U.S. Congress passed the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2016 (“the HEAR Act”). The HEAR Act supplanted state statutes of limitations for Naziconfiscated artwork with …

Transgender Inmates’ Right To Gender Confirmation Surgery, Marissa Luchs

Fordham Law Review

The Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. It ensures that the state’s power to punish is exercised within the bounds of evolving standards of human decency. At the time of its enactment in 1791, the Eighth Amendment merely protected against torture and other physically barbarous treatments. However, as society’s standards of decency changed, so too did the scope of the Eighth Amendment. Today, among other protections, the Eighth Amendment mandates that prisons provide inmates with adequate conditions of confinement. This includes an obligation on the part of the prison to provide adequate medical care. But a great deal of …

Race And Policing: Some Thoughts And Suggestions For Reform, Solomon Oliver Jr.

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

What Juries Really Think: Practical Guidance For Future Trial Lawyers, Amy J. St. Eve

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Feeling And Thinking Like A Lawyer: Cognition, Emotion, And The Practice And Progress Of Law, Susan A. Bandes

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

If Only I Had Known: The Challenges Of Representation, Jenny E. Carroll

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Investigating Pandemic Effects On Legal Academia, Meera E. Deo

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Rage Of A Privileged Class, Gregory S. Parks, Julia Doyle

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Managing Stress, Grief, And Mental Health Challenges In The Legal Profession; Not Your Usual Law Review Article, Deborah L. Rhode

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Understanding The Social And Cognitive Process In Law School That Creates Unhealthy Lawyers, Kathryne M. Young

Fordham Law Review

Previous work on law student wellness and mental health strongly suggests that the seeds of professional unhappiness are sown in law school. Law students suffer from anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and other mental health problems at alarmingly high rates. They also leave law school with different concerns, commitments, and cognitive patterns than when they entered, emerging less hopeful, less intrinsically motivated, and more concerned with prestige than they were at the outset. So what, exactly, happens to people in law school? Although a rich body of quantitative and survey-based research on law students documents these empirical trends, surprisingly little qualitative …

Who Needs Adverse Possession?, Nadav Shoked

Fordham Law Review

Adverse possession is one of property law’s most central doctrines. Yet, this Article contends, the need it answers has been largely misunderstood. Adverse possession’s doctrinal effects are clear—and stark: when its requirements are met, an owner loses her land to an invader. To explain a doctrine instituting such a radical result, scholars resort to property law’s major philosophical theories. These theories, they argue, at times demand that an owner lose her land to another person who is more committed to that land. The problem with these prevailing justifications of adverse possession, this Article shows, is that they imagine a very …

Taking A Stand: Climate Change Litigants And The Viability Of Constitutional Claims, Mina Juhn

Fordham Law Review

In response to the accelerating effects of global warming, individuals and citizen groups in the United States have brought suit against the federal government to challenge the adequacy of existing climate change policies. Though statutory and tort claims comprise the bulk of these actions, plaintiffs have begun alleging that government inaction on climate change violates constitutional and fundamental rights. In these matters, the federal judiciary generally applies threshold justiciability doctrines, such as standing and the political question doctrine, to deny judicial review. This Note examines the reasoning behind the judiciary’s application of these doctrines and evaluates the appropriate scope of …

Clean Water Act Jurisdiction Over Groundwater Discharges After County Of Maui V. Hawaii Wildlife Fund, Jocelyn Lee

Fordham Law Review

The Clean Water Act is the principal federal law aimed at controlling pollution of the nation’s water resources, yet it does not provide comprehensive oversight of pollutants entering groundwater, the subsurface water that often feeds into rivers, lakes, and oceans. This Note examines a recent Supreme Court decision, County of Maui v. Hawaii Wildlife Fund, which appeared to endorse a theory of federal regulation of groundwater discharges under the Clean Water Act. County of Maui established a “functional equivalent” standard, under which a discharge through groundwater is subject to the Clean Water Act’s permitting requirements if it is the functional …

Widening The Lens, Sharpening The Focus: Mental Health And The Legal Profession, Bernice Donald, Alex Bransford

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Awakening: The Impact Of Covid-19, Racial Upheaval, And Political Polarization On Black Women Lawyers, Tsedale M. Melaku

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Affirmative Immunity: A Litigation-Based Approach To Curb Appellate Courts’ Raising Qualified Immunity Sua Sponte, Michael E. Beyda

Fordham Law Review

Qualified immunity, to put it simply, provides public officials with immunity from civil lawsuits if they have violated an individual’s constitutional rights under their official authority and those rights were not “clearly established” at the time of the official’s actions. The doctrine has evolved into an elaborate framework that has plagued civil rights plaintiffs, as well as courts, for decades. Qualified immunity is an affirmative defense, and affirmative defenses are waived if not raised appropriately by the defendant. Moreover, issues that are not properly raised before the trial court, including affirmative defenses, are generally not considered for the first time …

Reconstructing State Republics, Francesca L. Procaccini

Fordham Law Review

Our national political dysfunction is rooted in constitutionally dysfunctional states. States today are devolving into modern aristocracies through laws that depress popular control, entwine wealth and power, and insulate incumbents from democratic oversight and accountability. These unrepublican states corrupt the entire United States. It is for this reason that the Constitution obligates the United States to restore ailing states to their full republican strength. But how? For all its attention to process, the Constitution is silent on how the United States may exercise its sweeping Article IV power to “guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of …

“The Rule Of The Strong, Not The Rule Of Law”: Reexamining Implicit Divestiture After Mcgirt V. Oklahoma, Joseph Palandrani

Fordham Law Review

In McGirt v. Oklahoma, the U.S. Supreme Court found that the boundaries of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, which were set in 1866 and which encompass a large swath of present-day Oklahoma, remain intact. Although non-Indigenous people had settled on the land in droves by the early twentieth century, the Court held that the land remains “Indian Country” until Congress explicitly indicates otherwise. Because Congress never so indicated, the reservation is undiminished. McGirt marked a massive shift in the Court’s approach to the question of whether reservation boundaries remain in force; demographic history had previously figured prominently in the Court’s rulings …

Foreword And Dedication, Deborah W. Denno, Bruce A. Green

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Conflict Minerals Legislation: The Sec’S New Role As Diplomatic And Humanitarian Watchdog, Karen E. Woody

Fordham Law Review

Buried in the voluminous Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act is an oft-overlooked provision requiring corporate disclosure of the use of “conflict minerals” in products manufactured by issuing corporations. This Article scrutinizes the legislative history and lobbying efforts behind the conflict minerals provision to establish that, unlike the majority of the bill, its goals are moral and political, rather than financial. Analyzing the history of disclosure requirements, the Article suggests that the presence of conflict minerals in an issuer’s product is not inherently material information and that the Dodd-Frank provision statutorily renders nonmaterial information material. The provision, therefore, …

Instructing Juries On Noneconomic Contract Damages, David A. Hoffman, Alexander S. Radus

Fordham Law Review

Gathering pattern contract jury instructions from every state, we examine jurisdictions’ treatment of noneconomic damages. While the conventional account holds that there is a uniform preference against awards of noneconomic damages, we find four different approaches in pattern instructions, with only one state explicitly prohibiting juries from considering noneconomic losses. Lay juries have considerably more freedom to award the promisee’s noneconomic damages than the hornbooks would have us believe.

We substantiate this claim with an online survey experiment asking respondents about a simple contract case and instructing them using the differing pattern forms. We found that subjects routinely awarded more …

Disfavored Constitution, Passive Virtues? Linking State Constitutional Fiscal Limitations And Permissive Taxpayer Standing Doctrines, Joshua G. Urquhart

Fordham Law Review

This Article contrasts the permissive state taxpayer standing doctrines in place in most states with the restrictive federal and state taxpayer standing rules applied in federal court. It proposes a new theory to explain this disparity, arguing that ubiquitous state constitutional fiscal restrictions, which specifically limit a state government’s ability to tax, spend, and borrow, are a primary impetus in the creation and development of liberal state taxpayer standing doctrines. The Article evaluates this novel hypothesis through an empirical-historical survey of the early state taxpayer standing decisions in every permissive jurisdiction and finds that these provisions are indeed involved in …

Bankrupt Estoppel: The Case For A Uniform Doctrine Of Judicial Estoppel As Applied Against Former Bankruptcy Debtors, Eric Hilmo

Fordham Law Review

This Note examines the role judicial estoppel plays in supporting the U.S. federal bankruptcy regime. Though once considered an obscure doctrine, the use of judicial estoppel to bar pursuit of previously undisclosed claims by former bankrupts has grown apace with burgeoning bankruptcy filings over the last decade. While the doctrine’s application in federal courts has evolved toward a common standard of application, state courts’ application remains idiosyncratic. The Note argues that under the established laws of judgment recognition and in light of federal courts’ sophisticated application of the doctrine, state courts should apply federal judicial estoppel standards to further national …

Functionalism’S Military Necessity Problem: Extraterritorial Habeas Corpus, Justice Kennedy, Boumediene V. Bush, And Al Maqaleh V. Gates, Richard Nicholson

Fordham Law Review

The U.S. Supreme Court has struggled over the last 150 years to definitively answer the question of whether the U.S. Constitution applies beyond the borders of the territorial United States. Because the Constitution is silent on the issue, the burden has fallen on the judiciary to establish the contours of the doctrine. At times, the Court has espoused formulistic theories limiting constitutional application to territorial sovereignty, while at others it has looked to more objective, practical solutions that reach beyond the borders.

In 2008, the Supreme Court held in Boumediene v. Bush that the application of the Suspension Clause of …

Determining Diversity Jurisdiction Of National Banks After Wachovia Bank V. Schmidt, Michael Podolsky

Fordham Law Review

Prior to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Wachovia Bank v. Schmidt, some courts held, for diversity jurisdiction purposes, that national banks were citizens of each and every state in which they had a branch. In Schmidt, the Supreme Court made it clear that this approach was incorrect, but failed to provide an alternative one. Not surprisingly, in the wake of that decision another court split developed. While some courts have found that national banks are citizens only of the state listed on their charters as their main office, others have found that national banks are also citizens …

Enron, Doma, And Spousal Privileges: Rethinking The Marriage Plot, Bennett Capers

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Foreward, Joseph Landau

Fordham Law Review

On March 30, 2012, the Fordham Law Review held a daylong conference on the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a statute enacted in 1996 with large majorities in both the House and Senate and signed into law by President Clinton. The Symposium could not have come at a better time: there have been extraordinary changes in the political dynamics surrounding relationship rights since DOMA’s enactment in 1996, when same–sex couples could not marry in any U.S. or foreign jurisdiction. Currently, same–sex couples can legally marry in six U.S. states and the District of Columbia. Nine additional states have broad …

The Solicitor General’S Office, Tradition, And Conviction, Charles Fried

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Missing Links In The President’S Evolution On Same-Sex Marriage, Saikrishna Bangalore Prakash

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Interpretive Schizophrenia: How Congressional Standing Can Solve The Enforce-But-Not-Defend Problem, Abner S. Greene

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.