Law Commons^™

Sentence Appeals In England: Promoting Consistent Sentencing Through Robust Appellate Review, Briana Lynn Rosenbaum

Scholarly Works

Unlike in most areas of the law, federal courts of appeals in the United States defer to trial courts on many issues of sentencing law and policy. As a result, the power to decide sentencing law and policy is often at the discretion of individual district court judges. Law reform scholars have long decried the disparity, lack of transparency, and legitimization concerns that this practice raises. These concerns are heightened in the post-Booker sentencing regime, where the advisory nature of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines undermines those Guidelines’ ability to further sentencing consistency. The deferential approach to federal sentence appeals is …

Young Again, Larry Yackle

Faculty Scholarship

This essay revisits an old problem in the law of federal courts: the source of the right of action in Ex parte Young. The core of the story underlying Young is familiar. Shareholders in railroad corporations filed suit in a federal circuit court, claiming that state established rail rates in Minnesota violated the Fourteenth Amendment and the (dormant) Commerce Clause. The circuit court issued a preliminary injunction barring adoption of the rates and prohibiting the defendants from attempting to enforce them. One of the defendants, Minnesota Attorney General Edward T. Young, nonetheless brought a state court mandamus action against the …

Reviving The Federal Crime Of Gratuities, Sarah N. Welling

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The federal crime of gratuities prohibits people from giving gifts to federal public officials if the gift is tied to an official act. Both the donor and the donee are liable. The gratuities crime is dysfunctional in two main ways. It is overinclusive in that it covers conduct indistinguishable from bribery. It is underinclusive in that it does not cover conduct that is clearly dangerous: gifts to public officials because of their positions that are not tied to a particular official act.

This Article argues that Congress should extend the crime of gratuities to cover gifts because of an official’s …

Small Business Disaster Assistance, Peggy Maisel, Natalie Roman

Faculty Scholarship

When a disaster hits, it affects the entire community. A small business is especially vulnerable because it does not necessarily have the resources to respond to a disaster or to catastrophic damage. In fact, it is reported that approximately 25 percent of small businesses that close due to a disaster never reopen, and 40 percent of small businesses hit directly by a serious natural disaster do not recover. This is true regardless of what kind of disaster is involved, from a hurricane, a tornado, an earthquake, flooding, winter storms, or even civil unrest or terrorism.

Small businesses experience a number …

The Supreme Court And The Ppl Montana Case: Examining The Relationship Between Navigability And State Ownership Of Submerged Lands, Richard C. Ausness

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The United States Supreme Court held in PPL Montana v. Montana held that the State of Montana did not own the beds beneath certain rivers and, therefore, rejected the State's claim that the power company owed it millions of dollars in "back rent" for the use of the riverbeds as sites for ten of its hydroelectric power plants. The Montana Supreme Court, which had ruled in favor of the State, declared that even if portions of a river were not navigable for commercial purposes because of physical conditions, the entire river would be treated as navigable if commercial traffic could …