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Full-Text Articles in Law

Changemakers: Terrence Haas : Juris Doctorate : Adventures In Law, Roger Williams University School Of Law Apr 2024

Changemakers: Terrence Haas : Juris Doctorate : Adventures In Law, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.


Is The Shipwreck I Found In Lake Michigan Mine? Great Lakes Shipwreck Legal Research Basics And Sources, Kincaid C. Brown Jan 2022

Is The Shipwreck I Found In Lake Michigan Mine? Great Lakes Shipwreck Legal Research Basics And Sources, Kincaid C. Brown

Law Librarian Scholarship

There have been approximately 6,000 shipwrecks claiming an estimated 30,000 lives in the Great Lakes and new shipwrecks continue to be located, such as the recently discovered Atlanta. There are many opportunities for divers, boaters, and other users of the Great Lakes to come across found and new shipwrecks. This article discusses the basic framework of federal, state, and other law governing these shipwrecks.


Why Can't I Get Pliny The Elder? Beer Distribution Law In Michigan, Kincaid C. Brown Jan 2022

Why Can't I Get Pliny The Elder? Beer Distribution Law In Michigan, Kincaid C. Brown

Law Librarian Scholarship

If you are a craft beer drinker, you have noticed that there are many beers brewed in the United States that you cannot buy in Michigan, like California-based Pliny the Elder. You will have also noticed that there are many craft beers brewed in Michigan that you cannot buy at your local grocery store or bottle shop. Why is that the case? The short answer is because Michigan law mandates that beer pass through what’s known as a three-tier distribution system. This article outlines what a three-tier distribution is, what it means for Michigan brewers and beer drinkers,


Researching Marijuana Law, Seth Quidachay-Swan Jun 2021

Researching Marijuana Law, Seth Quidachay-Swan

Law Librarian Scholarship

This article provides a brief overview of the current legal framework governing the regulation of marijuana at the federal and state levels in the United States. It also provides an overview of the state of Michigan’s current regulatory framework and resources for attorneys interested in learning more about marijuana regulation.


Designing Legal Experiences, Maximilian A. Bulinski, J.J. Prescott Feb 2021

Designing Legal Experiences, Maximilian A. Bulinski, J.J. Prescott

Book Chapters

Technological advancements are improving how courts operate by changing the way they handle proceedings and interact with litigants. Court Innovations is a socially minded software startup that enables citizens, law enforcement, and courts to resolve legal matters through Matterhorn, an online communication and dispute resolution platform. Matterhorn was conceived at the University of Michigan Law School and successfully piloted in two Michigan district courts beginning in 2014. The platform now operates in over 40 courts and in at least eight states, and it has facilitated the resolution of more than 40,000 cases to date. These numbers will continue to grow …


Drone Law: Legal Research Basics And Sources, Kincaid C. Brown Jan 2021

Drone Law: Legal Research Basics And Sources, Kincaid C. Brown

Law Librarian Scholarship

Drones, legally called “unmanned aircraft systems” (UAS), are primarily governed by federal law with some aspects overseen by state and local law. The system includes the aircraft itself and its associated elements for communication and operation. This article discusses the basic framework of federal and Michigan law governing UAS.


Voting By Mail: Issues And Resources, Virginia A. Neisler Aug 2020

Voting By Mail: Issues And Resources, Virginia A. Neisler

Law Librarian Scholarship

As the world navigates the worst pandemic in living memory, America has been faced with the prospect of holding a federal presidential election amid a public health crisis. In the spring of 2020, when the coronavirus began to spread rapidly in the United States, election officials in many states opted to extend absentee voting deadlines or postpone elections altogether to reduce the risk of disease transmission. In anticipation of a resurgence of COVID-19 in the fall, the scheduled November election has caused concern for many officials who have searched for potential solutions to make the upcoming presidential election safer.


Expungement Of Criminal Convictions: An Empirical Study, J.J. Prescott, Sonja B. Starr May 2020

Expungement Of Criminal Convictions: An Empirical Study, J.J. Prescott, Sonja B. Starr

Articles

Laws permitting the expungement of criminal convictions are a key component of modern criminal justice reform efforts and have been the subject of a recent upsurge in legislative activity. This debate has been almost entirely devoid of evidence about the laws’ effects, in part because the necessary data (such as sealed records themselves) have been unavailable. We were able to obtain access to de-identified data that overcome that problem, and we use it to carry out a comprehensive statewide study of expungement recipients and comparable nonrecipients in Michigan. We offer three key sets of empirical findings. First, among those legally …


Prenatal Drug Exposure As Aggravated Circumstances, Frank E. Vandervort Nov 2019

Prenatal Drug Exposure As Aggravated Circumstances, Frank E. Vandervort

Articles

In Michigan, "a child has a legal right to begin life with sound mind and body." Yet the family court may not assert Juvenile Code jurisdiction until after birth. In re Baby X addressed the question of whether a parent's prenatal conduct may form the basis for jurisdiction upon birth. It held that a mother's drug use during pregnancy is neglect, allowing the court to assert jurisdiction immediately upon the child's birth. In deciding Baby X, the Court specifically reserved the question of whether parental drug use during pregnancy might be sufficient to permanently deprive a parent of custody. …


Rural America's Drinking Water Crisis, Madison Condon Oct 2019

Rural America's Drinking Water Crisis, Madison Condon

Shorter Faculty Works

While Flint, Michigan, rightfully captures headlines, another water crisis affecting millions of Americans continues to go largely unnoticed. All across rural America, small community water systems are failing to protect public health due to a perfect storm of forces. Poor regulation of agricultural waste and other pollutants, shrinking populations, and aging infrastructure all contribute to the increasing incidents of water quality violations dotting the rural landscape. There are nearly 60 thousand community water systems in the United States and 93 percent of them serve populations of fewer than 10,000 people—67 percent serve populations of fewer than 500 people. In 2015, …


Domestic Violence Convictions And Firearms Possession: The Law As It Stands And As It Moves, Kate E. Britt Jul 2019

Domestic Violence Convictions And Firearms Possession: The Law As It Stands And As It Moves, Kate E. Britt

Law Librarian Scholarship

Legislatures have attempted to curb instances of gun use in fatal and nonfatal domestic violence by passing statutes restricting possession of firearms for perpetrators of domestic violence. This article explains federal and Michigan law as it stands and discusses current efforts to further limit perpetrators’ access to firearms.


New Juvenile Discovery Rules: Mandatory, Comprehensive, And Streamlined., Joshua B. Kay Jul 2019

New Juvenile Discovery Rules: Mandatory, Comprehensive, And Streamlined., Joshua B. Kay

Articles

The recently promulgated amendments and additions to the civil discovery rules include several changes affecting child protection and juvenile delinquency proceedings.1 The updates should make discovery in juvenile court matters more efficient by clarifying what is discoverable and requiring more timely exchange of information.


Research Resources For Michigan Criminal Law, Kate E. Britt Jan 2019

Research Resources For Michigan Criminal Law, Kate E. Britt

Law Librarian Scholarship

Few areas of the law are as consequential to the personal lives of those involved as criminal law. The law can, and does, change quickly, and attorneys need to stay abreast of the latest developments to effectively represent their clients. Thankfully, modern government bodies publish current primary law (and many useful secondary sources) online. The sites outlined below will take users to reliable sources of Michigan criminal law and procedure.


Stategraft, Bernadette Atuahene, Timothy Hodge Jan 2018

Stategraft, Bernadette Atuahene, Timothy Hodge

All Faculty Scholarship

Although sometimes difficult to detect, governmental power abuses can have detrimental impacts. Property tax assessments provide an effective lens to examine this phenomenon because, given the complexity of calculating property tax assessments, it is difficult for citizens to know when local government has exceeded its legitimate taxing authority and crossed into the realm of illegal extraction. Michigan is an ideal case study because it protects property owners by making assessment-related power abuses more visible through a unique state constitutional provision: property tax assessments cannot exceed 50 percent of a property’s market value. Abuses have persisted nevertheless. Between 2011 and 2015, …


Assessing Access-To-Justice Outreach Strategies, J. J. Prescott Jan 2018

Assessing Access-To-Justice Outreach Strategies, J. J. Prescott

Articles

The need for prospective beneficiaries to “take up” new programs is a common stumbling block for otherwise well-designed legal and policy innovations. I examine the take-up problem in the context of publicly provided court services and test the effectiveness of various outreach strategies that announce a newly available online court access platform. I study individuals with minor arrest warrants whose distrust of courts may dampen any take-up response. I partnered with a court to quasi-randomly assign outreach approaches to a cohort of individuals and find that outreach improves take-up, that the type of outreach matters, and that online platform access …


Juvenile Lifers And Juveniles In Michigan Prisons: A Population Of Special Concern, Kimberly A. Thomas Sep 2017

Juvenile Lifers And Juveniles In Michigan Prisons: A Population Of Special Concern, Kimberly A. Thomas

Articles

Prisoners serving life without parole for offenses they committed when they were juveniles have received much attention after the United States Supreme Court found in Miller v Alabama that mandatory life without parole for juveniles violated the Eighth Amendment and found that its Miller decision applied retroactively. Courts have begun the process of sentencing and resentencing these individuals, some of whom are still teens and some of whom have served 40 years or more in the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC). All told, not including new cases that come before the court, approximately 370 prisoners will receive individualized sentences under …


Evicted: The Socio-Legal Case For The Right To Housing, Lisa T. Alexander Apr 2017

Evicted: The Socio-Legal Case For The Right To Housing, Lisa T. Alexander

Faculty Scholarship

Matthew Desmond's Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City is a triumphant work that provides the missing socio-legal data needed to prove why America should recognize housing as a human right. Desmond's masterful study of the effect of evictions on Milwaukee's urban poor in the wake of the 2008 U.S. housing crisis humanizes the evicted, and their landlords, through rich and detailed ethnographies. His intimate portrayals teach Evicted's readers about the agonizingly difficult choices that low-income, unsubsidized tenants must make in the private rental market. Evicted also reveals the contradictions between "law on the books" and "law-in-action." Its most …


The Stereotyped Offender: Domestic Violence And The Failure Of Intervention [Batterer Intervention Program (Bip) Standards Data, As Of 2015], Carolyn B. Ramsey Jun 2016

The Stereotyped Offender: Domestic Violence And The Failure Of Intervention [Batterer Intervention Program (Bip) Standards Data, As Of 2015], Carolyn B. Ramsey

Research Data

These 19 comparative data tables relating to state and local certification standards for batterer intervention programs (BIPs), as of 2015, are electronic Appendices B-T to Carolyn B. Ramsey, The Stereotyped Offender: Domestic Violence and the Failure of Intervention, 120 Penn. St. L. Rev. 337 (2015), available at http://scholar.law.colorado.edu/articles/56/. Appendix A is not reproduced here because it simply contains citations to the state and local standards, but it is published with the journal article.


Us Environmental Injustice Goes Well Beyond Flint, Lauren Carasik Feb 2016

Us Environmental Injustice Goes Well Beyond Flint, Lauren Carasik

Media Presence

No abstract provided.


Rejected For Exposure, Jessica Hanes, Seth Quidachay-Swan Jan 2016

Rejected For Exposure, Jessica Hanes, Seth Quidachay-Swan

Law Librarian Scholarship

A story published recently in the Detroit News about a Michigan man “asserting a constitutional right to take ‘ballot selfies’ by challenging the state’s long-standing ban on voting station and polling place photography” sparked our interest in whether generational social media preferences might be the driving force for citizens who seek to overturn such laws. After all, the plaintiff is among the earliest born into the Millennial generation, over half of which (55%) have shared a selfie on social media as of 2014, a practice that has become ubiquitous even in politics.


Easy Come, Easy Go: The Plight Of Children Who Spend Less Than 30 Days In Foster Care, Vivek Sankaran, Christopher Church Jan 2016

Easy Come, Easy Go: The Plight Of Children Who Spend Less Than 30 Days In Foster Care, Vivek Sankaran, Christopher Church

Articles

This article explores the plight of “short stayers” and argues that juvenile courts are failing to use two tools—the federal reasonable efforts requirement and the early appointment of parents’ counsel—to prevent the unnecessary entry of children into foster care. The article also argues that states should give parents and children the right to an expedited appeal of removal decisions to ensure removal standards are properly applied. Finally, this article argues that the federal government must acknowledge the problem of short stayers by utilizing data related to children who may unnecessarily enter foster care in the Child and Family Services Review, …


Tesla, Dealer Franchise Laws, And The Politics Of Crony Capitalism, Daniel A. Crane Jan 2016

Tesla, Dealer Franchise Laws, And The Politics Of Crony Capitalism, Daniel A. Crane

Articles

Public choice theory has long proclaimed that business interests can capture regulatory processes to generate economic rents at the expense of consumers. Such political exploitation may go unnoticed and unchallenged for long time periods because, though the rents are captured by a relatively small number of individuals or firms, the costs are widely diffused over a large number of consumers. The triggering event to expose and mobilize opposition to the regulatory capture may not arise until a new technology seeks to challenge the incumbent technology, thus creating a motivated champion to expose and oppose the regulatory capture and advocate for …


Race, Restructurings, And Equal Protection Doctrine Through The Lens Of Schuette V. Bamn, Steve Sanders Jan 2016

Race, Restructurings, And Equal Protection Doctrine Through The Lens Of Schuette V. Bamn, Steve Sanders

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.


Michigan Craft Beer Legislation, Kincaid C. Brown Jan 2015

Michigan Craft Beer Legislation, Kincaid C. Brown

Law Librarian Scholarship

Michigan is currently in the midst of a craft beer boom. The Michigan Brewers Guild’s member list includes more than 150 breweries and brewpubs brewing craft beer. Michigan’s craft beer industry is boosting the state’s economy. According to an analysis by the Brewers Association customized by the Michigan Brewers Guild, the craft beer industry is directly responsible for more than 5,000 Michigan jobs and contributes more than $277 million to the state’s economy and more than $144 million in wages.


The Intersection Of Family Law And Education Law, Debra Chopp Jul 2014

The Intersection Of Family Law And Education Law, Debra Chopp

Articles

It is well-established that parents have a fundamental liberty interest in directing the education of their children. As family law practitioners know, however, parents do not always agree with each other on matters pertaining to their child's education. Where education issues arise in family law cases, it is important for members of the family law bar to have familiarity with education laws so that they may properly advise their clients. This article will identify and briefly discuss common intersections of family law and education law.


Case Closed: Addressing Unmet Legal Needs & Stabilizing Families, Vivek S. Sankaran, Martha L. Raimon Jan 2014

Case Closed: Addressing Unmet Legal Needs & Stabilizing Families, Vivek S. Sankaran, Martha L. Raimon

Other Publications

This is the first of two articles that examines the role that advocates for parents and families can play in furthering the well-being and safety of children. This article highlights how the work of multidisciplinary advocacy teams with legal expertise can help prevent children from entering foster care. The next article will discuss emerging parent representation models that expedite the safe reunification of children already in foster care.


Using Preventive Legal Advocacy To Keep Children From Entering Foster Care, Vivek Sankaran Jan 2014

Using Preventive Legal Advocacy To Keep Children From Entering Foster Care, Vivek Sankaran

Articles

Children may unnecessarily enter foster care because their parents are unable to resolve legal issues that affect their safety and well-being in their home.[...] Yet these kinds of legal needs for poor families are rarely met. On average, poor families experience at least one civil legal need per year, but only a small portion of those needs are satisfied. For about every six thousand people in poverty, there exists only one legal aid lawyer. So legal aid programs are forced to reject close to a million cases each year. This lack of legal services threatens the well-being of children[...] who …


Human Trafficking Law And Resources, Kincaid C. Brown Jan 2013

Human Trafficking Law And Resources, Kincaid C. Brown

Law Librarian Scholarship

The U.S. State Department estimates as many as 27 million men, women, and children are global human trafficking victims at any given time. In 2012, only 46,570 new victims were identified. Globally, there were only 7,705 prosecutions and 4,746 convictions for human trafficking crimes in 2012. In the United States, there were 2,515 suspected incidents of human trafficking investigated between January 2008 and June 2010. Of these, more than 80 percent of the victims of sex trafficking were U.S. citizens or nationals, and more than 90 percent of the victims of labor trafficking were undocumented or qualified aliens.


Hydraulic Fracturing: Sources Of Law And Information, Barbara H. Garavaglia Jan 2013

Hydraulic Fracturing: Sources Of Law And Information, Barbara H. Garavaglia

Articles

Hydraulic fracturing—also known as fracking—has become increasingly controversial in the United States over the past several years, especially in states such as Michigan with large shale gas deposits that were previously unextractable. In 2012, a Michigan fracking ban initiative failed to make it onto the November statewide ballot, but citizens groups are presently collecting signatures in an attempt to get the initiative onto the November 2014 ballot as an “initiated state statute.” And, more recently, state auctions of drilling permits have been the scenes of citizen protests driven by concerns about the potential environmental impacts of hydraulic fracturing.


Child Welfare Cases Involving Mental Illness: Reflections On The Role And Responsibilities Of The Lawyer-Guardian Ad Litem, Frank E. Vandervort Jan 2012

Child Welfare Cases Involving Mental Illness: Reflections On The Role And Responsibilities Of The Lawyer-Guardian Ad Litem, Frank E. Vandervort

Articles

Child welfare cases involving mental illness suffered either by a child or his parent can be among the most difficult and perplexing that a child’s lawyerguardian ad litem (L-GAL) will handle. They may present daunting problems of accessing necessary and appropriate services as well as questions about whether and when such mental health problems can be resolved or how best to manage them. They also require the L-GAL to carefully consider crucially important questions—rarely with all the information one would like to have and too often with information that comes late in the case, is fragmented or glaringly incomplete. This …