Law Commons^™

On Removal Jurisdiction's Unanimous Consent Requirements, Adam R. Prescott

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Schneckloth V. Bustamonte: History’S Unspoken Fourth Amendment Anomaly, Brian Gallini

School of Law Faculty Publications and Presentations

The officer walking the beat has numerous tools at her disposal to effectuate a warrantless search, the most popular of which is the consent search. Academics, courts, and the public appear skeptical of current consent search practices; so, how did we get here? Step back to 1969 when President Nixon appointed Warren Burger to replace Earl Warren as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. At that time, many believed Burger’s “law and order” background foretold Miranda’s overruling. That never happened; a handful of commentators and historians therefore view the Burger Court’s criminal procedure decisions as anticlimactic. That view overlooks the …

Schneckloth V. Bustamonte: History’S Unspoken Fourth Amendment Anomaly, Brian Gallini

Brian Gallini

Lawrence V. Texas: The Decision And Its Implications For The Future, Martin A. Schwartz

Martin A. Schwartz

No abstract provided.

A Foster Child’S Right To Informed Consent: A Call To Address The Unique Circumstances Of Foster Children, Patricia A. Cross

Patricia A Cross

Foster care is a term used to describe a system that provides for the needs of children who are without a family member willing or able to take care of them. Caregivers certified by the state in which the child resides will often provide for their basic needs. The Code of Federal Regulations defines foster care as a “24-hour substitute care for children outside their own homes.” How foster children may provide informed consent in medical situations is an important issue that has been largely unexplored. Children, in general, lack the competency to provide independent consent for medical decisions and …

Public Education And Student Privacy: Application Of The Fourth Amendment To Dormitories At Public Colleges And Universities, Bryan R. Lemons Mr.

Bryan R Lemons Mr.

This article discusses the application of the Fourth Amendment to searches of dormitories at public colleges and universities. It begins by providing a general introduction to the Fourth Amendment, as well as the concept of a “reasonable expectation of privacy,” before looking at whether students living in on-campus residential facilities have such reasonable expectations of privacy both in their individual rooms and in the building’s common areas. The article discusses searches by Resident Assistants, and explores the conflict between courts on whether to categorize such searches as private in nature. Additionally, four (4) exceptions to the search warrant requirement are …

Sex And Hiv Disclosure, Aziza Ahmed, Beri Hull

Faculty Scholarship

What do you consent to when you have sex with someone? What if the person is a new sexual partner from a night at a bar? What if the person is your spouse or long-term partner? In these two scenarios, people might understand both HIV risk and HIV disclosure differently. Close reflection demonstrates that a purportedly clear set of criminal laws rarely reflects the complexity of sexual interaction.

This article explores how the dynamics of HIV disclosure prior to sex contribute to an ongoing dialogue about disclosure and consent: Does a person have a right to know his or her …

Group Consensus, Individual Consent, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch

Scholarly Works

Despite a rise in the number of personal-injury and product-liability cases consolidated through multi-district litigation, a decline in class-certification motions, and several newsworthy nonclass settlements such as the $4.85 billion Vioxx settlement and estimated $700 million Zyprexa settlements, little ink has been spilled on nonclass aggregation’s unique issues. Sections 3.17 and 3.18 of the American Law Institute’s Principles of the Law of Aggregate Litigation are a noteworthy exception. This Article uses those principles as a lens for exploring thematic questions about the value of pluralism, group cohesion, governance, procedural justice, and legitimacy in nonclass aggregation.

Sections 3.17 and 3.18 make …

Bad News About Bad News: The Disclosure Of Risks To Insurability In Research Consent Processes, Victoria Smith Apold, Jocelyn Downie

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

One of the phenomena associated with research is “incidental findings,” that is, unexpected findings made during the research, and outside the scope of the research, which have potential health importance. One underappreciated risk of incidental findings is the potential loss of the research subject's insurability; or if a research subject fails to disclose incidental findings when applying for insurance, the insurance contract may be voidable by the insurer. In this article, we seek to explain the insurability risks associated with incidental findings and to make recommendations for how researchers and research ethics committees should address the issue of disclosure of …

The Failure Of Consent: Re-Conceptualizing Rape As Sexual Abuse Of Power, Michal Buchhandler-Raphael

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Article argues that while rape law reform has accomplished significant changes in the past decades, the reform has since stalled. The contemporary focus on the element of consent might account for this stagnation. This move has both failed to effect instrumental change in the courts as well as in social norms, and is conceptually flawed and normatively misguided. The practical result of these deficiencies is that rape, as defined by our criminal justice system, bears little resemblance to the various forms of sexual abuses that are inflicted on victims. While rape law typically criminalizes only the physically violent sexual …

Both Giving And Taking: Should Misuse Of Atms And Electronic Payment Systems Be Theft, Fraud Or Neither?, Alex Steel

Alex Steel

Although transactions via automatic teller machines and other computerised cash payment systems are now very widespread the criminal law relating to their misuse remains confused. Unauthorised withdrawals can be prosecuted as both theft and fraud. By contrast, similar behaviour involving interactions with human tellers is generally not criminal. The result is a deeply flawed and contradictory legal landscape. This article provides an analysis and critique of the case law and legislation that has led to this result and proposes an alternative statutory offence that better reflects the commercial and consumer realities of electronic transactions.

When Sixteen Ain't So Sweet: Rethinking The Regulation Of Adolescent Sexuality, Nicole Phillis

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Legally speaking, sexual maturity poses a significant enough liberty interest for a minor to make medical decisions regarding contraceptive medicine or to choose motherhood without parental involvement, but not quite enough for her to obtain an abortion independently. The law incentivizes teenage motherhood by only granting decisional autonomy to those minors who choose to have a child; the minor female's right to procreate vests regardless of her individual maturity. The law discourages teenage abortions by using the choice to terminate a pregnancy to trigger a presumption of immaturity; the minor female's abortion right is pitted against personal autonomy via parental …

Consent Is Not A Defense To Battery: A Reply To Professor Bergelson, Luis E. Chiesa

Journal Articles

In this essay I argue that, contrary to what most criminal law scholars believe, consent does not operate as a justification that relieves the actor of liability for conduct that admittedly satisfies the offense elements of battery. Rather, I contend that consent is only relevant to battery liability when, in conjunction with other factors, it modifies the definition of the crime in a way that reveals that the defendant’s act does not actually fall within the range of conduct prohibited by the offense. The argument proceeds in three parts.

In Part I, I argue that there are three ways of …

Litigating Together: Social, Moral, And Legal Obligations, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch

Scholarly Works

In a post-Class Action Fairness Act world, the modern mass-tort class action is disappearing. Indeed, multi-district litigation and private aggregation through contracts with plaintiffs’ law firms are the new mass-tort frontier. But something’s amiss with this “nonclass aggregation.” These new procedures involve a fundamentally different dynamic than class actions: plaintiffs have names, faces, and something deeply personal at stake. Their claims are independently economically viable, which gives them autonomy expectations about being able to control the course of their litigation. Yet, they participate in a familiar, collective effort to establish the defendant’s liability. They litigate from both a personal and …

Making Willing Bodies: Manufacturing Consent Among Prisoners And Soldiers, Creating Human Subjects, Patriots, And Everyday Citizens, Bernard E. Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

In March 1944, doctors at the University of Chicago began infecting volunteer convicts at Stateville Prison with a virulent strand of malaria to test the effectiveness and side-effects of potent anti-malarial drugs. According to Dr. Alf Alving, the principal investigator, malaria "was the number-one medical problem of the war in the Pacific" and "we were losing far more men to malaria than to enemy bullets." This refrain would rehearse one of the most productive ways of speaking about prisoner experimentation. The Stateville prisoners became human once again and regained their citizenship and political voice by sacrificing their bodies to the …

It's Good To Be Autonomous: Prospective Consent, Retrospective Consent, And The Foundation Of Consent In The Criminal Law, Jonathan Witmer-Rich

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

What is the foundation of consent in the criminal law? Classically liberal commentators have offered at least three distinct theories. J.S. Mill contends we value consent because individuals are the best judges of their own interests. Joel Feinberg argues an individual’s consent matters because she has a right to autonomy based on her intrinsic sovereignty over her own life. Joseph Raz also focuses on autonomy, but argues that society values autonomy as a constituent element of individual well-being, which it is the state’s duty to promote.The criminal law’s approach to the problem of non-contemporaneous consent—prospective consent and retrospective consent—casts a …

New Twist On An Old Approach: Missouri's Use Of Unconscionability And Consent In The Class Arbitration Waiver Analysis - Brewer V. Missouri Title Loans, Inc., A, Whitney Hampton

Journal of Dispute Resolution

In recent years, the inclusion of arbitration agreements in consumer product contracts has become increasingly popular. In an effort to shield themselves from the damaging effects of expensive class action suits by consumers, many companies have begun to include class arbitration waivers in their contracts, which effectively mandate individual arbitration. These arbitration agreements were initially met with optimism. However, courts have seemingly developed a sense of disdain toward them because of their apparent ability to perpetuate disreputable business practices. This has left many courts searching for ways to invalidate class arbitration waivers.

Consent Is Not A Defense To Battery: A Reply To Professor Bergelson, Luis E. Chiesa

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Professor Vera Bergelson expressed puzzlement over the fact that those who feel "trapped in the wrong body" can "consent to a sex change operation, which often involves the removal of healthy sexual organs," whereas those who would feel happier being amputees "cannot consent to amputation of an arm or a leg.” Bergelson is equally puzzled by the fact that a spouse may physically injure her partner pursuant to practices of religious flagellation, but she may not cause similar injuries pursuant to sadomasochistic sexual practices. The purpose of this brief essay is to explain why I believe that the aforementioned cases …

The Legitimating Role Of Consent In International Law, Matthew J. Lister

All Faculty Scholarship

According to many traditional accounts, one important difference between international and domestic law is that international law depends on the consent of the relevant parties (states) in a way that domestic law does not. In recent years this traditional account has been attacked both by philosophers such as Allen Buchanan and by lawyers and legal scholars working on international law. It is now safe to say that the view that consent plays an important foundational role in international law is a contested one, perhaps even a minority position, among lawyers and philosophers. In this paper I defend a limited but …

Advice And Consent Vs. Silence And Dissent? The Contrasting Roles Of The Legislature In U.S. And U.K. Judicial Appointments, Mary Clark

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The Senate‘s role in judicial appointments has come under increasingly withering criticism for its uninformative and spectacle-like nature. At the same time, Britain has established two new judicial appointment processes - to accompany its new Supreme Court and existing lower courts - in which Parliament plays no role. This Article seeks to understand the reasons for the inclusion and exclusion of the legislature in the U.S. and U.K. judicial appointment processes adopted at the creation of their respective Supreme Courts.

The Article proceeds by highlighting the ideas and concerns motivating inclusion of the legislature in judicial appointments in the early …

Parental Involvement Laws And New Governance, Rachel Rebouché

UF Law Faculty Publications

The stated objectives of parental involvement laws are to protect the health and well-being of minors and to encourage dialogue between parents and adolescents about pregnancy options. Yet decades of studies urge that parental involvement laws do not meet these purposes. Adding to this research, a new ethnography of professionals who implement parental involvement statutes seeks to demonstrate how notice and consent laws and the judicial bypass work in practice. Over the last two years, a non-profit organization, the National Partnership for Women & Families, interviewed 155 lawyers, advocates, judges, health care providers, and court clerks who assist minors in …

Graduated Consent In Contract And Tort Law: Toward A Theory Of Justification, Tom Bell

Tom W. Bell

We often speak of consent in binary terms, boiling it down to 'yes' or 'no.' In truth, however, consent varies by degrees. We tend to afford expressly consensual transactions more respect than transactions backed by only implied consent, for instance, which we in turn regard as more meaningful than transactions justified by merely hypothetical consent. A mirror of that ordinal ranking appears in our judgments about unconsensual transactions, too. Those gradations of consent mark a deep structure of our social world, one especially evident in the contours of contract and tort law. This article draws on those and other sources …

The "Youngest Profession": Consent, Autonomy, And Prostituted Children, Tamar R. Birckhead

Tamar R Birckhead

Although precise estimates do not exist, the data suggests that the number of children believed to be at risk for commercial sexual exploitation in the United States is between 200,000 and 300,000 and that the average age of entry is between eleven and fourteen, with some as young as nine. The number of prostituted children who are criminally prosecuted for these acts is equally difficult to estimate. In 2008—the most recent year for which data is available—approximately 1500 youth under age eighteen were reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation as having been arrested within United States borders for prostitution …