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Law Library Blog (November 2018): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Securities Law In The Sixties: The Supreme Court, The Second Circuit, And The Triumph Of Purpose Over Text, Adam C. Pritchard, Robert B. Thompson

Articles

This Article analyzes the Supreme Court’s leading securities cases from 1962 to 1972—SEC v. Capital Gains Research Bureau, Inc.; J.I. Case Co. v. Borak; Mills v. Electric Auto-Lite Co.; Superintendent of Insurance v. Bankers Life & Casualty Co.; and Affiliated Ute of Utah v. United States—relying not just on the published opinions, but also the Justices’ internal letters, memos, and conference notes. The Sixties Court did not simply apply the text as enacted by Congress, but instead invoked the securities laws’ purposes as a guide to interpretation. The Court became a partner of Congress in shaping the securities laws, rather …

Mitochondrial Replacement Therapy: How A Government For The People, Failed The People, Jeffery Mark Sauer

University of Miami Law Review

Despite having the potential to significantly reduce the passage of many lethal diseases and devastating birth defects, mitochondrial replacement therapy—a controversial medical procedure in which mitochondrial RNA from a healthy female replaces the mitochondrial RNA from the intended mother in vitro—will have no place in the United States anytime soon. Under the guise of purported safety concerns and ethical dilemmas, the Republican Congress used its “power of the purse” to halt any and all research furthering mitochondrial replacement therapy, notwithstanding the fact that many leaders in the medical community have advocated for further research. Several developed countries have already implemented …

How Should Congress Respond To Mcdonnell?, David Yassky, Kathleen Clark, Allen Dickerson, Jennifer Rodgers

Pace Law Review

Discussion of question of whether McDonnell was essentially right or wrong. Should Congress act to change the McDonnell rule? Should the Supreme Court reconsider it? What would be an alternative or a better way, if there is one, to approach the question of public corruption prosecution?

Originalism And Congressional Power To Enforce The Fourteenth Amendment, Christopher W. Schmidt

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

In this Essay, I argue that originalism conflicts with the Supreme Court’s current jurisprudence defining the scope of Congress’ power to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment. Under the standard established in Boerne v. Flores, the Court limits congressional power under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment to statutory remedies premised on judicially defined interpretations of Fourteenth Amendment rights. A commitment to originalism as a method of judicial constitutional interpretation challenges the premise of judicial interpretive supremacy in Section 5 jurisprudence in two ways. First, as a matter of history, an originalist reading of Section 5 provides support for broad judicial …

Blurring Institutional Boundaries: Judges' Perceptions Of Threats To Judicial Independence, Alyx Mark, Michael A. Zilis

Political Science Faculty Publications

The legislature wields multiple tools to limit judicial power, but scholars have little information about how judges interpret variant threats and which they find most concerning. To provide insight, we conduct original interviews regarding legislative threats to courts with over two dozen sitting federal judges, representing all tiers of the federal judiciary. We find that judges have a nuanced understanding of threats and tend to identify components of legislative proposals that threaten formal institutional powers as more concerning than those challenging policy set by judges. This distinction has broad implications for our understanding of judicial behavior at the federal level.

Rights And Retrenchment In The Trump Era, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang

All Faculty Scholarship

Our aim in this essay is to leverage archival research, data and theoretical perspectives presented in our book, Rights and Retrenchment: The Counterrevolution against Federal Litigation, as a means to illuminate the prospects for retrenchment in the current political landscape. We follow the scheme of the book by separately considering the prospects for federal litigation retrenchment in three lawmaking sites: Congress, federal court rulemaking under the Rules Enabling Act, and the Supreme Court. Although pertinent data on current retrenchment initiatives are limited, our historical data and comparative institutional perspectives should afford a basis for informed prediction. Of course, little in …

De Novo: Reviewing Tax Court Redressability Incongruities In Innocent Spouse Relief Sections 66© And 6015(F), Jason Harn

Seattle University Law Review

Part One of this Note details the historical background of joint and several liability in federal income taxation. Part Two introduces, compares, and contrasts the two statutory provisions Congress has enacted to relieve “innocent spouses” from joint and several liability. Part Three discusses the incongruent standards of review applied by the Tax Court to these—§§ 66 and 6015—two substantially similar relief provisions. Finally, Part Four suggests remedies to alleviate this incongruity.

Barack Obama's Emancipation Proclamation: An Essay In Memory Of Judge Richard D. Cudahy, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

In a case involving whether illegal immigrants were protected under federal labor law, Judge Richard Cudahy, observed that illegal immigrants are often at the mercy of unscrupulous employers and that immigrations laws provide employers “with a powerful tool for unfair and oppressive treatment of migrant labor.” There are millions of people in the United States who are vulnerable to exploitation in the workplace due to their illegal immigration status. In 2012 and 2014, the Obama administration announced programs designed to provide limited security to some of the millions of illegal immigrants present in the United States. These programs are, in …

Wilderness, Luck & Love: A Memoir And A Tribute, Neil Kagan

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

In 1984, Congress preserved 8.2 million acres of roadless federal lands as "wilderness," nearly matching the acreage set aside in the Wilderness Act of 1964. Congress also created the most new wilderness areas ever in a single year, by far. Wilderness Connect, Number of Wilderness Areas Designated by Year, https://wilderness.net/practitioners/wilderness-areas/summary-reports/wilderness-areas-designated-by-year.php.

I brought two lawsuits in 1983 that proved to be the catalyst responsible for breaking the years-long impasse that had previously stymied the protection of these pristine wildlands. The lawsuits also pushed Congress to preserve more wildlands as wilderness than it would have otherwise.

This article describes the lawsuits, …

A Surging Drug Epidemic: Time For Congress To Enact A Mandate On Insurance Companies And Rehabilitation Facilities For Opioid And Opiate Addiction, Alanna Guy

Journal of Law and Health

This Note begins with a discussion of both the national opioid problem as well as the specific epidemic in Ohio as an example of how it has grown within all of the states. Part II discusses the differences between prescription opioids and opiates, how they can be obtained, what effects they have on the human body, and why the government has an interest in this growing problem. Next, this Note explains how and why there was an increase in access and addiction to prescription opioid pain medication. Following this explanation, the steps the government has taken to try to rectify …

Oops!... I Infringed Again: An Analysis Of U.S. Copyright And Its Intended Beneficiaries, Gabriele A. Forbes-Bennett

Student Theses and Dissertations

This paper seeks to establish the reasons why federal copyright protection was created, discuss the shifts in reasoning behind major amendments, and explore its effects on copyright holders and the public, with a slight focus on the music industry. Federal copyright has existed in the United States since the late 1700s, with the creation of the Copyright Act in 1790. Adopted from the first copyright law ever created, the English Statute of Anne (1710), the Copyright Act was meant to protect citizens from piracy in a world where the risk of such a thing was rapidly increasing. The stated objective …

Prophylactic Redistricting? Congress's Section 5 Power And The New Equal Protection Right To Vote, Michael T. Morley

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Restoring Congress's Role In The Modern Administrative State, Christopher J. Walker

Michigan Law Review

A review of Josh Chafetzm Congress's Constitution: Legislative Authority and Separation of Powers.

“Encroachments And Oppressions”: The Corporatization Of Procedure And The Decline Of Rule Of Law, J. Maria Glover

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This Article begins by providing a brief account of the corporatization of procedure through judicial decision-making and noting some of the detrimental effects it has had on the preservation of rule of law and access to justice. Part II goes on to explore how the judiciary does not retain full control over procedure and how corporate entities have little care for whether a procedural reform simply cuts back at litigation or goes further and cuts back at judicial power and the judicial role itself. To illustrate these points, Part II examines the most recent attempt at "procedural reform" by corporate …

Section 2 After Section 5: Voting Rights And The Race To The Bottom, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

Five years ago, Shelby County v. Holder released nine states and fifty-five smaller jurisdictions from the preclearance obligation set forth in section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). This obligation mandated that places with a history of discrimination in voting obtain federal approval—known as preclearance—before changing any electoral rule or procedure. Within hours of the Shelby County decision, jurisdictions began moving to reenact measures section 5 had specifically blocked. Others pressed forward with new rules that the VRA would have barred prior to Shelby County.

According To The Dean: Public Service And Public Service Loan Forgiveness: A Commitment To Our State And Our Nation, Austen Parrish

Austen Parrish (2014-2022)

A student loan bill proposed by Congress is troublesome for those who worry about encouraging our best and brightest to commit to state and national service. Among other provisions, the bill – known as the PROSPER Act – would eliminate the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Program. The repeal apparently will do little for the federal budget, but the predictions are it will adversely affect government, the military and public-interest organizations that have relied on the program for attracting and retaining talent.

Hidden among the partisan rhetoric are issues of real importance to the state – and compelling stories about …

Are Medicaid Work Requirements Legal?, Nicholas Bagley

Articles

On January 12, 2018, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) approved a waiver allowing Kentucky to impose a work requirement on some nondisabled Medicaid beneficiaries. Similar waivers are sure to follow. Supporters see work requirements as a spur to force the idle poor to work; opponents see the requirements as a covert means of withholding medical care from vulnerable people. Setting the policy debate aside, however, are work requirements legal?

Too Clever By Half: Commanding The Nonuse Of State Authority To Regulate Health Benefits In The Aca, Michael F. Ryan

University of Massachusetts Law Review

Prior to the enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), state legislatures routinely passed laws requiring health insurance carriers to cover certain health care services or providers. At the behest of the insurance industry, Congress attempted to use the health reform law as a vehicle to reign in state-specific “mandated benefit” laws. That being said, the ACA does not prevent states from enacting mandated benefit laws; in fact, the statute expressly permits states to enact such laws. Instead, Congress created a significant barrier to continued state-specific regulation of health insurance benefits. Specifically, 42 U.S.C. § 18031(d)(3)(B)(ii) (Section …

Changing The First Lady’S Mystique: Defining The First Lady’S Legal Role And Upending Gender Norms, Ashlee A. Paxton-Turner

University of Massachusetts Law Review

This Article explores the lack of formal guidelines governing the First Lady by first considering the history of the role and how the three branches of government have typically dealt with the role. Attention is also given to the possible intersection with the anti-nepotism statute when and if the First Lady acts as an advisor to the President. This Article then goes on to suggest that this lack of formality has allowed gender norms to govern the role. In an era where women’s rights have resurfaced as a central theme in political discourse, this Article concludes by suggesting some possible …

“I Walk In, Sign. I Don’T Have To Go Through Congress.” President Trump’S Use Of Executive Orders To Unravel The Patient Protection And Affordable Care Act, Elizabeth Van Nostrand, Tina Batra Hershey

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

Executive orders, used by presidents to advance their administrations’ agendas, have changed history. These powerful written instruments were used to confine Japanese Americans during World War II, desegregate public schools, and create NASA. On the day of his inauguration, President Donald J. Trump issued his first Executive Order which directed secretaries of executive branch agencies to begin dismantling President Barack Obama’s flagship initiative—the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). This action, along with subsequent executive orders, precipitated a flurry of regulatory change and judicial challenges. Whether President Trump will ultimately be successful in crippling the ACA is still to …

What Motivates Legislators To Act: Problem Definition & The Opioid Epidemic, A Case Study, Taleed El-Sabawi

Faculty Publications

This article explores why federal legislators may have been motivated to treat the current opioid crisis as a health issue, when past drug problems have been treated as a criminal justice issue. Using theories from political science, policy studies and sociology, this article summarizes leading theories of legislative behavior and applies them to the current opioid crisis, in an effort to better understand what motivates legislators to enact legislation to solve pressing social problems in a way that reframes the problem. Part II of this article provides an overview of the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, its significance, and how …

Legislative History Is Dead; Long Live Legislative History, Genevieve B. Tung

Librarian Scholarship at Penn Law

Review of Victoria Nourse, Misreading Law, Misreading Democracy (Harvard 2016)

A Review Of Contemporary U.S. Wild Horse And Burro Management Policies Relative To Desired Management Outcomes, Keith A. Norris

Human–Wildlife Interactions

Legally defined “wild” horse (Equus ferus caballus ) and burro (E. asinus ; WHB) populations in the United States exceed established population objectives. The context of WHB policy and management can be categorized into ecological, geographical, legal, social, and political perspectives. Ecologically, all WHB populations in the United States are considered feral animals, but certain populations are afforded protection and management by the federal Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act (WFRHBA) of 1971. The current policy and management paradigms under which the WFRHBA is being implemented has contributed to rangeland degradation, poor WHB health, and impacts to native wildlife. This …

"The Essential Characteristic": Enumerated Powers And The Bank Of The United States, Richard Primus

Michigan Law Review

The idea that Congress can legislate only on the basis of its enumerated powers is an orthodox proposition of constitutional law, one that is generally supposed to have been recognized as essential ever since the Founding. Conventional understandings of several episodes in constitutional history reinforce this proposition. But the reality of many of those events is more complicated. Consider the 1791 debate over creating the Bank of the United States, in which Madison famously argued against the Bank on enumerated-powers grounds. The conventional memory of the Bank episode reinforces the sense that the orthodox view of enumerated powers has been …

Technological Rights Accretion, Kristelia A. García

Publications

No abstract provided.

Obama's Conversion On Same-Sex Marriage: The Social Foundations Of Individual Rights, Robert L. Tsai

Faculty Scholarship

This essay explores how presidents who wish to seize a leadership role over the development of rights must tend to the social foundations of those rights. Broad cultural changes alone do not guarantee success, nor do they dictate the substance of constitutional ideas. Rather, presidential aides must actively re-characterize the social conditions in which rights are made, disseminated, and enforced. An administration must articulate a strategically plausible theory of a particular right, ensure there is cultural and institutional support for that right, and work to minimize blowback. Executive branch officials must seek to transform and popularize legal concepts while working …

A "Chinese Wall" At The Nation's Borders: Justice Stephen Field And The Chinese Exclusion Case, Polly J. Price

Faculty Articles

First, the sweeping implications of The Chinese Exclusion Case had as much to do with the Supreme Court's concerns about its relationship with both Congress and the President as it did with the Chinese as a disparaged racial group. There are other dimensions beyond race, and one of these was the Supreme Court's view of its role with respect to the other branches of government. Importantly, the Court did not decide the balance of authority between the President and Congress on matters of immigration, an omission that surely lessens its precedential value today.

Second, the Court's pronouncement in the Chinese …

Congressional Control Of Presidential Pardons, Glenn Harlan Reynolds

Scholarly Works

Though the president’s pardon power is plenary, many questions remain. To what extent may Congress, via legislation, regulate the president’s pardon power? Though it is well established that the power is plenary, does that insulate the pardon power from any Congressional regulation at all? And if the answer to this is “no” – and it is – then what sort of Congressional regulation is permissible? I address those issues in this short Essay, while offering some suggestions for regulating, or at least regularizing, the pardon power in ways that I believe are within Congress’s power.

How Long Is History's Shadow?, Anita S. Krishnakumar

Faculty Publications

In Congress’s Constitution, Josh Chafetz takes issue with those who have questioned the value of Congress in recent years. He argues that Congress’s critics focus too heavily on its legislative function and ignore several important nonlegislative powers that enable Congress to exert significant authority vis-à-vis the other branches. Chafetz engages in close historical examination of these nonlegislative powers and notes that in some cases, Congress has ceased exercising them as robustly as it once did, while in others it has unwittingly ceded them to another branch. Congress’s Constitution urges Congress to reassert several of its ceded powers more aggressively …