Law Commons^™

The Cruel And Unusual Punishment Of Prison Rape: Why The Prison Rape Elimination Act Failed And How To Fix It, Savannah G. Plaisted

University of Massachusetts Law Review

Recent studies show the rate of sexual abuse endured in prisons has been steadily increasing. To remedy this issue, the Prison Rape Elimination Act was passed in 2003, however it has had no legitimate impact on the rate of sexual abuse in prisons due to the absence of mandatory rules upon prisons and a private right of action. This note will argue that prison rape is an Eighth Amendment violation but is not punished as one and that the Prison Rape Elimination Act failed to provide Survivors of prison sexual abuse with any legitimate recourse against violators of the law. …

Blatant Discrimination Within Federal Law: A 14th Amendment Analysis Of Medicaid’S Imd Exclusion, J. Michael E. Gray, Madeline Easdale

University of Massachusetts Law Review

A discriminatory piece of Medicaid law, the institution for mental diseases (IMD) exclusion, is denying people with serious mental illness equal levels of treatment as those with only primary healthcare needs. The IMD exclusion denies the use of federal funding in psychiatric hospitals for inpatient care. This article discusses the history and collateral implications of the IMD exclusion, then examines it through the lens of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, argues that people with severe mental illness constitute a quasi-suspect class, and that application of intermediate scrutiny would render the IMD exclusion unenforceable.

Determining What’S Not Obvious: Should A Reasonable Expectation Of Success Invalidate Patent Applications?, Natalie Peters

University of Massachusetts Law Review

Patents are necessary to incentivize innovation because they grant owners the right to protect inventions. To be patentable, an invention must be useful, it must be novel, and it must not be obvious. But the judiciary has struggled to apply the latter requirement, non-obviousness, particularly for highly technical innovations subject to FDA regulations. For these innovations, the progression through the regulatory jungle can take ten to twenty years and millions of dollars (2.6 billion for a pharmaceutical drug). The complexities of the regulatory process can also render an innovation unprotected by patent rights because, by the end of the process, …

How To Expand Rape By Deception And Protect Consent, Ricardo Licea

University of Massachusetts Law Review

The trend towards accepting the violation of consent as the underlying wrong addressed by rape law conflicts with the almost universal rejection of rape by deception. Rape by deception is limited to fraud in the factum, however the exclusion of fraud in the inducement finds no support under a consent framework. The principal objections to the expansion of rape by deception are that it will criminalize common behavior, that rape by deception produces only minor harm, and that self-protection is a viable alternative. Analogizing from the criminalization of deception to obtain money shows that the criminal deception statutes need not …

A Breath Of Fresh Air: A Constitutional Amendment Legalizing Marijuana Through An Article V Convention Of The States, Ryan C. Griffith, Esq.

University of Massachusetts Law Review

Criminal enforcement of anti-marijuana laws by the United States federal government has been non-sensical for more than twenty years. Culminating, ultimately, in an anomaly within American jurisprudence when California legalized marijuana in 1996 in direct violation of federal law, yet the federal government did little to stop it. Since then, a majority of states have followed California and legalized marijuana. Currently, thirty-six states and the District of Columbia have legalized medical marijuana despite federal law. Every year billions of dollars are spent on the federal enforcement of anti-marijuana laws while states collect billions in tax revenue from marijuana sales. Even …

Cartoon Contracts And The Proactive Visualization Of Law, Michael D. Murray

University of Massachusetts Law Review

Contracts have always relied on text first, foremost, and usually exclusively. Yet, this approach leaves many users of contracts in the dark as to the actual meaning of the transactional documents and instruments they enter into. The average contract routinely uses language that only lawyers, law-trained readers, and highly literate persons can truly understand. There is a movement in the law in the United States and many other nations called the visualization of law movement that attempts to bridge these gaps in contractual communication by using highly visual instruments. In appropriate circumstances, even cartoons and comic book forms of sequential …

Feminist Perspectives On Disaster, Pandemics, And Intimate Partner Violence, Margaret Drew

Faculty Publications

The COVID-19 pandemic brought international awareness to the likelihood of increased abuse of those in abusive intimate partner relationships because of the forced confinement with their abusers (Bettinger-Lopez and Bro, A double pandemic: domestic violence in the age of COVID 19, Council on Foreign Relations. https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/double-pandemic-domestic-violence-age-covid-19, 2020). While this awareness was much discussed, assistance to survivors of abuse was limited because survivors often could not reach out for help, nor could advocates wishing to offer assistance safely reach in to advise them (Taub, A new Covid-19 crisis: domestic abuse rises worldwide. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/world/coronavirus-domestic-violence.html, 2020). The ever-present influence of the …

Spring 2020 Newsletter: The Docket, Emma M. Wood

Law Library Newsletter

Copy of the Spring 2020 issue of the UMass Law Library Newsletter, The Docket.

Complicated Lives: A Look Into The Experience Of Individuals Living With Hiv, Legal Impediments, And Other Social Determinants Of Health, Margaret B. Drew, Jason Potter, Caitlin Stover

Faculty Publications

Those living with HIV continue to have challenges that extend well beyond their medical needs Public misconceptions surrounding HIV transmission and treatment have resulted in systemic and pervasive discrimination against those living with the disease. Common misconceptions include overly optimistic perceptions of the modern state of medical treatment, leading the uninformed to conclude that people living with HIV are minimally impacted by the disease, and misunderstandings regarding how the disease is transmitted from person-to-person, leading to stigma and social prejudice. Because of these misconceptions, three professors from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth formed a community partnership to determine the unmet …

Fall 2020 Newsletter: The Docket, Emma M. Wood

Law Library Newsletter

Copy of the Fall 2020 issue of the UMass Law Library Newsletter, The Docket.

Fall 2019 Newsletter: The Docket, Emma M. Wood

Law Library Newsletter

Copy of the Fall 2019 issue of the UMass Law Library Newsletter, The Docket.

Spring 2019 Newsletter: The Docket, Emma M. Wood

Law Library Newsletter

Copy of the Spring 2019 issue of the UMass Law Library Newsletter, The Docket.

A Conspiracy Of Life: A Posthumanist Critique Of Appoaches To Animal Rights In The Law, Barnaby E. Mclaughlin

University of Massachusetts Law Review

Near the end of his life, Jacques Derrida, one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century, turned his attention from the traditional focus of philosophy, humans and humanity, to an emerging field of philosophical concern, animals. Interestingly, Derrida claimed in an address entitled The Animal That Therefore I Am that,

since I began writing, in fact, I believe I have dedicated [my work] to the question of the living and of the living animal. For me that will always have been the most important and decisive question. I have addressed it a thousand times, either directly or obliquely, …

"Black Lives Matter" As A Claim Of Fundamental Law, David B. Mcnamee

University of Massachusetts Law Review

In this Article, I argue that we should understand #BlackLivesMatter as a claim on the Constitution—a very special kind of constitutional claim, on the Constitution as fundamental law. It is a paradigmatic contemporary example of this category of constitutional law for citizens, one that reaches back past the roots of the American Revolution and underlies the logic of popular sovereignty at the core of our system. Section I develops a conceptual sketch of fundamental law and its features. Section II then turns to the content of “Black Lives Matter” as a constitutional principle and traces its position in the arc …

Anthrogogy: Towards Inclusive Law School Learning, Rebecca C. Flanagan

Faculty Publications

At the time it was introduced, andragogy did offer benefits over “chalk and talk;” where most law students passively took notes while one student at a time actively engaged with their professor in a Socratic dialogue. While andragogy has sustained several modifications and revisions over the last fifty years, it does not reflect the life stage or life experiences that blur the boundaries of childhood and adulthood for over half the current student body in most law schools. Andragogy, designed as a teaching methodology for traditional adults seeking continuing education or to gain credentials for upward mobility in their current …

Fall 2018 Newsletter: The Docket, Emma M. Wood

Law Library Newsletter

Copy of the Fall 2018 issue of the UMass Law Library Newsletter, The Docket.

Manifest Disregard In International Commercial Arbitration: Whether Manifest Disregard Holds, However Good, Bad, Or Ugly, Chad R. Yates

University of Massachusetts Law Review

Manifest disregard is a common law reason for not enforcing an arbitration award. This principle applies when the arbitrator knew and understood the law, but the arbitrator disregarded the applicable law. Presently, the United States Supreme Court has not made a definite decision on whether manifest disregard is still a valid reason for vacating the award (known as “vacatur”), and the Court is highly deferential to arbitrator decisions. Consequently, the lower courts are split on the issue. For international commercial arbitration awards, manifest disregard can only apply to a foreign award that is decided under United States law or in …

Ferpa Close-Up: When Video Captures Violence And Injury, Richard J. Peltz-Steele, Kitty L. Cone

Faculty Publications

Federal privacy law is all to often misconstrued or perverted to preclude the disclosure of video recordings that capture students victimized by violent crime or tortious injury. This misuse of federal law impedes transparency and accountability and, in many cases, even jeopardizes the health, safety, and lives of children. When properly construed, however, federal law is no bar to disclosure and, at least in public schools, works in tandem with freedom of information laws to ensure disclosure. This Article posits that without unequivocal guidance from federal administrative authorities, uncertainty regarding the disclosure of such recordings will continue to linger, jeopardizing …

The Role Of Religiously Affiliated Law Schools In The Renewal Of American Democracy, Bruce Ledewitz

University of Massachusetts Law Review

American Democracy has broken down. This crisis was on dramatic display in the 2016 Presidential Campaign. Americans are resentful, distrustful and pessimistic. We find it easy to blame “the other side” for the deadlock, mendacity and irresponsibility in American public life. By virtue of their public role, American law schools have an obligation to address the breakdown in order to understand and try to ameliorate it. That task is currently unfulfilled by law schools individually and collectively. They are distracted by marketing and pedagogy. Religious law schools, which retain the traits of normative discourse, mission, Truth and tragic limit to …

The Ebola Virus Prevention And Human Rights Implications, Florence Shu-Acquaye

University of Massachusetts Law Review

The Ebola virus and its now infamous 2014 West African outbreak have constituted the deadliest and most terrifying epidemic of recent memory. Not only does the epidemic now carry an already ghastly backdrop in the public mind when discussions around it begin, but, like the AIDS epidemic, cultural practices have contributed to the entrenchment of Ebola in Africa, compounded by weak human rights laws and stigmatization, all of these factors having contributed to the multi-faceted and complex nature of addressing the problem of eliminating this disease in Africa. This article examines the African countries that have been plagued by the …

Law As Instrumentality, Jeremiah A. Ho

Faculty Publications

Our conceptions of law affect how we objectify the law and ultimately how we study it. Despite a century’s worth of theoretical progress in American law—from legal realism to critical legal studies movements and postmodernism—the formalist conception of “law as science,” as promulgated by Christopher Langdell at Harvard Law School in the late-nineteenth century, still influences methodologies in American legal education. Subsequent movements of legal thought, however, have revealed that the law is neither scientific nor “objective” in the way the Langdellian formalists once envisioned. After all, the Langdellian scientific objectivity of law itself reflected the dominant class, gender, power, …

Spring 2017 Newsletter: The Docket, Emma Wood

Law Library Newsletter

Copy of the Spring 2017 issue of the UMass Law Library Newsletter, The Docket.

Fall 2017 Newsletter: The Docket, Emma M. Wood

Law Library Newsletter

Copy of the Fall 2017 issue of the UMass Law Library Newsletter, The Docket.

Carpenter Privacy Case Vexes Justices, While Tech Giant Microsoft Battles Government In Second U.S. Supreme Court Privacy Case With International Implications, Richard J. Peltz-Steele

Faculty Publications

Fall 2017 saw a major privacy case with international implications reach the U.S. Supreme Court this term, Carpenter v. United States. Now a second such case pits the Government against Big Tech in United States v. Microsoft. Carpenter is a criminal case involving federal seizure of cell phone location data from service providers. Arising under the “reasonable grounds” provision of the Stored Communications Act (SCA), the case accentuates Americans’ lack of constitutional protection for personal data in third-party hands, in contrast with emerging global privacy norms. The second major privacy case headed for Supreme Court decision in 2018 also arises …

Emerging Adults: A New Understanding Of Millennial Law Students, Rebecca C. Flanagan

Faculty Publications

The challenges facing emerging adults in law school can be some of the vexing for Academic Success professionals if these students are assumed to have the adult life experiences of prior generations of law students. However, their challenges can be some of the simplest to solve when Academic Success professionals are aware of trends in law school admissions and undergraduate education. Academic Success professionals have the tools to work with doctrinal or substantive professors to provide context to the difficulties students are experiencing with understanding class discussions.

Your Mission, Should You Choose To Accept It: Taking Law School Mission Statements Seriously, Irene Scharf, Vanessa Merton

Faculty Publications

A law school can best achieve excellence and have the most effective academic program when it possesses a clear mission, a plan to achieve that mission, and the capacity and willingness to measure its success or failure. Absent a defined mission and the identification of attendant student and institutional outcomes, a law school lacks focus and its curriculum becomes a collection of discrete activities without coherence.

Affirmative Confusion: A Proposed Paradigm Shift In Higher Education Disciplinary Proceedings, Kendal Poirier

University of Massachusetts Law Review

This Note examines the codification of affirmative consent statutes in New York and California as well as the language of Title IX of Education Amendments of 1972, with the ultimate goal of demonstrating that the two statutory constructions cannot co-exist without jeopardizing accused students’ due process rights. During the course of a college or university disciplinary proceeding in an affirmative consent jurisdiction, the potential exists for a burden shift onto the accused student to affirmatively prove consent was obtained. Such a shift directly conflicts with Title IX mandates for prompt and equitable treatment. This Note proposes that in order to …

The Law Of The Groves: Whittling Away At The Legal Mysteries In The Prosecution Of The Groveland Boys, William R. Ezzell

University of Massachusetts Law Review

This Article tells the legal story of one of the South’s most infamous trials – the Groveland Boys prosecution in central Florida. Called “Florida’s Little Scottsboro,” the Groveland case garnered international attention in 1949 when four young black men were accused of the gang rape of a white woman in the orange groves north of Orlando. Several days of rioting, Ku Klux Klan activity, three murders, two trials, and three death penalty verdicts followed, in what became the most infamous trial in Florida history. The appeals of the trial reached the United States Supreme Court, with the NAACP’s Thurgood Marshall …

Fall 2016 Newsletter: The Docket, Emma Wood

Law Library Newsletter

Copy of the Fall 2016 issue of the UMass Law Library Newsletter, The Docket.

Spring 2016 Newsletter, Emma Wood

Law Library Newsletter

Copy of the Spring 2016 UMass Law Library Newsletter.