Legislation Commons^™

Catalyst Pharms., Inc. V. Becerra: When The Food And Drug Administration Repeatedly Ignores The Plain Language Of The Orphan Drug Act (Oda), Yifan Wang

Journal of Law and Health

In Catalyst Pharms., Inc. v. Becerra, the court held that the scope of orphan drug exclusivity applies to the disease or conditions for which the drug is designated because the plain language of the 21 U.S.C. § 360cc(a) is clear. The decision is in contrast to the practice of the FDA to narrowly construe the exclusivity to apply only to the uses or indications for which the drug is approved. The court correctly reached its holding using a plain language approach and rejected the FDA’s argument based on legislative history and purpose. The FDA has repeatedly ignored courts interpretations …

A History Of United States Cannabis Law, David V. Patton

Journal of Law and Health

Perhaps the best way to understand early-Twenty-First Century state and federal cannabis law in the United States is to examine the relevant history. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.’s statement is apropos: "[A] page of history is worth a volume of logic." This article begins by discussing the early history of cannabis and its uses. Next, the article examines the first state and federal marijuana laws. After a brief comparison of alcohol prohibition to cannabis prohibition, this article addresses cannabis laws from the 1920s to the early 1950s. Then, the article takes up the reorganization of the federal drug regulatory bureaucracy …

Buckeyes Against The Boycott: Why Ohio's Law Opposing Bds Is Protected Under The First Amendment, Hannah Kraus

Cleveland State Law Review

In 2016, Ohio became the fourteenth state to enact legislation denouncing the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel. Codified as § 9.76 of the Ohio Revised Code, this legislation prohibits any state agency from contracting with a company that boycotts Israel during the contractual period. While the constitutionality of § 9.76 has not been challenged, anti-BDS statutes passed by other state legislatures have faced First Amendment challenges. This Note argues that § 9.76 of the Ohio Revised Code complies with the First Amendment under the government speech doctrine. In 1991, the Supreme Court applied the government speech doctrine in …

Opportunity In Ohio: Rethinking Northeast Ohio's Opportunity Zones With Local Legislation, Patrick J. Lipaj

Cleveland State Law Review

Welcome to Census Tract 1186.02! Here, in a small sliver of Cleveland’s Glenville neighborhood, tucked between Superior and Hough Avenues, you will uncover a lot. You will discover a rich history of the city’s ethnic and cultural roots. You will also find gang violence, underperforming schools, a median household income of $9,526, and a poverty rate of 66.5 percent. Something you will not find in 1186.02 is investment. Private or public, money is not flowing in to 1186.02 and it has not for a long time. The substantial toll of continuous underinvestment on the residents of this neighborhood, one of …

Puffing Away Parental Rights: A Survey And Analysis Of Whether Secondhand Smoke Exposure Is Child Abuse, Karly Huml

Journal of Law and Health

The steps taken thus far to protect children in public areas, custody cases, and in vehicles show the legislature's awareness of the chemical harms of secondhand smoke for children. This article will analyze those steps and discuss what they mean for both parents' and children's constitutional rights. This article proposes that the legislature take a vital fourth step by including secondhand smoke exposure in child abuse laws. Section II of this article provides the history of smoking tobacco and its transition from a trendy social status to an unpopular, harmful habit. Section II also introduces the steps that have been …

Solving The Opioid Epidemic In Ohio, Lacy Leduc

Journal of Law and Health

On May 31, 2017, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine took a step in fighting Ohio's opioid epidemic, bringing the first of many lawsuits against five top pharmaceutical companies. However, under Federal and State law, there is an exception called the Learned Intermediary Doctrine, which can absolve drug manufacturers of liability from any misconduct that might be found and transfer that liability to a treating physician. This exception is the way many drug manufacturers were able to avoid being held responsible in the past. This Note proposes that with the current pending lawsuit in the State of Ohio, an exception to …

Ohio's Modern Courts Amendment Must Be Amended: Why And How, Richard S. Walinski, Mark D. Wagoner Jr.

Cleveland State Law Review

A 1968 amendment to the Ohio Constitution granted the Supreme Court of Ohio the authority to promulgate “rules governing practice and procedure” for Ohio courts. The amendment also provided that “[a]ll laws in conflict with such rules shall be of no further force or effect after such rules have taken effect” and that no rule may “abridge, enlarge, or modify any substantive right.”

Although the amendment was explicit about automatic repeal of existing laws, it says nothing about whether the General Assembly may legislate on a procedural matter after a court rule takes effect. That silence has caused enduring confusion. …

How Big Money Ruined Public Life In Wisconsin, Lynn Adelman

Cleveland State Law Review

This Article discusses how Wisconsin fell from grace. Once a model good government state that pioneered many democracy-enhancing laws, in a very short time, Wisconsin became a state where special interest money, most of which is undisclosed, dominates politics. This Article identifies several factors as being critical to Wisconsin’s descent. These include the state’s failure to nurture and build on the campaign finance reforms enacted in the 1970s and both the state’s and the United States Supreme Court’s failure to adequately regulate sham issue ads. As evidence of Wisconsin’s diminished status, this Article describes how several of the state’s most …

Whatever Happened To Military Good Order And Discipline?, Colonel Jeremy S. Weber

Cleveland State Law Review

Discipline is often called “the soul of an army.” If this is so, the United States military seems to be experiencing a spiritual crisis. Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) allows commanders to punish acts prejudicial to “good order and discipline,” but the reach of this provision has been increasingly limited in recent years. Appellate courts have repeatedly overturned convictions of conduct charged as prejudicial to good order and discipline, and in recent years, the military’s high court has issued a series of decisions limiting the reach of the UCMJ’s “general article.” Congress has also recently …

A Statute By Any Other Name Might Smell Less Like S.P.A.M., Or, The Congress Of The United States Grows Increasingly D.U.M.B., Chris Sagers

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Why we name our statutes is a rarely asked and non-obvious question, but it turns out to be deeply illuminating. This essay examines one little-noticed trend in particular, which has simply exploded within the U.S. Congress during the past twenty years. What at first might seem a frivolous, innocuous, and maybe even sort of likable kind of statute name appeared perhaps three times in the entire history of the Republic before 1988. In the twenty years since, there have been nearly seventy of them. But much more important than its recent and arresting profusion will be the deeper philosophical insight …

Choosing A Court To Review The Executive, Joseph Mead, Nicholas Fromherz

All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications

For more than one hundred years, Congress has experimented with review of agency action by single-judge district courts, multiple-judge district courts, and direct review by circuit courts. This tinkering has not given way to a stable design. Rather than settling on a uniform scheme—or at least a scheme with a discernible organizing principle—Congress has left litigants with a jurisdictional maze that varies unpredictably across and within statutes and agencies.In this Article, we offer a fresh look at the theoretical and empirical factors that ought to inform the allocation of the judicial power between district and circuit courts in suits challenging …

Choosing A Court To Review The Executive, Joseph Mead, Nicholas Fromherz

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

For more than one hundred years, Congress has experimented with review of agency action by single-judge district courts, multiple-judge district courts, and direct review by circuit courts. This tinkering has not given way to a stable design. Rather than settling on a uniform scheme—or at least a scheme with a discernible organizing principle— Congress has left litigants with a jurisdictional maze that varies unpredictably across and within statutes and agencies.

In this Article, we offer a fresh look at the theoretical and empirical factors that ought to inform the allocation of the judicial power between district and circuit courts in …

The Skeleton Key: Will The Federal Health Care Reform Legislation Unlock The Solutions To Diverse Dilemmas Arising From The State Health Care Reform Laboratories , Christopher R. Smith

Journal of Law and Health

Given that the Reform Law is not operating on a blank slate, this article examines its impact on the health care reform efforts of three states: Hawaii, Maine, and Vermont. More specifically, this article examines each state’s health care reform plan, the outcomes of each plan in terms of achieving universal coverage or near universal coverage, and the likely impact of the federal health care reform legislation on these plans, with a particular focus on how the federal legislation and state laws will or will not work together to achieve near-universal coverage. The article aims to determine whether the Reform …

Food-Borne Ultimatum: Proposing Federal Legislation To Create Humane Living Conditions For Animals Raised For Food In Order To Improve Human Health, The, Lynn M. Boris

Journal of Law and Health

In order to reduce the large number of human health risks associated with reckless farming practices, Congress must enact federal legislation that requires humane living conditions for farm animals and declares a moratorium on the routine use of unnecessary antibiotics. Part II of this Note will briefly review traditional farming and animal husbandry practices and examine the shift to the modern practices used by producers of animal products today. Part II will also present several farming practices utilized today that are particularly dangerous to human health. Part III of this Note will explore the immense human suffering that is occurring …

Ohio's Aggressive Attack On Medical Identity Theft, Stanley C. Ball

Journal of Law and Health

This note explains the severity of medical identity theft and the state and federal legislative reactions to the problem. Specifically, the note discusses data breach notification statutes that require healthcare providers to notify consumers when the systems holding customer personal information are breached. The note concludes that Ohio’s data breach notification statute, which does not expressly cover healthcare providers, should be amended to protect residents from medical identity theft and provide redress when healthcare providers violate state law.

Making Language Access To Health Care Meaningful: The Need For A Federal Health Care Interpreters' Statute, Alvaro Decola

Journal of Law and Health

This Note will argue that there are strong public policy, and legal and equity considerations for Congress to enact a federal statute to address the inadequacies of the current policies and regulations pertaining to language access to health care. The issue has become a significant one throughout the United States, given the influx of LEP (Limited English Proficiency) Americans navigating the health care system. Part II of this writing discusses the existing federal laws dealing with language access and the hurdles faced by LEP individuals in bringing legal action, because of existing case law on the subject. Part II also …

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder In The Military: The Need For Legislative Improvement Of Mental Health Care For Veterans Of Operation Iraqi Freedom And Operation Enduring Freedom, Madeline Mcgrane

Journal of Law and Health

This Note argues that legislation requiring improved mental health treatment for veterans of OIF (Operation Iraqi Freedom) and OEF (Operation Enduring Freedom) is necessary to protect American service members from the dangers of mental illness. In order to prevent crimes and suicides committed by veterans of OIF and OEF as a result of undiagnosed PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), the United States Congress should enact legislation imposing requirements on all branches of the military that: 1) mandates screening of all veterans at risk for PTSD upon their return from deployment; 2) ensures veterans are provided with adequate and timely mental healthcare; …

Does Congress Find Facts Or Construct Them - The Ascendance Of Politics Over Reliability, Perfected In Gonzales V. Carhart, Elizabeth De Coux

Cleveland State Law Review

The disparity between the rules of courts and the rules of Congress gives rise to this question: is the rigor-or lack of it-with which Congress evaluates the reliability of evidence an appropriate factor for courts to consider in deciding whether to defer to a congressional finding? In this Article, I consider whether Congress should adopt rules to fill the void. In Part I, I give a brief summary of the development and use of Congressional Committees. In Part II, I analyze several modern-day congressional hearings in an effort to examine the degree to which Congress and its committees require that …

A Sign Of Contradiction, David F. Forte

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Hadley Arkes offers a brilliant manifesto for natural law. In it, he suggests that judges do not pay enough attention to reason, that their realm of reason is too circumscribed—and he levels the criticism at both modern liberal and conservative judges. He urges them to reach out specifically to the principles of the natural law. Yet the judges resist the invitation. They seem always to have resisted the invitation. Why is that so? Why are natural law reasons resisted?, Arkes asks. Why do judges not seek a proper grounding of their judgment in natural law?

Antitrust Immunity And Standard Setting Organizations: A Case Study In The Public-Private Distinction, Chris Sagers

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This paper uses an ongoing issue of local legal doctrine as a case study to provide insights into a problem of larger political philosophy: the problem whether the difference between "public" and "private" should be made to matter and, indeed, whether there is a difference at all. The case study is as follows: In our system, state governments are free to fashion their own trade policies in virtually any manner they choose. During the past century there has evolved a complex range of relationships between government and the businesses regulated by those policies, the result often being that businesses themselves …

A Jurisprudential Analysis Of Government Intervention And Prenatal Drug Abuse, Susan Fortney

Journal of Law and Health

This article takes a different approach in considering the problem of prenatal drug abuse. After briefly discussing government intervention and constitutional issues, this article will consider the concept of duty and correlative rights. This discussion of duty and correlative rights suggests that the government can take measures to curb prenatal drug use without recognizing fetal rights. The article concludes with a discussion of the utility of criminal legislation as compared to public health legislation that treats drug addiction as a disease requiring treatment. As formulated, the proposal for public health legislation is not based on any concept of fetal rights. …

Lincoln, Marshall And The Judicial Role, David F. Forte

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Abraham Lincoln understood judicial activism. For Lincoln, the paradigm of the unrestrained Supreme Court was the decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford. Lincoln saw the "illegitimacy" of Dred Scott not in that the Supreme Court had overturned an act of Congress. It was, rather, that the Supreme Court, in the guise of making a legal decision, instead made a political decision. Even worse, it was a political decision that sought to redefine the polity in fundamental, constitutional terms. Lincoln's position echoed the most eloquent articulation of judicial review ever made by the Court: in Marbury vs. Madison, Chief Justice Marshall …

Are Contemporary Community Standards No Longer Contemporary, Roman A. Kostenko

Cleveland State Law Review

This note concurs with the decision reached by the Third Circuit. The federal obscenity law, which incorporated the contemporary community standards test is unconstitutional as applied to expression on the internet because it has chilling effect on the exercise of freedom of speech as guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Because freedom of speech would be restrained by any incorporation of community standards in federal regulation of the internet, the legislature should refrain from adopting a standard that would apply in all internet situations. Rather, with respect to obscenity, the internet should be left …

The Constitutional Legitimacy Of The Civil Provisions Of The Federal Wiretap Act - A Suggestion To The Supreme Court In The Case Of Bartnicki V. Vopper, Jess Gamiere

Cleveland State Law Review

Title III of the Federal Wiretap Act, as amended, remains the "primary law guarding the privacy of personal communication [among private citizens] in the United States." This piece of legislation will serve as the focal point of this Note. This Note will first discuss the history and context of the statute under which two cases have arisen. It will then survey various Supreme Court cases addressing the tension between the First Amendment and the right to privacy so as to provide the reader with a better understanding of the conflict between these two constitutional rights. Then it will outline and …

Bankruptcy Reform: An Orderly Development Of Public Policy , William T. Bodoh, Lawrence P. Dempsey

Cleveland State Law Review

In legislating the pending bankruptcy "reform," Congress has made many of the key decisions behind closed doors. In fact, the process has been characterized as a congressional effort to pass a "stealth bankruptcy bill." This secrecy brings into question the democratic nature of congressional deliberation. When the Framers designed the legislative branch, open debate was envisioned as the rule, not the exception. Unfortunately, Congress has adopted a secretive, approach to pushing through recent bankruptcy legislation. In a sharp departure from the decades-long congressional approach to bankruptcy legislation, "Congress stopped seeking expert advice and instead turned to special interest lobbyists…” Thus, …

The Religious Liberty Protection Act: The Validity Of Using Congress' Commerce And Spending Powers To Protect Religion, Jennifer Dorton

Cleveland State Law Review

Although the Religious Liberty Protection Act appears, on its face, to be simple, there are many constitutional issues which call into question the validity of the proposed bill. This note will focus on the constitutional problems of using Congress' commerce and spending powers to protect religion. It will examine the problem of attaching religious conditions to the States' receipt of federal funds, and the potential problem that may result from using the spending power to protect religious exercise. The note then turns to the commerce clause justification for the RLPA. It will point out the major flaw in using the …

The Beltway And Beyond: The Struggle For Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual And Transgender Equality, Rebecca Isaacs

Cleveland State Law Review

I will focus primarily on the struggle in the legislative arena in Washington, DC and more importantly, in states and local communities. And I will focus on three key issues for the GLBT community: families; civil rights and the intersection with religious liberty rights; and finally, violence and hate crimes. In summary, the GLBT community is pushing ahead of these and other issues in all 50 states.

Predatory Lending: Practices, Remedies And Lack Of Adequate Protection For Ohio Consumers, Anna Beth Ferguson

Cleveland State Law Review

This note focuses on remedies available to borrowers who fall prey to predatory lending practices on their home equity loans where their homes are used as collateral. Part II gives basic background information on predatory lending: what predatory lending is, examples of common predatory lending techniques, and, who benefits and who is hurt by predatory lending practices. Part III discusses and critiques current federal laws that borrowers have used to combat predatory mortgage lending practices. Part IV explains the current forms of relief available in Ohio and the limitations of these remedies. Part V discusses remedies in other states, focusing …

The Parent-Child Testimonial Privilege - Has The Time For It Finally Arrived, Amee A. Shah

Cleveland State Law Review

Academics and courts in the United States have been grappling with the issue of compelled parent or child testimony for more than twenty-five years. This article uses the bills of the late-1990s proposed in the House and Senate to analyze the parent-child privilege debate. First, this article will discuss the history of the parent-child privilege. Next, the proposed bills will be evaluated to determine their effectiveness in achieving their goals and in resolving the debate. This article will then discuss the effects that the passage or nonpassage of these bills (particularly the House bill) would have. Finally, this article proposes …

Mr. Justice Holmes's Constitutionally Crooked Path Part Ii: The State Sovereignty Jurisdictional Stopgap , Mitchell B. Weiss

Cleveland State Law Review

This article analyzes the last turn in Justice Holmes's constitutionally crooked path, largely by penetrating to the very core of the Supreme Court's recent decision in Alden v. Maine. Part I therefore traces the Court's waffling attitude towards the division of regulatory power between the state and federal governments. Then, against this backdrop, Part II takes the jurisdictional turn by analyzing the Court's most recent attempt to resuscitate the Tenth Amendment's check on Congress's Commerce Power. To sharpen the focus, much of this article will focus on the Fair Labor Standards Act, a federal statute that always seems to sit …