Legislation Commons^™

Strategic Institutional Positioning: How We Have Come To Generate Environmental Law Without Congress, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

Legisprudence And The Limits Of Legislation תורת החקיקה וגבולות החקיקה, Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov

Dr. Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov

Statutory Constraints And Constitutional Decisionmaking, Anthony O'Rourke

Anthony O'Rourke

Although constitutional scholars frequently analyze the relationships between courts and legislatures, they rarely examine the relationship between courts and statutes. This Article is the first to systematically examine how the presence or absence of a statute can influence constitutional doctrine. It analyzes pairs of cases that raise similar constitutional questions, but differ with respect to whether the court is reviewing the constitutionality of legislation. These case pairs suggest that statutes place significant constraints on constitutional decisionmaking. Specifically, in cases that involve a challenge to a statute, courts are less inclined to use doctrine to regulate the behavior of nonjudicial officials. …

Symposium On A Free Press And A Fair Trial - Introduction, Donald W. Dowd

Donald W. Dowd

No abstract provided.

New Hampshire Juvenile Sex Trafficking Survivor Urges Representatives To Vote Against Decriminalized Prostitution, Darlene Pawlik, Donna M. Hughes Dr.

Donna M. Hughes

Sex Industry Advocates Aim To Decriminalize Prostitution In New Hampshire, Kelly Roy-Williams, Lisa Thompson, Donna M. Hughes Dr.

Donna M. Hughes

Evaluating Katrina: A Snapshot Of Renters’ Rights Following Disasters, Eloisa Rodriguez-Dod, Olympia Duhart

Eloisa C Rodríguez-Dod

Hurricane Katrina destroyed the homes of many people living in parts of the Gulf Region. The storm displaced as many as 800,000 victims and it is still difficult for them to return home. Consequently, many homeowners have turned to renting because of the slow recovery process. Renters face added difficulties; they are often the last in line for government benefits and other assistance. There is much hostility towards the rights of renters, creating even more difficulties for them. This article focuses on the difficulties evacuee renters faced in New Orleans following the disaster. This article discusses legislation and attempted legislation …

It’S Not A Small World After All: Regulating Obesity Globally, Eloisa Rodriguez-Dod

Eloisa C Rodríguez-Dod

The rate of obesity and overweight among the world population has increased dramatically over the past several years in both adults and children. Childhood obesity is a critical health care concern. There have been well-publicized efforts to regulate children‘s obesity both in the U.S. and abroad through such measures as mandated nutritional school lunch programs. This article focuses, however, on a less examined area of regulation—the recent worldwide efforts to curb obesity among adults. The regulations discussed in this article include measures proposed or adopted by either administrative agencies or legislative bodies, whether on a local or national level. The …

Private Law In The Gaps, Jeffrey A. Pojanowski

Jeffrey A. Pojanowski

Private law subjects like tort, contract, and property are traditionally taken to be at the core of the common law tradition, yet statutes increasingly intersect with these bodies of doctrine. This Article draws on recent work in private law theory and statutory interpretation to consider afresh what courts should do with private law in statutory gaps. In particular, it focuses on statutes touching on tort law, a field at the leading edge of private law theory. This Article's analysis unsettles some conventional wisdom about the intersection of private law and statutes. Many leading tort scholars and jurists embrace a regulatory …

Class Actions And The Counterrevolution Against Federal Litigation, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang

Sean Farhang

In this article we situate consideration of class actions in a framework, and fortify it with data, that we have developed as part of a larger project, the goal of which is to assess the counterrevolution against private enforcement of federal law from an institutional perspective. In a series of articles emerging from the project, we have documented how the Executive, Congress and the Supreme Court (wielding both judicial power under Article III of the Constitution and delegated legislative power under the Rules Enabling Act) fared in efforts to reverse or dull the effects of statutory and other incentives for …

Is Carolene Products Dead--Reflections On Affirmative Action And The Dynamics Of Civil Rights Legislation, Daniel A. Farber, Philip P. Frickey

Daniel A Farber

No abstract provided.

דיני החקיקה (The Law Of Lawmaking), Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov

Dr. Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov

Preventing Preemption: Finding Freedom For States To Protect Their Citizens’ Personal History Information, Elizabeth De Armond

Elizabeth De Armond

In Loco Aequitatis: The Dangers Of "Safe Harbor" Laws For Youth In The Sex Trades, Brendan M. Conner

Brendan M. Conner

A New Law To "Save" Youth From Survival Sex Will Force Them Into State Custody, Brendan M. Conner Esq.

Brendan M. Conner

It’s not novel that minors in the US can, in very rare cases, be sentenced to reform programs or secure confinement for actions that wouldn’t be illegal if adults did them. But the system used to punish youth for the likes of skipping school or drinking has never been used systematically to address cases where minors engage in survival sex – meaning, youths who exchange sex for money, shelter, food, drugs or other needs.

That is about to change, even though treating juveniles charged with prostitution like truants will increase arrests and extend court-involvement and institutionalization of victims.

On 29 …

Sound Recordings, Works For Hire, And The Termination-Of-Transfers Time Bomb, David Nimmer, Peter S. Menell

Peter Menell

No abstract provided.

Public Actors In Private Markets: Toward A Developmental Finance State, Robert Hockett, Saule Omarova

Saule T. Omarova

The recent financial crisis brought into sharp relief fundamental questions about the social function and purpose of the financial system, including its relation to the “real” economy. This Article argues that, to answer these questions, we must recapture a distinctively American view of the proper relations among state, financial market, and development. This programmatic vision – captured in what we call a “developmental finance state” – is based on three key propositions: (1) that economic and social development is not an “end-state” but a continuing national policy priority; (2) that the modalities of finance are the most potent means of …

Penal Policy And Penal Legislation In Recent American Experience, Franklin E. Zimring

Franklin E. Zimring

offers a look on the origins and careers of proposals for penal legislation in a time of radical change in the U.S. Descriptions of where penal policy is made in the U.S. governmental system; Information on issues of quality control in shaping, passing, implementing and reviewing penal legislation in recent U.S. experience; Role of penal legislation in changing penal practices in the past generation.

Reading Statutes In The Common Law Tradition, Jeffrey A. Pojanowski

Jeffrey A. Pojanowski

There is wide agreement in American law and scholarship about the role the common law tradition plays in statutory interpretation. Jurists and scholars of various stripes concur that the common law points away from formalist interpretive approaches like textualism and toward a more creative, independent role for courts. They simply differ over whether the common law tradition is worth preserving. Dynamic and strongly purposive interpreters claim the Anglo-American common law heritage in support of their approach to statutory interpretation, while arguing that formalism is an unjustified break from that tradition. Formalists reply that the common law mindset and methods are …

Reflections On The Past, Looking To The Future: The Fair Housing Act At 40, John A. Powell

john a. powell

A summary is presented of the Fair Housing Act that was introduced in the U.S. 40 years ago to address the housing challenges.

Model No More: Querulent Behaviour, Vexatious Litigants And The Vexatious Proceedings Act 2005 (Qld), Narelle Bedford, Monica Taylor

Narelle Bedford

This article examines the history and development of vexatious proceedings legislation in Queensland. It undertakes a case study of declared vexatious litigants and analyses the effectiveness of a legislative response. In light of recent national and international reforms, this article argues that the current legislative approach to dealing with vexatious proceedings in Queensland is no longer model and requires reformulation. It asserts that a system of graduated litigation limitation orders would provide for a more nuanced response to the issue of vexatious and querulous behaviour. The article concludes by emphasising the value of a multidimensional approach which includes practical, early …

Decisions Rules And Conduct Rules: On Acoustic Separation In Criminal Law, Meir Dan-Cohen

Meir Dan-Cohen

No abstract provided.

The Neomercantilist Fallacy And The Contextual Reality Of The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Philip Nichols

Philip M. Nichols

The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act is domestic legislation and should be analyzed as such. This article addresses a persistent failure in analysis of the Act, by scholars and policymakers alike. Many discussions of the Act approach it from a neomercantilist perspective. This approach contains three flaws. First, whereas neomercantilism envisions manipulation of the market to give advantage to national champion industries, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act was adopted for the purpose of strengthening and enhancing the integrity of the global market. A neomercantilist perspective is contrary to the purpose of the Act. Second, this article shows that neomercantilism fundamentally misunderstands …

The Aftermath Of Governor Mcdonnell’S Corruption Trial: Proposing Comprehensive Ethics Reform In Virginia, Lisa J. Lindhorst

Lisa J Lindhorst

On September 4, 2014, a federal court convicted former governor of Virginia Bob McDonnell of eleven counts of corruption, bribery, and fraud for accepting over $165,000 worth of gifts and loans from the CEO of a local company. The egregious actions that led to these federal criminal convictions, however, were startlingly “legal” under Virginia’s ethics laws. The disparity between federal criminal standards and Virginia’s ethics standards illustrates the severe inadequacies that plague Virginia’s current system of ethics laws. Virginia’s absence of appropriate ethics laws and enforcement led to the state’s failing State Integrity Investigation grade, and the public acknowledgment by …

Sentencing Pregnant Drug Addicts: Why The Child Endangerment Enhancement Is Not Appropriate, Monica Carusello

Monica B Carusello

No abstract provided.

Wrecking Ball Disguised As Law Reform: Alec's Model Act On Private Enforcement Of Consumer Protection Statutes, Dee Pridgen

Dee Pridgen

The consumer protection statutes of every state are currently under attack by a proposed model law that would effectively eliminate the critical private enforcement provisions that give these laws their power. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has produced a purported law reform vehicle that is actually a wrecking ball to destroy one of the building blocks of consumer protection, namely the private enforcement of state unfair and deceptive practices acts. It does this by systematically weakening each and every provision of these laws, such as lower burdens of proof, special damages, and attorney’s fees, that were designed to provide …

Taking Distribution Seriously, Robert C. Hockett

Robert C. Hockett

It is common for legal theorists and policy analysts to think and communicate mainly in maximizing terms. What is less common is for them to notice that each time we speak explicitly of socially maximizing one thing, we speak implicitly of distributing another thing and equalizing yet another thing. We also, moreover, effectively define ourselves and our fellow citizens by reference to that which we equalize; for it is in virtue of the latter that our social welfare formulations treat us as “counting” for purposes of socially aggregating and maximizing. To attend systematically to the inter-translatability of maximization language on …

Minding The Gaps: Fairness, Welfare, And The Constitutive Structure Of Distributive Assessment, Robert C. Hockett

Robert C. Hockett

Despite over a century’s disputation and attendant opportunity for clarification, the field of inquiry now loosely labeled “welfare economics” (WE) remains surprisingly prone to foundational confusions. The same holds of work done by many practitioners of WE’s influential offshoot, normative “law and economics” (LE). A conspicuous contemporary case of confusion turns up in recent discussion concerning “fairness versus welfare.” The very naming of this putative dispute signals a crude category error. “Welfare” denotes a proposed object of distribution. “Fairness” describes and appropriate pattern of distribution. Welfare itself is distributed fairly or unfairly. “Fairness versus welfare” is analytically on all fours …

Foreword — Chevron At 30: Looking Back And Looking Forward, Peter M. Shane, Christopher J. Walker

Christopher J. Walker

This Foreword introduces a Fordham Law Review symposium held in March 2014 to mark the thirtieth anniversary of Chevron U.S.A. v. Natural Resources Defense Council. The most-cited administrative-law decision of all time, Chevron has sparked thirty years of scholarly discussion concerning what Chevron deference means, when (or even if) it should apply, and what impact it has had on the administrative state. Part I of the Foreword discusses the symposium contributions that address Chevron’s scope and application, especially in light of City of Arlington v. FCC. Part II introduces the contributions that explore empirically and theoretically Chevron’s impact outside of …

Troubled Waters: Diana Nyad And The Birth Of The Global Rules Of Marathon Swimming, Hadar Aviram

Hadar Aviram

On September 3, 2013, Diana Nyad reported having completed a 110-mile swim from Cuba to Florida. The general enthusiasm about her swim was not echoed in the marathon swimming community, whose members expressed doubts about the integrity and honesty of the swim. The community debate that followed gave rise to the creation of the Global Rules of Marathon Swimming, the first effort to regulate the sport. This Article uses the community’s reaction to Nyad’s deviance to examine the role that crime and deviance plays in the creation and modification of legal structures. Relying on Durkheim’s functionalism theory, the Article argues …