Other Law Commons^™

Covid-19, Courts, And The 'Realities Of Prison Administration.' Part Ii: The Realities Of Litigation, Chad Flanders

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Lawsuits challenging prisons and jails for not doing enough to stop the spread of COVID-19 among inmates have faced mixed results in the courts: wins at the district court level are almost always followed by losses (in the form of stays of any orders to improve conditions) at the appeals court level or at the Supreme Court. This short article tries to explain why this is happening, and makes three comparisons between how district courts and appeals courts have analyzed these lawsuits. First, district courts and appeals courts tend to emphasize different facts in their decisions. District courts focus more …

The Law Of Employee Data: Privacy, Property, Governance, Matthew T. Bodie

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The availability of data related to the employment relationship has ballooned into an unruly mass of personal characteristics, performance metrics, biometric recordings, and creative output. The law governing this collection of information has been awkwardly split between privacy regulations and intellectual property rights, with employees generally losing on both ends. This Article rejects a binary approach that either carves out private spaces ineffectually or renders data into isolated pieces of ownership. Instead, the law should implement a hybrid system that provides workers with continuing input and control without blocking efforts at joint production. In addition, employers should have fiduciary responsibilities …

St. Louis Vacancy Collaborative: 2019-2021 Work Plan, Dana M. Malkus

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Our City has a serious vacant property challenge. To effectively address vacancy, we must understand and respond to the factors that cause and perpetuate it. Much of the story of vacancy in our city, like other cities, includes a legacy of racism, disinvestment, and disengagement that has led to a breakdown in trust. We know that vacancy can result from incomplete foreclosure, bankruptcy, prolonged probate or lack of proper probate, investors with little incentive to care, judgment proof owners, bank ownership, lack of resources to repair or redevelop, lack of value, the foreclosure crisis, sprawl and weak markets.¹ In …

A Guide To Understanding And Addressing Vacant Property In The City Of St. Louis, Dana M. Malkus

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The City of St. Louis has a serious vacant property challenge. Since the population peak in 1950, the City has experienced a 63% decline in population and now has one of the highest rates of vacancy in the nation.¹ The City has approximately 25,000 vacant properties.² Approximately 12,000 of these are owned by the Land Reutilization Authority (LRA) or other public agencies,³ which means that approximately 13,000 are privately owned. Most of those vacant properties
are concentrated in the north and southeast portions of the City.⁴ For a city of its size, the City has "an …

Religious Privilege To Discriminate As Religious Freedom: From Charitable Choice To Faith Based Initiatives To Rfra And Fada, Marcia L. Mccormick

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The movement for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Inter-sex, and Asexual (LGBTQIA) rights has had three main themes since the civil rights era: freedom from criminalization of relationships and harassment by police; protection from discrimination in employment, housing, public ac-commodations, and government services; and civil protections for familial re-lationships, like the right to marry.[1] Freedom from criminalization of inti-mate relationships was won in 2003, when the Supreme Court held that the federal constitution protected same-sex intimate conduct and that states could not make that conduct criminal,[2] and that decision accelerated the fight for civil protections for familial relationships. In May …

Importance Of State Law In Police Reform, Roger L. Goldman

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Most articles on police reform concern the role of federal courts in enforcing constitutional rights under the fourth, fifth and sixth amendments through application of the exclusionary rule, criminal prosecution of law enforcement officers and pattern and practice suits brought against police departments. Additionally, much has been written about the need for civilian review of departmental discipline at the local level. In contrast, the focus of this article is on state law. On the one hand, state criminal prosecution of officers involved in shootings of unarmed, Black suspects has been shown to be ineffective because of the unwillingness of prosecutors …

Called To Serve: Five Habits Of Effective Board Members, Dana M. Malkus

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In any given year, a single nonprofit organization has the potential to positively impact hundreds of lives. Given their training, passion, and community standing, young lawyers are often a great asset for such organizations. At the same time, nonprofit organizations can provide excellent training and networking opportunities for young lawyers.

With a relatively modest investment of time, you can provide the kind of board service that brings substantial impacts for our communities. Whether you currently serve on a board or are simply considering doing so in the future, developing the following five habits will help you more effectively advance your …

Our Uneasiness With Police Unions: Power And Voice For The Powerful?, Marcia L. Mccormick

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The police shooting of Michael Brown, and the other recent police shootings of black men and boys, gave rise to many important discussions about race, inequality, power, and policing. But one issue not as widely discussed was the the role and propriety of police unions. This Essay describes the history and uniqueness of public sector unions, such as police unions, and why they are both useful and problematic.

This Essay describes ways police unions might be used to help solve the current problems, such as helping to connect officers with the community. The Federal and State governments have provided recommendations …

Collaboration: Promises And Pitfalls, Dana M. Malkus

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Simply put, collaboration refers to two or more organizations coming together to accomplish a specific goal. It is helpful to think of collaboration as a spectrum: Collaborations range from informal arrangements (e.g., a committee, a task force, a joint initiative, information sharing, joint purchasing arrangements, co-locating arrangements, or program coordination) to more formal arrangements (e.g., the creation of a new entity).

Common reasons for collaborations include

• greater access to certain funding or grant streams;
• access to the expertise of the collaborating organization;
• an ability to increase the human resources that can be devoted to an event or cause;
• access to …

The Gamification Of Work, Miriam A. Cherry

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In the language of cyberspace, introducing elements of fun or game-playing into everyday tasks or through simulations is known as the process of “gamification.” The idea that people could be working while they play a video game – in some instances without even knowing that they are working – is becoming part of our reality. Gamification is an important element of what in previous writing I have termed “virtual work,” that is, work that is taking place wholly online, in crowdsourcing arrangements, or in virtual worlds. The gamification of work is an important trend with important implications for employment law. …

A Model Decertification Law, Roger L. Goldman

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Despite the over 50-year existence of laws permitting the revocation of a police officer’s right to serve in law enforcement for serious misconduct, most scholars have ignored this development. Currently, 44 states have such laws, but they differ greatly in scope. This article suggests the three most important characteristics of an effective decertification law: first, the types of law enforcement officers covered by the law should be wide-ranging, including correctional officers and probation officers, not just police officers and deputy sheriffs and police officers. Second, the range of misconduct that can lead to decertification should not just be limited to …

Cultural Understandings Of Risk And The Tyranny Of The Experts, Molly J. Walker Wilson

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Every year, law-makers and agency regulators, with the input of industry experts and scientists, make hundreds of decisions about how to regulate conduct and allocate resources to address various types of risks that threaten the well-being of American citizens. In fact, managing and minimizing risk is one of the most important tasks of today’s policy-makers. In spite of this fact, most actions are taken without systematic consideration of the preferences of the very people whose welfare is at stake. There are two reasons for this. First, the dominance of Traditional Risk Analysis, with its emphasis on statistics and cost-benefit analysis, …

Revocation Of Police Officer Certification: A Viable Remedy For Police Misconduct?, Roger L. Goldman, Steven Purro

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We take it as a given that any profession or occupation, which involves interaction with the public, will be regulated by a state agency. Accountants, architects, attorneys, barbers, cosmeticians, dentists, etc. are all required to undergo training, meet selection standards and, if they seriously misbehave, they will have their licenses or certificates revoked by the board or commission which regulates that profession. Until fairly recently, there was no license or professional certificate issued by a state agency for law enforcement officers. That meant that an officer, who had successfully completed his police academy training and received a diploma, could be …

Pro-Gun Scholars Twist Constitution, Kenneth Lasson

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Earlier this year, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia became the first federal tribunal to strike down a local gun-control law, holding that the Founding Fathers would have allowed all private citizens to arm themselves.

Using An Online Auction To Sell Article 9 Collateral, Michael Korybut

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This short article discusses selected issues under Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code with respect to a secured party using an online auction like eBay to sell repossessed collateral. In particular, the article analyzes certain potential limitations imposed by Article 9's commercial reasonableness standard and its notice of sale requirement.

Article 9'S Incorporation Strategy And Novel, New Markets For Collateral: A Theory Of Non-Adoption, Michael Korybut

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Online auctions like eBay are heralded widely as efficient, robust markets through which millions of businesses and people have sold billions of dollars of all types of property. Yet U.C.C. Article 9 secured parties apparently are only slowly and anemically adopting eBay or other online auctions to sell repossessed property (collateral) and are sticking instead to conventional, traditional sale methods. The apparent slow and anemic adoption of eBay and other online auctions by Article 9 secured creditors suggests a failure of the commercial reasonableness standard's incorporation strategy of new, efficient markets and its price-maximization goal. The Article proposes a non-adoption …

Markets For Markets: Origins And Subjects Of Information Markets, Miriam A. Cherry, Robert L. Rogers

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This Article focuses on why information markets have covered certain subject areas, sometimes of minor importance, while neglecting other subject areas of greater significance. To put it another way, why do information markets exist to predict the outcome of the papal conclave and the Michael Jackson trial, but no information markets exist to predict government policy conclusions, Supreme Court decisions, or the rulings in Delaware corporate law cases? Arguably, from either a dollar value or a social utility perspective, these areas of law and business would be more important than the outcome of, say, the Jackson trial. Why, then, do …

Final Report Of The Maldivian Penal Law & Sentencing Codification Project: Text Of Draft Code (Volume 1) And Official Commentary (Volume 2), Paul H. Robinson, Criminal Law Research Group -- University Of Pennsylvania

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The United Nations Development Programme and the Government of the Maldives commissioned the drafting of a penal code based upon existing Maldivian law, which meant primarily a codification of Shari'a. This is the Final Report of that codification project. A description of the process that produced this Report and the drafting principles behind it, as well as a discussion of the special challenges of codifying Islamic criminal law, are contained in an article at http://ssrn.com/abstract=941443.

State Revocation Of Law Enforcement Officers' Licenses And Federal Criminal Prosecution: An Opportunity For Cooperative Federalism, Roger L. Goldman

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This article suggests ways that Department of Justice Attorneys who prosecute state and local law enforcement officers for violation of civil rights under 18 USC §§ 241 and 242 could use state laws that permit revocation of law enforcement officers’ licenses. Whereas federal criminal convictions of non-law enforcement defendants are close to 100%, statistics indicate that when law enforcement officers are go to trial in federal court, the conviction rate is closer to 50%. Thus, if a jury is unlikely to convict because of its natural sympathies towards the officer, prosecutor should seriously consider permitting the officer to agree to …

Searching For Commercial Reasonableness Under The Revised Article 9, Michael Korybut

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Under U.C.C. Article 9, a secured party selling repossessed collateral must conduct a commercially reasonable sale. Under the old Article 9, courts and commentators debated the question of whether the foreclosure sale process and its procedural regularity should measure the sale's commercial reasonableness or whether instead the main focus of inquiry should be the reasonableness of the proceeds produced by the sale. This question spawned conflicting and non-uniform judicial approaches, most simply described as the "procedures test" versus "proceeds test."

In 2001 Article 9 was revised. The revisions included changes that addressed, but did not explicitly resolve, the question of …

Online Auctions Of Repossessed Collateral Under Article 9, Michael Korybut

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Under U.C.C. Article 9, a secured creditor selling repossessed collateral must do so in a commercially reasonable manner. A traditional form of foreclosure sale is an auction conducted by a professional auctioneer. With the rapid growth of online auctions like eBay, secured parties may want to use the new platform to sell their collateral. But conceived in the 1940s, Article 9 was not drafted with the Internet in mind. The secured creditor will face many novel issues, including whether the defining characteristics distinguishing a real-world public sale from a private sale remain coherent and applicable in cyberspace; whether an online …

Protecting Defamatory Fiction And Reader-Response Theory With Emphasis On The German Experience, Henry Ordower

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Examines the litigation in Germany surrounding the publication of Klaus Mann's novel Mephisto. Analyzes the concepts of libel and defamation in fictional works and concludes that neither injunctive relief nor damages is appropriate because of the limited risk of injury and the potential for adverse impact on creative expression.

Exploring The Literary Function Of Law And Litigation In Njal's Saga, Henry Ordower

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This paper argues that whether Njal's Saga (a medieval Icelandic family saga) accurately describes litigation or correctly identifies legal rules in medieval Iceland, those descriptions primarily serve a literary function. The author uses law and litigation to accelerate or retard the plot in order to enhance dramatic tension.

Decertification Of Police: An Alternative To Traditional Remedies For Police Misconduct, Roger L. Goldman, Steven Purro

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This article is the first in-depth examination of revocation of peace officer licenses for citizen abuse. Unlike the more familiar remedy of terminating the officer’s employment, license revocation, more commonly called decertification, has the advantage of disabling the officer from continuing to work in other departments within the state, just as occurs for myriad other professions and occupations. To determine what type of misconduct led to revocation, a file search was made of all revocations by the Florida Criminal Justices Standards and Training Commission during the time period October 1976 – October 1983. Florida was selected because it has been …