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Articles 1 - 13 of 13
Full-Text Articles in Torts
The Myth Of Personal Liability: Who Pays When Bivens Claims Succeed, James E. Pfander, Alexander A. Reinert, Joanna C. Schwartz
The Myth Of Personal Liability: Who Pays When Bivens Claims Succeed, James E. Pfander, Alexander A. Reinert, Joanna C. Schwartz
Articles
In Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents, the Supreme Court held that federal law creates a right to sue federal officials for Fourth Amendment violations. For the last three decades, however, the Court has cited the threat of individual liability and the burden of government indemnification on agency budgets as twin bases for narrowing the right of victims to secure redress under Bivens. In its most recent decisions, Ziglar v. Abbasi and Hernandez v. Mesa, the Court said much to confirm that it now views personal liability less as a feature of the Bivens liability rule than …
Qualified Immunity At Trial, Alexander A. Reinert
Qualified Immunity At Trial, Alexander A. Reinert
Articles
Qualified immunity doctrine is complex and important, and for many years it was assumed to have an outsize impact on civil rights cases by imposing significant barriers to success for plaintiffs. Recent empirical work has cast that assumption into doubt, at least as to the impact qualified immunity has at pretrial stages of litigation. This Essay adds to this empirical work by evaluating the impact of qualified immunity at trial, a subject that to date has not been empirically tested. The results reported here suggest that juries are rarely asked to answer questions that bear on the qualified immunity defense. …
Requiem For Section 1983, Paul D. Reingold
Requiem For Section 1983, Paul D. Reingold
Articles
Section 1983 no longer serves as a remedial statute for the people most in need of its protection. Those who have suffered a violation of their civil rights at the hands of state authorities, but who cannot afford a lawyer because they have only modest damages or seek only equitable remedies, are foreclosed from relief because lawyers shun their cases. Today civil rights plaintiffs are treated the same as ordinary tort plaintiffs by the private bar: without high damages, civil rights plaintiffs are denied access to the courts because no one will represent them. Congress understood that civil rights laws …
An Essay On Texas V. Lesage, Christina B. Whitman
An Essay On Texas V. Lesage, Christina B. Whitman
Articles
When I was invited to participate in this symposium, I was asked to discuss whether the causation defense developed in Mt. Healthy City School District Board of Education v. Doyle applied to cases challenging state action under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. As I argue below, it seems clear that Mt. Healthy does apply to equal protection cases. The Supreme Court explicitly so held last November in Texas v. Lesage. But the implications of Lesage go beyond questions of causation. The opinion suggests that the Court may be rethinking (or ignoring) its promise in Carey v. Piphus …
The Constitutionality Of Taxing Compensatory Damages For Mental Distress When There Was No Accompanying Physical Injury, Douglas A. Kahn
The Constitutionality Of Taxing Compensatory Damages For Mental Distress When There Was No Accompanying Physical Injury, Douglas A. Kahn
Articles
Since 1919, statutory tax law has excluded from gross income compensatory damages received on account of a personal injury or sickness.1 The current version of that exclusion is set forth in section 104 (a) (2) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986.2 The construction of that exclusion, both by the courts and by the Commissioner, underwent significant alterations over the 80-year period that the provision has existed.3 The statute itself was amended several times, most recently in 1996.4 It is the 1996 amendment that has raised a constitutional issue concerning the validity of a portion of the statute.5
Emphasizing The Constitutional In Constitutional Torts (Symposium On Section 1983), Christina B. Whitman
Emphasizing The Constitutional In Constitutional Torts (Symposium On Section 1983), Christina B. Whitman
Articles
It has been surprisingly difficult to extricate constitutional litigation from torts. In this Article I would like to resist once more' the idea that tort doctrines and tort categories provide a useful model for constitutional decision-making. When it comes to deciding the merits of a constitutional claim, torts is a distraction. That is the case whether torts serves as a positive model for the constitutional cause of action or as an alternative to be shunned. As part of this argument, I also question the claim2 that Monroe v. Pape,3 the 1961 case that opened the door for damages relief under …
Taxation Of Damages After Schleier - Where Are We And Where Do We Go From Here?, Douglas A. Kahn
Taxation Of Damages After Schleier - Where Are We And Where Do We Go From Here?, Douglas A. Kahn
Articles
This article will examine the reasoning of the Schleier decision and speculate as to how taxation of pre-1996 damages will likely apply in light of Schleier. First, the article will set forth a very brief history of the judicial and administrative constructions of the statutory exclusion, and explore tax policy justifications for providing an exclusion from gross income for certain damages. These latter two items (set forth in Parts II and III of this article) are areas that have been extensively addressed previously by several commentators, including the author of this article.' The reason for exploring tax policy issues is …
Compensatory And Punitive Damages For A Personal Injury: To Tax Or Not To Tax, Douglas A. Kahn
Compensatory And Punitive Damages For A Personal Injury: To Tax Or Not To Tax, Douglas A. Kahn
Articles
Since the adoption in 1919 of the Revenue Act of 1918, damages received on account of personal injuries or sickness have been excluded by statute from gross income.1 This exclusion, which does not apply to reimbursements for medical expenses for which the taxpayer was previously allowed a tax deduction,2 is presently set forth in section 104(a)(2). One might expect that a provision having recently attained the ripe age of 75 years without change in its basic language would have a settled meaning. However, recent litigation under section 104(a)(2) bristles with unsettled issues. Does the exclusion apply to punitive damages? To …
Government Responsibility For Constitutional Torts, Christina B. Whitman
Government Responsibility For Constitutional Torts, Christina B. Whitman
Articles
This essay is about the language used to decide when governments should be held responsible for constitutional torts.' Debate about what is required of government officials, and what is required of government itself, is scarcely new. What is new, at least to American jurisprudence, is litigation against government units (rather than government officials) for constitutional injuries. 2 The extension of liability to institutional defendants introduces special problems for the language of responsibility. In a suit against an individual official it is easy to describe the wrong as the consequence of individual behavior that is inconsistent with community norms; the language …
Constitutional Torts, Christina B. Whitman
Constitutional Torts, Christina B. Whitman
Articles
In this Article, I analyze the significance of the overlap between state tort law remedies and remedies under section 1983. I conclude that the dissatisfaction with section 1983 cannot fairly be attributed to the fact that it has been read to provide a remedy that "supplements" state law. I argue that most of the anxiety over constitutional damage actions under section 1983 can be understood - and resolved - only by focusing on two other questions. The first of these concerns the appropriate reach of the Constitution. Ambivalence about section 1983 reflects, in part, a fear that the federal Constitution …
The 'Source Of Law' In The Panama Canal Zone, Joseph H. Drake
The 'Source Of Law' In The Panama Canal Zone, Joseph H. Drake
Articles
A case just decided in the Supreme Court of the United States, coming to that court from the Canal Zone, shows the great difficulties under which our courts labor when they are called on to interpret and administer the law in our extra-continental possessions. The courts have apparently had the most difficulty in amalgamating the Roman law and the common law in cases involving questions of delictual liability. In the case of Fernandez v. Perez (1906), 202 U. S. 80, the procedural question was presented as to the validity of an action on the case for the wrongful levy of …
A Modern Evolution In Remedial Rights - The Declaratory Judgment, Edson R. Sunderland
A Modern Evolution In Remedial Rights - The Declaratory Judgment, Edson R. Sunderland
Articles
In early times the basis of jurisdiction is the existence and the constant assertion of physical power over the parties to the action, but as civilization advances the mere existence of such power tends to make its exercise less and less essential. If this is true, it must be because there is something in civilization itself which diminishes the necessity for a resort to actual force in sustaining the judgments of courts. And it is quite clear that civilization does supply an element which is theoretically capable of entirely supplanting the exercise of force in the assertion of jurisdiction. This …
The Liability Of The Common Carrier As Determined By The Recent Decisions Of The United States Supreme Court, Edwin C. Goddard
The Liability Of The Common Carrier As Determined By The Recent Decisions Of The United States Supreme Court, Edwin C. Goddard
Articles
An understanding of the present day liability of the common carrier under conditions as they exist, especially in interstate shipments, is best reached by an historical journey from the early decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States to the end of the year just past.