Law Commons^™

Money Laundering Through Cryptocurrencies, George Forgang

Economic Crime Forensics Capstones

Bitcoin, the world’s first cryptocurrency, was first introduced in 2009, by Satoshi Nakamoto. While many believe the name is a pseudonym, and the true identity of the creator(s) is unknown, it is an undisputed fact that cryptocurrencies have introduced an indelible change to monies worldwide. Consequently, cryptocurrencies have also introduced a plethora of new opportunities for money laundering activity.

While cryptocurrencies follow the same three-step laundering process of placement, layering, and integration, the activity can be more difficult to detect due to the anonymous nature of cryptocurrencies. Moreover, while traditional schemes such as smurfing or gambling at a ...

1923 - California County Boundaries With Maps, Owen C. Coy

Miscellaneous Documents and Reports

The object of this volume is to present a brief but comprehensive account of the formation of the counties of California, together with a more detailed study of the location and changes in the county boundaries. Beginning with the first legislature, in 1849, which divided the state into twenty-seven counties, the agitation for new counties and for county boundary changes has continued down to the present time, when there are fifty-eight counties, with consequent radical changes in boundary lines.

1920 - Third Biennial Report Of The State Water Commission Of California

Miscellaneous Documents and Reports

The California State Water Commission was created to carry out the terms of the Water Commission Act passed by the Legislature in 1913, and approved under referendum December 19, 1914. This act provides for a definite record of water right titles and constitutes a code of water law governing the use of surface water and underground water :flowing through known and definite channels, based upon rights by appropriation. It is designed to serve three main purposes.

First-To provide a definite system for public supervision of the initiation of water rights acquired subsequent to the adoption of the act and a ...

1919 - Catalogue Of Materials In The Archivo General De Indias For The History Of The Pacific Coast And The American Southwest, Chapman

Miscellaneous Documents and Reports

The Sevillian archive, Archivo General de Indias, contained a wealth of materials on almost every conceivable subject in Spanish colonial administration and was the most valuable single archive on that field in existence. As of 1919, much material of the Spanish period relating to regions now within the United States was still found in various local archives. The report listed the pertinent files on California history in general and that of regions in the direct line of approach to California, especially Baja California and Sonora but also affairs of the easterly provinces of the northern frontier from Nueva Vizcaya to ...

Mystery Subpoena Case At Supreme Court Could Expand Us Authority, Peter B. Rutledge, Amanda W. Newton

Popular Media

This article examines the D. C. Circuit’s underlying decision In Re Grand Jury Subpoena, that expands the possibility that a federal criminal subpoena could override a claim of sovereign immunity when also coupled with an invocation of a foreign blocking statute.

Nonvoting Shares And Efficient Corporate Governance, Dorothy S. Lund

Law, Economics, & Business Workshop

No abstract provided.

Humanitarian Logic And The Law Of Siege: A Study Of The Oxford Guidance On Relief Actions, Sean Watts

International Law Studies

In terms of human suffering, few military operations have rivaled sieges and comparably harsh legal regimes have governed them. At a time when legal vindication of humanitarian interests in armed conflict is ascendant, conventional accounts of the law of war governing humanitarian relief may seem out of step, plagued with glaring gaps in humanitarian logic. In 2016, Oxford University professors published a United Nations-commissioned legal study—the Oxford Guidance on the Law Relating to Humanitarian Relief Operations in Situations of Armed Conflict. The Guidance contends that during armed conflict international law prohibits belligerents from arbitrarily denying offers of humanitarian relief ...

Vol. 56, No. 01 (January 14, 2019)

Indiana Law Annotated

No abstract provided.

Transferability: Helping Students And Attorneys Apply What They Already Know To New Situations (Part 1), Edward R. Becker

Articles

Every fall, I work with my first year law students to begin developing their legal writing skills. They work hard learning how to analyze cases objectively, predict how a court might resolve a dispute, and convey their assessments to an experienced attorney. Their improvement from September to December is noticeable. They have only one semester of law school behind them and still have much to learn, but they’re on their way…In the second semester, we begin focusing on advocacy. The first assignment asks students to draft a pretrial brief. When I review the drafts, I’m struck by ...

1939 - Bulletin 18-F, California Irrigation District Laws, Revised

Miscellaneous Documents and Reports

Bulletin 18-F is the eleventh volume in this series of publications. It includes the text of the California Districts Securities Commission Act and the four district acts that have been most used in creating organizations for the development and distribution of water for irrigation.

Following each legislative session since 1919, the Division of Water Resources and its predecessors, the Department of Engineering, and the Division of Engineering and Irrigation, have compiled and issued revised editions of these laws to include the numerous amendments and additions that have been adopted to meet changing requirements found necessary under operating conditions.

1923 - Irrigation Requirements Of California Lands, Bulletin No. 6, Appendix B, Report To The Legislature

Miscellaneous Documents and Reports

The legislature of 1921 appropriated $200,000 for an investigation of California's water resources by the State Department of Public Works, Division of Engineering and Irrigation. Accordingly, an engineering investigation was completed.

California's agricultural lands are those portions of the state that have suitable soils, disposed in appreciable areas of regular surface conformation, favorable climate, and other requisite conditions for the production of harvestable crops. Included in these, are lands at present deficient in natural moisture, but more or less conveniently situated for the ultimate acquisition of an accessory water supply. These agricultural lands produced, or were capable ...

1929 - California Irrigation Districts, Bulletin No. 21

Miscellaneous Documents and Reports

The investigation is an enlargement of a study outlined February, 1926, by the late state engineer, Wilbur F. McClure, and cooperating agencies. Work on the project was suspended in 1927 but was resumed early in 1928 at the request of the California Economic Research Council, whose committee on irrigation economics prepared the schedule used in the field investigation.

An earlier report on this subject by the same author covered the situation up to 1915, and was published as Bulletin 2 of the State Department of Engineering. This report, together with Bulletin 2, presented the most complete information it had been ...

Putting Ethnography On The Witness Stand: Review Of Interrogating Ethnography: Why Evidence Matters, Janet K. Keeler

The Qualitative Report

Lawyer, historian and author Steven Lubet’s Interrogating Ethnography: Why Evidence Matters puts several well-known urban ethnographies on the figurative witness stand and finds that some don’t hold up to legal (and journalistic) scrutiny. The author encourages social science researchers to employ fact-checking techniques to increase the veracity of their work. While Lubet praises social science researchers for their altruistic missions and painstaking data collection in the field he finds follow-up research often lacking. He recognizes that ethnographers do not want to be the adversaries of marginalized subjects but believes that more rigorous vetting of data is crucial to ...

Saving Grace: The Role Of Religious Organizations In Disaster Recovery And The Constitutionality Of Federal Funding To Rebuild Them, Cheslea Till

SMU Law Review

Natural disasters are on the rise and religious organizations, the same organizations that came to victims’ rescue in the wake of the last natural disaster, are often left in the path of destruction. Under President Trump’s administration, FEMA recently amended its disaster assistance program to provide funding for religious organizations. Opponents argue this amendment is a violation of the Establishment Clause, while proponents argue the amended plan finally gives religious organizations the fair treatment they deserve. This new aid program needs to be modified and restricted. Though there is clear precedent to support providing some Public Assistance funding to ...

Avoiding The Alien Tort Statute: A Call For Uniformity In State Court Human Rights Litigation, Alicia Pitts

SMU Law Review

For decades, the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) has played a valuable role in human rights litigation in U.S. courts. However, in recent years, the U.S. Supreme Court has limited the ATS’s effectiveness in a number of respects. In response to these decisions, many scholars have predicted that litigants will begin to evade the restrictive ATS jurisprudence by bringing traditional ATS cases in state courts. This comment reveals that this tactic has not become as prevalent as scholars predicted and evaluates the only two state court cases uncovered by the author’s research. This comment then explains why ...

A Texas Two-Step In The Right Direction—Looking Beyond Recent Legislation To Improve The Provision Of Special Education Services In Texas, Taylor Michals

SMU Law Review

This article analyzes the current state of the special education system in Texas following the 85th Legislative Session, focusing on the practical and legal implications of the limitation imposed by the Texas Education Agency in 2004 before analyzing Senate Bill 160, which requires Texas to remove the limitation on special education services, and its future impact on special education in Texas. Additionally, this article addresses Senate Bill 927, which outlined a plan to ensure that students who were previously denied services receive an adequate evaluation, why the legislation failed, and potential remedies for students who have been negatively impacted by ...

“Heal Thyself.”—An Argument For Granting Asylum To Healthcare Workers Persecuted During The 2014 West African Ebola Crisis, Bethany Echols

SMU Law Review

This article argues for a change in United States asylum policy at a time when change is needed most. Those seeking asylum must prove that they fear persecution in their home country based on one of five protected categories and that their government is the persecutor or is unable to control the actions of the persecutors. Multiple articles have recognized that the “particular social group” is the most difficult category of asylum seeker to analyze. Not only do the standards for particular social groups (PSGs) vary among circuit courts, but judicial consistency is lacking.

This article focuses on a particular ...

Policing Narrative, Tal Kastner

SMU Law Review

Counter narrative, a story that calls attention to and rebuts the presumptions of a dominant narrative framework, functions as an essential tool to reshape the bounds of the law. It has the potential to shape the collective notion of what constitutes legal authority. Black Lives Matter offers a counter narrative that challenges the characterization of the shared public space, among other aspects of contemporary society, as the space of law. Using the concept of necropower—the mobilization and prioritization of the state’s power to kill—I analyze the contested physical and conceptual space of law exposed by the counter ...

The Icarus Syndrome: How Credit Rating Agencies Lost Their Quasi Immunity, Norbert Gaillard, Michael Waibel

SMU Law Review

Subsequent to the 2007–2008 subprime crisis, the SEC and the US Senate discovered that it was common practice for major credit rating agencies (CRAs) to produce inflated and inaccurate structured finance ratings. A host of explanations were posited on how this was able to happen from the “issuer pays” model of CRAs and conflicts of interest to underscoring the CRA’s regulatory license and their ensuing insulation from legal liability. Historically, credit ratings were akin to opinions. However, when courts started to consider structured finance ratings as commercial speech in the 2000s, CRAs became more vulnerable to litigation. This ...

Richard Posner: A Class Of One, Robert C. Farrell

SMU Law Review

Judge Richard Posner, best known for his contributions to the field of law and economics, has also made an outsized contribution to another area of the law—the equal protection class-of-one claim. By some combination of happenstance and design, Posner was able to shape the class-of-one doctrine even where his views were inconsistent with Supreme Court precedent. The Supreme Court’s initial exposition of the doctrine had identified an equal protection violation when there was intentionally different treatment of similarly situated persons without a rational basis for the difference in treatment. Posner insisted that this language included within it a ...