Public Law and Legal Theory Commons^™

Administrative Law In The Automated State, Cary Coglianese

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law

In the future, administrative agencies will rely increasingly on digital automation powered by machine learning algorithms. Can U.S. administrative law accommodate such a future? Not only might a highly automated state readily meet longstanding administrative law principles, but the responsible use of machine learning algorithms might perform even better than the status quo in terms of fulfilling administrative law’s core values of expert decision-making and democratic accountability. Algorithmic governance clearly promises more accurate, data-driven decisions. Moreover, due to their mathematical properties, algorithms might well prove to be more faithful agents of democratic institutions. Yet even if an automated ...

Towards A Unified General Theory Of Law In The Arab And Islamic World- Prof. Mustafa Al - Jammal

Journal Sharia and Law

This study starts by observing the duplicity that exists in the legal culture in the Arab and Islamic world, stemming, as it does, from the interaction with western legal culture, while a t the same time preserving the Islamic legal culture . This study aims at opening the way to unify the two cultures, in such a manner that would serve pedagogic and educational purposes in a contemporary Islamic society. The projected study consists of consecutive essays, and begins with this essay which discusses the issue of the definition of law. This essay comprises four points: The first point criticizes the ...

Private Farms, Public Power: Governing The Lives Of Dairy Cattle, Jessica Eisen

Journal of Food Law & Policy

It is widely assumed that laws governing dairy productioninclude substantial protection of animals’ interests—that in some way the state is regulating the treatment of farmed animals and protecting them against the worst excesses of their owners’ selfinterest. In fact, across jurisdictions in Canada and the United States, the standards governing farmed animal protection are not established by elected lawmakers or appointed regulators, but are instead primarily defined by private, interested parties, including producers themselves. As scholars of animal law have noted, this has contributed to weak and ineffectual legal protection of the interests of farmed animals. The present study ...

Covid-19 Impacts: How A Global Pandemic Amid The Sunsets Of The Ptc And Itc Made The U.S. Wind And Solar Industries More Resilient, Kimberly E. Diamond

Fordham Environmental Law Review

A cataclysmic event is sometimes the necessary catalyst for companies within certain industries to re- examine, radically shift, and replace their standard practices with technologically-advanced alternatives. In the United States, the occurrence of the Coronavirus pandemic (“COVID-19”) during the sunsets of the Production Tax Credit (“PTC”) and the Investment Tax Credit (“ITC”) created a unique confluence of factors that produced a perfect storm tantamount to such a cataclysmic event for companies in the wind and solar industries, particularly developers. Over the years, the domestic utility-scale wind industry has come to rely heavily upon the PTC, while the domestic utility- scale ...

Illegal Discharge: Exploring The History Of The Criminal Enforcement Of The U.S. Clean Water Act, Dr. Joshua Ozymy, Dr. Melisssa L. Jarrell

Fordham Environmental Law Review

The criminal prosecution of defendants that violate federal clean water laws has been ongoing for roughly four decades. Yet, we continue to have a poor understanding of how federal prosecutors use the U.S. Clean Water Act (“CWA”) to charge and prosecute criminals and the outcomes of those prosecutions. We use content analysis to analyze 2,588 federal criminal prosecution case summaries, 1983-2019, to gain a better historical understanding of how the CWA has been used as a prosecutorial tool, to bring out the major themes in the prosecutions, and quantify sentencing outcomes. Findings from the 828 CWA prosecutions undertaken ...

Red Tide: A Blooming Concern For Florida Manatees, Shannon Price Esq.

Fordham Environmental Law Review

Although red tides are a common and natural occurrence around the coast of Florida, within the last few decades they have intensified and become much more deadly. Several identifiable human-caused factors exacerbate the size, concentration, and duration of the harmful algae bloom and disturb the environment’s natural balance. The Florida Gulf Coast provides all the algae’s necessary requirements for survival, the perfect storm to create a resilient super bloom that annihilates its host ecosystem.

This article explains the plight of Florida manatees who, like other marine animals and plants, are being injured or killed by this algae crisis ...

"Eco" Your Own Way: An Argument For State-Specific Climate Change Legislation, Amanda Voeller

Fordham Environmental Law Review

The consequences of climate change seriously and immediately threaten the American way of life, but proposed federal legislation like the Green New Deal is overly broad, unrealistic, and inefficient. The most effective way for the United States to combat climate change is not with a one-size-fits-all plan like the Green New Deal, but with federal legislation that incentivizes states and cities to enact and enforce individualized, local climate legislation. Different states and cities have different climates, available energy sources, and transportation needs, so the federal government should use financial incentives to encourage states and cities to pass tailor-made bills and ...

The Use Of Regular Militaries For Natural Disasters After A Major Event Where The Military Was Seen As A Failure - The Somalia Effect In The Age Of Black Lives Matters And Covid-19, Donald D.A. Schaefer

Fordham Environmental Law Review

This is written as a continuation of Dr. Schaefer’s recent article entitled, “The Use of the Regular Militaries for Natural Disaster Assistance: Climate Change and the Increasing Need for Changes to the Laws in the United States, China, Japan, the Philippines, and Other Countries.” 2 Perhaps few other areas have affected so many people than the Covid-19 pandemic. Coupled with this has been the struggle over the use of force by the military and police in the age of “black lives matters” and the movements that have been transpired as a result. With the increased global warming likely to ...

No Rest For The Weary: A Survey Of Virginia's 2020 General Assembly Regular And Special Sessions, Samantha R. Galina

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

This has been possibly the most historic year in the Virginia General Assembly in decades. During the regular session alone, 3,857 bills were introduced, spanning thousands of pages covering topics as vast as criminal justice reform to election laws to natural resource protection.1 As if that wasn’t enough, the General Assembly reconvened for a Special Session in August to address the COVID-19 pandemic, related budgetary changes, and a myriad of police conduct-related bills in response to the killing of George Floyd and the national Black Lives Matter movement. This article will provide a summary of some of ...

The Fight Over The Virginia Redistricting Commission, Henry L. Chambers Jr.

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

In its 2020 regular session, Virginia's General Assembly debated whether to send to Virginians a constitutional amendment that transfers the General Assembly’s redistricting responsibility to a newly created Virginia Redistricting Commission (VRC). The VRC is a bipartisan commission of legislators and citizens that will redraw electoral districts before sending them to the General Assembly for up-or-down ratification without alteration. If a supermajority of the VRC fails to agree on redistricted maps or the General Assembly fails to approve the maps, the Virginia Supreme Court will draw the districts. The amendment triggered a fight over how to redistrict, how ...

Remembering The Ladies: Taking A Look At Some Of Virginia's Most Notable Female Leaders As Virginia Fights For Recognition Of The Equal Rights Amendment, Michelle Kallen, Jessica Merry Samuels, Morgan Maloney

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

In January 2020, Virginia ratified the Equal Rights Amendment, fulfilling the constitutional ratification requirements and thus enshrining it as the Twenty-Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution. This article seeks to highlight and explore the lives and contributions of some of the Virginia women who paved the way for this monumental achievement and shaped our nation and our Commonwealth. From Pocahontas to Barbara Johns and the women of the Virginia Military Institute, the history of Virginia women has been one of grit and determination even in the face of subjugation and exploitation. This article seeks to amplify their voices and ...

Decriminalization In Virginia: Marijuana In The 2020 General Assembly Session, Jenn Michelle Pedini, Cassidy Crockett-Verba

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

Cannabis is regulated in over one-third of the United States and it has finally made its way to Virginia. While it is not yet legal in the Commonwealth, it has been decriminalized. This is when the criminal penalties are removed but civil penalties (often fines) remain. This is a step in the right direction but activists know that this is not enough for the communities that continue to be harmed by a failed war on drugs. The legislation in Virginia will not fix the issue of over-policing in Black and Brown communities but activists believe that it will put Virginia ...

Letter From The Editor, Eudora F. S. Arthur

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

No abstract provided.

Prefatory Matter

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Virginia Values Act: A Landmark Civil Rights Legislation Leapfrogs Virginia Into A Leader On Equality, Sarah Warbelow, Cathryn Oakley

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

After more than 25 years of Republican political control, Virginia passed thirteen pieces of pro-equality legislation in 2020, the most sweeping of which was the Virginia Values Act. That legislation modernized Virginia civil rights law, bringing the state into line with the overwhelming majority of other states in addressing discrimination. In addition to adding nondiscrimination protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people in existing law - which included housing, public employment, and credit it created all-new protections from discrimination in employment and places of public accommodation on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, pregnancy, childbirth ...

Unallot A Lot: Virginia's Human Services Budgeting In The Time Of Coronavirus, Valerie L'Herrou, Cassie Cunningham, Salaam Bhatti

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

Virginia’s 2020 General Assembly budgeting process for fiscal year (“FY”) 2021-2022 was upended by the global pandemic which, after a rosy economic forecast for the Commonwealth, sent revenue expectations tumbling, and necessitated a nearly complete rewrite of the budget immediately upon its enactment by the legislature. Social services, an important aspect in the economic health of the Commonwealth, seemed poised to have greater support from the new Democratic majority in both houses of the state legislature as well as the governor’s mansion. But this may or may not have been true, even before the impact of COVID-19.

How Criminal Code Drafting Form Can Restrain Prosecutorial And Legislative Excesses: Consolidated Offense Drafting, Paul H. Robinson, Matthew Kussmaul, Muhammad Sarahne

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law

Solving criminal justice problems typically requires the enactment of new rules or the modification of existing ones. But there are some serious problems that can best be solved simply by altering the way in which the existing rules are drafted rather than by altering their content. This is the case with two of the most serious problems in criminal justice today: the problem of overlapping criminal offenses that create excessive prosecutorial charging discretion and the problem of legislative inconsistency and irrationality in grading offenses.

After examining these two problems and demonstrating their serious effects in perverting criminal justice, the essay ...

A Remedy For The Least Well Off: The Case For Preliminary Damages, Gideon Parchomovsky, Alex Stein

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law

Historically, the law helped impecunious plaintiffs overcome their inherent disadvantage in civil litigation. Unfortunately, this is no longer the case: modern law has largely abandoned the mission of assisting the least well off. In this Essay, we propose a new remedy that can dramatically improve the fortunes of poor plaintiffs and thereby change the errant path of the law: preliminary damages. The unavailability of preliminary damages has dire implications for poor plaintiffs, especially those wronged by affluent individuals and corporations. Resource constrained plaintiffs cannot afford prolonged litigation on account of their limited financial means. Consequently, they are forced to either ...

Fiscal Decentralization In Egypt: Nature, Obstacles And Solutions, Mohamed Ibrahim El Shafei

Journal Sharia and Law

The objective of this study is to analyse the features and the evolution of the fiscal decentralization in Egypt so as to reveal its obstacles and to suggest some solutions for tackling these problems. This research is divided into two sections. The first section indicates the economic & fiscal framework and the determinants of the fiscal decentralization. The second section identifies a detailed vision about the evolution of the decentralized budget in Egypt during the years 2005-2009. We conclude the main problems of the fiscal decentralization and proposes certain solutions for them.

Masthead

California Regulatory Law Reporter

No abstract provided.