Texas's Excessive Demand Doctrine Impacts Recoveries In Litigation.,
2016
St. Mary's University
Texas's Excessive Demand Doctrine Impacts Recoveries In Litigation., Stephanie M. Green
St. Mary's Law Journal
A party demanding money they are not entitled to becomes subject to the excessive demand doctrine. Because the excessive demand doctrine is an affirmative defense, a defending party must allege its claim of excessive demand in its pleadings. A party must “plead it, prove it, and obtain findings of fact on its essential elements.” To obtain findings on the issue, both the pleadings and the evidence are required to put a question or instruction before the jury. Ensuring that the evidence is enough depends upon the trial court—whose judgment will only be overturned upon a showing of an abuse of …
Use It Or Lose It: Grappling With Classification Of Post-Petition Sale Proceeds Under Chapter Seven Bankruptcy For Consumer Debtors In The Lone Star State.,
2016
St. Mary's University
Use It Or Lose It: Grappling With Classification Of Post-Petition Sale Proceeds Under Chapter Seven Bankruptcy For Consumer Debtors In The Lone Star State., Danielle Nicole Rushing
St. Mary's Law Journal
Texas affords consumer debtors some of the most generous state bankruptcy exemptions in the United States. This includes the homestead exemption, which permits consumer debtors to exempt a homestead of unlimited value from forced sale, subject to certain enumerated exceptions. Bankruptcy courts throughout the state are grappling with how to characterize proceeds from the sale of an exempted homestead once a consumer debtor files a Chapter Seven bankruptcy petition. Specifically, courts consider whether a debtor may personally retain funds from the sale of a homestead or whether a Chapter Seven Trustee should receive the sale proceeds on behalf of the …
Interlocutory Appeals In Texas: A History,
2016
Thompson Coe
Interlocutory Appeals In Texas: A History, Elizabeth Lee Thompson
St. Mary's Law Journal
This Article delves into the evolution of Texas's interlocutory appeals statute with the related goals of tracing the expanding subject matter of interlocutory appeals and identifying what these changes reflect about legal priorities and developments in Texas since the late nineteenth century.
Charting The Course: Charter School Exploration In Virginia,
2016
University of Richmond
Charting The Course: Charter School Exploration In Virginia, Katherine E. Lehnen
Law Student Publications
This comment reviews the background and status of the charter school movement in Part I and addresses legal challenges charters face in Part II. Part III provides an overview of Virginia's charter school law, and Part IV analyzes how the legislature can improve that law to foster charter school exploration in the Commonwealth.
Retirement In The Land Of Lincoln: The Illinois Secure Choice Savings Program Act,
2016
Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law
Retirement In The Land Of Lincoln: The Illinois Secure Choice Savings Program Act, Edward A. Zelinsky
Articles
In 2015, Illinois became the first state to enact a state-mandated and state-operated retirement system for private sector employers: The Illinois Secure Choice Savings Program Act. The Illinois program resembles a system approved by the California legislature—a system that has not yet been enacted since it is conditioned on an additional vote by the legislature. Illinois’ program and the one proposed in California have notable differences in that (1) the Illinois retirement accounts will qualify as individual retirement accounts (“IRAs”) under the Internal Revenue Code (“Code”); (2) the Illinois IRAs will be Roth IRAs; (3) the California program requires participation …
Legislative Atrophy,
2016
Florida Supreme Court Judicial Nominating Commission
Neighborhoods By Assessment: An Analysis Of Non-Ad Valorem Financing In California,
2016
Duke Law School
Neighborhoods By Assessment: An Analysis Of Non-Ad Valorem Financing In California, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Ellen C. Seljan
Faculty Scholarship
Non-ad valorem assessments on property are a fiscal innovation born from financial stress. Unable to raise property taxes due to limitations, many localities have turned to these charges as an alternative method to fund local services. In this paper, we seek to explain differential levels of non-ad valorem assessment financing through the analysis of property tax records of a large and diverse set of single family homes in California. We theorize that assessments, as opposed to other forms of taxation, will be used when residents hold anti-redistributive preferences. We show that assessment financing is most common in cities with high …
Managing Unconventional Oil And Gas Development As If Communities Mattered,
2016
University of Colorado Law School
Managing Unconventional Oil And Gas Development As If Communities Mattered, Mark Squillace
Publications
The advent of horizontal oil and gas drilling into relatively impermeable shale rock, and the companion technological breakthrough of high-pressure, multi-stage fracking that frees hydrocarbons along the substantial length of these horizontal wells, has fundamentally altered the oil and gas industry. The Energy Information Administration has gone so far as to predict that North America could become a net energy exporter as early as 2019, largely as a result of the explosive growth of this “unconventional” oil and gas development. Despite its promise, managing unconventional oil and gas development has proved challenging, and many of the communities that find themselves …
The Energy Prosumer,
2016
University of Colorado Law School
The Energy Prosumer, Sharon B. Jacobs
Publications
Decentralization is becoming a dominant trend in many industries, and the electricity industry is no exception. Increasing numbers of energy consumers generate their own electricity and/or provide essential grid services such as storage, efficiency, and demand response. This Article offers a positive account of the emergence of these new energy actors, which it calls "energy prosumers. " It then frames several doctrinal and procedural puzzles that prosumers create, including jurisdictional puzzles, distributional concerns, and democratic challenges. Ultimately, it concludes that prosumers can be a positive disruptive force in the electricity industry if courts and regulators can manage these challenges effectively. …
Restore The Republic: The Incompatibility Between The Taxpayer's Bill Of Rights And The Guarantee Clause,
2016
University of Colorado Law School
Restore The Republic: The Incompatibility Between The Taxpayer's Bill Of Rights And The Guarantee Clause, Joshua Pens
University of Colorado Law Review
No abstract provided.
Roe As We Know It,
2016
University of Texas School of Law
Roe As We Know It, Cary Franklin
Michigan Law Review
The petitioners in last year’s historic same-sex marriage case cited most of the Supreme Court’s canonical substantive due process precedents. They argued that the right of same-sex couples to marry, like the right to use birth control and the right to guide the upbringing of one’s children, was among the liberties protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court in Obergefell v. Hodges agreed, citing many of the same cases. Not once, however, did the petitioners or the majority in Obergefell cite the Court’s most famous substantive due process decision. It was the dissenters in Obergefell who invoked Roe v. Wade.
Black-Box Immigration Federalism,
2016
Washburn
University School of Law
Black-Box Immigration Federalism, David S. Rubenstein
Michigan Law Review
In Immigration Outside the Law, Hiroshi Motomura confronts the three hardest questions in immigration today: what to do about our undocumented population, who should decide, and by what legal process. Motomura’s treatment is characteristically visionary, analytically rich, and eminently fair to competing views. The book’s intellectual arc begins with its title: “Immigration Outside the Law.” As the narrative unfolds, however, Motomura explains that undocumented immigrants are “Americans in waiting,” with moral and legal claims to societal integration.
Governmental Intervention In An Economic Crisis,
2016
University of Southern California Law
Governmental Intervention In An Economic Crisis, Robert K. Rasmussen, David A. Skeel Jr.
All Faculty Scholarship
This paper articulates a framework both for assessing the various government bailouts that took place at the onset of Great Recession and for guiding future rescue efforts when they become necessary. The goals for those engineering a bailout should be to be as transparent as possible, to articulate clearly the reason for the intervention, to respect existing priorities among investors, to exercise control only at the top level where such efforts can be seen by the public, and to exit as soon as possible. By these metrics, some of the recent bailouts should be applauded, while others fell short. We …
Governance Reform And The Judicial Role In Municipal Bankruptcy,
2016
New York University
Governance Reform And The Judicial Role In Municipal Bankruptcy, Clayton P. Gillette, David A. Skeel Jr.
All Faculty Scholarship
Recent proceedings involving large municipalities such as Detroit, Stockton, and Vallejo illustrate both the utility and the limitations of using the Bankruptcy Code to adjust municipal debt. In this article, we contend that, to truly resolve the distress of a substantial city, municipal bankruptcy needs to do more than simply provide immediate debt relief. Debt adjustment alone does nothing to remedy the fragmented decision-making and incentives for expanding municipal budgets that underlie municipal distress. Unless bankruptcy also addresses governance dysfunction, the city may slide right back into financial crisis. Governance restructuring has long been an essential element of corporate bankruptcy. …
On Family Law Localism: A Comment On Sean Hannon Williams's Sex In The City,
2016
Columbia Law School
On Family Law Localism: A Comment On Sean Hannon Williams's Sex In The City, Richard Briffault
Faculty Scholarship
In his Article “Sex in the City,” Professor Sean Hannon Williams addresses the problems of enormous trial court discretion and concomitant unpredictable and inconsistent decisions found in divorce cases by proposing that local governments adopt nonbinding “rules of thumb” that would guide judges in exercising that discretion with respect to issues such as child custody, property division, and income support. He contends that this proposal would fit within the existing legal framework of state-local relations and would advance the goals of both family law reform and local empowerment with respect to family issues. Specifically, he urges that local legislative action …
A Solution In Search Of A Problem: Kelo Reform Over Ten Years,
2016
University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School
A Solution In Search Of A Problem: Kelo Reform Over Ten Years, Wendell Pritchett
All Faculty Scholarship
Kelo is NOT Dred Scott. Kelo is not only NOT Dred Scott, it was, as this Essay will argue, the right decision given the facts of the cases and the current state of legal jurisprudence. As an academic who has detailed the historic exploitation of eminent domain to uproot persons of color in this country, I find it interesting, and somewhat troubling, that the case has received so much criticism, much more criticism, I would argue, than other Supreme Court decisions that deserve condemnation. Certainly, eminent domain, like any other government power, must be regulated carefully. But upending …
Trust In Immigration Enforcement: State Noncooperation And Sanctuary Cities After Secure Communities,
2016
University of Colorado Law School
Trust In Immigration Enforcement: State Noncooperation And Sanctuary Cities After Secure Communities, Ming H. Chen
Publications
The conventional wisdom, backed by legitimacy research, is that most people obey most of the laws, most of the time. This turns out to not be the case in a study of state-local participation in immigration law enforcement. Two enforcement programs involving the use of immigration detainers, a vehicle by which the federal government (through ICE) requests that local law enforcement agencies (LEAs) detain immigrants beyond their scheduled release upon suspicion that they are removable, demonstrate the breakdown of conventional wisdom. In the five years following initiation of the Secure Communities program, a significant and growing number of states and …
Reclaiming The Right Of Beneficial Use,
2016
University of Colorado Law School
Reclaiming The Right Of Beneficial Use, Abby Harder
University of Colorado Law Review
Under the doctrine of prior appropriation, those that divert and apply water resources to a beneficial use gain a future right of use. Further, individuals may contract with the federal Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) for the delivery of federal project water. Under either method, individuals are required to use their water appropriation for a beneficial purpose to acquire and maintain their rights of use. What constitutes a beneficial purpose or a beneficial use of water resources has traditionally been defined by state law. Following some states’ legalization of marijuana, the BOR announced a new policy with regard to water use, …
U.S. Discovery And Foreign Blocking Statutes,
2016
University of Pittsburgh School of Law
U.S. Discovery And Foreign Blocking Statutes, Vivian Grosswald Curran
Articles
What is the reality between U.S. discovery and the foreign blocking statutes that impede it in France and other civil law states? How should we understand their interface at a time when companies are multinational in composition as well as in their areas of commerce? U.S. courts grapple with the challenge of understanding why they should adhere to strictures that seem to compromise constitutional or quasi-constitutional rights of American plaintiffs, while French and German lawyers and judges struggle with the challenges U.S. discovery poses to values of privacy and fair trial procedure in their legal systems. This article seeks to …
Out-Beale-Ing Beale,
2016
Georgetown University Law Center
Out-Beale-Ing Beale, Carlos Manuel Vázquez
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
In response to the 1991 Supreme Court decision resuscitating the presumption against extraterritoriality [hereinafter “PAE” or “presumption”], EEOC v. Arabian American Oil Co. (Aramco), Larry Kramer described the presumption as an anachronism—a throwback to the strict territorialist approach to choice of law that prevailed before the mid-Twentieth Century but has been mostly abandoned since then. The title of his scathing article, Vestiges of Beale, referred to Joseph Beale, the Harvard Law professor and reporter of the First Restatement of Conflict of Laws, whose since-discredited theories underlay that Restatement’s approach to choice of law. In the cases since Aramco …
