Digital Commons Network^™

Miller V. Alabama And The (Past And) Future Of Juvenile Crime Regulation, Elizabeth S. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

This essay was the keynote address for a symposium on Miller v Alabama, the 2012 Supreme Court opinion holding unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment a statute imposing a mandatory sentence of life without parole for juveniles convicted of homicide. The essay argues that Miller embodies a way of thinking about juvenile crime that has taken hold in the early 21st century – an approach that emphasizes the importance for legal policy of developmental differences between juveniles and adults. This emerging trend contrasts sharply with the regulatory approach of the 1990s when moral panics over juvenile crime fueled punitive law reforms …

The Second Amendment: An Analysis Of District Of Columbia V. Heller, Eileen Kaufman

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Transformation Of Immigration Federalism, Jennifer M. Chacón

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

Making The Most Of United States V. Jones In A Surveillance Society: A Statutory Implementation Of Mosaic Theory, Christopher Slobogin

Duke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy

No abstract provided.

Getting Juvenile Life Without Parole “Right” After Miller V. Alabama, Doriane L. Coleman, James E. Coleman Jr.

Duke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy

No abstract provided.

Can The States Keep Secrets From The Federal Government?, Robert A. Mikos

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

States amass troves of information detailing the regulated activities of their citizens, including activities that violate federal law. Not surprisingly, the federal government is keenly interested in this information. It has ordered reluctant state officials to turn over their confidential files concerning medical marijuana, juvenile criminal history, immigration status, tax payments, and employment discrimination, among many other matters, to help enforce federal laws against private citizens. Many states have objected to these demands, citing opposition to federal policies and concerns about the costs of breaching confidences, but the lower courts have uniformly upheld the federal government’s power to commandeer information …

Allocating The Costs Of Parental Free Exercise: Striking A New Balance Between Sincere Religious Belief And A Child's Right To Medical Treatment , Paul A. Monopoli

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

It Is Broken: Breaking The Inertia Of The Exclusionary Rule, L. Timothy Perrin, H. Mitchell Caldwell, Carol A. Chase

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Gray Zone In The Power Of Local Municipalities: Where Zoning Authority Clashes With State Law, Skye L. Daley

The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law

This article will explore the oft-overlooked area of police powers granted to local municipalities by the California Constitution through the lens of marijuana dispensaries. These dispensaries, and the obstacles they face, provide the perfect vantage point from which to survey the current status of zoning power in California. This article will consider the extent and limits of what is known as the “police powers” of local municipalities: the power of cities, towns and counties to regulate, restrict, and proscribe the way in which land can be utilized within its borders. If local municipalities are the creation of the state--indeed, an …

The Model Penal Code’S Wrong Turn: Renunciation As A Defense To Criminal Conspiracy, R. Michael Cassidy, Gregory I. Massing

Florida Law Review

While the Model Penal Code was certainly one of the most influential developments in criminal law in the past century, the American Law Institute (ALI) took a seriously wrong turn by recognizing “renunciation” as a defense to the crime of conspiracy. Under the Model Penal Code formulation, a member of a conspiracy who later disavows the agreement and thwarts its objective (for example, by notifying authorities of the planned crime in order to prevent its completion) is afforded a complete defense to conspiracy liability. This defense has enormous implications for crimes involving national security and terrorism, which are typically planned …

Policing Identity, Wayne A. Logan

Scholarly Publications

Identity has long played a critical role in policing. Learning “who” an individual is not only affords police knowledge of possible criminal history, but also of “what” an individual might have done. To date, however, these matters have eluded sustained scholarly attention, a deficit that has assumed ever greater significance as government databases have become more comprehensive and powerful. Identity evidence, in short, has and continues to suffer from an identity crisis, which this Article seeks to remedy. The Article does so by first surveying the methods historically used by police to identify individuals, from nineteenth-century efforts to measure bodies …

Proportionality In Interpreting Constitutions: A Comparison Between Canada, The United Kingdom And Singapore And Its Implications For Vietnam, Jack Tsen-Ta Lee

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Few rights that are guaranteed by constitutions and bills of rights are expressed to be absolute. In many jurisdictions, the legislature is permitted to impose restrictions on rights for specified reasons and under particular conditions. However, constitutional or bill of rights text often do not expressly indicate how the courts should determine that applicants’ rights have been legitimately restricted. To this end, courts in jurisdictions such as Canada and the United Kingdom have adopted the European doctrine of proportionality. Essentially, this requires them to balance opposing types of public interests – the interest sought to be protected by the rights …

Threading The Needle:Constitutional Ways For Local Governments To Refuse Cooperation With Civil Immigration Policies, Mary Cheh

University of the District of Columbia Law Review

On October 19, 2011, the mayor of Washington, D.C. issued an Executive Order to limit the District's cooperation with the federal government's Immigration and Naturalization Service in identifying and deporting undocumented residents.' In so doing, the mayor joined with many other communities' that, while specifically not shielding undocumented aliens engaged in criminal activity, want to maintain the trust and care of the many law-abiding immigrants within their borders. The mayor's Order is a direct response to the federal government's more aggressive effort to enlist local authorities in the roundup of undocumented aliens,' and raises the question which is the subject …

Wrong Means To An Unjust End? The Eleventh Circuit’S Decision In First Vagabonds Church Of God, Fay O. Pappas

Florida Law Review

In 2005, Orlando Food Not Bombs (OFNB), a conglomeration of political activists who advocate a “right to food,” began conducting “food-sharing events” once a week in downtown Orlando, Florida. OFNB distributed free vegan meals in Lake Eola Park to the hungry and homeless. Soon, however, the City began receiving complaints related to the number of homeless individuals who would disperse into adjacent neighborhoods following the events. In response, the City enacted the Large Group Feeding Ordinance, which required a permit for any feeding event likely to attract twenty-five or more people.

Grave Consequences For Economic Liberty: The Funeral Industry's Protectionist Occupational Licensing Scheme, The Circuit Split, And Why It Matters, Lana Harfoush

The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law

This article examines a current circuit split regarding the constitutionality of restrictive occupational licensing schemes that exist only for protectionist purposes. The Sixth Circuit in Craigmiles v. Giles and the Tenth Circuit case Powers v. Harris, are cases that revolve around similar facts but reach opposite outcomes. The two cases profile state funeral industry licensing restrictions. In both cases, the plaintiffs were penalized for selling caskets without state-issued licenses. Though licensing restrictions in the funeral industry affect most Americans as consumers, the scope of this circuit split reaches into nearly every industry. When businesses lobby governments to enact legislation, they …

The Fourth Amendment And The Stored Communications Act: Why The Warrantless Gathering Of Historical Cell Site Location Information Poses No Threat To Privacy , Kyle Malone

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Satellites And Municipalities: One Town’S Use Of Google Earth For Residential Surveillance, Edward Knoedler

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Revisiting "Special Needs" Theory Via Airport Searches, Alexander A. Reinert

Articles

Controversy has raged since the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) introduced Advanced Imaging Technology, capable of producing detailed images of travelers' bodies, and "enhanced" pat frisks as part of everyday airport travel. In the face of challenges in the courts and in public discourse, the TSA has justified the heightened security measures as a necessary means to prevent terrorist attacks. The purpose of this Essay is to situate the Fourth Amendment implications of the new regime within a broader historical context. Most germane, after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) introduced sweeping new screening of air travelers in the 1960s and 1970s …

June 21, 2012: The Misuse Of Religious Exemptions, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “The Misuse of Religious Exemptions“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Making The Most Of United States V. Jones In A Surveillance Society: A Statutory Implementation Of Mosaic Theory, Christopher Slobogin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In the Supreme Court's recent decision in United States v. Jones, a majority of the Justices appeared to recognize that under some circumstances aggregation of information about an individual through governmental surveillance can amount to a Fourth Amendment search. If adopted by the Court, this notion sometimes called "mosaic theory"-could bring about a radical change to Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, not just in connection with surveillance of public movements-the issue raised in Jonesbut also with respect to the government's increasingly pervasive record-mining efforts. One reason the Court might avoid the mosaic theory is the perceived difficulty of implementing it. This article …

Association For Civil Rights In Israel V. Knesset, Elyakim Rubinstein, Edna Arbel, Dorit Beinisch

Translated Opinions

The petition, filed in 1999, concerned the repeated renewal of the declaration of a national state of emergency under sec. 38 of Basic Law: The Government. The petition asked that the Court revoke the declaration of a national state of emergency.

The High Court of Justice (per Justice Rubinstein, President (Emerita) Beinisch and Justice Arbel concurring) dismissed the petition, holding:

Although the work is not finished, the petition has exhausted its purpose. The state authorities should be allowed to work toward completing the legislative processes that the Petitioner helped advance by means of its petition. While this was, indeed, a …

Bart Cell Phone Service Shutdown: Time For A Virtual Forum?, Rachel Lackert

Federal Communications Law Journal

The balancing act between protecting First Amendment rights and the necessity of law enforcement to maintain the public order is not simple under normal circumstances. On August 11, 2011, San Francisco's Bay Area Rapid Transit ("BART") created a paradigm embodying the very essence of this problem by shutting down cell phone and Internet service to prevent citizens from organizing and planning a protest. Both the constitutional and telecommunications law implications of BART's cell phone and Internet shutdown beg for analysis and reform, especially in an age of rapidly advancing technology. This Note analyzes the legal implications of BART's shutdown, and …

Proportionality And Parole, Richard A. Bierschbach

Articles

Commentators analyzing the Supreme Court's watershed decision in Graham v. Florida, which prohibited sentences of life without parole for juveniles convicted of nonhomicide crimes, have generally done so in substantive proportionality terms, ignoring or downplaying parole in the process. This Article challenges that approach, focusing on the intersection of proportionality and parole as a jumping-off point. Taking parole seriously makes clear that Graham is difficult to understand solely in terms of substantive proportionality concepts like individual culpability and punishment severity. Instead, the decision can be seen as establishing a rule of constitutional criminal procedure, one that links the validity of …

Proportionality And Parole, Richard A. Bierschbach

Articles

Commentators analyzing the Supreme Court's watershed decision in Graham v. Florida, which prohibited sentences of life without parole for juveniles convicted of nonhomicide crimes, have generally done so in substantive proportionality terms, ignoring or downplaying parole in the process. This Article challenges that approach, focusing on the intersection of proportionality and parole as a jumping-off point. Taking parole seriously makes clear that Graham is difficult to understand solely in terms of substantive proportionality concepts like individual culpability and punishment severity. Instead, the decision can be seen as establishing a rule of constitutional criminal procedure, one that links the validity of …

Saving Their Own Souls: How Rluipa Failed To Deliver On Its Promises, Sarah Gerwig-Moore

Legislation and Policy Brief

In the summer of 2001, as a graduate student in law and theology, I began work on a master’s thesis that examined the predicament of men of faith on San Quentin’s Condemned Row. I was working in the California Appellate Project—mostly assisting with direct appeals and state habeas petitions on behalf of men under a death sentence—when a colleague guided me into theological conversations with some of our clients. On Condemned Row, they waited—up to five years to be assigned a court-appointed appellate attorney, on judges’ rulings, and to find whether the legal system would ultimately exact the penalty it …

Bartnicki V. Vopper: Another Media Victory Or Ominous Warning Of A Potential Change In Supreme Court First Amendment Jurisprudence?, Jennifer Nichole Hunt

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Fifth Amendment Right Against Self-Incrimination: An In-Depth Look At Mckune V. Lile, Heidi Feldman

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Preemption And Regulatory Failure, David C. Vladeck

Pepperdine Law Review

Daily front-page stories recounting the failure of defibrillators, pacemakers, heart stents and infusion pumps have raised questions about the adequacy of FDA regulation of medical devices. At the same time, lower courts are struggling to apply the Supreme Court's ruling in Medtronic, Inc. v. Lohr to determine the preemptive reach of the Medical Device Amendments ("MDA"). This article explores the repercussions of Medtronic and argues that Congress' use of words like "requirements" in regulatory statutes should be seen as references to positive state law only, and should not be read, absent an explicit command by Congress, to subsume state law …

Wiretapping The Internet: The Expansion Of The Communications Assistance To Law Enforcement Act To Extend Government Surveillance, Christa M. Hibbard

Federal Communications Law Journal

Criminal use of the Internet to circumvent traditional government phone wiretaps has inspired the Obama Administration to create a proposal to expand the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act ("CALEA"). CALEA was passed in 1994 to regulate telephone and broadband companies to ensure compliance with standards to enable government wiretapping. The proposed amendment of CALEA would allow the government to require all communications service providers to meet technical standards necessary to comply with a wiretap order. The expansion of CALEA would likely widen its scope to social networking sites, instant messaging, gaming consoles that allow conversation among multiple players, and …

Exactions For The Future, Timothy M. Mulvaney

Faculty Scholarship

New development commonly contributes to projected infrastructural demands caused by multiple parties or amplifies the impacts of anticipated natural hazards. At times, these impacts only can be addressed through coordinated actions over a lengthy period. In theory, the ability of local governments to attach conditions, or “exactions,” to discretionary land use permits can serve as one tool to accomplish this end. Unlike traditional exactions that regularly respond to demonstrably measurable, immediate development harms, these “exactions for the future” — exactions responsive to cumulative anticipated future harms — admittedly can present land assembly concerns and involve inherently uncertain long-range government forecasting. …