Digital Commons Network^™

Exploring Climate Framework Laws And The Future Of Climate Action, Jennifer Huang

Pace Environmental Law Review

Every country in the world now has at least one law or policy to address climate change; these laws vary widely in type, scope, and ambition. Although scholarship on the many types and levels of effectiveness of enacted climate legislation is still growing, legal experts are taking note of a recent trend in the adoption of formal climate legislation that is economy-wide or cross-sectoral in scope, sets out both a broad and long-term direction for climate policy, and ensures some measure of accountability for the executive branch. In the absence of a commonly agreed definition, this article will loosely define …

Destructive Federal Decentralization, David Fontana

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

This Article—written for a symposium hosted by the William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal—focuses on the efforts by the Trump administration to relocate federal officials outside of Washington to reduce the capacity of the federal government. Federalism and the separation of powers are usually the twin pillars of structural constitutional law. Locating federal officials outside of Washington— federal decentralization—has been an additional tool of diffusing power that has started to gain some scholarly attention. These debates largely focus on structural constitutional law as constructive—as improving the capacity and operation of the federal and state governments. The power …

Slow And Steady Saves The Whales: Preventing Vessel Strikes On Whales In The Santa Barbara Channel, Anthony Cusato

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

“While in the life the great whale’s body may have been a real terror to his foes, in his death his ghost becomes a powerless panic to a world.” In the past, whales and humans (in boats) fought on the high seas. The humans fought for precious whale oil while the whales fought for their rights not to be murdered and turned into oil. While those days are mostly long gone, whales still face a serious threat of harm from humans in the form of vessel strikes, which is when a whale is struck by a vessel. Vessel strikes are …

Resilience Justice And Community-Based Green And Blue Infrastructure, Craig Anthony Arnold, Resilience Justice Project Researchers

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

The environmental conditions of marginalized communities, particularly low-income communities of color, make those communities disproportionately more vulnerable to major disturbances and changes, such as climate change, health crises, pollution releases, disasters, economic shocks, and social and political upheaval. Many of the most important movements for justice with respect to environmental conditions, including environmental justice, disaster justice, and climate justice, are connected to broader movements for racial and social justice, asserting that Black and Brown lives matter. These movements seek to confront, dismantle, and reform systems of racism, colonialism, and structural inequality.

In particular, low-income communities of color have inequitably less …

The Duties Of Online Marketplaces, Shelly Kreiczer-Levy

San Diego Law Review

Is Amazon a seller for the purpose of product liability law? Is it obligated to stop price gouging by its sellers in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic? Is Airbnb responsible for discrimination practiced by its users? These legal issues are discussed separately, and courts are typically divided into two camps. Some courts force platforms into unfitting categories such as a seller, a hotel chain, or an employer in order to establish liability; others exempt platforms from liability altogether. This Article argues we need to think of these legal duties holistically, and suggests a new legal category: the market-constituting platform. …

A (Dangerous) New Normal—Public Safety Power Shutoffs (Psps): A Look Into California Utility De-Energization Authority And The Potential For Its Abuse, Murillo Ii, Robert

Santa Clara Law Review

Over the past few years, the State of California has endured some of the worst fire seasons on record. In 2020, over one million acres burned across the San Francisco Bay Area, Northern California, and the Central San Joaquin Valley—conditions which created a public safety and health emergency in the midst of an ongoing pandemic. In 2019, the Kincade Fire set ablaze nearly 78,000 acres in Northern California, but coincided with widespread power shutoffs impacting millions of customers throughout the state. In 2018, we learned of the devastation in Butte County, where the Camp Fire destroyed the community of Paradise, …

Beyond “Children Are Different”: The Revolution In Juvenile Intake And Sentencing, Josh Gupta-Kagan

Washington Law Review

For more than 120 years, juvenile justice law has not substantively defined the core questions in most delinquency cases—when should the state prosecute children rather than divert them from the court system (the intake decision), and what should the state do with children once they are convicted (the sentencing decision)? Instead, the law has granted certain legal actors wide discretion over these decisions, namely prosecutors at intake and judges at sentencing. This Article identifies and analyzes an essential reform trend changing that reality: legislation, enacted in at least eight states in the 2010s, to limit when children can be prosecuted …

Session 1: Access To Legal Services - The Role Of Innovation And Technology, Steven Bender, Stacy Butler, Anna Carpenter, Michael Cherry, Sands Mckinley, Kimball Dean Parker, Miguel Willis

SITIE Symposiums

This expert panel is addressing access to justice problems. People without access to lawyers and legal services suffer in many ways not limited to divorce, domestic violence, and educational roadblocks. This panel will ask what lawyers can do to help, in what ways can technology help or replace lawyers in the delivery of legal and non-legal services. It will also explore different legal services being offered by individuals who do not have a JD, online firms, and developing technology in a law firm owed subsidiary. There are six panelists who are broken into two categories: (1) the innovation and delivery …

Opening Session, Annette Clark, Steven Bender

SITIE Symposiums

This year's conference focuses on the social good, highlighting three access barriers fundamental in law and society - access to legal services (and more generally, justice), access to health and health care during the COVID-19 pandemic, and access to financial services for the unbanked or underbanked.

Business Interruption Insurance In The Time Of Covid-19: Who Should Foot The Bill?, Paul Mchugh

Journal of Law and Policy

COVID-19-related business closures led to thousands of business interruption insurance claims and lawsuits across the country. However, throughout the history of business interruption policies, obstacles such as virus exclusions and “physical damage” requirements have been added in response to prior pandemics and catastrophic losses. These exclusions and requirements have led to many hurdles and outright denials for those seeking payment on their policies. So, then, can business owners still find some economic refuge in these policies? Despite outright denials in many courts, at least a handful of federal judges as well as a number of members of Congress seem to …

The Rule Of Law: A Necessary Pillar Of Free And Democratic Societies For Protecting Human Rights, Bessler, John D.

Santa Clara Law Review

This essay traces the history and development of the concept of the Rule of Law from ancient times through the present. It describes the elements of the Rule of Law and its importance to the protection of human rights in a variety of contexts, including under domestic and international law. From ancient Greece and Rome to the Enlightenment, and from the American and French Revolutions to modern times, the Rule of Law has played a key role in societies around the world. The essay discusses definitions of the Rule of Law, its origins, and its development over time, including in …

Landlord Bounty Hunters: Qui Tam As An Effective Tool For Housing Code Enforcement, Alex Ellefson

Journal of Law and Policy

Millions of American renters live in substandard housing. Conditions in these homes not only affect individual renters’ quality of life, but in the aggregate create enormous burdens on public resources in the form of higher healthcare costs, demand for public benefits, and lower economic productivity. Furthermore, the legacy of racist housing policies in the United States has concentrated poor housing conditions in low-income communities of color. This Note argues that existing methods of housing code enforcement are inadequate. Instead, housing advocates should turn to an ancient remedy that has been used to prosecute fraud, labor violations, and even pirates: qui …

Transfer Of Child Offenders To Adult Criminal Courts In The Usa: An Unnecessary Exercise, Unconstitutional Practice, International Law Violation, Or All Of The Above?, Roger-Claude Liwanga, Patrick Ibe

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

There is an ongoing debate over the legality and effectiveness of the use of judicial waiver as a tool to fight violent crimes, including those committed by children in the United States. Judicial waiver or transfer of juveniles is a process by which child offenders are transferred from the juvenile court to adult criminal courts to be tried and sentenced as adult offenders. Despite the implicit recognition of the constitutionality of this practice by the United States Supreme Court, this paper contends that the transfer of child offenders to adult criminal courts violates key provisions of the Convention on the …

Climate Change, Competition & Conflict Along The River Nile: The Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam & Shifting Customary International Water Law, Salma Shitia

Fordham Environmental Law Review

Decade-long negotiations between the Arab Republic of Egypt and the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia surround the decision to build the hydroelectric power plant along the River Nile. For much of Ethiopia, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam represents a beacon of prosperity. For countless Egyptians, the structure embodies a potential catastrophe. Grounded in threats of displacement for Egyptian agricultural communities, some have compared the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam crisis to disasters culminating in mass migration.

This battle for natural resource access has intensified as climate change exacerbates the region’s dire conditions. Specifically, exhaustible resource allocation amid climate change indicates that …

Beyond Equity: Shared Natural Resources And Human Rights, Criminal Law, And The Use Of Force, Eian Katz

Fordham Environmental Law Review

Transboundary resource disputes are often analyzed by reference to two nebulous and conflicting principles that have emerged in international environmental law: “equitable and reasonable utilization” and “no significant harm.” Frequently overlooked in this context is the potential value of other canons of international law—especially human rights law, criminal law, and the rules governing the use of force—in adding definition to the muddled contours of these foundational precepts. This Article therefore undertakes an assessment of sovereign rights and obligations regarding shared natural resources which arise from these other bodies of law. In doing so, it offers new lenses through which to …

To “Defund” The Police, Jessica M. Eaglin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Much public debate circles around grassroots activists’ demand to “defund the police,” raised in public consciousness in the summer of 2020. Yet confusion about the demand is pervasive. This Essay adopts a literal interpretation of “defund” to clarify and distinguish four alternative, substantive policy positions that legal reforms related to police funding can validate. It argues that the policy debates between these positions exist on top of the ideological critique launched by grassroots activists, who use the term “defund the police” as a discursive tactic to make visible deeper transformations in government practices that normalize the structural marginalization of black …

Legal Education's Curricular Tipping Point Toward Inclusive Socratic Teaching, Jamie R. Abrams

Hofstra Law Review

Two seismic curricular disruptions create a tipping point for legal education to reform and transform. COVID-19 abruptly disrupted the delivery of legal education. It aligned with a tectonic racial justice reckoning, as more professors and institutions reconsidered their content and classroom cultures, allying with faculty of color who had long confronted these issues actively. The frenzy of these dual disruptions starkly contrasts with the steady drumbeat of critical legal scholars advocating for decades to reduce hierarchies and inequalities in legal education pedagogy.

This context presents a tipping point supporting two pedagogical reforms that leverage this unique moment. First, it is …

Constructing Identities Of Deservedness: Public Housing And Post-Wwii Economic Planning Efforts, Prentiss A. Dantzler, Jason D. Rivera

Minnesota Journal of Law & Inequality

No abstract provided.

A Racially Biased Obstacle Course: Apprendi Transformed The Federal Sentencing Guidelines Into A Series Of Judicial Obstacles; Can Shame Reduce The Racial Disparities, Kallie S. Klein, Susan R. Klein

North Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Enough! Eliminating Police Abuse Of Individuals Of Color With Disabilities, Ann C. Mcginley

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Beyond “Children Are Different”: The Revolution In Juvenile Intake And Sentencing, Josh Gupta-Kagan

Faculty Publications

For more than 120 years, juvenile justice law has not substantively defined the core questions in most delinquency cases—when should the state prosecute children rather than divert them from the court system (the intake decision), and what should the state do with children once they are convicted (the sentencing decision)? Instead, the law has granted certain legal actors wide discretion over these decisions, namely prosecutors at intake and judges at sentencing. This Article identifies and analyzes an essential reform trend changing that reality: legislation, enacted in at least eight states in the 2010s, to limit when children can be prosecuted …

Introduction: Lenses, Methods, And Approaches In Intellectual Property Research, Irene Calboli, Maria Lillà Montagnani

Faculty Scholarship

The relevance of Intellectual Property (IP) Law in our society has increased dramatically over the last several years. Globalization, digitization, and the rise of post-industrial information-based industries have all contributed to a new prominence of IP Law as one of the most important factors in driving innovation and economic development. At the same time, the significant expansion of IP rules has impacted many areas of public policy such as public health, the environment, biodiversity, agriculture, and information, in an unprecedented manner. No longer relegated to a cohort of few specialized experts, IP Law is now at the front and centre …

Selective Justice: A Crisis Of Missing And Murdered Alaska Native Women, Megan Mallonee

Alaska Law Review

Across the country, Indigenous women are murdered more than any other population and go missing at disproportionate rates. This crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women is amplified in Alaska, where the vast landscape, a confusing jurisdictional scheme, and a history of systemic racism all create significant barriers to justice for Alaska Native women. This Note examines the roots of the crisis and calls for a holistic response that acknowledges the role of colonialism, Indigenous genocide, and governmental failures. While this Note focuses on the epidemic of violence against Alaska Native women in particular, it seeks to provide solutions that …

Too Young For The Crime, Yet Old Enough To Do Life: A Critical Review Of How State Felony Murder Laws Apply To Juvenile Defendants, Stuti S. Kokkalera, Beck M. Strah, Anya Bornstein

Journal of Criminal Justice and Law

The felony murder rule applies when a killing occurs during the commission of a felony offense. Youth under the age of 18 years can be charged with felony murder even if they did not commit the killing or intend the death of the victim, and subsequently sentenced to an adult maximum sentence, including life in prison. This study examines how states enable lengthy sentencing terms for their juvenile defendants charged with felony murder. By reviewing felony murder provisions and state appellate court decisions in all fifty states and the District of Columbia, we identify how juveniles who did not commit …

Debt To Society: The Role Of Fines & Fees Reform In Dismantling The Carceral State, Wesley Dozier, Daniel Kiel

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Fines and fees that result from contact with the criminal legal system serve as a suffocating debt for those against whom they are assessed. Many states have countless laws that require taxes, fines, and fees to be assessed against individuals involved in the criminal legal system at various stages of the criminal legal process, and they have the effect of permanently trapping individuals within the system. In Tennessee, for example, these debts, which can accumulate to over $10,000 in a single criminal case, stand in the way of individuals getting their criminal records expunged, keeping valid driver’s licenses, and restoring …

How The Rational Basis Test Protects Policing For Profit, William R. Maurer

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Since the police shooting of Michael Brown in 2014 and the civil unrest that followed, numerous lawsuits have challenged laws that use the government’s ability to impose fines and fees for reasons other than the protection of the public. These challenges have usually raised equal protection challenges to these laws—that is, that the laws punish the poor more harshly than others. The challenges have been unsuccessful, largely because courts examine these laws using “rational basis review,” a standard that is highly deferential to the government and one in which the courts themselves are often required to actively advocate for the …

Fee Simple Failures: Rural Landscapes And Race, Jessica A. Shoemaker

Michigan Law Review

Property law’s roots are rural. America pursued an early agrarian vision that understood real property rights as instrumental to achieving a country of free, engaged citizens who cared for their communities and stewarded their physical place in it. But we have drifted far from this ideal. Today, American agriculture is industrialized, and rural communities are in decline. The fee simple ownership form has failed every agrarian objective but one: the maintenance of white landownership. For it was also embedded in the original American experiment that land ownership would be racialized for the benefit of its white citizens, through acts of …

Ranked-Choice Voting As Reprieve From The Court-Ordered Map, Benjamin P. Lempert

Michigan Law Review

Thus far, legal debates about the rise of ranked-choice voting have centered on whether legislatures can lawfully adopt the practice. This Note turns attention to the courts and the question of remedies. It proposes that courts impose ranked-choice voting as a redistricting remedy. Ranked-choice voting allows courts to cure redistricting violations without also requiring that they draw copious numbers of districts, a process the Supreme Court has described as a “political thicket.” By keeping courts away from the fact-specific, often arbitrary judgments involved in redistricting, ranked-choice voting makes for the redistricting remedy that best protects the integrity of the judicial …

Social Distancing With Your Doctor: The Promise Of Telemedicine In Medicare And Medicaid, And How To Pay For It, Jacob Hauschild

Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology

No abstract provided.

Studying Race In International Law Scholarship Using A Social Science Approach, James Thuo Gathii

Chicago Journal of International Law

This Essay takes up Abebe, Chilton, and Ginsburg’s invitation to use a social science approach to establish or ascertain some facts about international law scholarship in the United States. The specific research question that this Essay seeks to answer is to what extent scholarship has addressed international law’s historical and continuing complicity in producing racial inequality and hierarchy, including slavery, as well as the subjugation and domination of the peoples of the First Nations. To answer this question, this Essay uses the content published in the American Journal of International Law (AJIL) from when it was first published in 1907 …