Digital Commons Network^™

Georgians “Waive” Goodbye To The Prospect Of Full Compensation In Car Wrecks Caused By Municipalities: Automatic Governmental Immunity Waiver’S Interplay With Liability Insurance, W. Jackson Latty

Mercer Law Review

Arguably two of the most axiomatic interests the Georgia legislature must consider when enacting laws are the interests of local governments to carry out public works and individual citizens’ abilities to seek full and adequate relief when they have been injured by the wrong of another. For example, although police officers generally enjoy immunity for acts performed in their official capacity, there is also a compelling government interest in allowing individuals to recover for a police officer’s negligent or reckless conduct, recoveries which often repay local hospitals or government insurance systems for treatment otherwise covered by taxpayer dollars. These two …

An Unattainable Standard: Analyzing The Fourth Circuit's Approach To The State-Created Danger Doctrine, Elizabeth G. Poole

North Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

In A Galaxy … Not So Far Away: The Privatization Of Space Flight And The Need For Labor Laws In Outer Space, Taylor Brodsky

Hofstra Labor & Employment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Error Aversions And Due Process, Brandon L. Garrett, Gregory Mitchell

Michigan Law Review

William Blackstone famously expressed the view that convicting the innocent constitutes a much more serious error than acquitting the guilty. This view is the cornerstone of due process protections for those accused of crimes, giving rise to the presumption of innocence and the high burden of proof required for criminal convictions. While most legal elites share Blackstone’s view, the citizen jurors tasked with making due process protections a reality do not share the law’s preference for false acquittals over false convictions.

Across multiple national surveys sampling more than 12,000 people, we find that a majority of Americans consider false acquittals …

Continuing Principled Sentencing Reform And Winding Back Mass Incarceration Against The Backdrop Of America’S Surge In Violent Crime, Mirko Bagaric, Jennifer Svilar, Brienna Bagaric

Nevada Law Journal

Five decades of an unremitting tough on crime policy resulted in the United States having the highest incarceration rate on earth. This approach was in the process of being systematically wound back in recent years. The mood for criminal justice reform was highlighted by the receptiveness of many people to what on their face seemed to be radical proposals, such as defunding the police and abolishing prisons. This resulted in a significant decline in the incarceration levels. The momentum towards proportionate and principled sentencing has stalled as a result of the massive increase in violent crime in the United States …

Statement Of The District Task Force On Jails And Justice Before The Committee On The Judiciary And Public Safety Of The Council Of The District Of Columbia. Performance Oversight Hearing For The Deputy Mayor For Public Safety & Justice, Katherine S. Broderick

D.C. Council Testimony

No abstract provided.

Rounding Up The Three-Fifths Clause: Eradicating Prison Gerrymandering In The South, Abigail N. Falk

Pepperdine Law Review

This Comment examines the phenomenon of prison gerrymandering, a practice that involves counting prisoners as residents of the counties where their state correctional facilities are located—rather than in their home communities—for redistricting and representational purposes. This practice of counting inflates the voting power of rural, white districts with large prison complexes and diminishes the voting power of minority communities. Prison gerrymandering has become especially pervasive across southern states while many of the South’s northern counterparts have eradicated this practice through legislative reform. This Comment proposes a solution to stop prison gerrymandering in the South, arguing a strategy to produce a …

Sentenced To Prison, Not To Death: Home Confinement During The Pandemic And Moving Beyond Covid-19, Sydney Mcconnell

Arkansas Law Review

A prison sentence should “not include incurring a great and unforeseen risk of severe illness or death.” But for the 2.3 million people housed in our nation’s prisons and jails during the COVID-19 (“COVID”) pandemic, their sentences have included just that. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the Bureau of Prisons has transferred approximately 49,068 inmates to home confinement. The decision to expand home confinement is an important one. It is a step in the right direction to address another broader, and distinctly American, issue: mass incarceration. Lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle have reached the consensus “that …

The Long Road To Justice: Why State Courts Should Lower The Evidentiary Burden For Proving Racialized Traffic Stops And Adopt The Exclusionary Rule As A Remedy For Equal Protection Violations, Abby M. Fink

Washington Journal of Social & Environmental Justice

Racist and brutal policing continues to pervade the criminal legal system. Black and brown people who interact with the police consistently face unequal targeting and treatment. Routine traffic stops are especially dangerous and harmful and can lead to death. Under Whren, a police officer’s racist motivations or implicit bias towards a driver do not influence the constitutionality of a traffic stop. An officer only needs to show there was probable cause to believe a traffic stop occurred. Although the unconstitutionality of pre-textual traffic stops has been widely explored since Whren, both federal and state courts have struggled to find legal …

Marsy's Law: Florida's Victim Classification Protections Are Too Broad And Wrongfully Utilized By Florida Law Enforcement Agencies, Ashley Lee

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

While new trends in legislation may aim to reduce the use of excessive force by law enforcement, some Florida agencies interpreted their state’s Marsy’s Law to protect officers accused of using excessive force. This Comment examines the inappropriateness of Florida’s law enforcement agencies’ interpretation of Marsy’s Law, particularly in the context of the law’s original intentions. This Comment points to a potential solution to this problematic interpretation, advocating for an additional limiting clause that narrowly targets how law enforcement interpreted this statute in the context of excessive force reports.

What’S The Most Defense Friendly Jurisdiction In America?The Military., Nino C. Monea

Ohio Northern University Law Review

No abstract provided.

State Ex Rel. Awms Walter Solutions, L.L.C. V. Mertz2020-Ohio-5482, Ryan Davis

Ohio Northern University Law Review

No abstract provided.

State V. Pribble2019-Ohio-4808, Ben Waldron

Ohio Northern University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Active Forest Mismanagement And The “New Normal”:Advocating For An Integrative Wildfire Management Policy, Jeremy Martin

Ohio Northern University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Breaking The Cycle: Ohio Reentry Courts, Melissa A. Knopp

Ohio Northern University Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Sharia Problem With Sharia Legislation, Asifa Quraishi-Landes

Ohio Northern University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Shelby County V. Holder133 S. Ct. 2612 (2013), V. Alex Miller

Ohio Northern University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Counterterrorism Roadblocks:Constitutional Under The Fourth Amendment?, Matt Saldaña

Ohio Northern University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Who Is Manning The Ship? The Environmental And Legal Questions Facing The Emerging Commercial Space Tourism Market, Alec Fante

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

Westerners Hung Out To Dry: A Review Of The Prior Appropriation Doctrine Amidst A Drying Climate And A Patchwork Of Water Claims, Madelyn M. Vandorpe

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

Covid-19 Vs. Constitution; Limited Government's Unlimited Response, John A. Losurdo

DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Google Dorking Or Legal Hacking: From The Cia Compromise To Your Cameras At Home, We Are Not As Safe As We Think, Star Kashman

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

This article addresses the issue of Google Dorking (“Dorking”): an underestimated, overlooked computer-crime technique utilized by hackers, cyberstalkers, and cybercriminals alike. Google Dorking is the specialized use of the Google Search engine which can be used to uncover sensitive data unintentionally exposed to the public online. Dorking can be beneficial and harmless when used by innocent researchers, journalists, and curious users. But it can be incredibly harmful if utilized by malicious actors. Dorking is behind notorious and infamous computer crimes that appear vastly different on the surface, such as a sextortion case involving over a hundred women including Miss Teen …

Deals In The Heartland: Renewable Energy Projects, Local Resistance, And How Law Can Help, Christiana Ochoa, Kacey Cook, Hanna Weil

Minnesota Law Review Vols. 106:2 onward (2021-present)

Rural communities in every windblown and sun-drenched region of the United States are enmeshed in legal, political, and social conflicts related to the country’s rapid transition to renewable energy. Organized local opposition has foreclosed millions of acres from renewable energy development, impeding national and state-level commitments to achieving renewable energy targets in the face of the mounting climate crisis. This Article analyzes why and how communities, using county ordinances, township regulations, and electoral processes, mobilize against renewable energy companies and repel commercial wind projects. It describes the surprising and complex interplay of national, state, and municipal law governing the transition …

Establishing A Conditional Driver Permit In Texas, Luz E. Herrera, Taylor Garner, Crystal Hernandez, Lisa Mares

Faculty Scholarship

The article presents supporting data to expand access to state-issued driver permits for Texans who cannot provide the required documents to obtain a driver’s license. Part I examines the unlicensed and uninsured population in Texas that these efforts attempt to address. Part II discusses state jurisdiction to issue driver licenses and permits. It discusses existing Texas statutes that authorize the issuance of driver’s licenses and permits. The section also offers examples of other state statutes that have expanded their right to regulate driving privileges beyond Real ID Act requirements. Part III presents a partial economic analysis illustrating potential economic benefits …

Antimatters: The Curious Case Of Confederate Monuments, Jeremiah Chin

Articles

Confederate monuments sit at a crossroads of speech frameworks as contested government speech, as concrete edifices of hate speech, and as key protest sites. The interplay of state law and speech doctrines in states like Alabama and Florida has cemented monuments as physical representations of government speech that municipal governments cannot speak on. To understand the confounding ways that doctrinal principles take on inverse implications, this Article draws on the concept of antimatter in physics—matter that has the same mass and properties of ordinary matter but with the opposite charge—to analyze doctrinal intersections of constitutional law that are made to …

Immigration Law’S Boundary Problem: Determining The Scope Of Executive Discretion, Peter Margulies

UC Law Journal

In immigration law, executive discretion has become contested terrain. Courts, officials, and scholars have rarely distinguished between regulatory discretion, which facilitates exclusion and removal of noncitizens, and protective discretion, which safeguards noncitizens’ reliance interests. Moreover, courts have long discerned an internal-external divide in discretion, deferring to executive measures that exclude noncitizens abroad, while reducing deference for measures concerning noncitizens who have already entered the United States. Immigration law needs a cohesive framework for executive discretion. This Article suggests a stewardship model to fill that gap.

Recent developments have emphasized the need for a coherent model of discretion. The Trump Administration …

When Further Incarceration Is No Longer In The Interest Of Justice: Instituting A Federal Prosecutor-Initiated Resentencing Framework, Lydia Tonozzi

UC Law Journal

The dire state of the prison population in the United States has become common knowledge both at home and abroad. Mass incarceration in the United States has been caused by nearly four decades of retributive criminal justice policies that do little to reduce crime. This mass incarceration imposes a multitude of costs on American society, both financially and socially. Furthermore, congressional goals to reduce crime rates are necessarily undermined by punitive policies at the federal level. The history of California’s penal system during the same time frame parallels the federal history. Yet in 2017, California began to remedy this history …

The Death Of The Legal Subject, Katrina Geddes

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

The law is often engaged in prediction. In the calculation of tort damages, for example, a judge will consider what the tort victim’s likely future earnings would have been, but for their particular injury. Similarly, when considering injunctive relief, a judge will assess whether the plaintiff is likely to suffer irreparable harm if a preliminary injunction is not granted. And for the purposes of a child custody evaluation, a judge will consider which parent will provide an environment that is in the best interests of the child.

Relative to other areas of law, criminal law is oversaturated with prediction. Almost …

Insider Expungement, Brian M. Murray

Utah Law Review

Like many phases of the criminal justice system, insiders dominate the practice of expungement and there is little to no involvement of the broader community. Recently, scholars in favor of democratization in criminal justice have called for enhanced public involvement during policing, charging, bail determinations, plea-bargaining, and sentencing to improve accountability, transparency, and democratic participation. This Article is the first to extend this critique to decision-making during the expungement process. It conveys how expungement always has been the province of insiders and how recent expungement reforms, while broadening some substantive expungement remedies, double down on this paradigm. Procedures are implemented …

Public Law, Private Platforms, Andrew Keane Woods

Minnesota Law Review Vols. 106:2 onward (2021-present)

Our law—both our constitutional law and much of our statutory law—has long drawn a fraught distinction between public and private domains. Indeed, debates about the public/private distinction date as far back as liberalism itself. But today’s private digital platforms strain that distinction to a new degree. Platforms have become our public spaces, but because they are privately owned and “merely” coordinate private ordering, they operate without the guardrails of many of our most important laws. For example, anti-discrimination law once covered nearly all short-term bookings at inns and hotels; today, nearly a quarter of the hospitality market is controlled by …