Digital Commons Network^™

Reclaiming Rights: Combatting Employee-Sided Labor & Employment Legal Accessibility Issues For The New Working Class Through Unionization, Evan Dandrea

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Procedural Justice And Crime Control: Latinos’ Perceptions Of The Minneapolis Police, Giovanni Veliz

School of Business Student Theses and Dissertations

Deadly encounters between U.S. police and marginalized communities, such as the high-profile deaths of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky, and George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, have resulted in fractured police–community relationships and civil unrest. Elected officials, police executives, and scholars have investigated various strategies to repair these relationships. Efforts to improve public perceptions of law enforcement have frequently focused on procedural justice training and research. Many academic studies and police initiatives have overlooked the perspectives of Latino individuals and communities. This study asks: How do Latinos perceive the police? Do they believe that police treat Latinos and others fairly? Do …

Re-Regulating Dietary Supplements, Jessie L. Bekker, Alex Flores, Michael S. Sinha

All Faculty Scholarship

In 1994, Congress introduced the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) to create a regulatory framework for the dietary supplement industry. Since the passage of DSHEA nearly thirty years ago, U.S. adults have steadily increased their annual consumption of dietary supplements. The once $4 billion industry comprising approximately 4,000 products has swelled to a $40 billion trade with anywhere from 50,000 to 80,000 dietary supplements available over-the-counter.

Despite the increased market size of dietary supplements, the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) pre-market authority to regulate the introduction of dietary supplements into the stream of commerce has remained subdued. Under …

The (Local) Prosecutor, Carissa Byrne Hessick, Rick Su

Faculty Publications

The rise of the reform prosecutor has led to a backlash. Many states have sought to circumvent the power of reform prosecutors, others to sanction them, and some to replace them with unelected appointees. These efforts have been met with resistance and, in some instances, with legal challenges. Resolving those challenges may prove difficult because local prosecutors straddle three distinct axes within state governments: the horizontal divide between its branches, the vertical divide between the state government and its local subdivisions, and the constitutional divide between constitutional and statutory offices. This Essay exposes the significant state variation in the legal …

States Of Emergency: Covid-19 And Separation Of Powers In The States, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

No event in recent years has shone a brighter spotlight on state separation of powers than the COVID-19 pandemic. Over a more than two-year period, governors exercised unprecedented authority through suspending laws and regulations, limiting business activities and gatherings, restricting individual movement, and imposing public health requirements. Many state legislatures endorsed these measures or were content to let governors take the lead, but in some states the legislature pushed back, particularly — albeit not only—where the governor and legislative majorities were of different political parties. Some of these conflicts wound up in state supreme courts.

This Essay examines the states’ …

Delegating War Powers, Michael D. Ramsey, Matthew C. Waxman

Faculty Scholarship

Academic scholarship and political commentary endlessly debate the President’s independent constitutional power to start wars. And yet, every major U.S. war in the last sixty years was fought pursuant to war-initiation power that Congress gave to the President in the form of authorizations for the use of military force. As a practical matter, the central constitutional question of modern war initiation is not the President’s independent war power; it is Congress’s ability to delegate its war power to the President.

It was not until quite late in American history that the practice of war power delegation became well accepted as …

The (Immediate) Future Of Prosecution, Daniel C. Richman

Faculty Scholarship

Even as others make cogent arguments for diminishing the work of prosecutors, work remains – cases that must be brought against a backdrop of existing economic inequality and structural racism and of an array of impoverished institutional alternatives. The (immediate) future of prosecution requires thoughtful engagement with these tragic circumstances, but it also will inevitably involve the co-production of sentences that deter and incapacitate. Across-the-board sentencing discounts based on such circumstances are no substitute for the thoughtful intermediation that only the courtroom working group – judges, prosecutors and defense counsel- can provide. The (immediate) future also requires prosecutors to do …

Publicizing Corporate Secrets, Christopher J. Morten

Faculty Scholarship

Federal regulatory agencies in the United States hold a treasure trove of valuable information essential to a functional society. Yet little of this immense and nominally “public” resource is accessible to the public. That worrying phenomenon is particularly true for the valuable information that agencies hold on powerful private actors. Corporations regularly shield vast swaths of the information they share with federal regulatory agencies from public view, claiming that the information contains legally protected trade secrets (or other proprietary “confidential commercial information”). Federal agencies themselves have largely acceded to these claims and even fueled them, by construing restrictively various doctrines …

Chicago's War On Crime, Madison Flores

Public Interest Law Reporter

About one in five U.S. adults say they or someone close to them has had a personal experience with gun violence.¹ Seventy-one percent of Americans also believe gun laws should be stricter.² Most people favor a federal law preventing people with mental illnesses from purchasing guns and a smaller percentage favor a nationwide ban on semi-automatic weapons.³ The debate is not so simply divided between those who want to ban all guns and those who want no restrictions on guns. Rather, many Americans value both preventing gun violence and protecting gun rights.⁴

To understand the atmosphere …

Punishing Poverty: The Inequalities Of Cash Bail And The Move Towards Reform, Emily L. Salamone

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

"If You Die, That's On You": The Persistence Of Inhumane Conditions At Cook County Jail, Leanna Nichols

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Stop Cop City: The Expanding Reach Of The Racketeer Influenced And Corrupt Organizations Act's Threat To First Amendment Protected Activism, Elizabeth Stamper

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

The Press Clause Needs Teeth: The Case For Strengthening Constitutional Press Protections At Protests, Ryan Liston

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

Journalists and the government have often had a tense relationship because of journalism’s watchdog role. In recent years, that tension has reached a boiling point. Law enforcement arrested journalists at an unprecedented rate in 2020, primarily while they were covering racial justice protests after Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd. Given the press’s watchdog role, the presence of journalists at protests criticizing government action (such as police brutality) is particularly important. Moreover, law enforcement seemingly targeted the press at these protests, even when they clearly presented themselves as journalists. In Minnesota and Oregon, hotspots for these protests, courts …

The Way Forward: A Review Of Virginia's 2023 Regular General Assembly Session, Benjamin Raab, Mariam Rasooli

Law Student Publications

The 2023 General Assembly Session can best be defined by the success of bipartisanship. In an era of heightened polarization, Virginia legislators were able to meet across the aisle on a number of relevant issues. This article will provide a summary of key bills that were passed during the 2023 Regular and Special Sessions. The other articles within this issue touch upon the following topics: the Virginia Commission on School Construction and Modernization, family law, and the opioid and addiction crises. This article summarizes legislation passed with bipartisan support in the areas of: drugs, mental healthcare, labor and commerce, public …

Are Police Officers Bayesians? Police Updating In Investigative Stops, Jeffrey A. Fagan, Lila J.E. Nojima

Faculty Scholarship

Theories of rational behavior assume that actors make decisions where the benefits of their acts exceed their costs or losses. If those expected costs and benefits change over time, behavior will change accordingly as actors learn and internalize the parameters of success and failure. In the context of proactive policing, police stops that achieve any of several goals — constitutional compliance, stops that lead to “good” arrests or summonses, stops that lead to seizures of weapons, drugs, or other contraband, or stops that produce good will and citizen cooperation — should signal to officers the features of a stop that …

Getting To The Root Of The Problem: How Biden’S “Root Causes Initiative” Can Bypass The Title 42 Immigration Dilemma, Randolph Portugal

Student Works

No abstract provided.

Alternative Facts: The Strategy Of Judicial Rhetoric, Tonja Jacobi, Eryn Mascia

Emory Law Journal

Studies have established the influence of ideology on the answers justices give to legal questions; this study shows that the questions themselves are often selected, framed, and phrased in a way that promotes ideologically-driven answers. By examining a variety of linguistic techniques used to describe just the facts of constitutional criminal procedure cases—separate from the legal analysis—we show the justices are engaging in highly strategic behavior. The facts included, omitted, or emphasized vary with the ideology of the justices and are predictable not just based on voting behavior in other criminal procedure cases but in all Supreme Court cases. We …

Grand Jury Information And Government Contractors: Reconciliation Through Privacy Law, Andrew Holzmann

Marquette Intellectual Property & Innovation Law Review

None

Alone In The Lone Star State: How A Lack Of Centralized Public Defender Offices Fails Rural Indigent Defendants, Aiden Park

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The criminal justice system is stacked against indigent defendants. The disadvantages indigent defendants face are exacerbated when mixed with the unique qualities of rural America.

For instance, rural court-assigned attorneys are often picked through ad hoc systems by the very judges these attorneys must appear in front of, creating a judicial conflict of interest. The financial realities of rural public defense work often force counsel to manage a private practice while also balancing court-appointed cases. To the extent integral resources like investigators or experts are present in rural spaces, they are seldom used. This Note highlights the way Texas organizes …

Nysrpa V. Bruen And New York: A Lost Opportunity For Racial Equity In The Polarizing Gun Conversation, Zamir Ben-Dan

City University of New York Law Review

On June 23, 2022, the United States Supreme Court handed down its decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen,1 which invalidated the “proper cause” requirement of New York’s “Sullivan Law,” its gun licensing statute. Reactions to this deci-sion were predictably mixed, largely drawn along the regular partisan lines.2 For those concerned about racial justice, this decision created an opportunity for honest dialogue about how to enhance public safety in a nondiscriminatory way while being consistent with the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Second Amendment. Unfortunately, this was bound to be a lost opportunity in New …

Reducing Multigenerational Poverty In New York Through Sentencing Reform, Jared Trujillo

City University of New York Law Review

The relationship between incarceration and poverty is circular, cyclical, and symbiotic – poverty is a cause of incarceration, and incarceration causes poverty. In the 1970’s and 1990’s, New York led the country in enacting draconian sentencing laws that required judges to sentence children and adults to longer periods of incarceration, while also reducing the ability of incarcerated people to earn time off of their sentences for participation in rehabilitative, vocational, and educational programming. For the past half century, these harsh sentencing laws have been the primary driver of mass incarceration in New York. As a result, generations of families with …

Search And Seizure Budgets, Kiel Brennan-Marquez, Stephen E. Henderson

Faculty Articles

This article proposes a new means of restraining police power: quantitative limits on the number of law enforcement intrusions—searches and seizures—that may occur over a given period of time. Like monetary constraints, search and seizure budgets would aim to curb abusive policing and improve democratic oversight. But unlike their monetary counterparts, budgets would be indexed directly to the specific police activities that most enable escalation and abuse. What is more, budgets are a tool that finds support, conceptually, in the American framing experience. The Fourth Amendment has long been understood to require procedural limits, such as probable cause, on specific …

The Geography Of Unfreedom, Ann M. Eisenberg

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Coal, Cages, Crisis: The Rise of the Prison Economy in Central Appalachia. By Judah Schept.

Labor Mobility And The Problems Of Modern Policing, Jonathan S. Masur, Aurélie Ouss, John Rappaport

Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper Series

We document and discuss the implications of a striking feature of modern American policing: the stasis of police labor forces. Using an original employment dataset assembled through public records requests, we show that, after the first few years on a job, officers rarely change employers, and intermediate officer ranks are filled almost exclusively through promotion rather than lateral hiring. Policing is like a sports league, if you removed trades and free agency and left only the draft in place.

We identify both nonlegal and legal causes of this phenomenon—ranging from geographic monopolies to statutory and collectively bargained rules about pensions, …

Criminality And Inequity Under Canada's Legalization Of Cannabis: A Study Of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, Stephanie Lake, Margot Young

All Faculty Publications

The origin of this essay reminds us of the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration to the development and assessment of public policy. It also demonstrates the serendipitous beginnings of many interesting inquiries. This collaboration was thus fortuitous: authors Lake and Young met during Lake’s doctoral dissertation defence. Young was on the examining committee. Lake presented a series of epidemiological studies (three of which are summarized below) involving the use of cannabis for therapeutic and harm reduction purposes among marginalized people who use drugs (PWUD) in Vancouver. Young’s lines of questioning involving the legal implications of Lake’s findings spurred the idea to …

Rationing Access, Roy Baharad, Gideon Parchomovsky

Vanderbilt Law Review

Protection of common natural resources is one of the foremost challenges facing our society. Since Garrett Hardin published his immensely influential The Tragedy of the Commons, theorists have contemplated the best way to save common-pool resources-—national parks, fisheries, heritage sites, and fragile ecosystems-—from overuse and extinction. These efforts have given rise to three principal methods: private ownership, community governance, and use restrictions. In this Essay, we present a different solution to the commons problem that has eluded the attention of theorists: access rationing. Access rationing measures rely not only on restrictions on the number of users but also on a …

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

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Informed by original empirical research conducted in the Midwestern United States, this Article provides a rich and textured understanding of the rapidly emerging opposition to renewable energy projects. Beyond the Article’s urgent practical contributions, it also examines the importance of formalism and formality in contracts and complicates current understandings.

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 …

The Great Effacement: New Zealand's Silencing On The 2019 Mosque Shooter, J.C. Oleson

University of San Francisco Law Review

No abstract provided.

California Constitutional Law: The Emergency Police Power, Daniel H. Bromberg

University of San Francisco Law Review

No abstract provided.

Right Of Association For Platform Workers In Thailand (A Case Study Of Food Delivery Platform Workers), Kanut Thamromdee

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

Platform work has become the prominent form of employment in the last decade due to its unique features which are seemingly beneficial to workers, whether it is flexibility, autonomy, diverse job opportunities or ease of entry resulting in many people choosing to be platform workers working with platform providers on platforms. During the last decade, platform work has rapidly grown thanks to the advanced technology and innovative business models; however, it seems that Thai labour law focusing on traditional employment has not been adequately developed to catch up the growth of platform work in Thailand. Platform providers have classified platform …