Digital Commons Network^™

Google, Gadgets, And Guilt: Juror Misconduct In The Digital Age, Thaddeus Hoffmeister

University of Colorado Law Review

This Article begins by examining the traditional reasons for juror research. The Article then discusses how the Digital Age has created new rationales for juror research while simultaneously affording jurors greater opportunities to conduct such research. Next, the Article examines how technology has also altered juror-to-juror communications and juror-to-non-juror communications. Part I concludes by analyzing the reasons jurors violate court rules about discussing the case. In Part II, the Article explores possible steps to limit the negative impact of the Digital Age on juror research and communications. While no single solution or panacea exists for these problems, this Article focuses …

The Future Of Abandoned Big Box Stores: Legal Solutions To The Legacies Of Poor Planning Decisions, Sarah Schindler

University of Colorado Law Review

Big box stores, the defining retail shopping location for the majority of American suburbs, are being abandoned at alarming rates, due in part to the economic downturn. These empty stores impose numerous negative externalities on the communities in which they are located, including blight, reduced property values, loss of tax revenue, environmental problems, and a decrease in social capital. While scholars have generated and critiqued prospective solutions to prevent abandonment of big box stores, this Article asserts that local zoning ordinances can alleviate the harms imposed by the thousands of existing, vacant big boxes. Because local governments control land use …

Waltzing Through A Loophole: How Parens Patriae Suits Allow Circumvention Of The Class Action Fairness Act, Jacob Durling

University of Colorado Law Review

This Note explores the applicability of the Class Action Fairness Act's (CAFA) mass action removal provision to parens patriae suits. CAFA amended the federal rules governing aggregate litigation, replacing the complete diversity requirement with a minimal diversity requirement. CAFA's applicability to parens patriae suits, a type of representative lawsuit brought by a state alleging injuries to its citizens, was first addressed in Louisiana ex rel. Caldwell v. Allstate Insurance Co. In Caldwell, the Fifth Circuit held that a parens patriae suit was mislabeled because the real parties in interest-the parties whose interests constitute the basis of the parens patriae standing-represented …

Nagpra In Colorado: A Success Story, Cecily Harms

University of Colorado Law Review

A primary goal of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) is to correct the human rights violations committed against Native Americans from centuries of grave looting, stealing, and improper sales of cultural items. In the twenty-two years since NAGPRA's passage, the human rights foundation of the Act has been overshadowed by struggles regarding interpretation and implementation. The museums and Native American tribes of Colorado have not lost sight of NAGPRA's human rights foundation, however. Their commitment to the spirit of NAGPRA is evident in the museums' and tribes' approach to basic implementation and taking the initiative to …

Using Poor Form As A Proxy For Poor Substance: A Look At Wend V. People And Its Categorical Rule Prohibiting Prosecutors From Using The Word "Lie", Danny Paulson

University of Colorado Law Review

In Wend v. People, the Colorado Supreme Court reversed a second-degree murder conviction because the prosecutor repeatedly used various forms of the word "lie" to describe some of the defendant's statements made during two taped interviews with the police. In its opinion, the court first held that in Colorado it is categorically improper for a prosecutor to use the word "lie." In doing so, it committed itself to a unique legal standard for one word that runs contrary to the traditional legal test used nationwide for all forms of prosecutorial misconduct. Then, the court reversed the conviction on plain error …

Table Of Contents (Vol.83, Issue 3)

University of Colorado Law Review

No abstract provided.

Alive But Irrelevant: The Prior Appropriation Doctrine In Today's Western Water Law, Reed D. Benson

University of Colorado Law Review

The Prior Appropriation Doctrine has long been the foundation of laws governing water allocation and use in the American West, but it has been under pressure from forces both external and internal to the western states. Twenty years ago, Prior Appropriation was pronounced dead in a provocative essay by Charles Wilkinson. Other scholars argued that it was still alive, but it now appears to have lost its force as the controlling doctrine of western water law. This Article analyzes three recent cases upholding state laws that undermine a fundamental Prior Appropriation principle, then considers the water policy implications of the …

Administering Justice: Removing Statutory Barriers To Reentry, Joy Radice

University of Colorado Law Review

No abstract provided.

"Of Greater Value Than The Gold Of Our Mountains": The Right To Education In Colorado's Nineteenth- Century Constitution, Tom I. Romero, Ii

University of Colorado Law Review

As the contemporary battle for educational opportunity has moved to state courts, the education clauses of a state's constitution have played prominent roles in the litigation. Of particular concern has been the role that history should play in interpreting the scope and meaning of various provisions of a clause. This Article advances this debate by examining the development of article IX (the education clause) in Colorado's 1876 "Centennial" Constitution. The Article first details the efforts to provide free public education in the United States in the decades leading to the drafting of the Colorado state constitution in 1876. Colorado, as …

The Right To Float: The Need For The Colorado Legislature To Clarify River Access Rights, Cory Helton

University of Colorado Law Review

For years, Colorado judges and legislators have struggled to clearly define and delineate public access rights for rivers running through private property. In Colorado, it is settled law that land underlying non-navigable streams is the subject of private ownership, but beyond this basic principle, little is settled. As a result, a dispute has developed between private landowners exercising their right to exclude individuals from their land and recreational river users seeking access to Colorado's rivers. The failure to resolve this longstanding dispute jeopardizes Colorado's multimillion dollar commercial rafting industry and creates avoidable transaction costs. This Note examines the right-to-float debate …

Restore Colorado's Repair Doctrine For Construction- Defect Claims, Michael F. Lutz

University of Colorado Law Review

The "repair doctrine" is a common law defense to statutes of limitations. It protects defective product and property buyers who delay suit due to sellers' promises to make repairs. Recently, in Smith v. Executive Custom Homes, the Colorado Supreme Court rejected the repair doctrine for construction-defect claims due to an apparent redundancy between the doctrine and the notice-and-opportunity-to repair provision of Colorado's Construction Defect Action Reform Act. This Note explains why Smith was wrongly decided.

Table Of Contents (Vol. 83, Issue 4)

University of Colorado Law Review

No abstract provided.

What American Legal Theory Might Learn From Islamic Law: Some Lessons About 'The Rule Of Law' From 'Shari'a Court' Practice In India, Jeffrey A. Redding

University of Colorado Law Review

In 2010, voters in the state of Oklahoma passed a constitutional amendment that prohibits the Oklahoma courts from considering "Sharia Law." A great deal of the support for this amendment and similar (ongoing) legal initiatives appears to be generated by a deep-seated paranoia about Muslims and Islamic law that has taken root in many parts of the post-9/11 United States. This Article contends that the passage of this Oklahoma constitutional amendment should not have been surprising given that it is not only right-wing partisans who have felt the need to strictly demarcate and police the boundaries of the American legal …

Homely, Cultured Brahmin Woman Seeks Particular Social Group: Must Be Immutable, Particulara, Nd Socially Visible, Sarah Kathryn French

University of Colorado Law Review

This Note examines whether Brahmin women constitute a particular social group under United States asylum law. The domestic violence victims in immigration court-who are predominately Latin American-have thus far failed to establish, in a precedential decision, that they are part of a particular social group or that their perpetrators' violence was on account of their membership in a particular social group. Orthodox Brahmin women in India, however, may be able to meet the elements of asylum where other victims have failed. This Note examines whether Brahmin women can meet the elements of a particular social group, whether the Indian government …

It Happens In The Dark: Examining Current Obstacles To Identifying And Rehabilitating Child Sex- Trafficking Victims In India And The United States, Emily K. Harlan

University of Colorado Law Review

The governments of India and the United States have been struggling for years to eradicate child sex trafficking within their borders. Nevertheless, many Indian and American child sex-trafficking victims have yet to be identified as victims or provided with rehabilitation services. Both countries need to make additional legal and policy reforms to ensure their legal systems correctly identify child sextrafficking victims and provide them with meaningful opportunities for rehabilitation. This Note identifies police corruption in India and the disparate treatment of foreign and domestic victims in the United States as the major obstacles to correctly identifying child sex-trafficking victims, and …

Destinations: A Comparison Of Sex Trafficking In India And The United States, Sarah Montana Hart

University of Colorado Law Review

This Note examines the similarities and differences between sex trafficking in India and the United States. It highlights three similarities between the countries. First, the basic sexual demands of the johns are not being met by the local population of women despite that population's vulnerabilities. Second, sex trafficking is usually more profitable than legal alternatives for the pimps. Third, the victims are lured by the dreams of a better life that the traffickers supposedly can provide and will therefore often consent to travel with them until it is too late. This Note argues that if these three truths apply in …

Different Names For The Same Thing: Domestic Homicides And Dowry Deaths In The Western Media, Jennifer Parker

University of Colorado Law Review

Domestic violence is a global phenomenon that knows no geographic or cultural bounds. Whether they are shot, poisoned, stabbed, or burned, women across the world are dying at the hands of their male partners. Nevertheless, the Western media's portrayal of dowry deaths in India illustrates American society's failure to, or refusal to, connect dowry deaths to the parallel domestic homicides committed in the United States every day. From a postcolonial feminist standpoint, this Note argues that this disjunction is neither accidental nor inconsequential but rather reinforces the United States' hegemonic self-perception as a society in which women's liberation has been …

Between Tradition And Progress: A Comparative Perspective On Polygamy In The United States And India, Cyra Akila Choudhury

University of Colorado Law Review

Both the United States and India have had longstanding experiences with polygamy and its regulation. In the United States, the dominant Protestant majority has sought to abolish Mormon practices of polygamy through criminalization. Moreover, a public policy exception has been used to deny recognition of plural marriages conducted legally elsewhere. India's approach to polygamy regulation and criminalization has been both similar to and different from that of the United States. With a sizable Muslim minority and a legal framework that recognizes religious law as family law, India recognizes polygamy in the Muslim minority community. However, it has criminalized it in …

The U.S. Trade Representative's Democracy Problem: The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (Acta) As A Juncture For International Lawmaking In The United States, Margot Kaminski

Publications

No abstract provided.

Restrictive State And Local Immigration Laws: Solutions In Search Of Problems, Pratheepan Gulasekaram, Karthick Ramakrishnan

Publications

No abstract provided.

Positive Proposals For Treatment Of Online Intermediaries, Margot Kaminski

Publications

In the past several years of free trade agreement negotiations, a number of proposals for establishing an international standard of liability for copyright infringement by online intermediaries have emerged.' These proposals consistently lack consideration of their implications for Internet users. Building off a public stakeholder presentation given by the author at the ninth round of negotiations of the Trans-Pacific Partnership ("TPP") Agreement, held in Lima, Peru, this paper aims to identify both general principles and specific user-protecting provisions that should be considered when discussing proposals for intermediary liability.

Reading Over Your Shoulder: Social Readers And Privacy Law, Margot Kaminski

Publications

No abstract provided.

Prisons, Poverty And Power, Daria Roithmayr

Publications

No abstract provided.

Constructing The Threat And The Role Of The Expert Witness: A Response To Aziz Rana's Who Decides On Security?, Wadie E. Said

Publications

Aziz Rana's article presents clearly the overlooked but crucial question of "Who Decides on Security?" Namely, is determining who or what groups constitute a threat something that we are capable of making ourselves, or must we necessarily cede that authority to those in power-who supposedly have both the access to knowledge and the ability to understand it-to protect us from threats we cannot perceive? Using Rana's historical analysis as a framework, this Article builds on his thesis to show how the wide latitude granted to the conclusions of the Executive Branch's national security specialists in political matters has migrated into …

The Judicial Assault On The Clean Water Act, Mark Squillace

Publications

No abstract provided.

Tenth Amendment Challenges After Bond V. United States, Scott G. Thompson, Christopher Klimmek

Publications

In its recent decision in Bond v. United States, the Supreme Court explained that because the Tenth Amendment "secures the freedom of the individual," private parties who otherwise satisfy Article III's standing requirements and other prudential requirements may challenge federal laws as violating the Tenth Amendment. In so doing, the Court reversed the majority of circuit courts that have addressed the issue and removed a significant categorical bar to individual Tenth Amendment challenges. This Article explains Bond's holding and explores its implications for future Tenth Amendment challenges by private parties.

Although Bond contains some expansive language regarding the role …

Economic Development And The Problem With The Problem-Solving Approach, Justin Deystone

Publications

Scholars and practitioners alike have recently pointed to the idea of a "new moment" in the field of law and economic development, as well as a hope for a fruitful rethinking of political economy. The idea is that we have passed out of the period of high "neoliberalism," associated at one time with Reagan, Thatcher, and the so-called Washington Consensus and now eclipsed by the ascendance of the Obama Administration. The hope attending the new consensus is that, in the wake of neoliberal law and policy, the field of law and development might be on the verge of a new …

Duncan Kennedy's Third Globalization, Criminal Law, And The Spectacle, Aya Gruber

Publications

No abstract provided.

Mrs. Dred Scott: A Genre Bender?, Lolita Buckner Inniss

Publications

No abstract provided.

Understanding The United States' Incarceration Rate, William T. Pizzi

Publications

What has caused prison sentences to climb so sharply and consistently in the last four decades?