Digital Commons Network^™

Nfib V. Sebelius And The Right To Health Care: Government's Obligation To Provide For The Health, Safety, And Welfare Of Its Citizens, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

One of the most important roles government plays in contemporary society is protecting people from unsafe products and environmental conditions. Although the Supreme Court has rejected calls to read the Constitution of the United States to include positive rights, this article’s central claim is that the Supreme Court’s rejection of the Medicaid expansion in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act makes sense only if the Constitution is understood as requiring government to provide for the health, safety and welfare of its citizens. It’s not that Chief Justice Roberts intended this implication, but if states did not feel obligated to …

Surveillance As Loss Of Obscurity, Woodrow Hartzog, Evan Selinger

Faculty Scholarship

Everyone seems concerned about government surveillance, yet we have a hard time agreeing when and why it is a problem and what we should do about it. When is surveillance in public unjustified? Does metadata raise privacy concerns? Should encrypted devices have a backdoor for law enforcement officials? Despite increased attention, surveillance jurisprudence and theory still struggle for coherence. A common thread for modern surveillance problems has been difficult to find.

In this article we argue that the concept of ‘obscurity,’ which deals with the transaction costs involved in finding or understanding information, is the key to understanding and uniting …

Are Private Prisons To Blame For Mass Incarceration And Its Evils? Prison Conditions, Neoliberalism, And Public Choice, Hadar Aviram

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Prosecute, Sue, Or Deport? Transnational Accountability In International Law, Chimène Keitner

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Monitoring Youth: The Collision Of Rights And Rehabilitation, Kate Weisburd

Faculty Scholarship

A monumental shift in juvenile justice is underway, inspired by the wide recognition that incarceration is not the solution to youth crime. In its place, “electronic monitoring” has gained widespread support as a new form of judicial control over youth offenders. Supporters herald it as “jail-togo”: a cost-efficient alternative to incarceration that allows youth to be home while furthering rehabilitative and deterrent goals. But despite electronic monitoring’s intuitive appeal, virtually no empirical evidence suggests its effectiveness. Instead, given the realities of adolescent development, electronic monitoring may lead to more harm than good. This Article is the first to examine the …

Trust In Immigration Enforcement: State Noncooperation And Sanctuary Cities After Secure Communities, Ming Hsu Chen

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Responding To The Childhood Vaccination Crisis: Legal Frameworks And Tools In The Context Of Parental Vaccine Refusal, Dorit Rubenstein Reiss, Lois A. Weithorn

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Mandating Discretion: Juvenile Sentencing Schemes After Miller V. Alabama, Jennifer S. Breen, John Mills

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Responding To The Childhood Vaccination Crisis: Legal Frameworks And Tools In The Context Of Parental Vaccine Refusal, Lois A. Weithorn, Dorit Rubenstein Reiss

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Use And Abuse Of Labor's Capital, David H. Webber

Faculty Scholarship

The recent financial crisis has jeopardized the retirement savings of twenty-seven million Americans who depend on public pension funds, leading to cuts in benefits, increased employee contributions, job losses, and the rollback of legal rights like collective bargaining. This Article examines ways in which public pension funds invest against the economic interests of their own participants and beneficiaries, and the legal implications of these investments. In particular, the Article focuses on the use of public pensions to fund privatization of public employee jobs. Under the ascendant — and flawed — interpretation of the fiduciary duty of loyalty, public pension trustees …

Making Smart Decisions About Surveillance: A Guide For Communities, Chris Conley, Matthew Cagle, Peter Bibring, Jessica Farris, Linda Lye, Mitra Ebadolahi, Nicole Ozer

Faculty Scholarship

California communities are increasingly grappling with whether to deploy new surveillance technologies ranging from drones to license plate readers to facial recognition. This is understandable, since public safety budgets are tight, technology vendors promise the ability to do more with less, and federal agencies or industry sponsors may even offer funding.

But surveillance can be both less effective and far more costly to local agencies and to the community at large than initially imagined, leaving communities saddled with long-term bills for surveillance that doesn't end up making the community safer. Surveillance can also be easily misused, leading to the erosion …

Lost In The Weeds Of Pot Law: The Role Of Ethics In The Movement To Legalize Marijuana, Helia Garrido Hull

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Fairness, Equity, And A Level Playing Field: Development Goals For The Resilient City, Christopher K. Odinet

Faculty Scholarship

In the wake of the Great Recession and in the midst of a political climate that endorses the devolution of governmental power to more localized levels there has been a resurgence in recent years of the idea of the city as the center of American life. Competition between cities in capturing economic development projects has become palpable. Success can lead to job creation and growth, private investment, and, importantly, increased tax revenues. Cities often compete with one another by each offering their own package of public incentives. In the waning hours of negotiations hundreds of millions of public dollars can …

The Criminal Court Audience In A Post-Trial World, Jocelyn Simonson

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Ordered Gun Liberty: Rights With Responsibilities And Regulation, Linda C. Mcclain, James E. Fleming

Faculty Scholarship

This Article focuses on the case of the Second Amendment right to bear arms and gun control to examine whether the Constitution has fostered a pathological rights culture of rights without responsibilities and regulation. We offer some preliminary thoughts about “ordered gun liberty” – the individual right to bear arms in relation to responsibilities, virtues, and regulation. This article addresses a conundrum concerning this right: there is no individual right that cries out more for governmental encouragement of responsibility concerning its exercise and for governmental regulation to promote safety and to protect from harm, and yet there is no individual …

Postadjudicatory Juvenile Defense Attorneys: More Thoughts On Reimaging Juvenile Justice, Megan F. Chaney

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Buying Time: False Assumptions About Abusive Appeals, Michael Kagan, Fatma Marouf, Rebecca Gill

Faculty Scholarship

The federal government has expressed fear that immigrants abuse the appellate process to delay their deportations by filing meritless petitions for review with the federal courts. Some courts have responded to these concerns by imposing stricter standards for issuing stays of removal, so that the government can more easily deport petitioners even while their appeals remain pending. The risk with this approach is that immigrants who ultimately prevail may be erroneously deported. What is often overlooked is that the potential for abuse is really a function of time, with longer appeals posing a greater threat to immigration enforcement. This study …

Energy Reform In Mexico: Lessons And Warnings From International Law, Guillermo J. Garcia Sanchez

Faculty Scholarship

The article analyzes some of the contents of the Mexican Energy Reform of 2013 and warns on the international legal implications that the path that Mexico has chosen to follow could bring to its economy and international relations. Concretely, it argues that in order to avoid falling into the same mistakes made by other Latin American countries in the region, Mexico must consider its obligations contained in international treaties signed with the United States on transboundary resources, and its obligations in bilateral investment treaties that protect foreign investors from certain government acts and policies.

Law And Order Commission Report: “A Roadmap For Making Native America Safer.”, Kevin Washburn

Faculty Scholarship

Testimony of Kevin K. Washburn Assistant Secretary Indian Affairs United States Department of the Interior Before The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs On The Law and Order Commission Report: “A Roadmap for Making Native America Safer.”

Prisoners And Habeas Privileges Under The Fourteenth Amendment, Lee B. Kovarsky

Faculty Scholarship

The U.S. Reports contain no answer to a million-dollar question: are state prisoners constitutionally entitled to a federal habeas forum? The Supreme Court has consistently ducked the basic constitutional issue, and academic work on the question idles on familiar themes.

The strongest existing argument that state prisoners are constitutionally entitled to a federal habeas forum involves a theory of incorporation under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. I provide a new and different account: specifically, that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Privileges and Immunities Clause (“PI Clause”) guarantees a habeas privilege as a feature of national citizenship, and that the corresponding habeas …

The Internal Revenue Service And A Crisis Of Confidence: A New Regulatory Approach For A New Era, Donald B. Tobin

Faculty Scholarship

The Internal Revenue Service is not usually thought of as the agency charged with enforcing the nation’s campaign finance laws. It has found itself, however, at the center of a firestorm over both its involvement and its ineptitude in enforcing certain rules that regulate the campaign activities of tax-exempt organizations. For historical, legal, and practical reasons, the Internal Revenue Code regulates the political activity of tax-exempt groups, in some instances providing for disclosure of campaign donors and expenditures, and in other instances limiting the amount of political activity engaged in by tax-exempt organizations. As campaigns become more sophisticated and complicated, …

Perspectives On Outpatient Commitment, Richard C. Boldt

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Emergence Of New Corporate Social Responsibility Regimes In China And India, Shruti Rana, Afra Afsharipour

Faculty Scholarship

In an era of financial crises, widening income disparities, and environmental and other calamities linked to corporations, calls for greater corporate social responsibility (“CSR”) are increasing rapidly around the world. Though CSR efforts have generally been viewed as voluntary actions undertaken by corporations, a new CSR model is emerging in China and India. In a marked departure from CSR as it is known in the United States and as it has been developing through global norms, China and India are moving towards mandatory, not voluntary, CSR regimes. They are doing so not only in a time of great global economic …

Crimes And Medical Care On Board Cruise Ships: Do The Statistics Fit The Crimes?, Leticia M. Diaz, Barry H. Dubner, Nicole Mckee

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

In Defense Of Snooping Employers, Jessica Fink

Faculty Scholarship

The Article describes the means through which employers gather information about their employees, including through some recent, rather novel approaches to collecting such data. In addition, this Article discusses the financial, legal, and practical concerns that motivate employers to snoop in the first place, arguing that employers engage in this conduct for what frequently amount to very legitimate reasons. More significantly, this article places substantial responsibility for employer snooping with the courts themselves, highlighting particular decisions and doctrines that not only permit, but in fact encourage, employers to engage in these efforts to monitor employees.

Escaping From The Standard Story: Why The Conventional Wisdom On Prison Growth Is Wrong, And Where We Can Go From Here, John F. Pfaff

Faculty Scholarship

Whether as a result of low crime rates, the financial pressures of the 2008 credit crunch, or other factors, policymakers on both sides of the aisle are trying to rein or even reduce the US incarceration rate after an unprecedented forty-year expansion. Unfortunately, reforms are hampered by the fact that we do not have a solid empirical understanding of what caused the explosion in the first place. In fact, the "Standard Story" of prison growth generally overemphasizes less important factors and overlooks more important ones. This essay thus does two things. First, it points out the flaws in five key …

The Future Of Medicaid Supplemental Payments: Can They Promote Patient-Centered Care?, Laura Hermer, Merle Lenihan

Faculty Scholarship

Supplemental Medicaid payments such as DSH and UPL are the exception to the financing of specific services to specific patients. Medicaid DSH funds currently finance over 30 percent of hospital care to the uninsured. As a result of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), DSH funds will be substantially reduced. At the same time, their importance will be heightened, especially in states that refuse to take up the ACA’s Medicaid expansion. DSH payments to hospitals have been plagued by a lack of accountability and transparency and an inability to assess whether patients benefit from such payments. Flexibility in the DSH program …

On The Uneasy Relationship Between Medicaid And Charity Care, Laura D. Hermer, Merle Lenihan

Faculty Scholarship

Medicaid and charity care have a lengthy relationship fraught with complications. These complications will remain and in some respects become even more acute following the implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

This article focuses on the uneasy relationship between Medicaid and charity care, one that becomes particularly acute in the context of Medicaid reimbursement. It traces the lineage of Medicaid in charity, and uses Medicaid reimbursement and supplemental payments as lenses through which to examine the relationship between Medicaid and charity care. The tension that we uncover will need to be resolved if Medicaid is to come …

The Judiciary And Fiscal Crises: An Institutional Critique, Peter Conti-Brown, Ronald J. Gilson

Faculty Scholarship

Scholars have long debated the role for courts with respect to governmental action that responds to crisis. Most of the crises analyzed, however, are exogenous to the political process; the courts’ role in response to politically endogenous crises has received less attention. We evaluate the role of the judiciary in a subset of those endogenous crises: the judicial treatment of governmental efforts to resolve the crisis facing underfunded public pensions. Assessing institutional competence schematically with reference to an institution’s democratic accountability and fact-finding ability, we argue that, where institutions function properly, judicial intervention in politically endogenous economic crises should be …

Justice Policy Reform For High-Risk Juveniles: Using Science To Achieve Large-Scale Crime Reduction, Jennifer L. Skeem, Elizabeth S. Scott, Edward Mulvey

Faculty Scholarship

After a distinctly punitive era, a period of remarkable reform in juvenile crime regulation has begun. Practical urgency has fueled interest in both crime reduction and research on the prediction and malleability of criminal behavior. In this rapidly changing context, high-risk youth – the small proportion of the population where crime is concentrated – present a conundrum. Research indicates that these are precisely the individuals to intensively treat to maximize crime reduction, but there are both real and imagined barriers to doing so. Institutional placement or criminal court processing can exclude these youths from interventions that would better protect public …