Law Commons^™

Acs Selects Allyson Mcbride As Next Generation Leader, James Owsley Boyd

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

The American Constitution Society has named Indiana University Maurer School of Law second-year student Allyson McBride a Next Generation Leader—one of 34 across the United States—the organization announced April 11.

She is the third Indiana Law student in as many years to earn the prestigious recognition.

Maurer Blsa Earns Midwest Chapter Of The Year, James Owsley Boyd

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

The Black Law Students Association at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law has earned national recognition, taking home Medium Chapter of the Year honors at the 56th Midwest BLSA Regional Convention in early February.

The Midwest BLSA community includes dozens of chapters at law schools from Colorado to Ohio, including nearly all of the schools in the Big Ten conference.

“Our Black Law Students Association isn’t just one of the best in the Midwest, it’s one of the best in the country,” said Indiana Law Dean Christiana Ochoa. “Congratulations to Nashuba Hudson, the executive board, and all who have …

Legal, Policy, And Environmental Scholars Discuss Global Food Systems At Indiana Law Symposium, James Owsley Boyd

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

The Indiana University Maurer School of Law and its Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies are hosting scholars from around the country Friday and Saturday (Jan. 19-20) for an interdisciplinary discussion on one of the world’s most prevalent problems—food insecurity.

Data from the World Bank estimate more than 780 million people around the world suffered from chronic hunger in 2022. As climate change affects agricultural production and water accessibility, the problem could worsen in coming years.

“A Fragile Framework: How Global Food Systems Intersect with the International Legal Order, the Environment, and the World’s Populations” will bring together legal, policy, …

Research On Renewable Energy Project Opposition Selected For Environmental Law And Policy Annual Review Award, James Owsley Boyd

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

A publication co-authored by Indiana University Maurer School of Law Dean Christiana Ochoa and 2021 Law School alumna Kacey Cook has been selected to appear in the 17th edition of the Environmental Law and Policy Annual Review.

“Deals in the Heartland: Renewable Energy Projects, Local Resistance, and How Law Can Help” was authored by Ochoa, Cook, and University of Minnesota Law School third-year student Hanna Weil and was published in January 2023 in the Minnesota Law Review.

Former Colombian Constitutional Judge And Ut-Austin Professor Join Ccd Board, James Owsley Boyd

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

On Friday, August 11, and following the recent appointment of Brady Harman and Greg Zoeller, the Center for Constitutional Democracy added two new members to its Advisory Board: Professor Richard Albert (University of Texas at Austin) and Justice Manuel Cepeda (former President of the Constitutional Court of Colombia).

Meet Our New Faculty: Valena Beety, James Owsley Boyd

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

You’ve read about some of the amazing students we have starting with us next week. Now we’ll introduce you to some of the new faculty who have joined us over the summer. First up is Valena Beety, the Robert H. McKinney Professor of Law. Prof. Beety was most recently Professor of Law and Deputy Director of the Academy for Justice at theArizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law.

Center For Constitutional Democracy Welcomes Two New Board Members, James Owsley Boyd

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

Beginning on July 1, the Center for Constitutional Democracy will be welcoming two new members to its Advisory Board: former Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller ’82 and former CCD Senior Managing Affiliate Brady Harman ’15.

Four Maurer School Of Law Students Selected As 2023 Stevens Fellows, James Owsley Boyd

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

Four Indiana Law students have been selected as Stevens Fellows, the John Paul Stevens Foundation accounced today (June 20). Selection as a Stevens Fellow allows students to receive critical financial support while participating in unpaid summer legal internships serving the public interest.

Named after the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice, the John Paul Stevens Foundation is dedicated to promoting public interest and social justice values in the next generation of American lawyers.

2023 Academy Of Law Alumni Fellows Induction Ceremony Program, Maurer School Of Law - Indiana University

Academy of Law Alumni Fellows

The Academy of Law Alumni Fellows was established in 1985 to recognize alumni whose careers are defined by exceptional personal achievement and dedication to the highest standards of the profession.

Academy Fellows are part of an elite group that includes US senators, federal judges, successful business leaders, and distinguished practitioners. A committee of anonymous alumni selects each year’s Fellows from among many deserving candidates. To be named an Academy of Law Alumni Fellow is to receive the very highest honor that the Maurer School of Law can bestow.

This year, we are honored to recognize four alumni whose remarkable contributions …

Just-Right Government: Interstate Compacts And Multistate Governance In An Era Of Political Polarization, Policy Paralysis, And Bad-Faith Partisanship, Jon Michaels, Emme M. Tyler

Indiana Law Journal

Those committed to addressing the political, economic, and moral crises of the day— voting rights, racial justice, reproductive autonomy, gaping inequality, LGBTQ rights, and public health and safety—don’t know where to turn. Federal legislative and regulatory pathways are choked off by senators quick to filibuster and by judges eager to strike down agency rules and orders. State pathways, in turn, are compromised by limited capacity, collective action problems, externalities, scant economies of scale, and—in many jurisdictions—a toxic political culture hostile to even the most anodyne government interventions. Recognizing the limited options available on a binary (that is, federal or state) …

The Afterlife Of Confederate Monuments, Jess Phelps, Jessica N. Owley

Indiana Law Journal

As communities increasingly remove Confederate monuments from public spaces, they must decide what to do with these troubled statues. Given the recent wave of monument removal, we consider how property law and other restrictions impact community decisions on the disposition of monuments removed from public spaces on two levels—by location and future owner. In considering the fate of removed monuments, we profile potential destinations including museums, battlefields, cemeteries, and even storage. Alongside these examples, we discuss how laws constrain (or fail to constrain) the options for new owners and the restrictions on where monuments can be relocated. Even where laws …

Domestic Emergency Pretexts, Amy L. Stein

Indiana Law Journal

Whereas emergencies used to be the exception to the rule, they now seem to be the norm. Wildfires, hurricanes, flooding, and contagious diseases dominate our daily lives. Although these are not the traditional types of military emergencies of our past, these non-wartime emergencies can trigger some of the same emergency powers. And with their use comes some of the same concerns about abuses of such emergency powers. Much ink has been spilled analyzing the tradeoffs associated with necessary emergency powers and frequent abuses in the context of foreign threats—resulting in reduced privacy, civil liberties, and freedoms.

This Article is not …

Pregnant Workers Fairness Acts: Advancing A Progressive Policy In Both Red And Blue America, Deborah Widiss

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Pregnant workers often need small changes—such as permission to sit on a stool or to avoid heavy lifting—to stay on the job safely through a pregnancy. In the past decade, twenty-five states have passed laws that guarantee pregnant employees a right to reasonable accommodations at work. Despite the stark partisan divide in contemporary America, the laws have passed in both Republican- and Democratic-controlled states. This Essay offers the first detailed case study of this remarkably effective campaign, and it shows how it laid the groundwork for analogous federal legislation, passed in December 2022, that ensures workers across the country will …

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 Undemocratic Class Action, Nicholas Almendares

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Class actions can have profound effects. But theorists, policymakers, and judges have long worried that attorneys can use them for their own advantage, reaping generous rewards for themselves while class members receive next to nothing. Unlike citizens or shareholders, members of a class cannot exercise democratic control over the attorney that nominally works on their behalf. I label this the democratic critique of class actions, and it has been the dominant framework for understanding class actions, shaping both case law and reform proposals.

The democratic critique is based on a false premise, though, because it does not take into account …

The Child Vanishes: Justice Scalia's Approach To The Role Of Psychology In Determining Children's Rights And Responsibilities, Aviva Orenstein

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This Article explores how Justice Antonin Scalia’s hostility to psychology, antipathy to granting children autonomous rights, and dismissiveness of children’s interior lives both affected his jurisprudence and was a natural outgrowth of it. Justice Scalia expressed a skeptical, one might even say hostile, attitude towards psychology and its practitioners. Justice Scalia’s cynicism about the discipline and the therapists who practice it is particularly interesting regarding legal and policy arguments concerning children. His love of tradition and his rigid and unempathetic approach to children clash with modern notions of child psychology. Justice Scalia’s attitude towards psychology helps to explain his jurisprudence, …

Without Accommodation, Jennifer Bennett Shinall

Indiana Law Journal

Under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), workers with disabilities have the legal right to reasonable workplace accommodations provided by employers. Because this legal right is unique to disabled workers, these workers could, in theory, enjoy greater access to the types of accommodations that are desirable to all workers—including the ability to work from home, to work flexible hours, and to take leave. This Article compares access to these accommodations, which have become increasingly desirable during the COVID-19 pandemic, between disabled workers and nondisabled workers. Using 2017–2018 data from the American Time Use Survey’s Leave and Job Flexibilities Module, I …

Regulating Charitable Crowdfunding, Lloyd H. Mayer

Indiana Law Journal

Charitable crowdfunding is a global and rapidly growing new method for raising money to benefit charities and individuals in need. While mass fundraising has existed for hundreds of years, crowdfunding is distinguishable from those earlier efforts because of its low cost, speed of implementation, and broad reach. Reflecting these advantages, it now accounts annually for billions of dollars raised from tens of millions of donors through hundreds of internet platforms, including Charidy, Facebook, GoFundMe, and GlobalGiving. Although most charitable crowdfunding campaigns raise only modest amounts, on occasion a campaign attracts tens of millions of dollars in donations. However, charitable crowdfunding …

Managing Judicial Discretion: Qualified Immunity And Rule 12(B)(6) Motions, Zachary R. Hart

Indiana Law Journal

Qualified immunity is a judicially created doctrine that shields government officials from personal liability for civil damages. Courts applying the doctrine, which is heavily dependent on the facts of the case, must determine whether the government officials’ conduct violated a clearly established statutory or constitutional right of which a reasonable person would have known. This inquiry is discretionary as judges must determine if the alleged violation was “clearly established,” a term that the Supreme Court has defined in conflicting ways. Moreover, when federal judges conduct the qualified immunity inquiry at the Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss stage, their decision is …

Frozen Embryos, Male Consent, And Masculinities, Dara E. Purvis

Indiana Law Journal

Picture two men facing the possibility of unwanted fatherhood. One man agreed to go through in vitro fertilization (IVF) with his partner, but years later has changed his mind. Despite the fact that the embryos created through IVF are his partner’s last chance to be a genetic parent, a court allows him to block her use of the embryos.

By contrast, another couple’s sexual relationship broke the law. The woman was a legal adult, and her partner was a child under the age of eighteen. Their encounter was thus statutory rape. Her crime led to pregnancy, and after she gave …

Movement Lawyers: The Tension Between Solidarity And Independence, Catherine Fisk

Indiana Law Journal

Seeking to engage with scholars and activists who call for lawyer solidarity with social movements, this Essay considers professional ethics constraints on what a lawyer can justifiably do on behalf of clients in the name of solidarity with a movement. I consider whether the concept of solidarity, especially solidarity in the face of legal repression, justifies a movement lawyer in using tactics that would otherwise be grounds for legal prosecution, professional discipline, or moral condemnation. Drawing on the long history of legal repression of progressive activism, including repression of progressive lawyers, this Essay proposes a way to think about lawyers …

Overview Of Bicameral Legislatures’ Potential Impact On The Executive Selection Process, Kyle Kopchak

Indiana Journal of Constitutional Design

Bicameral legislature is a common constitutional design model, with bicameral legislatures making up roughly 41 percent of all legislatures worldwide. As of April 2014, 79 bicameral and 113 unicameral systems were recorded in the database of the Inter-Parliamentary Union. In general, “bicameralism is more common in federal, large, and presidential states, while unicameralism is more common in unitary, small, parliamentary ones”. Bicameral systems operate two legislative chambers, both of which play a role in drafting and passing national legislation. However, each house often fulfills a unique role in the legislative process and is usually elected by different methods. Proponents of …

Enforcing Interstate Compacts In Federal Systems, Michael Osborn

Indiana Journal of Constitutional Design

The central goal of a federal system is for local government units to retain degrees of independence, specifically over matters of importance to that local unit. A logical corollary to that independence is the ability for local units to negotiate and contract with other local units on matters of importance. Therefore, it is not surprising that almost every federal system allows, either implicitly or explicitly, member states to form binding compacts with other states, the union government, or municipalities.1 Some federal democracies even allow member states to compact with foreign governments. Furthermore, almost every federal constitution includes a provision outlining …

Ending Demand For Modern-Day Slavery: An Analysis Of Human Trafficking In The Global Marketplace, Rachel Leach

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

The purpose of this paper is to inform readers of the prevalence of and increasing demand for human trafficking, both domestically and globally, and to propose necessary next steps governments must take in order to end the demand for such human exploitation. This paper will closely analyze the issue of trafficking humans for sex and labor within the Western Hemisphere and throughout Asia by using the United States and China as primary case studies. These case studies analyze the specific actions or inactions taken by the United States and Chinese governments to combat modern day slavery, as well as the …

Organized For Service: The Hicks Classification System And The Evolution Of Law School Curriculum, John L. Moreland

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This article traces the origins and development of the Hicks Classification System, an in-house organizational scheme used by the Yale Law Library from the late 1930s to the 1990s. It explores the relationship between the Hicks Classification System and the changing pedagogical methods of the law school curriculum during the early part of the 20th century. It provides a brief biographical sketch of Frederick C. Hicks, creator of the scheme, the need for a legal classification system, a detailed analysis of Hicks’s scheme, its finding aids, and a discussion of the inherent cultural biases in the system.

Do Social Movements Spur Corporate Change? The Rise Of “Metoo Termination Rights” In Ceo Contracts, Rachel Arnow-Richman, James Hicks, Steven Davidoff Solomon

Indiana Law Journal

Do social movements spur corporate change? This Article sheds new empirical and theoretical light on the issue through an original study of executive contracts before and after MeToo. The MeToo movement, beginning in late 2017, exposed a workplace culture seemingly permissive of high-level, sex-based misconduct. Companies typically responded slowly and imposed few consequences on perpetrators, often allowing them to depart with lucrative exit packages. Why did companies reward rather than penalize bad actors, and has the movement disrupted this culture of complicity?

The passage of time since the height of the movement allows us to investigate these issues empirically, using …

Rethinking Juvenile Rehabilitation: Presumptive Waiver And Alternative Sentencing In Indiana, S. Reese Sobol Ii

Indiana Law Journal

Indiana’s juvenile justice system, like all systems of juvenile justice, is premised on rehabilitation. And while Indiana is far from an outdated, overly punitive system, there are several tangible opportunities for improvement. Indiana enacted an alternative sentencing scheme for juvenile offenders waived into adult court in 2013, but alternative sentencing has not been implemented in an effective manner yet. Furthermore, Indiana’s statutory system of waiver contains several aspects that are inconsistent with, or simply fail to account for, modern social science understandings.

This Comment seeks to expound upon relevant social science principles within the context of juvenile justice in order …

Worth A Shot: Encouraging Vaccine Uptake Through "Empathy", Jody L. Madeira

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Pro- and anti-vaccine organizations and individuals have frequently invoked empathy as a strategy for increasing uptake of COVID-19 precautions, including vaccinations. On one hand, vaccine supporters deployed empathy to defuse conflict, prioritize safeguarding the collective welfare, and avoid government mandates. On the other hand, vaccine opponents used empathy to emphasize the alleged individual effects of pandemic precautions, mobilize public voices, and stress the importance of medical freedom in policy-making contexts.

This Article first defines empathy and reviews empathy scholarship, paying particular attention to its relationship with narrative and the contexts where empathy can be difficult or dangerous. It then applies …

A Pioneer Of The Law & Society Movement: One Eyewitness’S Reflections, Jayanth K. Krishnan

Articles by Maurer Faculty

There is arguably no more seminal a figure in the field of law and society than Professor Marc Galanter. That a Special Issue featuring dedications to several leading academic lights would be hosted by the University of Chicago Law Review is especially significant in terms of Marc’s inclusion because Chicago is where Marc came of age as a student.

Professor Richard Abel, some years back, chronicled Marc’s educational journey in Hyde Park. As Abel tells it—and as Marc has told me over the years—after finishing his B.A. and while continuing to work on his master’s degree from Chicago, Marc enrolled …

Chosen Family, Care, And The Workplace, Deborah Widiss

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Employees often request time off work to care for the medical needs of loved ones who are part of their extended or chosen family. Until recently, most workers would not have had any legal right to take such leave. A rapidly growing number of state laws, however, not only guarantee paid time off for family health needs, but also adopt innovative and expansive definitions of eligible family.

Several provide leave to care for intimate partners without requiring legal formalization of the relationship. Some go further to include any individual who has a relationship with the employee that is “like” or …