Law Commons^™

How To Improve The Debt Ceiling To Fit A Partisan Government: A Global Examination Of Which International Solutions Excel, Sarah Love

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This Note explores the changing role the debt ceiling has played within the United States and considers how that role should be altered moving forward. The debt ceiling's history and its political connections are discussed as a backdrop to how the United States might alter the debt ceiling to limit both future government shutdown and political gridlock. This Note examines both domestic and international solutions to the debt ceiling problem with an emphasis on the latter. In particular, the Note focuses on the possible international solution of adopting a system similar to Denmark's debt ceiling, or adopting a high debt-to- …

Inmates For Rent, Sovereignty For Sale: The Global Prison Market, Benjamin Levin

Scholarship@WashULaw

In 2009, Belgium and the Netherlands announced a deal to send approximately 500 Belgian inmates to Dutch prisons, in exchange for an annual payment of £26 million. The arrangement was unprecedented, but justified as beneficial to both nations: Belgium had too many prisoners and not enough prisons, whereas the Netherlands had too many prisons and not enough prisoners. The deal has yet to be replicated, nor has it triggered sustained criticism or received significant scholarly treatment. This Article aims to fill this void by examining the exchange and its possible implications for a global market in prisoners and prison space. …

Refund Fraud? Real-Time Solution!, Richard Thompson Ainsworth

Faculty Scholarship

When seven million dependents vanished from the tax rolls in 1986 the IRS recovered three billion dollars in revenue. A simple enforcement measure was applied. Taxpayers were required to list the social security number (SSN) for any dependent they claimed on their tax return. Costing next to nothing to implement, the benefits of this enforcement action continue to this day.

A similar enforcement measure could be employed against refund fraud. Even though the solution is not as simple as that adopted in 1986, it is similar. The effort is worth making. The revenue loss is much larger. As before, the …