Law Commons^™

The Unintended Consequences Of Safety Regulation, Sherzod Abdukadirov

Sherzod Abdukadirov

This study examines how risk trade-offs undermine safety regulations. Safety regulations often come with unintended consequences in that regulations attempting to reduce risk in one area may increase risks elsewhere. The increases in countervailing risks may even exceed the reduction in targeted risks, leading to a policy that does more harm than good. The unintended consequences could be avoided or their impacts minimized through more careful analysis, including formal risk trade-off analysis, consumer testing, and retrospective analysis. Yet agencies face strong incentives against producing better analysis; increased awareness of risk trade-offs would force agencies to make unpalatable and politically sensitive …

Freedmen And Day Laborers: Why Enforcement Matters, Raja Raghunath

Raja Raghunath

As the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Emancipation approaches, there is a cautionary lesson for modern workers from the period that followed the abolition of chattel slavery. Reconstruction, after the Civil War, was the moment when the promise of universal liberty to work first became part of the American state’s covenant with its people. But this promise was quickly lost, as the rights that the federal government extended to the freed slaves – the freedmen – were contested and eventually nullified by vehement opposition in the working fields and cities of the South. In this sense, workers’ rights were …

Enlightened Regulatory Capture, David Thaw

Articles

Regulatory capture generally evokes negative images of private interests exerting excessive influence on government action to advance their own agendas at the expense of the public interest. There are some cases, however, where this conventional wisdom is exactly backwards. This Article explores the first verifiable case, taken from healthcare cybersecurity, where regulatory capture enabled regulators to harness private expertise to advance exclusively public goals. Comparing this example to other attempts at harnessing industry expertise reveals a set of characteristics under which regulatory capture can be used in the public interest. These include: 1) legislatively-mandated adoption of recommendations by an advisory …

Overcoming Obstacles To Religious Exercise In K-12 Education, Lewis M. Wasserman

Lewis M. Wasserman

Overcoming Obstacles to Religious Exercise in K-12 Education LEWIS M. WASSERMAN Abstract Judicial decisions rendered during the last half-century have overwhelmingly favored educational agencies over claims by parents for religious accommodations to public education requirements, no matter what constitutional or statutory rights were pressed at the tribunal, or when the conflict arose. These claim failures are especially striking in the wake of the Religious Freedom Restoration Acts (“RFRAs”) passed by Congress in 1993 and, to date, by eighteen state legislatures thereafter, since the RFRAs were intended to (1) insulate religious adherents from injuries inflicted by the United States Supreme Court’s …

Freedmen And Day Laborers: Why Enforcement Matters, Raja Raghunath

Raja Raghunath

As the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Emancipation approaches, there are cautionary lessons for modern workers to be found in Reconstruction, the period that followed the abolition of chattel slavery. It was mostly due to vehement opposition that the promise of universal liberty at work was squelched after the Civil War, but the federal government also bears responsibility for not defending the rights it had granted to the freed slaves, or freedmen, when those rights were contested and eventually nullified in the working fields and cities of the South. In this sense, workers’ rights were the original civil rights, …

The Legitimacy Of Crimmigration Law, Juliet P. Stumpf

Juliet P Stumpf

Crimmigration law—the intersection of immigration and criminal law—with its emphasis on immigration enforcement, has been hailed as the lynchpin for successful political compromise on immigration reform. Yet crimmigration law’s unprecedented approach to interior immigration and criminal law enforcement threatens to undermine public belief in the fairness of immigration law. This Article uses pioneering social science research to explore people’s perceptions of the legitimacy of crimmigration law. According to Tom Tyler and other compliance scholars, perceptions about procedural justice—whether people perceive authorities as acting fairly—are often more important than a favorable outcome such as winning the case or avoiding arrest. Legal …

The Achievement Gap And Disparate Impact Discrimination In Washington Schools, Sarah Albertson

Seattle University Law Review

In today’s public schools, students designated as “white” and “Asian” consistently outperform students from other ethnic groups in test scores and graduation rates. These disparities, commonly called “the achievement gap,” are a symptom of greater issues, or “opportunity gaps.” Washington State has recently taken a further step to address the achievement gap and racial discrimination in schools. In 2010, the Washington legislature passed the Equal Education Opportunity Law (EEOL), HB 3026, in response to the recommendations in commissioned achievement gap studies. The EEOL authorizes the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) to enforce this law through regulations. This …

Regulating For The Public Health: Perchlorate Regulation Under The Safe Drinking Water Act Exceeds Statutory Authority, Mary Jones

Mary Jones

This paper recommends rethinking the statutory framework of the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) to provide a more robust rubric, to include a scientific and objective focus, for proper regulation. The SDWA is evaluated through the lens of upcoming perchlorate regulation due in February 2013.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulates acceptable contaminant levels and decontamination processes for all public water systems, pursuant to statutory authority granted by the SDWA. Where the policy at work is admirable, the execution falls short.

Perchlorate occurs naturally, but also as a by-product to rocket fuel, firework, and other explosive constructions. Scientific …

Snopa And The Ppa: Do You Know What It Means For You? If Snopa (Social Networking Online Protection Act) Or Ppa (Password Protection Act) Do Not Pass, The Snooping Could Cause You Trouble, Angela Goodrum

Angela Goodrum

No abstract provided.

Critical Tax Policy: A Pathway To Reform?, Nancy J. Knauer

Nancy J. Knauer

The Global Recession of 2008 and ensuing austerity measures have renewed the urgency surrounding the call for fundamental tax reform. Before embarking on fundamental tax reform, this Article proposes adding a critical lens to existing US tax policy to ensure that any proposals for change are informed, transparent, and responsive to the needs (and abilities) of individual taxpayers. This Article makes the case for a specific method of inquiry – Critical Tax Policy – that is built on the articulation of difference rather than false assumptions of sameness. Critical Tax Policy incorporates the insights of a growing international tax equity …

“Smut And Nothing But”: The Fcc, Indecency, And Regulatory Transformations In The Shadows, Lili Levi

Lili Levi

For almost a century, American broadcasting has received a lesser degree of constitutional protection than the print medium. Although many of the FCC’s regulations in “the public interest” have been upheld against First Amendment challenge on the ground that broadcasting is exceptional, the traditional reasons given for such exceptionalism – scarcity and pervasiveness – have become increasingly careworn. Fighting that consensus, the FCC has aggressively pursued the regulation of indecency on radio and television since 2003. When the FCC’s enhanced indecency prohibitions swept up U2 front-man Bono’s fleeting expletive on a music awards show, broadcasters finally thought they had found …

The Implausibility Of Secrecy, Mark Fenster

Mark Fenster

Government secrecy frequently fails. Despite the executive branch’s obsessive hoarding of certain kinds of documents and its constitutional authority to do so, recent high-profile events—among them the WikiLeaks episode, the Obama administration’s celebrated leak prosecutions, and the widespread disclosure by high-level officials of flattering confidential information to sympathetic reporters—undercut the image of a state that can classify and control its information. The effort to control government information requires human, bureaucratic, technological, and textual mechanisms that regularly founder or collapse in an administrative state, sometimes immediately and sometimes after an interval. Leaks, mistakes, open sources—each of these constitutes a path out …

Do California’S Teacher Tenure Laws Violate California’S Constitutional Right To Education, Allen W. Hubsch

Allen W Hubsch

The accompanying note addresses an important and topical issue. In May 2012, Ted Olson, the former Solicitor General of the United States, and Theodore Boutrous, co-chair of the appellate practice at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, filed a complaint in Los Angeles Superior Court, entitled Vargara v. California, naming the State of California, the California Department of Education, the Los Angeles Unified School District and others as defendants.

The complaint alleges that California’s teacher tenure statutes are unconstitutional under the California constitution because such laws have the effect of preventing school districts from providing a quality education to school age …

Regulating The Family: The Impact Of Pro-Family Policy Making Assessments On Women And Non-Traditional Families, Robin S. Maril

Robin S. Maril

Beginning in the 1980s, pro-family advocates lobbied the Reagan administration to take a stronger, more direct role in enforcing traditional family norms through agency rulemaking. In 1986 the White House Working Group on the Family published a report entitled, The Family: Preserving America’s Future, detailing what its authors perceived to be the biggest threats to the “American household of persons related by blood, marriage or adoption – the traditional . . . family.” These threats included a lax sexual culture carried over from the 1960s, resulting in rising divorce rates, children born “out of wedlock,” and increased acceptance of “alternative …

Dodd-Frank Act And Remittances To Post-Conflict Countries: The Law Of Unintended Consequences Strikes Again, Raymond Natter

Raymond Natter

The Dodd-Frank Act established a new Federal framework for the regulation of international remittance payments that originate in the U.S. However, the statute and implementing regulations may have the unintended consequence of disrupting the flow of remittance funds to post-conflict nations.

Rise Of The Intercontinentalexchange And Implications Of Its Merger With Nyse Euronext, Latoya C. Brown

Latoya C. Brown, Esq.

This paper examines the impending merger between the IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) and NYSE Euronext against the backdrop of the current structure of the global financial services industry. The paper concludes that the merger embodies what the financial services industry is becoming and captures the model that will allow exchanges to remain competitive in today’s marketplace: mega-exchanges with broader asset classes and electronic platforms. As technology and globalization threaten their vitality, exchanges will need to continue reinventing and adapting. Increasingly over the last decade they have done so by merging and by moving, at least a part of, their operations on screen. …

Enhancing Public Access To Online Rulemaking Information, Cary Coglianese

All Faculty Scholarship

One of the most significant powers exercised by federal agencies is their power to make rules. Given the importance of agency rulemaking, the process by which agencies develop rules has long been subject to procedural requirements aiming to advance democratic values of openness and public participation. With the advent of the digital age, government agencies have engaged in increasing efforts to make rulemaking information available online as well as to elicit public participation via electronic means of communication. How successful are these efforts? How might they be improved? In this article, I investigate agencies’ efforts to make rulemaking information available …

Disclosure's Effects: Wikileaks And Transparency, Mark Fenster

Mark Fenster

The Transatlantic Gmo Dispute Against The European Communities: Some Preliminary Thoughts, David A. Wirth

David A. Wirth

Any day now, a World Trade Organization panel is expected to rule in a dispute between the U.S. and the EU concerning market access for genetically-engineered foods and crops. This piece, written before the release of the WTO panel's report, analyzes novel systemic issues concerning the impact of WTO law on regulatory design, at both the national and international levels, that are raised by this dispute. These include (1) the application of WTO disciplines to regulatory schemes that require prior governmental approval to protect the environment and public health from newly-introduced products and substances; (2) the role of precaution as …

Delivering The Goods: Herein Of Mead, Delegations, And Authority, Patrick Mckinley Brennan

Patrick McKinley Brennan

This paper argues, first, that the natural law position, according to which it is the function of human law and political authorities to instantiate certain individual goods and the common good of the political community, does not entail judges' having the power or authority to speak the natural law directly. It goes on to argue, second, that lawmaking power/authority must be delegated by the people or their representatives. It then argues, third, that success in making law depends not just on the exercise of delegated power/authority, but also on the exercise of care and deliberation or, in the article's terms, …

The “California Effect” & The Future Of American Food: How California’S Growing Crackdown On Food & Agriculture Harms The State & The Nation, Baylen J. Linnekin

Baylen J. Linnekin

For several decades, California has served as the epicenter of the American food scene. California produces one-third of the nation’s food, is home to one in eight American consumers, and boasts a staggering 90,000 restaurants. California is also where eating trends are born, and where fast food, organic food, and Napa Valley wines became durable icons of American culinary culture.

The state’s place atop the national food chain, though, is in jeopardy. In recent years, California legislators have pursued regulations that negatively impact many important agricultural and culinary trends. State and local governments have banned or severely regulated a veritable …

New Governance In The Teeth Of Human Frailty: Lessons From Financial Regulation, Cristie L. Ford

Cristie L. Ford

New Governance scholarship has made important theoretical and practical contributions to a broad range of regulatory arenas, including securities and financial markets regulation. In the wake of the global financial crisis, question about the scope of possibilities for this scholarship are more pressing than ever. Is new governance a full-blown alternative to existing legal structures, or is it a useful complement? Are there essential preconditions to making it work, or can a new governance strategy improve any decision making structure? If there are essential preconditions, what are they? Is new governance “modular” – that is, does it still confer benefits …

Race, Sex, And Rulemaking: Administrative Constitutionalism And The Workplace, 1960 To The Present, Sophia Z. Lee

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article uses the history of equal employment rulemaking at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Power Commission (FPC) to document and analyze, for the first time, how administrative agencies interpret the Constitution. Although it is widely recognized that administrators must implement policy with an eye on the Constitution, neither constitutional nor administrative law scholarship has examined how administrators approach constitutional interpretation. Indeed, there is limited understanding of agencies’ core task of interpreting statutes, let alone of their constitutional practice. During the 1960s and 1970s, officials at the FCC relied on a strikingly broad and affirmative interpretation of …

Delivering The Goods: Herein Of Mead, Delegations, And Authority, Patrick Mckinley Brennan

Working Paper Series

This paper argues, first, that the natural law position, according to which it is the function of human law and political authorities to instantiate certain individual goods and the common good of the political community, does not entail judges' having the power or authority to speak the natural law directly. It goes on to argue, second, that lawmaking power/authority must be delegated by the people or their representatives. It then argues, third, that success in making law depends not just on the exercise of delegated power/authority, but also on the exercise of care and deliberation or, in the article's terms, …

Feminizing Capital: A Corporate Imperative, Darren Rosenblum

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article argues that Norway’s Corporate Board Quota Law (“CBQ”) fosters a productive symbiosis between the public and private spheres. Recent studies indicate that higher numbers of women in executive positions result in stronger rates of corporate return on equity (“ROE”). Countries with higher levels of women's political representation also tend to have higher levels of economic growth. Increasing women's workforce participation outside the home can drive overall economic growth. These factors prompted the CBQ's proponents to argue for the economic imperative of women's corporate leadership. The CBQ will not only ameliorate gender inequality, but will bring new life to …

Natural Justice And Its Applications In Administrative Law, Mubashshir Sarshar

Mubashshir Sarshar

No abstract provided.

When Second Comes First: Correcting Patent’S Poor Secondary Incentives Through An Optional Patent Purchase System, Jordan Barry

ExpressO

As research has advanced, technologies have become more closely knit, and the relationships between them—both complementary and competitive—have become increasingly important. Unfortunately, the patent system’s use of monopoly power to reward innovators creates inefficient results by overly encouraging the development of substitute technologies and discouraging the development of complementary technologies. This paper explains how an optional patent purchase system could help ameliorate such problems and discusses the implications of such a system.

Surfing Past The Pall Of Orthodoxy: Why The First Amendment Virtually Guarantees Online Law School Graduates Will Breach The Aba Accreditation Barrier, Nicholas C. Dranias

ExpressO

The impact of the constitutional dilemma created by the ABA’s aversion to Internet schooling is widespread. Currently, 18 states and 2 U.S. territories restrict bar exam eligibility to graduates of ABA-accredited law schools. Additionally, 29 states and 1 U.S. territory restrict admission to practice on motion to graduates of ABA-accredited law schools.

Although numerous lawsuits have been filed in ultimately failed efforts to strike down bar admission rules that restrict eligibility to graduates of ABA-accredited law schools, none has challenged the ABA-accreditation requirement based on the First Amendment’s prohibition on media discrimination. This Article makes that case.

Despite accelerating technological …

Content On The Fly: The Growing Need For Regulation Of Video Content Delivered Via Cellular Telephony, Jacob M. Chapman

ExpressO

Technological advancements in the last twenty years have substantially altered the ways in which people work, communicate, and are entertained. Many of these advancements have occurred in areas generally thought to fall under the regulatory purview of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). These advancements have included the personal computer, the internet, digital cable, direct broadcast satellites (DBS), and cellular phones. Of all these increasingly available and inexpensive technologies, perhaps the most ubiquitous is the cellular phone. Thus far, the FCC has struggled to apply its public interest mandate to the ever shifting sands of technological development with varying degrees of …

A Complete Property Right Amendment, John H. Ryskamp

ExpressO

The trend of the eminent domain reform and "Kelo plus" initiatives is toward a comprehensive Constitutional property right incorporating the elements of level of review, nature of government action, and extent of compensation. This article contains a draft amendment which reflects these concerns.