Law Commons^™

How Congress Can Help Raise Vaccine Rates, Dorit Rubinstein Reiss, Y. Tony Yang

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection

2019 saw an unusually high number of measles cases, and other preventable disease outbreaks, at least in part linked to vaccines refusal. States are considering legislative responses. This Essay examines what role the federal government can fill in increasing vaccines rates. The Essay suggests that the federal government has an important role to fill in funding research, coordination, and local efforts. It also suggests that a federal school vaccine mandate is likely not the solution: first, such mandates can run into plausible constitutional challenges, and second, there are policy arguments against it. The policy contentions include the unfairness of imposing …

Three Questions About "Stand Your Ground" Laws, Cynthia V. Ward

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection

Stand Your Ground laws, and the issues they generate, do raise serious questions about what constitutes justice in cases that give rise to claims of self-defense. In order to resolve those questions, we first need to understand what the self-defense doctrine actually says and how it was designed to work. It is necessary to specify the ways in which Stand Your Ground provisions do, and do not, affect that doctrine.

In this Essay I will raise three issues about Stand Your Ground and self-defense. In addressing these issues I will use Florida law as a template because the Stand …

United We Stand, Divided We Fall? An Inquiry Into The Values And Shortcomings Of Uniform Methodology For Statutory Interpretation, Chelsea A. Bunge-Bollman

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection

How should courts interpret statutes? This question has fueled generations of debate. Some believe generally that legislative intent should be understood based on the greater purpose of the statute; others believe that would be “pure applesauce” and the legislative intent should be understood through the plain meaning of the statute as written. Where one lands on that spectrum dictates the acceptable use of various tools for statutory interpretation, from legislative history to dictionaries. But, this is largely a theoretical exercise because statutory interpretation is messy in practice. The judiciary employs a variety of methodologies across cases, courts, time periods, and …

Shareholders United?, Andrew K. Jennings

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection

Securities regulation has a way of crossing into other lanes. What public companies do is substantive regulation. How they govern themselves while doing it—or more importantly, how they disclose it—is securities regulation. So it is no surprise that the perennial concern over regulating money in politics should also become a question of federal securities regulation. The Shareholders United Act (the “Act”)—passed by the House of Representatives as part of House Bill 1, an early, major piece of legislation in the 116th Congress—does just that. The Act would require that before engaging in political spending, public companies poll shareholders on how …

Military Mothers And Claims Under The Federal Tort Claims Act For Injuries That Occur Pre-Birth, Tara Willke

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection

In order to right a longstanding wrong perpetrated against military mothers and their children, the Court should grant review in Ortiz v. United States ex rel. Evans Army Community Hospital. Part I of this Essay provides a brief discussion of the FTCA and the Feres doctrine. Part II discusses the facts and holding in Ortiz and its rejection of the approaches taken in other circuits involving pregnant service members and pre-birth injuries, which has caused a clear split in the circuits. Part III argues that these types of claims are not subject to the Feres doctrine because pregnancy and …

The Emergence Of Contextually Constrained Purposivism, Michael C. Mikulic

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection

This Case Comment first outlines the various methods of statutory construction used by the Supreme Court throughout its history, leading up to the Court’s implementation of contextually constrained purposivism in King v. Burwell. It then provides a summary of the facts and procedural history of King, thereby setting the stage to explain how the Court invoked contextually constrained purposivism. Finally, the Case Comment discusses some of the positive and negative implications of the approach.