Law Commons^™

First Amendment Decisions - 2002 Term, Joel Gora

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Studies In Roman Law In Memory Of A. Arthur Schiller, Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1986. By Roger S. Bagnall And William V. Harris. Leiden, Netherlands: E.J. Brill Co., 1986., Richard J. Cummins

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Lane V. Franks, Katie Jo Baumgardner

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection

On June 19, 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court expanded the scope of public employee free speech with its decision in Lane v. Franks. The Court granted certiorari in order “to resolve discord among the Courts of Appeals as to whether public employees may be fired—or suffer other adverse employment consequences—for providing truthful subpoenaed testimony outside the course of their ordinary job responsibilities.” The unanimous Lane decision, which affirmed in part and reversed in part an opinion by the Eleventh Circuit, held that the First Amendment protects a public employee from retaliatory employer discipline where the employee testifies at trial, pursuant …

Passive Takings: The State's Affirmative Duty To Protect Property, Christopher Serkin

Michigan Law Review

The purpose of the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause is to protect property owners from the most significant costs of legal transitions. Paradigmatically, a regulatory taking involves a government action that interferes with expectations about the content of property rights. Legal change has therefore always been central to regulatory takings claims. This Article argues that it does not need to be and that governments can violate the Takings Clause by failing to act in the face of a changing world. This argument represents much more than a minor refinement of takings law because recognizing governmental liability for failing to act means …

German Reunification - The Privatization Of Socialist Property On East Germany's Path To Democracy, Michael J. Thomerson

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Delinking International Environmental Law & Climate Change, Cinnamon Carlarne

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

This Article challenges the existing paradigm in international law that frames global efforts to address climate change as a problem of and for international environmental law. The most recent climate reports tell us that warming is unequivocal and that we are already experiencing the impacts of climate change at the domestic level in the United States. Against this backdrop, much has been written recently in the United States about domestic efforts to address climate change. These efforts are important, but they leave open the question of how the global community can work together to address the greatest collective action problem …

The Political Safeguards Of Horizontal Federalism, Heather K. Gerken, Ari Holtzblatt

Michigan Law Review

For decades, we have debated whether “political safeguards” preserve healthy relations between the states and the federal government and thus reduce or eliminate the need for judges to referee state–federal tussles. No one has made such an argument about relations among the states, however, and the few scholars to have considered the question insist that such safeguards don’t exist. This Article takes the opposite view and lays down the intellectual foundations for the political safeguards of horizontal federalism. If you want to know what unites the burgeoning work on horizontal federalism and illuminates the hidden logic of its doctrine, you …

The World Health Organization's Framework Convention On Tobacco Control: An Analysis Of Guidelines Adopted By The Conference Of The Parties, Sam F. Halabi

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Reconstructing The Effective Control Criterion In Extraterritorial Human Rights Breaches: Direct Attribution Of Wrongfulness, Due Diligence, And Concurrent Responsibility, Vassilis P. Tzevelekos

Michigan Journal of International Law

As one of the core elements of statehood, territory is inextricably linked to sovereignty. For this reason, jurisdiction is primarily territorial. In principle, the sphere of power of the sovereign state—including its competence to exercise legislative, judicial, and executive authority—applies within the confines of its own territory. Otherwise, the state risks interfering with the sovereignty of other states and thereby breaking one of the fundamental principles of Public International Law (PIL), that of sovereign equality. The principle of sovereign equality dictates that all assertions of jurisdiction have to be balanced with the sovereign rights of other states. This is why …

Prosser's Bait-And-Switch: How Food Safety Was Sacrificed In The Battle For Tort's Empire, Denis W. Stearns

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Implications For The Mille Lacs Lake Fishery With Continued Enforcement Of The 1837 Treaty Of St. Peters, Matthew Steffes

Journal of Public Law and Policy

Mille Lacs Lake, one of Minnesota’s over 13,000 lakes, holds a reputation for being one of the best walleye fisheries in Minnesota, as well as being a fishing destination for anglers across the nation. In 1999 the Supreme Court held that the Mille Lacs Band of Chippewa Indians retained hunting and fishing rights on ceded land that were granted to them in the 1837 Treaty of St. Peters. Part of this ruling allowed the Mille Lacs tribe to continue their commercial walleye fishing operation on Mille Lacs Lake. Since the Supreme Court’s ruling, the walleye population on Mille Lacs Lake …

Assessing The Silica (Frac) Sand Mining Environmental Regulatory Frameworks In Minnesota And Wisconsin: Who Has A Better Plan For Digging, The Gophers Or Badgers?, William Miley

Journal of Public Law and Policy

In recent years silica (frac) sand mining activity in Minnesota and Wisconsin has grown significantly due to high demand for the sand from the hydraulic fracturing (or “fracking”) oil and gas extraction industry. Consequently, there has been much debate in the region over the proper state and local regulatory controls and overall framework to adequately protect against health and environmental impacts associated with the mining activities while also avoiding undue regulatory burdens that hinder economic development. This article analyzes the silica sand mining regulatory schemes in Minnesota and Wisconsin to determine if this booming industry is met with appropriate oversight. …

How ‘Comprehensive’ Is The Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill? S. 744 And Its Implications For Muslims, Arabs, South Asians, Somalis And Iranian Immigrants, Samira Afzali

Journal of Public Law and Policy

This article discusses the failure of the current immigration reform debate in addressing immigration policies that affect highly unpopular ethnic communities including Muslims, Arabs, South Asians, Somalis and Iranians. The current debate on immigration reform was heavily shaped and influenced by the 2012 presidential elections and both parties’ attempts to win the Hispanic vote. For this reason, the current discourse on immigration reform has focused on one segment of the population, albeit a diverse segment.

Since the Clinton Administration, Congress has passed legislation that converged national security interests with immigration law. The current debate on immigration reform fails to address …

Narrowing The Scope Of Judicial Review For Humanitarian Appeals Of Deportation Orders In Canada, New Zealand And The United States, Timothy Philip Fadgen, Guy Charlton, Mark Kielsgard

Journal of Public Law and Policy

The paper will compare the humanitarian and compassionate appeal provisions in relevant immigration law allowed to deportees in Canada, New Zealand and the United States. It argues that while recent changes in each of the countries have preserved the humanitarian appeals process, the basis of the appeal and judicial review have been dramatically narrowed by changes in legislation and case law. These changes have particularly limited the scope of judicial review and the ability of the courts to overturn administrative decisions regarding the fitness of an applicant to benefit from the appeal provisions.

Bruce Ledewitz, American Religious Democracy: Coming To Terms With The End Of Secular Politics, Thomas A. Schweitzer

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Environmental Law, Public Health, And The Values Conundrum, David M. Uhlmann

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

In September 1996, when I was nearing the end of my sixth year as a Justice Department environmental crimes prosecutor, one of my colleagues sent me an email that there was a “good-sounding RCRA [Resource Conservation and Recovery Act] knowing endangerment case developing in Idaho.” A twenty-year-old man named Scott Dominguez had collapsed inside a storage tank at an Idaho fertilizer manufacturing facility called Evergreen Resources. Mr. Dominguez could not be rescued for nearly an hour, because firefighters who responded to the scene did not know what was in the tank and what safety precautions they needed to take before …

Public Lands Access Association V. Board Of County Commissioners Of Madison County, Graham Coppes

Public Land & Resources Law Review

On January 16, 2014, the Supreme Court of Montana reversed and remanded a district court decision that had foreclosed the public’s right to access the Ruby River. The Court held that the right of way was a public prescriptive easement, which extended beyond the road surface itself to include such area as necessary for the county to maintain the road in the interest of the public. Furthermore, the Court concluded that once a public right-of-way is established by prescriptive use, the scope of current and future use of such an easement is not limited to those historic adversarial practices which …

Undermining Or Promoting Democratic Government?: An Economic And Empirical Analysis Of The Two Views Of Public Sector Collective Bargaining In American Law, Kenneth G. Dau-Schmidt, Mohammad Khan

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Sewer Syndicalism: Worker Self-Management In Public Services, Eric M. Fink

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Unions As Conduits Of Democratic Voice For Non-Elites: Worker Politicization From The Shop Floor To The Halls Of Congress, Michael Wasser, J. Ryan Lamare

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Judicial Independence And Social Welfare, Michael D. Gilbert

Michigan Law Review

Judicial independence is a cornerstone of American constitutionalism. It empowers judges to check the other branches of government and resolve cases impartially and in accordance with law. Yet independence comes with a hazard. Precisely because they are independent, judges can ignore law and pursue private agendas. For two centuries, scholars have debated those ideas and the underlying tradeoff: independence versus accountability. They have achieved little consensus, in part because independence raises difficult antecedent questions. We cannot decide how independent to make a judge until we agree on what a judge is supposed to do. That depends on one’s views about …