Law Commons^™

State Constitutions And The Protection Of Rights, John M. Greabe

Law Faculty Scholarship

This article, using a recent Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling on partisan gerrymandering, explores how state constitutions can be significantly more protective of rights than the federal constitution.

The Uneasy Case For Patent Federalism, Roger Allan Ford

Law Faculty Scholarship

Nationwide uniformity is often considered an essential feature of the patent system, necessary to fulfill that system’s disclosure and incentive purposes. In the last few years, however, more than half the states have enacted laws that seek to disrupt this uniformity by making it harder for patent holders to enforce their patents. There is an easy case to be made against giving states greater authority over the patent system: doing so would threaten to disrupt the system’s balance between innovation incentives and a robust public domain and would permit rent seeking by states that disproportionately produce or consume innovation.

There …

Can President Trump 'Open Up' The Libel Laws?, John M. Greabe

Law Faculty Scholarship

[Excerpt] "Libel and slander are branches of the law of defamation. Defamation law authorizes remedies for reputational harm caused by some false statements of fact. A libel is a defamatory statement that is printed or written; a slander is a defamatory statement that is spoken.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, candidate Donald Trump suggested that, if elected, he would "open up our libel laws" to facilitate lawsuits by public officials against news organizations."

Trump, Federalism And The Punishment Of Sanctuary Cities, John M. Greabe

Law Faculty Scholarship

[Excerpt] “Historically, liberals have tended to hold more expansive under­standings of the scope of federal power. Conservatives, on the other hand, have tended to embrace stronger theories of federalism -- the term we use to describe the reservation of government power to state and local governments under the Constitution.”

Marijuana Regulation And Federalism, John M. Greabe

Law Faculty Scholarship

[Excerpt] "Federal law makes the cultivation and use of marijuana illegal for all purposes. Yet, over the past two decades, 28 states plus the District of Columbia have legalized marijuana for medicinal purposes, and eight states plus the District of Columbia have legalized it for recreational purposes. Marijuana regulation thus provides a useful and timely example for exploring the ways in which the distribution of power between the federal government and the states can facilitate policy change."

Authenticity Key To Success In Life And In Legal Information, Susan Drisko Zago

Law Faculty Scholarship

[Excerpt] "Authenticity is defined as something that is not false or an imitation. Savvy consumers pay a premium for an authentic product and treat with suspicion a product that does not ring true.

We have a system of trademark and copyright protections that protect a company’s intellectual property rights and brands and consumer protections to protect the consumer from counterfeit and unsafe products. Now, there is model legislation that will provide a systematic way to protect, preserve and provide better electronic access to the bread and butter of our legal profession: our official state legal documents."

A New Frontier In Campaign Finance Regulation, John M. Greabe

Law Faculty Scholarship

In recent years, the United States Supreme Court has taken what many regard as a doctrinaire approach to campaign finance regulation. It has seized on the indisputable proposition that limits on campaign expenditures and contributions implicate important First Amendment values and, pressing the proposition to logical extremes, invalidated a number of federal and state laws that had imposed such limits.

This newspaper editorial discusses recently proposed legislation in the state of New Hampshire that would collect fees on expenditures made by individual political candidates, PACs, and Super PACS. The collected fees would be used to help the state justice department …

Brief Amicus Curiae Of The Honorable Margaret W. Hassan Governor Of The State Of New Hampshire In Support Of The Plaintiffs/Cross-Appellants, Lucy C. Hodder, John M. Greabe

Law Faculty Scholarship

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT

The Governor confines her argument in this amicus brief to whether the superior court correctly concluded that the education tax credit program enacted under RSA § 77-G violates Article 83 insofar as it permits organizations authorized to receive donations subsidized by the credit to use those donations to fund student scholarships to religious, non-public schools. In the Governor’s view, the superior court’s finding of unconstitutionality was correct.

In its text, structure, and history (including its interpretive history), the New Hampshire Constitution significantly differs from the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause with respect to the question whether revenue generated …

Pledge Your Body For Your Bread: Welfare, Drug Testing, And The Inferior Fourth Amendment, Jordan C. Budd

Law Faculty Scholarship

Proposals to subject welfare recipients to periodic drug testing have emerged over the last three years as a significant legislative trend across the United States. Since 2007, over half of the states have considered bills requiring aid recipients to submit to invasive extraction procedures as an ongoing condition of public assistance. The vast majority of the legislation imposes testing without regard to suspected drug use, reflecting the implicit assumption that the poor are inherently predisposed to culpable conduct and thus may be subject to class-based intrusions that would be inarguably impermissible if inflicted on the less destitute. These proposals are …

One Toke Over The Line: The Proliferation Of State Medical Marijuana Laws, Troy E. Grandel

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “Marijuana has been used for medicinal purposes for at least five thousand years. In fact, it was used medicinally in the United States up until the twentieth century when antidrug zealots managed to prohibit it. Prohibition was the status quo until 1996 when California became the first state to adopt a law allowing medicinal marijuana use. Since then, thirteen additional states, along with the District of Columbia, have enacted similar laws. More states are now lining up with their own laws, which are in various stages of adoption. In addition, the Supreme Court has impacted the issue, both with …

State Constitutional Limits On New Hampshire's Taxing Power: Historical Development And Modern State, Marcus Hurn

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] "The New Hampshire Constitution is, in most of its fundamental parts, very old. It is long (nearly 200 articles) and wordy, even by the standards of the eighteenth century. It expresses essential principles in more than one place, in more than one way, and in language that to modern eyes is more suited to political philosophy than to positive law. Most of it was copied from the original Massachusetts Constitution, itself based on a draft by John Adams. However, there is no other state in the union with a structure of taxing powers and limits comparable to New Hampshire‘s."

First Amendment, Second Fiddle? Free Speech In New Hampshire‘S Constitution, Adam Rick

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “A car dealer in Concord, New Hampshire recently challenged the city zoning board‘s denial of its application to replace its existing readerboard (with manually changeable letters) with an electronic sign. The dealer argued that the city‘s zoning ordinance, prohibiting “[s]igns which move or create an illusion of movement except those parts which solely indicate date, time, or temperature,” constituted an unconstitutional restriction on free speech under the First Amendment. The trial court agreed, but the New Hampshire Supreme Court reversed, applying the Central Hudson test and finding that the ordinance reached no “broader than necessary to meet and advance …

Innovation Or A Race To The Bottom? Trust "Modernization" In New Hampshire, Christopher Paul

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “Late last summer, Governor Lynch signed into law Senate Bill 465, designed to further update New Hampshire‘s trust law. This bill follows similar legislation in Alaska, Delaware, Nevada, and several other states. It adds major new provisions to the existing statutory framework for irrevocable trusts. The bill allows for the creation of so-called self-settled asset protection trusts or domestic asset protection trusts (DAPTs). DAPTs represent the latest chapter in our State‘s move away from traditional trust and estate principles towards a system of dynastic and (theoretically) creditor-proof trusts.

This legislation results from New Hampshire‘s desire to retain and attract …

The Original Understanding Of The New Hampshire Constitution’S Education Clause, Edward C. Mosca

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “In 1993, the New Hampshire Supreme Court held that “part II, article 83 [of the state constitution] imposes a duty on the State to provide a constitutionally adequate education to every educable child in the public schools in New Hampshire and to guarantee adequate funding,” and that this duty is enforceable by the judiciary. This decision, known as Claremont I, was the wellspring of a line of decisions that has radically changed both the manner in which public education is funded in New Hampshire and the respective roles of the judicial branch and the representative branches in formulating education …

The Core Plan Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Central City: Shifting Control Of Regional Mass Transit To The Central City, Jeffrey Baltruzak

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “Mass transit in the United States is moribund: it plays a meaningful transportation role in only a handful of American regions. It is clear that the status quo—where state-created special-purpose districts (SPDs) provide limited regional mass transit options and new mass transit construction progresses at a glacial pace—is a colossal failure. This failure necessitates a new model of mass transit ownership and management. It is time for the region’s central city to own and operate the region’s mass transit system extraterritorially, free from significant control by the outer cities (the suburbs) and the state. This article calls this arrangement …

Administrative Agencies: A Comparison Of New Hampshire And Federal Agencies’ History, Structure And Rulemaking Requirements, Scott F. Johnson

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] "In this day and age it is difficult to think of anything that is not regulated in some way by a state or federal agency. State and federal agencies routinely make decisions that impact our daily lives. The air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, the clothes we wear, and the places where we live and work are all regulated to some extent.

Agencies sometimes regulate things in ways that lead to strange results. For example, New Hampshire, state regulations allow anyone to own a yak, a bison, a wild boar, or an emu, but …

New Hampshire’S Claremont Case And The Separation Of Powers, Edward C. Mosca

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] "Court decisions involving the adequacy of public education raise some obvious separation of powers problems. These include the institutional competency of courts to determine what level of education is adequate and how much funding is necessary to reach that level, and the authority of courts to enforce such judgments. This article will examine these problems through New Hampshire’s serial education funding litigation, the Claremont case. [. . .]

I will start by briefly reviewing the history of education funding litigation because this context is essential to understanding the Claremont case. I will then undertake a limited review of the …

Conflicts Between The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court And The Legislature: Campaign Finance Reform And Same-Sex Marriage, Mark C. Miller

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] "This article will examine recent interactions and dialogues between the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts (“SJC” or “Supreme Judicial Court”) and the Massachusetts State Legislature. The interactions between courts and legislatures are often cordial, but sometimes these interactions are also highly conflictual. During the 1980s and 1990s, the relationship between the Massachusetts legislature and the Supreme Court was indeed mainly cooperative. Recently, however, in several high profile cases the Supreme Court has been willing to challenge directly the decisions of the legislature and vice versa. Among other controversies, the Court’s 2002 decision requiring that the state legislature fund the …

States’ Rights And The Scope Of The Treaty Power: Could The Patriot Act Be Constitutional As A Treaty?, Simcha Herzog

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “Consider the following hypothetical scenario: after an appeal by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Supreme Court determines that the Patriot Act is unconstitutional. This decision so infuriates President Bush that he seeks out the advice of his legal counsel in a frantic attempt to bypass the Court’s ruling. After some research, President Bush’s legal advisers give him two options: he can either attempt to pass an amendment to the constitution or, with the “advice and consent of the Senate,” he can sign the Patriot Act as a treaty with a foreign nation. Either of these measures will evade …

Indivisible Injury Negligence And Nuisance Cases –Proving Causation Among Multiple-Source Polluters: A State-By-State Survey Of The Law For New England, And A Proposal For A New Causation Framework, Paul Homer

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] "The skies, soil, and water of every state are polluted every day. Whether the pollutants enter the atmos phere from coal plants or the water-ways from large farms, materials a bnormal to the “natural” environment are regularly emitted by a variety of sources over wide regions of the nation. To some extent, such emissions are normal and acceptable activities in modern society."