Law Commons^™

The Pressure Is On—Criminal Defense Counsel Strategies After Padilla V. Kentucky, Bill Hing

Bill Ong Hing

The Supreme Court’s message to criminal defense attorneys in Padilla v. Kentucky was clear: when there is a risk of deportation, defense counsel has a constitutional duty to inform an immigrant defendant of the potential for deportation or adverse immigration consequences prior to pleading guilty. In my view, this constitutional duty places tremendous pressure on defense counsel to do more than advise, because once advised, the client very naturally may want to know what options are available other than going to trial. Rather than simply focusing on how to minimize the time of incarceration for the client under a particular …

Reforming Preference Law, Dalie Jimenez

Dalie Jimenez

This article responds to Brook Gotberg's proposal to do away with preference liability in certain Chapter 11 cases and provides empirical evidence of preferential transfers in consumer Chapter 7 cases.

The Implications Of Incorporating The Eighth Amendment Prohibition On Excessive Bail, Scott Howe

Scott W. Howe

In its opinion in McDonald v. City of Chicago, 130 S.Ct. 3020 (2010), concerning the incorporation of the Second Amendment, the Supreme Court included a footnote that listed the Eighth Amendment prohibition on excessive bail as one of the incorporated Bill of Rights protections. Oddly, the Court had never incorporated the bail clause or even explained what protections it conferred. While strange, these circumstances provide a rare opportunity to reason backward from incorporation to the meaning of the incorporated provision. And by pursuing those backward implications, the paper offers novel arguments about the proper understanding of the bail clause.

I …

A Legislative History Of Article I, Section 27 Of The Constitution Of The Commonwealth Of Pennsylvania, John Dernbach, Edmund Sonnenberg

John C. Dernbach

No abstract provided.

Ethics, Morality, And Disruption Of U.S. Immigration Laws, Bill Hing

Bill Ong Hing

In this essay, I review Department of Homeland Security immigration enforcement tools and what I feel is the unnecessary havoc that they wreak on immigrant communities. In the process, I describe the resistance to these policies by immigrants and their supporters who have attempted to disrupt the enforcement tools. Immigrants and their supporters are attempting to raise awareness of better strategies to resolve whatever problems are perceived to exist. I also argue that the disruptive tactics by immigrants and their supporters have actually helped to push the Obama administration into engaging in disruptive innovation of its own with respect to …

Eu Climate Change Litigation: All Quiet On The Luxembourgian Front?, Sanja Bogojevic

Sanja Bogojević

No abstract provided.

"I Still Live In Guantanamo!" Human Rights Abuses Continue After Detainees Leave Guantanamo, Peter Honigsberg

Peter J Honigsberg

In November 2014, the U.S. government transferred Yemeni national Hussein Al-marfadi, from the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba detention center to the nation of Slovakia. He had never been charged with a crime, and had been cleared for release nearly five years before his transfer to Slovakia. Three months later, in February 2015, the Witness to Guantanamo project (W2G) interviewed Al-marfadi in Zvolen, a town in central Slovakia. Although physically and psychologically scarred from his 12 years of detention, Al-marfadi was an engaging, even-tempered and thoughtful man.

However, when W2G asked Al-marfadi about his life today, his composure and even-tempered tone transformed …

Notes From A New Underground: The Intersection Of Russian Orthodoxy, Religious Liberty, Lgbt Rights, And State Authority, John Ehrett

John Ehrett

Current laws in the Russian Federation impose sanctions against both speech deemed offensive to Russia’s traditional religious groups, and speech considered “propaganda” of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. This Featured Note offers a contemporary examination of the historical, cultural and political forces underlying these ongoing trends, and offers an interdisciplinary consideration of issues surrounding the intersection of liberty of religious expression with liberty of LGBT expression in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. This is historically contextualized through consideration of the political integration of church and state as a contributing factor toward limitations on these political freedoms. Ultimately, a vision …

African Migration To The United States: Assigned To The Back Of The Bus, Bill Hing

Bill Ong Hing

This book project, timed on the fiftieth anniversary of the 1965 immigration amendments, recognizes many significant effects that the amendments have had on the United States. In many ways—particularly with respect to dramatic demographic changes in Latino and Asian Pacific American communities—the amendments might be regarded as integral to the perpetuation of the United States as a land of immigrants. Yet, when it comes to residents of African descent after the end of slavery, the 1965 changes have had relatively little to do with facilitating the entry of African migrants to our shores.

In this book chapter, I discuss the …

Land And Law In The Age Of Enterprise: A Legal History Of Railroad Land Grants In The Pacific Northwest, 1864-1916, Sean Kammer

Sean Kammer

Federal land subsidies to railroad corporations comprised an important part of the federal government’s policies towards its western land domain in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. In all, Congress granted over a hundred million acres to railroad corporations to subsidize construction of a transcontinental railway network. Long after the last such grant in 1871, these land grants continued to incite political contests in Congress and state legislatures and legal disputes in communities across the West. By the end of the century, railroad corporations had become manifestations not just of the threatening growth of corporate power in the United …

Medical Debt As A Cause Of Consumer Bankruptcy, Daniel Austin

Daniel A. Austin

During his 2009 State of the Union Address, President Obama urged Americans to support healthcare reform, stating “[t]his is a cost that now causes a bankruptcy in America every thirty seconds.” That attention-grabbing statistic was based on a 2009 study, co-authored by now Sen. Elizabeth Warren, which concluded that 62.1% of consumer bankruptcies are medical bankruptcies. The figure has been widely cited by lawmakers, academics, and in the media. Other researchers dispute the study findings, and the issue of medical bankruptcies continues to be a focal point in debates over healthcare policy and bankruptcy law reform.

Several other studies have …

Toward A Textualist Paradigm For Interpreting Emoticons, John Ehrett

John Ehrett

This Essay evaluates the dimensions of courts’ current interpretive dilemma, and subsequently sketches a possible framework for extending traditional statutory interpretation principles into this new domain. Throughout the analysis, the Essay describes the process of attaching cognizable linguistic referents to emoticons and emojis throughout as symbolical reification, and proposes a normative way forward for those tasked with deriving meaning from emoji-laden communications.

Administrative Courts, Sofia Amaral-Garcia

Sofia Amaral-Garcia

No abstract provided.

Eu-Rätten Skulle Gagnas Av En Arbetsrättslig Avdelning I Eu-Domstolen, Niklas Selberg, Erik Sjödin

Niklas Selberg

No abstract provided.

De Minimis Content Discrimination: The Vexing Matter Of Sign-Ordinance Exemptions, Marc Rohr

Marc Rohr

Wartime Quartering With And Without Legislative Authorization, William Gill

William Gill

Ncaa Athletes, Unpaid Interns And The S-Word: Exploring The Rhetorical Impact Of The Language Of Slavery, Maria Ontiveros

Maria L. Ontiveros

Recognition Of Environmental Rights For Pennsylvania Citizens: A Tribute To Chief Justice Castille, John Dernbach, Marc Prokopchak

John C. Dernbach

No abstract provided.