Law Commons^™

Social Security Disability And Alcoholism: A Proposal For Reform, Kenneth L. Matheny

Kenneth L Matheny

No abstract provided.

Law, Fugitive Capital, And Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation, Walter J. Kendall Lll

Walter J. Kendall lll

No abstract provided.

Hospital Chargemaster Insanity: Heeling The Healers, George A. Nation Iii

George A Nation III

Hospital list prices, contained in something called a chargemaster are insanely high, often running 10 times the amount that hospitals routinely accept as full payment from insurers. Moreover, the relative level of a particular hospital’s chargemaster prices bears no relationship to either the quality of the services the hospital provides or, to the cost of the services provided. The purpose of these fictitious list prices is to serve as a starting point or anchoring point, for negotiations with third-party payers regarding the amount that they will actually pay the hospital for it’s goods and services.

Ironically, there is widespread agreement, …

For Goodness’ Sake: A Two-Part Proposal For Remedying The U.S. Charity/Justice Imbalance, Fran Quigley

Fran Quigley

The U.S. approach to addressing economic and social needs strongly favors individual and corporate charity over the establishment and enforcement of economic and social rights. This charity/justice imbalance has a severely negative impact on the nation’s poor, who despite the overall U.S. wealth struggle with inadequate access to healthcare, housing, and nutrition. This article suggests a two-part approach for remedying the charity/justice imbalance in the U.S.: First, the U.S. should eliminate the charitable tax deduction, a policy creation that does not effectively address economic and social needs, forces an inequitable poverty relief and tax burden on the middle class, and …

Definitions, Religion, And Free Exercise Guarantees, Mark Strasser

Mark Strasser

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution protects the free exercise of religion. Non-religious practices do not receive those same protections, which makes the ability to distinguish between religious and non-religious practices important. Regrettably, members of the Court have been unable to agree about how to distinguish the religious from the non-religious—sometimes, the implicit criteria focus on the sincerity of the beliefs, sometimes the strength of the beliefs or the role that they play in an individual’s life, and sometimes the kind of beliefs. In short, the Court has virtually guaranteed an incoherent jurisprudence by sending contradictory signals with …

Let Educators Educate, Let Builders Build: Making A Case For School Facility Privatization, John Pizzo

John Pizzo

No abstract provided.

In Defense Of Disparate Impact: An Opportunity To Realize The Promise Of The Fair Housing Act, Valerie Schneider

Valerie Schneider

Abstract:

Twice in the past three years, the Supreme Court has granted certiorari in Fair Housing cases, and, each time, under pressure from civil rights leaders who feared that the Supreme Court might narrow current Fair Housing Act jurisprudence, the cases settled just weeks before oral argument. Settlements after the Supreme Court grants certiorari are extremely rare, and, in these cases, the settlements reflect a substantial fear among civil rights advocates that the Supreme Court’s recent decisions in cases such as Shelby County v. Holder and Fisher v. University of Texas are working to dismantle many of the protections of …

Promoting Equitable Law School Admissions Through Legal Challenges To The Lsat, Al Alston

Al Alston

No abstract provided.

Denying Freedom Rather Than Securing The Country: National Security Is Undermined By Laws Governing Battered Immigrants, Eve Tilley-Coulson

Eve Tilley-Coulson

Relief for battered immigrants is not an obvious national security matter per se, yet remedies are enacted in conjunction with stringent interpretations of immigration law, as though victims pose a security threat. Discrepancies exist between the immigration laws themselves—which attempt to secure the United States from disease, violence, and illegal activity—and the loopholes within remedies under these laws, unnecessarily removing victims and perpetuating a cycle of fear and abuse. By displacing the victim, rather than the abuser, the government allows the cycle of violence to continue, while simultaneously breaking up families and creating disorder and instability. The economic and societal …

Denying Freedom Rather Than Securing The Country: National Security Is Undermined By Laws Governing Battered Immigrants, Eve Tilley-Coulson

Eve Tilley-Coulson

Relief for battered immigrants is not an obvious national security matter per se, yet remedies are enacted in conjunction with stringent interpretations of immigration law, as though victims pose a security threat. Discrepancies exist between the immigration laws themselves—which attempt to secure the United States from disease, violence, and illegal activity—and the loopholes found within remedies under these laws, unnecessarily removing victims and perpetuating a cycle of fear and abuse. This paper addresses how relief for battered immigrants, when implemented with the priority of protecting national security and immigration legislation, creates and perpetuates negative societal consequences. The economic and societal …

The Natural Rights Of Children, Walter E. Block

Walter E Block

No abstract provided.

Legalized Lynch Mobs In The 21st Century: Racial Improprieties In The Death Penalty, Betsy A. Daniller

Betsy A Daniller

No abstract provided.

Future Of Legal Aid, Wayne Moore

wayne moore

The Future of Legal Aid

Abstract

This article predicts the future of legal aid in the U.S. It begins by examining the tools other countries use for shaping the future of legal aid and explains why these methods will not work in the U.S. It also acknowledges that changes that require a significant increase in funding are not likely to occur in the foreseeable future. What’s left are methods that allow providers to do more with the resources they have, namely the adoption of systems. The U.S. is currently experiencing a revolution in the use of systems to expand and …

The Second Amendment: A Reasonable Interpretation In The 21st Century, Kaleb D. Wingate

Kaleb D Wingate

The interpretation of the Second Amendment has been the subject of increased litigation throughout the last several years. Challenges to the Second Amendment and related legislation tend to create polarized responses from various political organizations. These responses, commonly in the form of votes in our legislative branch, impede the progress of reasonable measures to reduce instances of violence across the country. Addressing gun violence in our country must be a goal which exceeds the interest of any political affiliate or lobby. This article suggests reasonable measures our government can take to address the growing problems with gun violence in the …

The Dangerousness Of The Status Quo: A Case For Modernizing Civil Commitment Law, Daniel A. Moon

Daniel C Moon

The states, private healthcare organizations, and those with psychiatric disorders are poorly served by the vague “dangerousness” standard endorsed by the United States Supreme Court in O’Connor v. Donaldson, as well as the state statutes that adhere to the high bar set in its holding. This paper explores involuntary civil commitment from a variety of perspectives in order to highlight these issues and to identify where improvements can be made. Specifically, this article proposes that the American Law Institute or the American Bar Association promulgate model rules intended to correct the system’s shortcomings and protect the various interested parties.

Daddy Warriors: The Battle To Equalize Paternity Leave In The United States By Breaking Gender Stereotypes; A Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Analysis, Abraham Z. Melamed

Abraham Z Melamed

No abstract provided.

How To Create American Manufacturing Jobs, John D. Gleissner Esquire

John D Gleissner Esquire

No abstract provided.

Social Capital: Friend Or Foe In The Lives Of Two Prominent Incarcerated Individuals, Froswa Booker-Drew

Froswa Booker-Drew

No abstract provided.

The Lawyer Rent-Seeker Myth And Public Policy, Teresa J. Schmid

Teresa J Schmid

ABSTRACT Two enduring fallacies in public policy are that lawyers are rent seekers who impair rather than stimulate the economy, and that there are too many of them. While lawyers may disagree with the first premise, they tacitly accept the second. These two fallacies have led leaders in both the political and professional arenas to adopt policies that impair access to justice. This study documents the negative effects of those policies and recommends courses of action to reverse those effects.

The Parent Trap: The Unconstitutional Practice Of Severing Parental Rights Without Due Process Of Law, Kendra H. Fershee

Kendra H Fershee

In 1997, Congress passed the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) to stem what it perceived to be an overreliance by states on foster care to provide a safe place for children whose parents had been accused of abuse or neglect. Prior to ASFA, many children were placed in foster care for extended periods of time while their parents were evaluated for their fitness and rehabilitative efforts were made to reunify families. Congress considered the time children spent in foster care as damaging to them because it left them uncertain about where they would live in the future. Congress, in …

The Economy Rules: An Analysis Of The Ever-Shifting Portrayal Of Attorneys In Popular Culture, Neely M. Peden

Neely M Peden

There has most definitely been a shift in the view of elite professionals within modern pop culture. Attorneys especially have come to face “anti-establishment” movement by popular culture. Those professions which used to be revered are now examples of ill-morals and ill-behavior. Indeed, popular culture goes out of its way to make villains out of attorneys by showing unprincipled characters in legal television shows or by churning out movies that revolve around attorneys whose lives and morals are so corrupt that they need to go through some sort of personal tragedy to be redeemed. It is this paper’s contention that …

"Health Care For All:" The Gap Between Rhetoric And Reality In The Affordable Care Act, Vinita Andrapalliyal

Vinita Andrapalliyal

The rhetoric of “universal health care” and “health care for all” that pervaded the health care debate which culminated in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA)’s passage. However, the ACA offers reduced to no protections for certain noncitizen groups, specifically: 1) recently-arrived legal permanent residents, 2) nonimmigrants, and 3) the undocumented. This Article explores how the Act fails to ensure “health care for all,” demonstrates the gap between rhetoric and reality by parsing the ACA’s legislative history, and posits reasons for the gap. The ACA’s legislative history suggests that legislators’ biases towards these noncitizen groups, particularly with respect …

Ideological Voting Applied To The School Desegregation Cases In The Federal Courts Of Appeals From The 1960’S And 70’S, Joe Custer

Joe Custer

This paper considers a research suggestion from Cass Sunstein to analyze segregation cases from the 1960's and 1970's and whether three hypothesis he projected in the article "Ideological Voting on Federal Courts of Appeals: A Preliminary Investigation," 90 Va. L. Rev. 301 (2004), involving various models of judicial ideology, would pertain. My paper considers Sunstein’s three hypotheses in addition to other judicial ideologies to try to empirically determine what was influencing Federal Court of Appeals Judges in regard to Civil Rights issues, specifically school desegregation, in the 1960’s and 1970’s.

Caught In A Trap - Paternity Presumptions In Louisiana, Evelyn L. Wilson

Evelyn L. Wilson

This article takes a critical look at revisions to Louisiana's 2005 law on presumptions of paternity and advocates for a change so that the presumptions more often reflects the reality that a child born during a later marriage is the child of the mother's current husband and not the child of the mother's former husband, as the 2005 law now presumes.

‘Peter Pan’ As Public Policy: Should Fifty-Five-Plus Age- Restricted Communities Continue To Be Exempt From Civil Rights Laws And Substantive Federal Regulation?, Mark D. Bauer

Mark D Bauer

Although millions of Americans live in 55-plus age-restricted housing, little research has been done to determine whether these communities benefit their residents, or the nation as a whole. This is particularly ironic because these communities exist in contravention to anti-discrimination laws by virtue of a specific exemption granted to real estate developers by an Act of Congress. Ordinarily age discrimination is prohibited by the Fair Housing Act, Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968. Successful lobbying by special interest groups carved out an exemption for 55-plus housing.

The original exemption required developers to offer elders special services and …

An Argument For A Vicarious Liability Standard For Agricultural Employers And Associations For The Acts Of Contractee Farm Labor Contractors: An Addition To The Migrant And Seasonal Agricultural Worker’S Protection Act Of 1983, Andrew Leibfried

Andrew Leibfried

Much of the federal law that has been passed to protect seasonal and migrant agricultural workers has been circumvented by Agricultural Employers and Associations who contract out their labor, and thus, many of their obligations to Farm Labor Contractors. Because these Farm Labor Contractors are considered independent contractors, seasonal and migrant agricultural laborers are required to enforce their rights under federal law against these contractors who can be either transient or judgment proof, while the Agricultural Employer or Association who hired the contractor escapes liability entirely. The focus of this paper is to present the case for a different legal …

Why Are We Teaching Kids To Hate?: Ending The Practice Of Gay-To-Straight Conversion Treatments, Afton R. Cavanaugh

Afton R. Cavanaugh

The governor of California just signed into law SB 1172, creating a cause of action against mental health professionals that attempt to convert children under the age of eighteen from gay to straight. Conversion therapy, as this practice is called, has been around for a long time, but recently our nation’s youth has come into the crosshairs of powerful anti-gay activists. Conversion therapy imbeds within the child’s psyche an internalized form of homophobia that causes an extreme risk of psychological distress given the developing and often fragile mental state of children and teenagers. These methods have no proven success rate, …

The Haunting Of Abigail Fisher: Race, Affirmative Action, And The Ghosts Of Legal History, Hilary A. Leewong

Hilary A Leewong

What is race in 2012, and why does it matter?

At the end of the current term, the Supreme Court will decide Fisher v. University of Texas. In doing so, the Court revisits the role of affirmative action and the meaning of race much sooner than constitutional law scholars, and likely the average college applicant, expected it would.

The Court’s last definitive take on the subject was conveyed by Justice O’Connor in 2003’s Grutter v. Bollinger. Justice O’Connor’s opinion conveyed disappointment that race-based admissions in higher education was still necessary this long after Brown v. Board of Education, heralded the …

Mandatory Reporting Of Abuse: A Historical Perspective On The Evolution Of States’ Current Mandatory Reporting Laws With A Review Of The Laws In The Commonwealth Of Pennsylvania, Leonard G. Brown Iii

Leonard G Brown III

Mandatory Reporting of Abuse: A Historical Perspective on the Evolution of States’ Current Mandatory Reporting Laws with a Review of the Laws in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania

The first states passed laws in 1963, following the publishing of a seminal article titled, “The Battered Child Syndrome.” By 1967, all fifty states had passed some form of mandatory reporting law. The federal government’s first major foray into the area of child abuse prevention occurred on January 31, 1974, when Congress enacted the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (“CAPTA”). CAPTA has no federal mandatory reporting provision, but rather requires states to …

Applying Method To The Madness: The Right To Court Appointed Guardians Ad Litem And Counsel For The Mentally Ill In Immigration Proceedings, Amelia Wilson

Amelia Wilson

A unique dilemma facing immigration judges (IJs) and practitioners today is how to address the acute problem of mentally ill respondents appearing pro se in immigration removal proceedings. Mentally ill respondents are more likely to face deportation from a position of indigence and detention, both of which create substantial barriers to obtaining counsel. Even where represented, the mentally ill are less able to contribute to their own defense or understand the proceedings against them. This lack of meaningful participation has cascading deleterious effects on respondents themselves, but also on our already overburdened immigration courts by creating docket delays, prolonged detention, …