Law Commons^™

Beyond Finality: How Making Criminal Judgments Less Final Can Further The Interests Of Finality, Andrew Chongseh Kim

Andrew Chongseh Kim

Courts and scholars commonly assume that granting convicted defendants more liberal rights to challenge their judgments would harm society’s interests in “finality.” According to conventional wisdom, finality in criminal judgments is necessary to conserve resources, encourage efficient behavior by defense counsel, and deter crime. Thus, under the common analysis, the extent to which convicted defendants should be allowed to challenge their judgments depends on how much society is willing to sacrifice to validate defendants’ rights. This Article argues that expanding defendants’ rights on post-conviction review does not always harm these interests. Rather, more liberal review can often conserve state resources, …

A Corporation Has No Soul - The Business Entity Law Response To Challenges To The Contraceptive Mandate Under The Ppaca, Thomas E. Rutledge

Thomas E. Rutledge

The most contentious matter in the implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (the “PPACA”) is not a question of health care, but rather one of the law of business organizations. The dispute has been over the requirement that group health insurance plans provide, on a no-cost sharing basis, coverage for a variety of procedures and prescription medicines involving contraception and what are described as “abortificants.”

The class of suits subject to this discussion were filed by what are not religious organizations but rather for-profit business ventures, asserting that they should be exempt from the requirements of the …

A Failure To Consider: Why Lawmakers Create Risk By Ignoring Trade Obligations, David R. Kocan Professor

David R. Kocan Professor

The U.S. Congress frequently passes laws facially unrelated to trade that significantly impact U.S. trade relations. These impacts are often harmful, significant, and long-lasting. Despite this fact, these bills rarely receive adequate consideration of how they will impact trade. Without this consideration, Congress cannot properly conduct a cost-benefit analysis necessary to pass effective laws. To remedy this problem, the U.S. Trade Representative should evaluate U.S. domestic law to determine whether it is consistent with international trade obligations. Moreover, the U.S. Congress committee structure should be amended so that laws that might impact trade are considered within that light. In the …

Addiction Postulates And Legal Causation, Or Who's In Charge, Person Or Brain?, David L. Wallace

David L Wallace

In this article, I address the persistent confusion over the meaning of a medical diagnosis of drug addiction or substance dependence in the courtroom, specifically in regard to legal judgments about the reasonable legal person, causation, and individual responsibility in civil actions. Using the example of the Engle tobacco litigation in Florida, where the plaintiffs have reduced mind to brain and claimed that the clinical status of addiction excuses or mitigates the smoker’s responsibility for the health consequences of smoking based on brain processes, I examine the conceptual difficulties presented by use of biomedical models of behavior in a legal …

The Arbitration Clause As Super Contract, Richard Frankel

Richard Frankel

It is widely acknowledged that the purpose of the Federal Arbitration Act was to place arbitration clauses on equal footing with other contracts. Nonetheless, federal and state courts have turned arbitration clauses into “super contracts” by creating special interpretive rules for arbitration clauses that do not apply to other contracts. In doing so, they have relied extensively, and incorrectly, on the Supreme Court’s determination that the FAA embodies a federal policy favoring arbitration.

While many scholars have focused attention on the public policy rationales for and against arbitration, few have explored how arbitration clauses should be interpreted. This article fills …

Lawyers, Food, And Money, David L. Wallace

David L Wallace

No abstract provided.

Implementing Language Policy For Deaf Students In A Texas School District, Sarah Compton

Sarah Compton

Language policy implementation is a complex, multilayered process. Understanding this process can be achieved by identifying the agents, layers, and processes of language planning and policy activities, analyzing the layers independently, and examining the relations among the layers. Considering these dimensions, this article explicates how U.S. special education policy functions as de facto language policy for deaf students. Turning to implementation in local contexts, data from a larger multi-sited, qualitative case study of a Texas school district is presented to show how individuals act as policy-implementing agents and how their beliefs about language and education policy influences the policy discourses …