Law Commons^™

Constitutional Restraints On Intrastate Distribution Of Taxing Authority, Walter Hellerstein

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No abstract provided.

Against Bankruptcy: Public Litigation Values Versus The Endless Quest For Global Peace In Mass Litigation, Abbe Gluck, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch, Adam Zimmerman

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Can bankruptcy court solve a public health crisis? Should the goal of “global peace” in complex lawsuits trump traditional litigation values in a system grounded in public participation and jurisdictional redundancy? How much leeway do courts have to innovate civil procedure?

These questions have finally reached the Supreme Court in Harrington v. Purdue Pharma L.P., the $6 billion bankruptcy that purports to achieve global resolution of all current and future opioids suits against the company and its former family owners, the Sacklers. The case provides a critical opportunity to reflect on what is lost when parties in mass torts find …

Blue Carbon, Red States, And Paris Agreement Article 6, Adam D. Orford

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Coastal U.S. states, including many that have opposed proactive U.S. climate policies, are contemplating entrance into the supply side of the international carbon credit markets by, among other things, hosting revenue-generating blue carbon projects on their submerged lands. The voluntary carbon credit markets already facilitate private investment in such activities, and the emerging Paris Agreement Article 6 framework is poised to generate investment interest at the national level as well. Reviewing these trends, this Perspective questions whether this is good climate, environmental, and social policy, and advises further oversight and accountability.

Challenging The Criminalization Of Undocumented Drivers Through A Health-Justice Framework, Jason A. Cade

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States increasingly use driver’s license laws to further policy objectives unrelated to road safety. This symposium contribution employs a health justice lens to focus on one manifestation of this trend—state schemes that prohibit noncitizen residents from accessing driver’s licenses and then impose criminal sanctions for driving without authorization. Status-based no-license laws not only facilitate legally questionable enforcement of local immigration priorities but also impose structural inequities with long-term health consequences for immigrants and their family members, including US citizen children. Safe, reliable transportation is a significant social determinant of health for individuals, families, and communities. Applying a health justice lens …

Blue Carbon Law, Adam D. Orford

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This Article explores the emerging law of blue carbon, defined as rules governing human interventions into Earth’s marine carbon cycles. Blue carbon law is of growing importance today as pressure mounts to incorporate coastal conservation and restoration activities into market-based carbon sequestration schemes, and as the planet’s deep oceans are evaluated for their carbon sequestration potential. The Article conceptualizes two broad trends in blue carbon law: the international law of carbon credit markets creating incentives to commodify and monetize blue carbon resources; and the responsive integration of commodification concepts into existing laws that already manage and influence blue carbon systems. …

The Right To Trial By Jury Shall Remain Inviolate: Jury Trials In Civil Actions In Georgia’S Courts, David E. Shipley

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Trials, though rare, “shape almost every aspect of procedure,” and the jury trial is a distinctive feature of civil litigation in the United States. The Seventh Amendment of the U.S. Constitution ‘preserves’ the right to jury trial “[i]n suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars.” Even though this amendment does not apply to the states, courts in the states “honor the right to the extent it is created in their constitutions or local statutes.”

The Georgia Constitution provides that “[t]he right to trial by jury shall remain inviolate,” and Georgia’s appellate courts have shown …

Chevron And Stare Decisis, Kent H. Barnett, Christopher J. Walker

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In our contribution to this Chevron on Trial Symposium, we argue that the Supreme Court should not overrule Chevron in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and its companion case Relentless v. Department of Commerce. We based our argument largely on statutory stare decisis. In particular, Chevron deference is a bedrock precedent in administrative law, relied on by the Supreme Court and the lower federal courts thousands of times since Chevron was decided in 1984. Congress, federal agencies, and the regulated public have also structured their affairs around the precedent. Conversely, the constitutional arguments against Chevron are unpersuasive, and the debate …

Judicial Threats To Olmstead And The Americans With Disabilities Act, Jean Mangan, Andrea L. Dennis

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The authors examine the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Olmstead v L.C. ex rel. Zimring and related Supreme Court rulings that could raise questions about the Americans With Disabilities Act's guarantee of care in integrated settings and about which governmental entity's interpretation should be respected when deciding whether a state has met its integration obligation. After reviewing statutes, administrative regulations, and judicial decisions, the authors conclude that Olmstead's integration mandate will likely stand, but actions should be taken to codify the rule in federal and state statutes so that governmental agencies will continue to have the authority to ensure compliance …

Jurisdiction Beyond Our Borders: United States V. Alcoa And The Extraterritorial Reach Of American Antitrust, 1909–1945, Laura Phillips Sawyer

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Chapter in the book Antimonopoly and American Democracy by Daniel A. Crane and William J. Novak, eds., Oxford University Press, 2023.

In 1945, Judge Learned Hand wrote one of the most influential opinions in modern antitrust law. In declaring that the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa) had illegally monopolized the industry for virgin aluminum and had participated in an illegal international cartel, Hand both revived and extended American antitrust law. The ruling is famous for several reasons: it narrowly defined the relevant market in favor of the government; it expanded the category of impermissible dominant firm conduct; it interpreted congressional …

Architects, Artists, Photographers, Property Owners, The Public And Their Rights: Reconciling Vara, The Awcpa, And Copyright Fundamentals, David E. Shipley

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Murals, sculpture, and other works of visual art have been parts of buildings, monuments and other structures for centuries, but copyright infringement litigation in the federal courts between artists, architects, photographers, and building owners is a relatively recent phenomenon. The outcome of these lawsuits has an impact on the public seeing works of visual art; experiencing works of visual art on buildings, monuments, and structures; and, looking at photographs of visual art on or in those architectural works. This article focuses on how the Copyright Act’s protection of artists’ rights in their works of visual art on buildings under the …

All The News That’S Fit To Be Identified: Facilitating Access To High-Quality News Through Internet Platforms, Sonja R. West, Jonathan Peters, Lefteris Jason Anastasopolous

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Roughly half of Americans get some of their news from social media, and nearly two-thirds get some of their news from search engines. As our modern information gatekeepers, these internet companies bear a special responsibility to consider the impact of their platform and site policies on users’ access to high-quality news sources. They should adopt policies that clear the digital pathway between the public and press by facilitating such access. To that end, the companies must first, address the threshold issue of how best to identify high-quality news sources. This article examines factors that would be useful, drawing from legal …

The Spac Market, Usha Rodrigues, Michael Stegemoller

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Special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) exploded in popularity in the past few years, to such a degree that they made up 60% of IPOs in 2020, 66.3% in 2021, and 69.4% in 2022. Celebrities from Colin Kaepernick to Jay-Z have launched SPACs, but perhaps the most feverish attention came in October 2021, when a SPAC called Digital World Acquisition Corp (DWAC) announced plans to acquire Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), a social media company headed by former president Donald Trump.

The SPAC frenzy has now abated, a casualty of some combination of higher interest rates, regulatory crackdown, and oversupply. …

Plaintiffs' Process: Civil Procedure, Mdl, And A Day In Court, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch, Abbe R. Gluck

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The article focuses on the concept of "plaintiffs process" within the field of civil procedure. It discusses how civil procedure doctrine has traditionally been defendant-centric, focusing on the rights and protections of defendants in legal cases. It examines the role of multidistrict litigation (MDL) in this context and how it impacts plaintiffs rights and access to the courts.

Environmental Law, Travis M. Trimble

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In 2022, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit held that a plaintiff and the organization to which she belonged had standing, based on her claimed injury to her aesthetic well-being, to bring a Clean Water Act (CWA) citizen suit against a developer who had allegedly filled a wetland in violation of its permit, even though the plaintiff had never visited the wetland and even though the wetland was on private property not accessible to the plaintiff. The United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama concluded that acid mine leachate from a refuse pile …

Book Review: Comparative Election Law, Lori A. Ringhand

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Review of the book Comparative Election Law by James A Gardner, ed. (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2022) 544 p.

Constitutional Text, Founding-Era History, And The Independent-State-Legislature Theory, Dan T. Coenen

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One question raised by proponents of the so-called independent-state-legislature theory concerns the extent to which state courts can apply state constitutional requirements to invalidate state laws that concern federal elections. According to one proposed application of the theory, state courts can never subject such laws to state-constitution-based judicial review. According to another application, federal courts can broadly, though not invariably, foreclose state courts from drawing on state constitutions to invalidate federal-election-related state legislation. This article evaluates whether either of these positions comports with the original meaning of the Constitution. Given the article’s focus on the originalist methodology, it directs attention …

The Immigration Implications Of Presidential Pot Pardons, Jason A. Cade

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This Essay examines the immigration implications of President Joe Biden’s Proclamation on October 6, 2022, pardoning most federal and D.C. offenders who committed the offense of simple marijuana possession. A late twentieth century interpretive shift by the Board of Immigration Appeals holds that pardons only prevent deportation for certain criminal history categories, which do not include controlled substance offenses, and thus far lower federal courts have deferred to the agency’s approach.Nevertheless, according to the analysis I offer, President Biden’s cannabis pardons should be deemed fully effective to eliminate all immigration penalties. All of the immigrant pardon cases to reach the …

Mdl For The People, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch

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By the terms of its own statute and the limits of its constitutional authority, multidistrict litigation (“MDL”) is designed to transfer and coordinate individual lawsuits then return plaintiffs back to their chosen fora for case-specific discovery and trial. Because each plaintiff is present and has her own lawyer, there is no need for the judge to police conflicts of interest or attorney loyalty as in the MDL’s kin, the class action.

But these assumptions do not match the empirical reality. Remand is rare. MDL judges resolve ninety-nine percent of the cases before them. And to some attorneys, the people of …

Data Versus More Data In Multidistrict Litigation, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch

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A reply to Lynn A. Baker & Andrew Bradt, Anecdotes in the Search for Truth About Multidistrict Litigation, 107 Cornell Law Review Online 249 (2023).

Perceptions of Justice in Multi-district Litigation: Voices from the Crowd presents the results of a study that no one wanted us to do—or help us to do. Professors Lynn Baker and Andrew Bradt would prefer to dismiss as “anecdote” our two-year effort to find and gain the trust of multi-district litigation (MDL) plaintiffs whose attorneys told them not to discuss their case with anyone, including us.

There are decades worth of procedural justice studies …

Privatizing International Governance, Melissa J. Durkee

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The theme of this panel is “Privatizing International Governance.” As the opening vignettes should make clear, public-private partnerships of all kinds are increasingly common in the international system. Since United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan's launch of the Global Compact in 2000, the United Nations has increasingly opened up to business entities. Now, the Sustainable Development Goals, the Global Compact, and the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights all encourage engaging with business entities as partners in developing and executing global governance agendas. These partnerships are seen by some as indispensable to sustainable development, international business regulation, climate change mitigation, …

Fair Notice, The Rule Of Law, And Reforming Qualified Immunity, Nathan S. Chapman

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After many well-publicized cases of police wrongdoing, a growing number of courts, scholars, and politicians have demanded the abolition of qualified immunity. The doctrine requires courts to dismiss damages actions against officials for violating the plaintiff’s constitutional rights unless a reasonable officer would have known that the right was “clearly established.” Scholars argue that the doctrine impedes deterrence of rights violations and forecloses compensation and vindication for victims.

One line of attack has relied on empirical evidence to challenge what scholars take to be the main justification for qualified immunity, that it prevents the threat of constitutional liability from over-deterring …

"The Arc Of The Moral Universe": Christian Eschatology And U.S. Constitutionalism, Nathan Chapman

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At the heart of American constitutionalism is an irony. The United States is constitutionally committed to religious neutrality; the government may not take sides in religious disputes. Yet many features of constitutional law are inexplicable without their intellectual and cultural origins in religious beliefs, practices, and movements. The process of constitutionalization has been one of secularization. The most obvious example is perhaps also the most ideal of liberty of conscience that fueled religious disestablishment, free exercise, and equality was born of a Protestant view of the individual’s responsibility before God.

This Essay explores another overlooked instance of constitutional secularization. Many …

The Contours Of Gun Industry Immunity: Separation Of Powers, Federalism, And The Second Amendment, Hillel Y. Levin, Timothy D. Lytton

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In 2005, Congress passed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), granting the firearms industry sweeping immunity from civil lawsuits. However, PLCAA immunity is not absolute. This Article demonstrates that both state and federal courts have fundamentally misread PLCAA when adjudicating cases involving the scope of gun industry immunity. Properly understood, PLCAA permits lawsuits against the gun industry so long as they are based on statutory causes of action rather than common law. While broadly preempting state common law claims, PLCAA affords state legislatures autonomy in deciding how to regulate the gun industry within their borders.

Additionally, this …

Brokered Abuse, Thomas E. Kadri

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Data brokers are abuse enablers. These companies, which traffic information about people for profit, facilitate interpersonal abuse by making it easier to find and contact people. By thwarting people’s obscurity, brokers expose them to physical, psychological, financial, and reputational harm. To date, there have been four common legal responses to this situation: prohibiting abusive acts, mandating broker transparency, limiting data collection, and restricting data disclosure. Though these measures each have some merit, none is adequate, and several recent privacy laws have even made matters worse. Put simply, the current legal landscape is neither effective nor empathetic.

This Essay explores the …

The Pledging World Order, Melissa J. Durkee

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There is an emerging world order characterized by unilateral pledges within a legal or “legal-ish” architecture of commitments. The pledging world order has materialized in the international legal response to climate change and in other diverse sites. It crosses and blurs the public-private divide. It erodes distinctions between multilateralism and localism, law and not-law, and progress and stasis. It is both a symptom of and a contributor to the dismantling of the Westphalian and postwar orders. Its report card is mixed: While pledging can be highly ineffective as a legal technology, the pledging world order may respond to some legitimacy …

Constructing The Supreme Court: How Race, Ethnicity, And Gender Have Affected Presidential Selection And Senate Confirmation Hearings, Christina L. Boyd, Paul M. Collins, Jr., Lori A. Ringhand, Karson A. Pennington

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In February 2022, President Joseph Biden announced his nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson to serve as an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. In doing so, he said this:

For too long, our government, our courts haven’t looked like America. And I believe it’s time that we have a Court that reflects the full talents and greatness of our nation with a nominee of extraordinary qualifications and that we inspire all young people to believe that they can one day serve their country at the highest level.

In the following days, Jackson’s nomination was discussed with enthusiasm, much like …

The Court And The Constitution, Lori A. Ringhand

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Americans do not want the Supreme Court to be just another political institution. This is apparent in the lukewarm response to even modest proposals to change the structure of the Court, such as limiting the terms of its justices or changing its size. The partisan overlay of this reaction is obvious, but the purpose of this Essay is to highlight an additional barrier to change: the dominance of originalist rhetoric in American constitutional discourse. The rhetoric of originalism has successfully tapped into many Americans’ deeply held expectations about the role of the Court and the Constitution as a unique and …

Contextualizing Corruption: Foreign Financing Bans And Campaign Finance Law, Lori A. Ringhand

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In Bluman v. FEC, the court held that foreign nationals could be prohibited from making even independent expenditures because such expenditures risked inappropriately influencing the choices made by American voters. The result in Bluman is correct, but the court’s reasoning is wrong. Foreign financing bans are constitutional not because foreign speech may “inappropriately” influence voters, but for the same reason all successful restrictions on political speech are constitutional: because of the risk they pose to the appearance or actuality of corrupting the conduct of public officials. The sense of indebtedness or ingratiation independent expenditures can induce in elected officials may …

Regulating Off-Campus Student Expression: Mahanoy Area School District V. B.L.: The Good News For College Student Journalists, Leslie Klein, Jonathan Peters

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This essay argues that the 2021 U.S. Supreme Court case Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L. protects off-campus college student journalism (if not published in a school-sponsored outlet) from school censorship and punishment—thanks to the majority opinion's reliance on in loco parentis principles. In short, Mahanoy made clear that K-12 students generally have diminished First Amendment rights on campus because parents have delegated to teachers and staff some of their supervisory authority. That reasoning applies with less force when students speak off campus, and it applies with no force if the speaker is a legal adult, as nearly all college …

Silencing Litigation Through Bankruptcy, Pamela Foohey, Christopher K. Odinet

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Bankruptcy is being used as a tool for silencing survivors and their families. When faced with claims from multiple plaintiffs related to the same wrongful conduct that can financially or operationally crush the defendant over the long term—a phenomenon we identify as onslaught litigation—defendants harness bankruptcy’s reorganization process to draw together those who allege harm and pressure them into a swift, universal settlement. In doing so, they use the bankruptcy system to deprive survivors of their voice and the public of the truth. This Article identifies this phenomenon and argues that it is time to rein in this destructive use …