Law Commons^™

Competitive Governance And Displacement Decisions Under Rebel Rule: Evidence From The Islamic State In Iraq, Mara Redlich Revkin

Faculty Scholarship

When rebel groups with state-building ambitions capture territory, who stays and why? Through semi-structured interviews and an original household survey in the Iraqi city of Mosul, which was controlled by the Islamic State for more than three years, I conduct a multi-method descriptive comparison of the characteristics of “stayers” against “leavers.” I test and find some quantitative and qualitative support for a theory of competitive governance: Civilians who perceived improvements in the quality of governance under IS rule—relative to the Iraqi state—were more likely to stay under IS rule than those who perceived no change or a deterioration, but displacement …

Chinese Canons And The Basic Law: Tracing The Interpretative Shifts Of The National People's Congress Standing Committee, Joshua M. Feinzig

Faculty Scholarship

This Article considers the uneasy constitutional relationship between Hong Kong and the People's Republic of China Central Government through the lens of the National People's Congress Standing Committee's interpretations of the Hong Kong Basic Law. These interpretations have constrained and redirected Hong Kong's democratic development, and scholars have appropriately questioned the legitimate extent of the Standing Committee's interpretative authority in light Article 158 and the animating purposes of the Sino-British Joint Declaration Treaty. But the interpretations are less frequently treated as legal texts that both reflect and inform underlying constitutional developments.

This Article therefore evaluates the Standing Committee's normative and …

The Untold History Of Women’S Suffrage: Voting Rights Pre-Ratification, Hayley N. Lawrence

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Cleaning Corporate Governance, Jens Frankenreiter, Cathy Hwang, Yaron Nili, Eric L. Talley

Faculty Scholarship

Although empirical scholarship dominates the field of law and finance, much of it shares a common vulnerability: an abiding faith in the accuracy and integrity of a small, specialized collection of corporate governance data. In this paper, we unveil a novel collection of three decades’ worth of corporate charters for thousands of public companies, which shows that this faith is misplaced.

We make three principal contributions to the literature. First, we label our corpus for a variety of firm- and state-level governance features. Doing so reveals significant infirmities within the most well-known corporate governance datasets, including an error rate exceeding …

The Giant Shadow Of Corporate Gadflies, Kobi Kastiel, Yaron Nili

Faculty Scholarship

Modern-day shareholders influence corporate America more than ever before. From demanding greater accountability of executives to lobbying for a variety of social and environmental policies, shareholders today have the power to alter how American companies are run. Amazingly, a small group of individual shareholders wields unprecedented power to set corporate agendas and stands at the epicenter of our contemporary corporate governance ecosystem. In fact, the power of these individuals, known as “corporate gadflies,” continues to rise.

Corporate gadflies present a puzzling reality. Although public corporations in the United States are increasingly owned by large institutional investors, much of their corporate …

When Virtual Discipline Becomes Virtual Suspension: Protecting The Due Process Rights Of Virtual Learners, Peggy Nicholson

Faculty Scholarship

It is well established that public school students do not shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse door. But what about when the “schoolhouse door” is a computer screen, with students entering and exiting the learning environment from the comfort of their homes through an internet-enabled device? The rise of virtual learning, expedited by the COVID-19 pandemic, raises questions about when and how constitutional rights apply to public school students in the virtual setting. This Paper examines one of those constitutional questions, by exploring the application of procedural due process to the emerging practice of virtual discipline. The Due Process …

Discipline In North Carolina’S Charter Schools, Peggy Nicholson, Ryan Yang, Richard Yang

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Better Than Our Biases: Using Psychological Research To Inform Our Approach To Effective, Inclusive Feedback, Anne D. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

As teaching faculty, we are obligated to create an inclusive learning environment for all students. When we fail to be thoughtful about our own bias, our teaching suffers – and students from under-represented backgrounds are left behind. This paper draws on legal, pedagogical, and psychological research to create a practical guide for clinical teaching faculty in understanding, examining, and mitigating our own biases, so that we may better teach and support our students. First, I discuss two kinds of bias that interfere with our decision-making and behavior: cognitive biases (such as confirmation bias, primacy and recency effects, and the halo …

Discovery Of Expert Reports And Testimony In Criminal Cases, Paul W. Grimm

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Office Of The Chief Circuit Judge, Marin K. Levy, Jon O. Newman

Faculty Scholarship

Despite famously being called, merely, “one among equals,” the Chief Judge of a federal court of appeals plays a significant role on their court. Internally, the Chief Judge is responsible for everything from overseeing the circuit’s budget to influencing how the court’s sitting calendar is set, from selecting judges who will sit by designation to reviewing complaints of misconduct against judges in their circuit. Externally, the Chief Judge serves as the court’s representative to the Judicial Conference of the United States, the national policy-making body for the federal courts. Outside of official duties, the Chief Judge may initiate projects, which …

How To Treat The Wto's Problem With Precedent, Timothy Meyer

Faculty Scholarship

This Article argues that the World Trade Organization’s Appellate Body (AB), or a successor body, must become more transparent in justifying its decision to rely (or not) on prior decisions. The AB’s practice of precedent—which the United States cited as a cause of its decision to paralyze the AB by blocking new appointments—is similar to how it has approached “likeness” in nondiscrimination cases. It placed a lot of weight on whether two cases (or products) are sufficiently similar to be compared, and it spent relatively less time substantively justifying its treatment of prior cases. Because the WTO does not have …

The Search For Clarity In An Attorney’S Duty To Google, Michael Murphy

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Fiduciary Duties On The Temporal Edges Of Agency Relationships, Deborah A. Demott

Faculty Scholarship

The duties that principals and agents owe each other are typically coterminous with the agency relationship itself. But sometimes temporal lines of clean demarcation do less work. The Chapter identifies situations in which an agent may owe duties—including fiduciary duties—to the principal prior to the formal start of their relationship, including any enforceable contract between the parties. Likewise, not all duties that agents and principals owe each other end with the relationship. The Chapter explores the rationales for duties at the temporal peripheries for an agency relationship and the extent to which they are derived from doctrines distinct from agency …

Keynote Address: Alaskan Election Law In 2020, Erwin Chemerinsky

Alaska Law Review

No abstract provided.

How Should Alaskans Choose?: The Debate Over Ranked Choice Voting, Angela Sbano

Alaska Law Review

In November 2020, Alaskan voters will decide whether or not they will adopt a Ranked Choice Voting system for elections within their state. While the move would be an unprecedented one for the state, the state of Maine and cities across the country have already adopted Ranked Choice Voting in recent years. The electoral system of Ranked Choice Voting in the United States has seen city-wide adoption, mass repeal, and renewed interest and support over the last century. Proponents hail its ability to improve representation and campaign civility, while opponents point out its complexity and potential to decrease voter turnout. …

Unlocking The Ballot: The Past, Present, And Future Of Alaska Native Voting Rights, Zachary R. Kaplan

Alaska Law Review

Racial oppression in American democracy is older than America itself. While most existing scholarship focuses on the historical disenfranchisement of Black and Latinx voters, this Note tells the story of the voting rights of a smaller, but still noteworthy marginalized American community: Alaska Natives. By contextualizing the history of Alaska Native disenfranchisement within the broader national landscape, this Note seeks to illuminate the ways in which the Alaska Native experience is similar to, and unique from, the experiences of other marginalized American communities. Although this history and present are rife with troubling discrimination, inequity, and non-compliance, this Note is ultimately …

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road: Enfranchisement Among Native American Voters And Nick V. Bethel, Kristen M. Renberg

Alaska Law Review

This Comment documents the limited impact of Nick v. Bethel and proposes legislative and electoral reforms to increase enfranchisement among Alaska Natives. The Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965 made significant progress in protecting minority voting rights. In 2007, a federal district court interpreted the “historically unwritten” exemption in Section 203 of the VRA for the first time in Nick. While the court found Yup’ik to be historically unwritten, the court also reasoned that written translations of election materials should be prepared in order to ensure that oral translations were effective in accommodating voters. The state responded through various actions …

The Top-Four Primary And Alaska Ballot Measure 2, Brendan Mcguire

Alaska Law Review

This Primer provides an overview of the debate surrounding non-partisan ranked primaries. In the November 2020 election, Alaskan voters decided whether to adopt Ballot Measure 2 which, among other reforms, would introduce a top-four primary system. Under this system, the top-four vote-getters in the primary election, regardless of partisan affiliation, would advance to the general election. Supporters of the reform argue it offers voters more choices, fosters competition, creates a more representative pool of candidates, and avoids vote splitting. Opponents contend that such a system reduces representation by possibly preventing political parties from participating in general elections. Alaska will not …

Where The Deer And The Antelope Play:Conserving Big Game Migrations As An Endangered Phenomena, Temple Stoellinger, Heidi J. Albers, Arthur Middleton, Jason F. Shogren, Robert Bonnie

Duke Environmental Law & Policy Forum

In the American West, high-profile big game species including mule deer, antelope, elk, moose, bison and bighorn sheep use large landscapes to migrate between winter and summer habitats to obtain the resources they need to survive. The big game species are a vital part of the West’s ecology, economy, and culture and are valued by local, national, and international stakeholders. Thanks to large parcels of private and public land and a low human population, many parts of the American West still provide some of the best big game habitats in the world. But these vast, intact landscapes are under threat …

Essay: Forks In The Road, Michael P. Vandenbergh, Jonathan M. Gilligan

Duke Environmental Law & Policy Forum

This Essay outlines a simple heuristic that will enable public and private policymakers to focus on the most important climate change mitigation strategies. Policymakers face a dizzying array of information, pressure from advocacy groups, and policy options, and it is easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees. Many policy options are attractive on the surface but either fail to meaningfully address the problem or are unlikely to be adopted in the foreseeable future. If policymakers make the right decision when confronting three essential choices or forks in the road, though, the result will be 60% to 70% …

Note: Foundational But Not Fundamental: No Right To The Environment, Robert Torres

Duke Environmental Law & Policy Forum

The world is on fire, and despite a general consensus among scientists that climate change is an imminent threat, recent decades have been devoid of legislatures capable of enacting meaningful legislation. The flames rage on as our President, an outspoken denier of climate change, adds fuel to the fire by stripping whatever attempts had been previously made to mitigate the effects of climate change. Forced to live in what seems a forsaken world, nineteen youths, a nonprofit organization, and a scientist on behalf of all future generations brought suit against the United States government, seeking more robust environmental protections. In …

Journal Staff

Duke Environmental Law & Policy Forum

No abstract provided.

The Environmental Protection Agency’S Role In U.S. Climate Policy- A Fifty Year Appraisal, Jody Freeman

Duke Environmental Law & Policy Forum

No abstract provided.

Note From The Editor

Alaska Law Review

No abstract provided.

Alaska’S Ballot Initiative Today: History, Practice, And Process, Elizabeth M. Bakalar

Alaska Law Review

Since statehood, Alaska’s Constitution has included the right of the people to enact legislative change by direct democracy. The state’s initiative process as governed by the Alaska Constitution, statutes, and caselaw reflects a delicate balance of citizen participation within carefully crafted guardrails meant to ensure the efficacy of the process and the role of the legislature. Alaska courts have developed a still-evolving body of caselaw interpreting the restrictions on the subject and scope of ballot initiatives, the role of the executive and judicial branches in the initiative process, and the timing and procedural features of the process. Navigating the initiative …

Alaskan Exceptionalism In Campaign Finance, Chad Flanders

Alaska Law Review

This article argues that Alaska’s efforts in campaign finance reform are closely tied to a philosophy of “Alaskan Exceptionalism”: the view that Alaska is fundamentally different from other states. A recent decision from the Supreme Court, Thompson v. Hebdon , may, however, weaken Alaska’s right to justify its reforms through an “exceptionalist” lens. The same decision suggests the Supreme Court is further narrowing its campaign finance jurisprudence more generally. Without these campaign finance limits, Alaskan politics may continue to be dominated by the oil and gas industry, the very problem those limits sought to address in the first place

Retaining Judicial Independence: Solutions To Increasing Threats To Alaska’S Judicial Merit System, Ryan Kuchinski

Alaska Law Review

While the judicial merit system in Alaska has effectively balanced accountability with the competing need for independence in the judiciary, the growing trend of politicized retention elections threatens that independence. This Note examines the threat to the Alaskan judicial merit system, argues for the importance of protecting an independent judiciary, and proposes a number of potential solutions to reform or replace the current retention election system.

When Misrepresentation Becomes Deceptive: Analyzing Petition-Signer Inadvertence Post-Cambell, Melissa English, Daisy Gray

Alaska Law Review

In 2010, the Alaska supreme court held that a legally deficient petition summary of a ballot initiative could be corrected and put on the ballot without being recirculated for signatures. The Parental Involvement Initiative at the root of the litigation would prohibit doctors from performing abortions for unemancipated minor women who had not provided notice to or obtained consent from a parent. After the petition was circulated for signatures, the supreme court determined that omissions of fact in the petition summary rendered the summary inaccurate and therefore deficient. However, the court refused to require that the initiative sponsors recirculate the …

Journal Staff

Alaska Law Review

No abstract provided.

Foreign Interference In Elections Under The Non-Intervention Principle: We Need To Talk About “Coercion”, Steven Wheatley

Duke Journal of Comparative & International Law

This article looks at the problem of foreign state cyber and influence operations targeting democratic elections through the lens of the non-intervention principle. The work focuses on the meaning of “coercion” following the 1986 Nicaragua case, wherein the International Court of Justice concluded that “[i]ntervention is wrongful when it uses methods of coercion.” The analysis shows that coercion describes a situation where (1) the foreign power wants the target state to do something and wants to be certain this will happen; (2) the outside power then takes some action, either by issuing a coercive threat, using coercive force, or engaging …