Law Commons^™

Why States Should Conform To The New Corporate Amt, David Gamage, Darien Shanske

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In 2022, as a key component of the Inflation Reduction Act, Congress enacted a new corporate alternative minimum tax (CAMT). With the possible exception of Alaska, states with corporate income taxes will not automatically conform to this change. But should they? Although states may not currently be seeking additional tax revenue, seasons change quickly when it comes to revenue needs. Further, there is increasing reason to believe that the corporate income tax is a progressive tax, and if so, a state might consider conforming to the CAMT as part of a revenue-neutral change to make its tax system more progressive. …

Four Indiana Law Graduates To Be Inducted Into The Academy Of Law Alumni Fellows, James Owsley Boyd

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

The Indiana University Maurer School of Law will add four members to its prestigious Academy of Law Alumni Fellows this April. Terry Dworkin ’75, Fred Logan ’77, Holiday “Holly” McKiernan ’83, and Luis Felipe Sanchez ’76 will receive the highest honor the Law School can bestow on its alumni when they are inducted April 14 in a ceremony inside the Indiana Memorial Union.

“Terry, Holly, Fred, and Luis have all led remarkable careers and lives, and we’re honored to welcome them into the Academy of Law Alumni Fellows this spring,” said Indiana Law Dean Christiana Ochoa. “They have represented …

Vol. 64, No. 04 (February 6, 2023)

Indiana Law Annotated

No abstract provided.

February 2023 Newsletter

Ergo

No abstract provided.

Vol. 64, No. 03 (January 30, 2023)

Indiana Law Annotated

No abstract provided.

Indiana Law Fertility Fraud Expert Participates In Washington, Dc Roundtable, James Owsley Boyd

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

Professor Jody Madeira, an internationally recognized expert in fertility fraud, bioethics, and law and medicine, participated this morning (January 26) in a bipartisan roundtable discussion with victims of fertility fraud. The event was facilitated by U.S. Representatives Stephanie Bice (R-OK), Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ), Julia Letlow (R-LA), and Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA) following the January 23 introduction of their Protecting Families From Fertility Fraud Act, which would—for the first time—make it a federal crime to knowingly misrepresent the source of DNA used in any procedure that involves assisted reproduction.

Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Available To Local Community Members Through March 28, James Owsley Boyd

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

With tax season now in full-swing through April 18, a dedicated group of volunteers is making the filing process easier—and cheaper—for many local community members. Local taxpayers with an annual income under $57,000 are eligible for free tax preparation help from students at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law’s Volunteer Income Tax Assistance site on Monday and Tuesday evenings from 6 to 9 p.m. beginning January 30.

Vol. 64, No. 02 (January 23, 2023)

Indiana Law Annotated

No abstract provided.

Vol. 64, No. 01 (January 16, 2023)

Indiana Law Annotated

No abstract provided.

Time Off Work For Menstruation: A Good Idea?, Deborah Widiss

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In February 2023, Spain became the first European country to guarantee “menstrual leave” for workers, joining several countries, mostly in East Asia, that have long done so. It has also become increasingly common for companies to offer paid time off to menstruators as a discretionary benefit. Reports on these developments are almost always accompanied by criticism from self-identified feminists voicing concern that the policies will spur discrimination against women or reinforce stereotypes about menstruators as incapable workers. This echoes earlier arguments over maternity leave. In their groundbreaking book, Menstruation Matters, Bridget Crawford and Emily Waldman expose myriad ways in which …

The Child Vanishes: Justice Scalia's Approach To The Role Of Psychology In Determining Children's Rights And Responsibilities, Aviva Orenstein

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This Article explores how Justice Antonin Scalia’s hostility to psychology, antipathy to granting children autonomous rights, and dismissiveness of children’s interior lives both affected his jurisprudence and was a natural outgrowth of it. Justice Scalia expressed a skeptical, one might even say hostile, attitude towards psychology and its practitioners. Justice Scalia’s cynicism about the discipline and the therapists who practice it is particularly interesting regarding legal and policy arguments concerning children. His love of tradition and his rigid and unempathetic approach to children clash with modern notions of child psychology. Justice Scalia’s attitude towards psychology helps to explain his jurisprudence, …

On Fires, Floods, And Federalism, Andrew Hammond

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In the United States, law condemns poor people to their fates in states. Where Americans live continues to dictate whether they can access cash, food, and medical assistance. What’s more, immigrants, territorial residents, and tribal members encounter deteriorated corners of the American welfare state. Nonetheless, despite repeated retrenchment efforts, this patchwork of programs has proven remarkably resilient. Yet, the ability of the United States to meet its people’s most basic needs now faces an unprecedented challenge: climate change. As extreme weather events like wildfires and hurricanes become more frequent and more intense, these climate-fueled disasters will displace and impoverish more …

Hidden Value Transfers In Public Utilities, Aneil Kovvali, Joshua C. Macey

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This Article describes strategies vertically integrated electric utilities use to transfer value from rate-regulated affiliates to non-rate regulated affiliates. First, regulated utilities directly subsidize non-regulated affiliates by entering into favorable contracts with affiliates that participate in competitive markets. These contractual value transfers include favorable purchase agreements such as long-term contracts to buy coal at above-market prices and cross-affiliate debt guarantees that allow non-rate regulated affiliates to borrow at a discount. Second, utilities receive regulatory authorization to pass costs incurred by their non-rate regulated affiliates onto captive ratepayers. Examples of regulatorily approved value transfers are fuel adjustment clauses that authorize recovery …

How The Supreme Court Ghosted The Phosita: Amgen And Legal Constructs In Patent Law, Timothy R. Holbrook, Mark D. Janis

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This Essay is an invited response to The Ghost in the Patent System: An Empirical Study of Patent Law’s Elusive “Skilled Artisan,” by Professors Laura Pedraza-Fariña and Ryan Whalen. In their piece, Pedraza-Fariña and Ryan Whalen offer an empirical study and use it to argue for a new conception of the Person Having Ordinary Skill in the Art (“PHOSITA”), patent law’s nod to the “reasonable person” construct.

As Professors Pedraza-Fariña and Whalen suggest, the PHOSITA should be understood as a crucial concept in patent law, warranting more scholarly attention. Pedraza-Fariña and Whalen provide that attention. They assert, based on an …

On Facial Recognition, Regulation, And "Data Necropolitics", Antonio Pele, Caitlin Mulholland

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This paper argues for actual and legal regulation of artificial intelligence (AI) and facial recognition. These new technologies represent great opportunities to improve the welfare of societies. However, some of their uses can also enhance discrimination and, eventually, lead to violence. From a comparative approach (examining the European Union and Brazil), we address the current and future aspects of facial regulation, AI, and personal data. This paper shows that regulation is relevant to protect the rule of law, free markets, and individual freedoms. It also examines the looming risks unfolding from the unregulated uses of new technologies. Our concept of …

The Afterlife Of Confederate Monuments, Jess Phelps, Jessica N. Owley

Indiana Law Journal

As communities increasingly remove Confederate monuments from public spaces, they must decide what to do with these troubled statues. Given the recent wave of monument removal, we consider how property law and other restrictions impact community decisions on the disposition of monuments removed from public spaces on two levels—by location and future owner. In considering the fate of removed monuments, we profile potential destinations including museums, battlefields, cemeteries, and even storage. Alongside these examples, we discuss how laws constrain (or fail to constrain) the options for new owners and the restrictions on where monuments can be relocated. Even where laws …

Purchasing Population Growth, Edward W. De Barbieri

Indiana Law Journal

State and local lawmakers compete to attract new populations of workers to purchase homes, grow the tax base, and develop local economies. Even before the pandemic, lawmakers used a variety of tax incentives and other legal levers to attract new residents. Increasingly, in some cases bolstered by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act funds, local governments are attracting high-paid, well-skilled, remote workers with cash gifts and other direct economic benefits.

Although cash incentives for remote workers have been increasing in popularity, they remain unproven with respect to intended outcomes and have yet to face legal challenge. The …

State Workarounds To The Irc's Salt Cap: The Past, The Present, And Building For The Future, Richard Stephenson Mcewan

Indiana Law Journal

Recently, Congress has debated measures to provide some relief to taxpayers negatively impacted by the Internal Revenue Code’s State and Local Tax (SALT) deductibility limit. Although Congress has not yet budged on whether to adjust this cap, many states have taken it upon themselves to find creative workarounds to provide relief for their constituent taxpayers. In the face of an uncertain future for the current SALT cap, crucial questions exist for these state workarounds and those still to come. This Note carefully lays out the individual income tax issue posed by the SALT cap, before analyzing the core elements of …

Situating Structural Challenges To Agency Authority Within The Framework Of The Finality Principle, Harold J. Krent

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Mobilizable Labor Law, Scott L. Cummings, Andrew Elmore

Indiana Law Journal

In the history of new labor localism, city-level living wage ordinances—emerging in the 1990s with Los Angeles leading the way—have generally been understood as a second-best, limited antipoverty device designed to raise wage floors, with only indirect effects on organized labor. Drawing upon original archival materials, this Article offers an alternative reading of the history of the living wage in Los Angeles, showing how it was designed and operationalized as a proactive tool to rebuild union density and reshape city politics. Doing so makes four key contributions. First, the Article theorizes and empirically examines the living wage as a pioneering …

Floating Liens Over Crypto-In-Commerce, Christopher K. Odinet, Andrea Tosato

Indiana Law Journal

Commercial law and crypto are colliding. Against the backdrop of explosive growth (and discord) in the digital asset market, there has been a series of recent revisions to American commercial law aimed at addressing new and emerging technologies. These changes to the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) are designed to facilitate the buying and selling of digital assets as well as their use as collateral. However, to date, the literature exploring these changes has mainly focused on understanding the basics of the new regime. This Essay moves beyond that baseline by showing how the UCC amendments can be used to structure …

Power And Pay Secrecy, Michael M. Oswalt, Jake Rosenfeld, Patrick Denice

Indiana Law Journal

The legal momentum toward pay transparency is widespread and fast-moving. Since 2010, over a dozen states have passed laws prohibiting employers from telling workers they may not talk about wages. Proponents see these and related transparency laws as crucial steps to combat sex- and race-based pay discrimination in the workplace. But do state anti-secrecy laws actually reduce pay secrecy in the first place? That basic question remains largely unexplored. This Article fills the gap through a unique national survey that includes information about pay discussion rules and a range of other relevant employer and employee characteristics across the fifty states. …

Artificial Intelligence In Government: Risks And Challenges Of Algorithmic Governance In The Administrative State, Jose Vida Fernandez

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This article analyzes the legal implications of using artificial intelligence in government and how it is challenging the foundations of the administrative state. It begins by demonstrating that a new model of government is emerging, based on information and intelligence (i-Gov). To understand the nature and scope of this new i-Gov model, this article will explain what artificial intelligence really is and analyze the applications that are currently being carried out in the US and the EU. Next, it will review the regulatory framework that is emerging that regulates government use of artificial intelligence in both the US and the …

The Curtailment Of Constitutional Rights And Mechanisms Of Social Control In The People's Republic Of China: Hubei Province Case At The Onset Of The Covid-19 Pandemic, Fabio Ratto Trabucco

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This paper analyzes the curtailment of constitutional rights arising from the implementation of emergency measures due to the COVID-19 pandemic in China’s Hubei Province, which was not at all counterbalanced by introducing new forms of due constitutional protection. Likewise, high expectations cannot be set on pre-existing means of constitutional safeguards since the Chinese government clearly refused to establish new or different safeguarding procedures nor did it deem it necessary to establish ad hoc courts in order to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper is laid out as follows: (1) fundamental rights in a contemporary socialist state: an overview; (2) containment …

Period Poverty And Life Strains: Efforts Made To Erase Stigma And To Expand Access To Menstrual Hygiene Products, Jennifer L. Brinkley, Nicole Niebuhr

Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality

No abstract provided.

Introduction: The Risk Of Digitalization: Transforming Government Into A Digital Leviathan, Jose Vida Fernandez

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This paper provides an overview of the threats posed by digitalization, particularly with regard to the public sector. It starts by describing digital risks as true global risks and argues that their scope and severity have not been recognized until now. The most well-known challenges come from the transformation of the private sector (economy, society, and individuals) and the emergence of large private powers that dominate the digital environment (digital feudal lord). However, there are even greater challenges coming from the digitization of government, creating almighty public bodies detached from laws that kept them locked until now.

Neurorights And New Charts Of Digital Rights: A Dialogue Beyond The Limits Of The Law, Rafael Yuste

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

In this article, the authors address some of the most pressing issues that stem from the relationship between the technological advancements of the twenty-first century and legal regulation. The development of neurotechnology and artificial intelligence (AI), while offering considerable opportunities for the betterment of social life, also poses unprecedented risks. These challenges manifest in a wide variety of topics. Areas such as human rights treaties, antitrust law, property law, and labor law are affected by these developments. The risks associated with the unregulated use of neurotechnology and AI do not cease at the sectorial stage. Some of the values upon …

Trust In Artificial Intelligence: Analysis Of The European Commission Proposal For A Regulation Of Artificial Intelligence, Antonio Estella

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

I shall start by reflecting on the importance that trust has for society (section 2). From there, I will define what is to be understood in this paper by trust (section 3). I shall then review the basis of trust (section 4) and shall make a reference to the main sources of evidence on trust (like, surveys and laboratory experiments), and to some of the results that these sources reveal on interpersonal and institutional trust (section 5). In the next section (section 6), I shall go on to analyse specifically the issue of trust in AI, will refer to the …

The Contentious Issues Of Governance By Algorithms, Gilles J. Gugielmi

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

The development of computerized tools that lead to decision-making processes which apply locally defined parameters poses many questions about democracy. These questions stem from our very conception of the state and its role, going beyond the boundaries of typical administrative law. According to a popular notion that permeates the practices of most executive branches in liberal political regimes, democratic concerns are now competing with managerial concerns. In order to analyze this idea, we must study the implementation of algorithms in administrative decision-making, underscoring both the changes to the characterization of administrative decisions and the questions raised about an administrative judicial …

Blockchain And The Right To Good Administration: Adding Blocks To Or Blocking Of The Globalization Of Good Administration?, Migle Laukyte

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

In this article, the author addresses the complex and multifaceted relationship between the right to good administration enshrined in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and the uses of blockchain technology by the public administration, which is in charge of making the right to good administration real. The opportunities and threats come hand in hand, and there is an urgent need to push forward a public debate on the uses and misuses of blockchain to guarantee public services, so much so that many aspects of blockchain are not compatible with citizens’ expectations in relation to the public …