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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Unintended Consequences Of California Proposition 47: Reducing Law Enforcement’S Ability To Solve Serious, Violent Crimes, Shelby Kail
Pepperdine Law Review
For many years, DNA databases have helped solve countless serious, violent crimes by connecting low-level offenders to unsolved crimes. Because the passage of Proposition 47 reduced several low-level crimes to misdemeanors, which do not qualify for DNA sample collection, Proposition 47 has severely limited law enforcement’s ability to solve serious, violent crimes through California’s DNA database and reliable DNA evidence. This powerful law enforcement tool must be preserved to prevent additional crimes from being committed, to exonerate the innocent, and to provide victims with closure through conviction of their assailants or offenders. Proposition 47’s unintended consequences have led to devastating …
A Diverse Student Body Without Student Bodies?: Online Classrooms And Affirmative Action, Ryan H. Nelson
A Diverse Student Body Without Student Bodies?: Online Classrooms And Affirmative Action, Ryan H. Nelson
Pepperdine Law Review
America’s public universities engage students in myriad classroom environments that range from traditional, entirely-in-person classroom environments to entirely-online, virtual classrooms, with every shade of grey in between. These varied learning environments pose a fascinating question with respect to the ways such universities use affirmative action in admissions. In Grutter v. Bollinger, the United States Supreme Court held that “student body diversity is a compelling state interest that can justify the use of race in university admissions.” Indeed, student body diversity remains one of the few “compelling interests” that the Court has held satisfies the constitutional imperative that the “government may …
The Outer Limits: Imsi-Catchers, Technology, And The Future Of The Fourth Amendment, Ryan C. Chapman
The Outer Limits: Imsi-Catchers, Technology, And The Future Of The Fourth Amendment, Ryan C. Chapman
Pepperdine Law Review
Recent advances in technology are posing new challenges for a legal system based on decades-old precedent. Nowhere is this more apparent than in law enforcement’s warrantless use of IMSI Catchers. These devices mimic a cell phone tower, and when the device is activated, cell phones will naturally connect to them. Law enforcement officers can use those intercepted cell phone signals to track a suspect’s movements in real time with startling accuracy. Scholarly commentary on these devices has largely concluded that their use requires a warrant. This Comment engages in a close examination of Fourth Amendment precedent and argues that, as …
The Vice Presidency In The Twenty-First Century, Jody C. Baumgartner
The Vice Presidency In The Twenty-First Century, Jody C. Baumgartner
Pepperdine Law Review
The vice presidency has undergone almost revolutionary change since its inception 227 years ago. Conceived as a convenient solution to a problem created by the Electoral College, the Vice President has only two constitutional functions—to serve as a successor to the President and as the President of the Senate. However, over the past sixty years, vice presidents have become increasingly part of and integral to American governance, and the last three (Al Gore, Dick Cheney, and Joe Biden) have been exceptionally active executive actors. What was once an all-but forgotten office is now an essential part of a president’s administration. …
The Vice President-More Than An Afterthought?, Richard B. Cheney, Edwin Meese Iii, Douglas W. Kmiec
The Vice President-More Than An Afterthought?, Richard B. Cheney, Edwin Meese Iii, Douglas W. Kmiec
Pepperdine Law Review
A round-table discussion among former U.S. Vice President Richard B. Cheney, Caruso Family Professor of Law and retired U.S. Ambassador Douglas Kmiec, and former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese III considered the practical implications of conceiving the Vice President as a legislative officer, an executive officer, or both. It was noted that until the second half of the twentieth century, the Office of the Vice President was conceived as legislative. Funding for the Office appeared in budget lines relating to Congress and physically, the Vice President’s office was in the Capitol. Beginning with Walter Mondale’s service as Vice President, presidents …
A Constitutional Afterthought: The Origins Of The Vice Presidency, 1787 To 1804, Edward J. Larson
A Constitutional Afterthought: The Origins Of The Vice Presidency, 1787 To 1804, Edward J. Larson
Pepperdine Law Review
At the origins of the office, even though the Vice President was, as its first occupant John Adams declared, “only one breath” away from the presidency, the Office of the Vice President was an afterthought of the Constitutional Convention. Never discussed during the first three months of the four-month long Convention, the Committee of Eleven introduced the vice presidency as a byproduct of how it resolved to fix the presidential selection process. Under this process, the Electoral College emerged, with each state assigned the same number of electors as its members in the House of Representatives and Senate. Each elector …
Government Identity Speech Programs: Understanding And Applying The New Walker Test, Leslie Gielow Jacobs
Government Identity Speech Programs: Understanding And Applying The New Walker Test, Leslie Gielow Jacobs
Pepperdine Law Review
In Walker v. Texas Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans, Inc., the Court extended its previous holding in Pleasant Grove City, Utah v. Summum, that a city’s donated park monuments were government speech, to the privately proposed designs that Texas accepts and stamps onto its specialty license plates. The placement of the program into the new doctrinal category is significant because the selection criteria for government–private speech combinations that produce government speech are “exempt from First Amendment scrutiny.” By contrast, when the government selects private speakers to participate in a private speech forum, its criteria must be reasonable in light of …
Protecting America’S Children: Why An Executive Order Banning Juvenile Solitary Confinement Is Not Enough, Carina Muir
Protecting America’S Children: Why An Executive Order Banning Juvenile Solitary Confinement Is Not Enough, Carina Muir
Pepperdine Law Review
Despite its devastating psychological, physical, and developmental effects on juveniles, solitary confinement is used in juvenile correctional facilities across the United States. This Comment posits that such treatment violates the Eighth Amendment’s Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause, the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. It likewise argues that that President Obama’s recent Executive Order banning juvenile solitary confinement is simply not a powerful enough remedy and discusses why it must be paired with Congressional legislation or Supreme Court jurisprudence if it is to …