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Full-Text Articles in Law
Juvenile Death Sentence Lives On... Even After Roper V. Simmons, Akin Adepoju
Juvenile Death Sentence Lives On... Even After Roper V. Simmons, Akin Adepoju
University of Massachusetts Law Review
This article begins with a discussion of the Supreme Court’s decision to abolish the death penalty as applied to individuals convicted of crimes they committed before they turned 18 and proceeds with a detailed exposition of worldwide standards of juvenile sentencing. Part I of this note briefly discusses the history and purposes of the juvenile justice system in the United States. Further, there is a general discussion on the constitutionality of life without parole sentences, which provides an overview of the inconsistencies between Federal and State Courts’ approaches when sentencing juveniles to life without parole. Part II analyzes the international …
Spreading Democracy Everywhere But Here: The Unlikely Prospect Of Foreign National Defendants Asserting Treaty Violations In American Courts After Sanchez-Llamas V. Oregon And Medellin V. Dretke, Miriam F. Miquelon-Weismann
Spreading Democracy Everywhere But Here: The Unlikely Prospect Of Foreign National Defendants Asserting Treaty Violations In American Courts After Sanchez-Llamas V. Oregon And Medellin V. Dretke, Miriam F. Miquelon-Weismann
University of Massachusetts Law Review
To squarely address this decisional quagmire, this article examines the binding effect of ICJ orders, entered pursuant to its compulsory jurisdiction, on American courts; earlier decisions of the Supreme Court penalizing foreign nationals for failing to timely raise individual treaty claims; the effect on treaty enforcement in domestic courts after the executive branch’s recent foreign policy decision to withdraw from compulsory ICJ jurisdiction; the current policy disputes dividing the United States and the ICJ; and, the national interest, or lack thereof, in treaty compliance. The article concludes that the government’s current claim that a “long standing presumption” exists to prevent …
State Sovereign Immunity And Intellectual Property: An Evaluation Of The Trademark Remedy Clarification Act’S Attempt To Subject States To Suit In Federal Courts For Trademark Infringements Under The Lanham Act, Jennifer L. Fessler
University of Massachusetts Law Review
There are two things that can be learned from this paper. First, the analytical framework developed by the Court in City of Boerne is a stringent test that has considerably narrowed Congress’s ability to abrogate state’s Eleventh Amendment immunity through legislation. Second, only half of the battle was won when Congress enacted the Trademark Remedy Clarification Act. Although it met the new requirements the Court placed on legislative efforts in Atascadero, it is not able to meet the requirements that were later set forth in Seminole Tribe. The Rehnquist Court’s holdings indicate the Court’s active pursuit of state’s …
History Repeats Itself: Parallels Between Current-Day Threats To Immigrant Parental Rights And Native American Parental Rights In The Twentieth Century, Vinita B. Andrapalliyal
History Repeats Itself: Parallels Between Current-Day Threats To Immigrant Parental Rights And Native American Parental Rights In The Twentieth Century, Vinita B. Andrapalliyal
University of Massachusetts Law Review
Immigrant parents are currently burdened with unique risks to their parental rights, risks that bear little relation to their ability to care for their children. Recent developments in family and immigration law, historical cultural prejudices against non-Western parenting traditions, and poor immigrants’ limited access to the U.S. legal system are largely to blame. This Note explores the inadequacies in our legal system contributing to the struggles of immigrant parents to maintain family unity and connects the current situation to the disproportionate number of terminations of parental rights within the Native American community in the mid-twentieth century. It suggests that a …
Wage War: Backpay Under The Hoffman Decision, Shuaa Tajammul
Wage War: Backpay Under The Hoffman Decision, Shuaa Tajammul
University of Massachusetts Law Review
This Article discusses the effect of the Hoffman Plastic Compounds decision on backpay as a remedy for illegal immigrants who sue their employers for lost wages. When Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (“IRCA”), it believed it struck at the heart of illegal immigration: the search for employment in the United States. However, the IRCA did not accomplish its stated purpose. In 2002, the Supreme Court ruled that lost wages and backpay were not available as remedies to an employee who obtained a job through IRCA violation and later tried to sue his/her employer. The decision …
Tactics, Strategies, & Battles – Oh My!: Perseverance Of The Perpetual Problem Pertaining To Preaching To Public School Pupils & Why It Persists, Casey S. Mckay
Tactics, Strategies, & Battles – Oh My!: Perseverance Of The Perpetual Problem Pertaining To Preaching To Public School Pupils & Why It Persists, Casey S. Mckay
University of Massachusetts Law Review
This Comment examines why a seemingly well-settled scientific issue, evolution through natural selection, continues to be the subject of so much legal controversy in public education. By exploiting misconceptions regarding the scientific method, religious special interest groups are able to persuade lawmakers to sneak religion into public school science classrooms across the country. This Comment considers the most recent incarnations of creationism and concludes by analyzing the impact the ongoing legal controversy has had on the American public’s understanding of science.
Connecting The Dots: Forming A Uniform Voter Identification System Through Established Law, Louis A. D'Amarino
Connecting The Dots: Forming A Uniform Voter Identification System Through Established Law, Louis A. D'Amarino
University of Massachusetts Law Review
The 2002 Help America Vote Act requires election officials to request photo ID for first time voters who register by mail. Some states took this a step further and required all voters to present photo ID in order to exercise the franchise. These laws have attracted a great deal of attention recently because of the belief that these laws disenfranchise voters. However, what is needed is a uniform system that allows voters access to the ballot and also protects the integrity of the ballot. This note argues that all Congress has to do is connect the dots in several federal …
Securitization Of Student Loans: A Proposal To Reform Federal Accounting, Reduce Government Risk, And Introduce Market Mechanisms As Indicators Of Quality Education, Robert Proudfoot
University of Massachusetts Law Review
This Article outlines looming budgetary and accounting issues with federal student loans and proposes securitization as an innovative mechanism to reform federal accounting, reduce federal balance sheet risk, and provide a new education quality indicator. The current federal loan program is unsustainable because it overestimates the repayment rates and underestimates the cost of certain loan programs. Securitization will reduce that federal risk. Additionally, by forcing academic institutions to bear some of the risk, securitization will create a neutral pricing mechanism outside the direct control of federal regulators to show whether academic institutions provide a quality education. While complicated, this proposal …
Furman, After Four Decades, J. Thomas Sullivan
Furman, After Four Decades, J. Thomas Sullivan
University of Massachusetts Law Review
Problems of racial discrimination in the imposition of capital sentences, disclosure of misconduct by prosecutors and police, inconsistency in the quality of defense afforded capital defendants, exoneration of death row inmates due to newly available DNA testing, and, most recently controversies surrounding the potential for cruelty in the execution process itself continue to complicate views about the morality, legality, and practicality of reliance on capital punishment to address even the most heinous of homicide offenses. Despite repeated efforts by the Supreme Court to craft a capital sentencing framework that ensures that death sentences be imposed fairly in light of the …