Law Commons^™

Mass Comments’ Opportunity Costs, Michael Herz

Online Publications

Agencies, courts, and academics agree that notice-and-comment rulemaking is not a referendum. But that conceptualization presents a challenge when an agency is confronted with mass comments. If agencies are not counting but reading comments, and if mass comments are duplicative and often devoid of content beyond a strong expression of values or preference, then what do they add?

State Lawmakers Must Step In To Remedy Supreme Court Voting Rights Blunder, Rachel Landy, Jarrett Berg

Online Publications

This June, a 6-3 Supreme Court decision further eroded the Voting Rights Act (VRA) by upholding an Arizona law that disqualifies ballots cast by voters at any poll site other than the one assigned — an administrative technicality that has been shown to disproportionately impact minority communities in multiple states.

Chevron Flip-Flops Of A Different Sort - Understanding The Shifting Politics Of Deference, Michael E. Herz

Online Publications

Like vaccinations, voter fraud, guns, taking a knee, and, well, everything, views on Chevron deference have become not just ideologically tinged but ideologically determined. Progressives are Chevron enthusiasts; conservatives are Chevron skeptics. Chevron is under siege, and the battle lines are familiar. Yet, on its face, Chevron is politically neutral. It increases agency power at the expense of judicial power; whether that is politically helpful depends on whether your team controls the White House or if it controls the courts. Furthermore, the current ideological array has not always been the case. When Chevron was decided, the enthusiasts were …

Fourth Amendment Review 2021, Ekow N. Yankah

Online Publications

When it comes to policing, the U.S. Supreme Court too often plays the role of the garish sun. Scholars counsel that policing is the quintessential local activity, often repeating that the United States has up to 18,000 local police forces, and if one wants to change policing, the place to look is your police chief, sheriff, or mayor. Yet despite our own warnings, we cannot help staring towards that Washingtonian marbled temple, to divine the shape of policing to come. If the Supreme Court cannot readily modify policing in each city and hamlet, it is unique in its ability to …

Who Defends: Judge Sutton's Vision And The Challenge Of A Plural Executive, Katherine A. Shaw

Online Publications

It’s no secret that this is a perilous moment for American democracy. We’re nine months out from a deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol, launched with the explicit goal of disrupting the peaceful transfer of power following the 2020 presidential election. Congress appears gridlocked on basic questions of debt and spending, and the possibility of a default before the end of the year remains a live one, with the covid pandemic still ongoing. The U.S. Supreme Court is facing an unprecedented legitimacy deficit in the eyes of the public. Election experts warn that future American elections, including the 2024 election, …

Immigration Cyber Prisons: Ending The Use Of Electronic Ankle Shackles, Tosca Giustini, Sarah Greisman, Peter L. Markowitz, Ariel Rosen, Zachary Ross, Alisa Whitfield, Christina Fialho, Brittany Castle, Leila Kang

Online Publications

The call to end immigration detention has garnered strong support in recent years due to a growing public awareness of its devastating impact on the individuals locked away, their families, and entire communities. Throughout the nation, communities, organizers, advocates, and public officials have demanded the shutdown of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers, particularly those operated by private prison companies.

However, less attention has been paid to another form of detention that has been insidiously expanding alongside ICE’s brick-and-mortar jails: the Intensive Supervision Assistance Program (ISAP), the primary component of ICE’s so-called “Alternatives to Detention” program. ISAP surveils, monitors, …

For Facebook’S Sake: Getting Conversant With Human Rights, Deborah Pearlstein

Online Publications

Each time I read a new article or interview with an American lawyer or legal scholar reacting to the recent decision by the Facebook Oversight Board (FOB) to invoke international human rights law in sustaining Facebook’s suspension of Donald Trump – I feel seized by the impulse to respond with an unsolicited public primer on what international human rights law (IHRL) is. It is not an unfamiliar feeling. On the contrary, the impulse (which I experience as uncomfortably paternalistic) has emerged repeatedly in the past, say, 20 years, during any one of countless exchanges with lawyers or academics who have …

A Way To Guarantee Voting Rights, Rachel Landy, Jarrett Berg

Online Publications

In 2004, state legislator Andrea Stewart-Cousins faced nine-term Republican Nick Spano in a state Senate election. The election was very close, certified in favor of Spano by 18 votes.

A Small Change To Save Thousands Of Votes, Rachel Landy, Jarret Berg

Online Publications

In 2004, then-County Legislator Andrea Stewart-Cousins faced off against the nine-term incumbent Nick Spano in an election for state Senate. The race was extremely close, certified in Spano’s favor by 18 votes.

Impact Of New York’S “Wrong Church” Ballot Disqualification Rule In The 2020 General Election, Rachel Landy, Jarret Berg

Online Publications

In 2020, more than 13,800 New York voters, eager to cast their ballots in the General Election, walked into a polling place and presented themselves to poll workers, who were unable to locate those voters in the poll book, even though they were registered. Poll workers directed them to vote provisionally by affidavit ballot and each did so. However, as officials determined several days later, these voters had all turned out and cast a ballot at a poll site in their county that was different from the one assigned to them, a fatal technical pitfall under New York’s election law. …

Defending "Universal Vacatur" - Nationwide Injunctions For Administrative Law, Michael E. Herz

Online Publications

The nationwide injunction has seized the imagination of courts and law professors in recent years. Not surprisingly, JOTWELL’s pages screens have given it extensive attention. Recent jots have described important work by Samuel Bray (twice), Amanda Frost (also twice), Russell Weaver, and Alan Trammell that attacks, defends, or theorizes nationwide (or “universal”) injunctions. Jack Beermann, in praising Bray and Frost, did have one complaint: “As an administrative law nut, I wish they both grappled more with the meaning of the APA’s instruction that reviewing courts should ‘hold unlawful and set aside’ unlawful agency action.” Mila Sohoni has now filled that …

Beware Of Strangers Bearing Gifts, Anthony J. Sebok

Online Publications

A familiar rhetorical trope in modern advocacy is: “Imagine if visitors from outer space were observing x; how would they describe it?” The payoff of this exercise is to get the audience to see that the view proposed by the speaker, while superficially unfamiliar, is actually more perceptive than the conventional understanding of the practice at issue. The subtext is that only with the benefit of insights gleaned from a great distance (or an unusual perspective) can those immersed in a practice truly understand it.