Law Commons^™

Cracks In The Cost Structure Of Agency Adoption, Andrea B. Carroll

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Abolishing State Trademark Registrations, Lee Ann Lockridge

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

"The More Things Change,…": Reflections On The Stasis Of Labor Law In The United States, William R. Corbett

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

What Is In Gina's Genes? The Curious Case Of The Mutant-Hybrid Employment Law, William R. Corbett

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Hotness Discrimination: Appearance Discrimination As A Mirror For Reflecting On The Body Of Employment Discrimination Law, William R. Corbett

Journal Articles

This essay considers the topic of appearance-based employment discrimination. The essay introduces the topic by juxtaposing the “hot” story of the summer, the bank employee who claims that she was fired for “being too hot,” with Professor Deborah Rhode’s recently published book, The Beauty Bias: The Injustice of Appearance in Life and Law. In the essay, I argue that although appearance discrimination is one of the most common forms of discrimination in employment and other areas of life and generally is regarded as at least unfair and perhaps immoral, neither federal nor many state employment discrimination laws will be amended …

Dangerous Psychopaths: Criminally Responsible But Not Morally Responsible, Subject To Criminal Punishment And To Preventive Detention, Ken M. Levy

Journal Articles

How should we judge psychopaths, both morally and in the criminal justice system? This Article will argue that psychopaths are generally not morally responsible for their bad acts simply because they cannot understand, and therefore be guided by, moral reasons.

Scholars and lawyers who endorse the same conclusion automatically tend to infer from this premise that psychopaths should not be held criminally punishable for their criminal acts. These scholars and lawyers are making this assumption (that just criminal punishment requires moral responsibility) on the basis of one of two deeper assumptions: that either criminal punishment directly requires moral responsibility or …

The Macondo Well Blowout: Taking The Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act Seriously, John J. Costonis

Journal Articles

Choice of law issues in marine pollution events engage federal admiralty/general maritime law, federal environmental legislation and the reserved powers of the states to protect their natural resources and economic welfare. Admiralty and general maritime law enjoyed center stage throughout the first two thirds of the last century. Federal marine pollution statutes were few and weak, and state initiatives were typically deemed preempted in all but the so-called “marine but local” cases. The equilibrium began to shift in favor of state police powers and federal environmental values in the mid-1960’s in consequence of the Supreme Court’s solicitude for the former, …

Hydraulic Fracturing And The Safe Drinking Water Act, Keith B. Hall

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Reconstituting Land Use Federalism To Address Transitory And Perpetual Disasters: The Bimodal Federalism Framework, Blake Hudson

Journal Articles

Scholars analyzing the intersection of federalism and disaster law and policy have primarily focused on the difficulties federalism poses for interjurisdictional coordination of disaster response. Though scholars have highlighted that rising disaster risks and costs are associated with “land-use planning that exacerbates, rather than mitigates, disaster risk,” a more holistic analysis of land-use-related disaster law and policy is needed. This Article provides a more comprehensive framework within which to analyze prospective mitigation or prevention of disaster risk and costs through a rebalancing - or reconstituting - of the respective roles of the federal and state governments in land-use planning. The …

Reviving Proxy Marriage, Andrea B. Carroll

Journal Articles

Marriage is merely a contract. It creates myriad rights and responsibilities - essentially conferring a status - but the American states recognize without exception that the parties’ relationship is at base nothing more than a contractual one. Still, modern society has elevated the marriage contract above all others. This distinction has overwhelmingly focused on the very personal nature of the marital relationship, a feature nonexistent in the arms-length contractual dealings with which we are accustomed to working when applying contract law. As a result, marriage is subject to a number of requirements, even at the level of contractual formation, which …

Climate Change, Forests And Federalism: Seeing The Treaty For The Trees, Blake Hudson

Journal Articles

Despite numerous attempts over the past two decades—including, most recently, the Copenhagen climate discussions in late 2009—international forest and climate negotiations have failed to produce a legally binding treaty addressing global forest management activities. This failure is due in large part to a lack of U.S. leadership. Though U.S. participation in ongoing forest and climate negotiations is essential, scholars have not fully explored the potential limiting effects of federalism on the United States’ treaty power in the area of forest management. Such an exploration is necessary given the debate among constitutional law scholars regarding the scope of the treaty power, …

Commerce In The Commons: A Unified Theory Of Natural Capital Regulation Under The Commerce Clause, Blake Hudson

Journal Articles

Scholars continue to debate the scope of Congress’s Commerce Clause authority and whether fluctuations in the U.S. Supreme Court’s Commerce Clause jurisprudence place federal environmental regulatory authority at risk. Yet when one analyzes major Commerce Clause cases involving resource regulation since the beginning of the modern regulatory state, a consistent theme emerges: both the Supreme Court and Circuit Courts of Appeal have consistently upheld federal authority to regulate depletable natural resources, the appropriation of which is non-excludable - key characteristics of a commons. Commerce Clause jurisprudence can be interpreted as treating appropriation of this natural capital, here described as “privatized …

Re-Regulating The Baby Market: A Call For A Ban On Payment Of Birth Mother Living Expenses, Andrea B. Carroll

Journal Articles

More than fifty years ago, state law on domestic infant adoption changed to uniformly prohibit the practice of baby selling, a development that eliminated the “black market” for babies that many argued previously existed. Nonetheless, one need not look far to find that the United States’ domestic adoption system is broken even today, and the cost structure of the domestic adoption scheme is the greatest offender. A domestic adoption currently costs in the neighborhood of $40,0000, with the vast majority of the associated expenses coming not from the payment of any professional fees, but rather from the payment of living …

The Improper Dismissal Of Title Vii Claims On "Jurisdictional" Exhaustion Grounds: How Federal Courts Require That Allegations Be Presented To An Agency Without The Resources To Consider Them, Katherine Macfarlane

Journal Articles

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 represents a watershed moment in American history. With Title VII's passage, Congress acknowledged the need to “back” the civil rights movement with “federal legislative power.” Title VII was meant to eliminate practices that inhibit employment opportunity equality. Beyond eliminating those practices, Title VII was also designed to assure equality of employment opportunities and to eliminate conduct that “fostered racially stratified job environments to the disadvantage of minority citizens.” This Title renders unlawful the refusal or failure to hire or “otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, …