Law Commons^™

“Heal Thyself.”—An Argument For Granting Asylum To Healthcare Workers Persecuted During The 2014 West African Ebola Crisis, Bethany Echols

SMU Law Review

This article argues for a change in United States asylum policy at a time when change is needed most. Those seeking asylum must prove that they fear persecution in their home country based on one of five protected categories and that their government is the persecutor or is unable to control the actions of the persecutors. Multiple articles have recognized that the “particular social group” is the most difficult category of asylum seeker to analyze. Not only do the standards for particular social groups (PSGs) vary among circuit courts, but judicial consistency is lacking.

This article focuses on a particular …

Taming Rule 10b-5-1: The Unfinished Business Of Texas Gulf Sulphur, Daniel J. Morrissey

SMU Law Review

Insider trading has shaped both the evolution of the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) and the current state of securities law. The injustice of insider trading, especially as felt by everyday shareholders and investors, mandated action by government regulators. Consequently, the SEC enacted Rule 10b-5—a prohibition and prosecution on any corporate officials’ use of material, non-public information for private profit. In SEC v. Texas Gulf Sulphur Co., Rule 10b-5 grew into the sanction on insider trading that it is known as today. As case law whet Rule 10b-5’s reach on in- sider trading, corporate executives became increasingly concerned that necessary business …

Joe Mcknight: Friend, Mentor, Scholar & Legend, Brian L. Webb

SMU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Second Amendment: D.C. Circuit Court Creates Split On The Constitutionality Of Good-Reason Laws, Madeleine Giese

SMU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Disgorgement In Insider Trading Cases: Fy2005-Fy2015, Verity Winship

SMU Law Review

For about 50 years—at least since Texas Gulf Sulphur—the SEC has ordered defendants to disgorge their profits from transactions that violated the securities laws. Despite disgorgement’s long history, in its 2017 opinion in Kokesh v. SEC, the U.S. Supreme Court put two aspects of the remedy on the table. It applied a five-year statute of limitations to disgorgement. It also reopened old questions about agencies’ power to seek remedies not specified in statute. This article provides data to inform these debates over the agency’s use of disgorgement and the effects of Kokesh. It reports the results of an empirical study …

Saving Grace: The Role Of Religious Organizations In Disaster Recovery And The Constitutionality Of Federal Funding To Rebuild Them, Cheslea Till

SMU Law Review

Natural disasters are on the rise and religious organizations, the same organizations that came to victims’ rescue in the wake of the last natural disaster, are often left in the path of destruction. Under President Trump’s administration, FEMA recently amended its disaster assistance program to provide funding for religious organizations. Opponents argue this amendment is a violation of the Establishment Clause, while proponents argue the amended plan finally gives religious organizations the fair treatment they deserve. This new aid program needs to be modified and restricted. Though there is clear precedent to support providing some Public Assistance funding to religious …

Rethinking Powers Of Attorney In Real Estate Transactions, Julia Patterson Forrester Rogers

SMU Law Review

The Uniform Power of Attorney Act, adopted in 2006, was designed to address the divergence of various states from the original uniform act and to address problems identified by attorneys practicing in the area. One such problem was the refusal of parties to accept powers of attorney—although a client might execute a durable power of attorney as part of an estate plan to avoid a guardianship, parties would refuse to deal with the agent, thus necessitating a guardianship proceeding. The Uniform Act has now been enacted in some form in more than half of the states, including Texas. The author …

Twitter And The #So-Calledjudge, Elizabeth G. Thornburg

SMU Law Review

Two-hundred-eighty characters may be insufficient to deliver a treatise on the judiciary, but it is more than enough to deliver criticism of the third branch of government. Today, these tweeted critiques sometimes come not from the general public but from the President himself. Attacks such as these come at a challenging time for court systems. We live in a highly politicized, polarized society. This polarization is reflected in attitudes toward the courts, particularly the federal courts. Unfortunately, public doubts about the court system come at a time when public understanding of the structure of government, and especially the court system, …

Avoiding The Alien Tort Statute: A Call For Uniformity In State Court Human Rights Litigation, Alicia Pitts

SMU Law Review

For decades, the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) has played a valuable role in human rights litigation in U.S. courts. However, in recent years, the U.S. Supreme Court has limited the ATS’s effectiveness in a number of respects. In response to these decisions, many scholars have predicted that litigants will begin to evade the restrictive ATS jurisprudence by bringing traditional ATS cases in state courts. This comment reveals that this tactic has not become as prevalent as scholars predicted and evaluates the only two state court cases uncovered by the author’s research. This comment then explains why litigating would-be ATS cases …

Equal Access To Information: The Fraud At The Heart Of Texas Gulf Sulphur, Stephen M. Bainbridge

SMU Law Review

The Texas Gulf Sulphur decision was the seminal moment in the creation of the modern federal insider trading prohibition. In the half century since it was decided, however, courts and commentators have overlooked the glaring flaw in the court’s analysis.

In the key part of the opinion, in which the court laid out the equal access standard, the court grossly misrepresented the precedents on which it relied. The court cited two state law opinions that were wholly irrelevant to the problem at hand. It cited two law review articles, but those articles sim- ply do not say what the court …

What’S In A Name?: Proving Actual Damages For Reputational Harm In Texas Defamation Cases Will Only Get Harder, Austin Brakebill

SMU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Panel Effects In Administrative Law: A Study Of Rules, Standards, And Judicial Whistleblowing, Morgan Hazelton, Kristin E. Hickman, Emerson Tiller

SMU Law Review

In this article, we consider whether “panel effects”—that is, the condition where the presence, or expected voting behavior, of one judge on a judicial panel influences the way another judge, or set of judges, on the same panel votes—varies depending upon the form of the legal doctrine. In particular, we ask whether the hand of an ideological minority appellate judge (that is, a Democrat-appointed judge with two Republican appointees or a Republican-appointed judge with two Democrat appointees) is strengthened by the existence of a legal doctrine packaged in the form of a rule rather than a standard. Specifically, we unbundle …

A Texas Two-Step In The Right Direction—Looking Beyond Recent Legislation To Improve The Provision Of Special Education Services In Texas, Taylor Michals

SMU Law Review

This article analyzes the current state of the special education system in Texas following the 85th Legislative Session, focusing on the practical and legal implications of the limitation imposed by the Texas Education Agency in 2004 before analyzing Senate Bill 160, which requires Texas to remove the limitation on special education services, and its future impact on special education in Texas. Additionally, this article addresses Senate Bill 927, which outlined a plan to ensure that students who were previously denied services receive an adequate evaluation, why the legislation failed, and potential remedies for students who have been negatively impacted by …

Front Matter

SMU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Reaching Across The Threshold Of The Fourth Amendment - Why Payton V. New York Should Be Interpreted Broadly, Caroline Hunt

SMU Law Review

No abstract provided.

From Blockbuster To Mobile Apps—Video Privacy Protection Act Of 1988 Continues To Protect The Digital Citizen, Ann Stehling

SMU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Copyright Ownership—Even Iron Man Couldn’T Protect The Work For Hire Doctrine From Third-Party Infringers, Elizabeth Vinson

SMU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Free Speech, The Search For Truth, And The Problem Of Collective Knowledge, Frederick Schauer

SMU Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Wrong Decision At The Wrong Time: Utah V. Strieff In The Era Of Aggressive Policing, Julian A. Cook Iii

SMU Law Review

No abstract provided.

The High Cost Of Free-To-Play Games: Consumer Protection In The New Digital Playground, Erik Allison

SMU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

SMU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Alternative Dispute Resolution: A Critical Reconsideration, Richard Delgado

SMU Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Unbearable Lightness Of Alternative Dispute Resolution: Critical Thoughts On Fairness And Formality, Richard Delgado

SMU Law Review

Years ago, I published Fairness and Formality: Minimizing the Risk of Prejudice in Alternative Dispute Resolution in Wisconsin Law Review. Arriving in the early years of the deformalization movement, Fairness and Formality sounded a warning about the risks this conflict resolution approach poses for disempowered disputants. Coming on the heels of an article in the same vein by Owen Fiss, Fairness & Formality attracted attention in part because its message ran counter to the prevailing ideology, according to which alternative dispute resolution is superior in many respects to the in-court variety—cheaper, faster, and friendlier, particularly for the uninitiated.

Soon, however, …

Reconsidering Prejudice In Alternative Dispute Resolution For Black Work Matters, Michael Z. Green

SMU Law Review

In the 1985 foundational article Fairness and Formality: Minimizing the Risk of Prejudice in Alternative Dispute Resolution, Richard Delgado and his co-authors identified major concerns with the growing use of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) to resolve disputes involving people of color. The seminal findings from that article highlighted the power differentials exacerbated by informal dispute resolution, and the article contributed immediately to a surge of robust critiques of the increasing use of alternative dispute resolution for those most vulnerable in our society.

More than thirty years after the Delgado article, a community of respected and prominent ADR and discrimination …

Do You Believe In Magic?: Self-Determination And Procedural Justice Meet Inequality In Court-Connected Mediation, Nancy Welsh

SMU Law Review

Proponents of the “contemporary mediation movement” promised that parties would be able to exercise self-determination as they participated in mediation. When courts began to mandate the use of mediation, commentators raised doubts about the vitality of self-determination. Though these commentators also suggested a wide variety of reforms, few of their proposals have gained widespread adoption in the courts.

Ensuring the procedural justice of mediation represents another means to ensure self-determination. If mediation provides parties with the opportunity to exercise voice, helps them demonstrate that they have considered what each other had to say, and treats them in an even-handed and …

Critical Procedure: Adr And The Justices’ “Second Wave” Constriction Of Court Access And Claim Development, Eric K. Yamamoto

SMU Law Review

Expansive alternative dispute resolution (ADR) was the centerpiece of efficiency-based procedural reforms in the 1980s and early 1990s. ADR and other reforms collectively altered the litigation landscape, at times for the better. Yet some scholars raised early questions about ADR’s effect on systemic litigation fairness and the ability of the disenfranchised to assert and maintain claims in court. Amid second wave procedural changes, commencing around the mid-2000s, a Justice Scalia-led majority significantly expanded the grasp of compelled, private, and individualized arbitration. Under the shroud of efficiency, that Court majority imposed those second wave changes by judicial fiat, bypassing formal rulemaking. …

Does Alternative Dispute Resolution Facilitate Prejudice And Bias? We Still Don’T Know, Gilat J. Bachar, Deborah R. Hensler

SMU Law Review

By the time Professor Richard Delgado and his colleagues wrote their seminal article on the risk of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) facilitating prejudice, ADR programs were well-established in the United States, supported by legislative and court mandates, private contracts, and U.S. Supreme Court decisions. Fairness and Formality: Minimizing the Risk of Prejudice in Alternative Dispute Resolution and Delgado’s subsequent review article, ADR and the Dispossessed: Recent Books About the Deformalization Movement, were cited hundreds of times by scholars and practitioners but did little to stop the movement to substitute mediation, arbitration, and other dispute resolution procedures for public adjudication. …

Contextual Analysis In Arbitration, Pat K. Chew

SMU Law Review

The arbitration process is embedded in a much larger context than the four walls in which the arbitration occurs. Exploring and studying that context—including the arbitral institution, the arbitrators, each party, the arbitration process, and the broader cultural and political environment—inform what actually occurs and to what extent one party may have inherent advantages over the other. This article illustrates this contextual analysis in two diverse settings: domestic employment arbitrations and international trade arbitrations. These analyses reveal one party’s advantages over the other, which are explained in part by market and cultural forces in which these arbitrations are embedded. Interdisciplinary, …

Do Alternative Dispute Resolution Procedures Disadvantage Women And Minorities?, Charles Craver

SMU Law Review

When different legal controversies arise, parties frequently employ alternative dispute resolution procedures to resolve them. Yet some members of ethnic minority groups and women may seek judicial proceedings out of a concern that their ethnicity or gender may undermine their ability to achieve beneficial bargaining outcomes through ADR. This article addresses the real and perceived challenges of ethnic minorities and women in ADR. It draws upon decades of research into dispute resolution bargaining processes to illustrate that most traits associated with ethnicity and gender are irrelevant today with respect to ADR. When persons are taught even minimally about the bargaining …

Dispute System Design And Bias In Dispute Resolution, Lisa Blomgren Amsler, Alexander B. Avtgis, Michael Scott Jackman

SMU Law Review

This article examines the role of mediator race and gender in perceptions of procedural justice as measure of accountability and representative bureaucracy in a national mediation program for complaints of employment discrimination at a large federal organization, the United States Postal Service. Mediation represents a forum of accountability in which employees may hold an employer accountable for violating federal law prohibiting forms of employment discrimination, in this case, race discrimination, sex discrimination, and sexual harassment. Representative bureaucracy theory suggests passive or symbolic representation when the demographics of public officials should mirror those of the public they serve. Some research suggests …