Law Commons^™

Interstate Groundwater Law Revisited: Mississippi V. Tennessee, Noah D. Hall, Joseph Regalia

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In June 2015, the United States Supreme Court granted the State of Mississippi leave to file a bill of complaint against the State of Tennessee, the City of Memphis, and Memphis Light, Gas & Water Division for wrongfully converting groundwater from the interstate Sparta-Memphis Aquifer. The dispute arises from Memphis and its municipal utility pumping groundwater within Tennessee, which Mississippi alleges has lowered the water tables within its territory. The Supreme Court's grant of leave raises for the first time the question of what legal doctrine applies to transboundary interstate groundwater resources. Tennessee and lower courts would subject interstate groundwater …

Policing And The Clash Of Masculinities, Ann C. Mcginley

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In 2014 and 2015, the news media inundated U.S. society with reports of brutal killings by police of black men in major American cities. Unfortunately, police departments do not typically keep data on police killings of civilians. The data that exist do show, however, that at least for a five-month period in 2015, there was a disproportionate rate of police killings of unarmed black men.

There is no question that race and class play a key role in the nature of policing that occurs in poor black urban neighborhoods. However, the relationship between police officers and their victims is not …

Untangling The Web: Juvenile Justice In Indian Country, Addie C. Rolnick

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The juvenile justice system in Indian country is broken. Native youth are vulnerable and traumatized. They become involved in the system at high rates, and they are more likely than other youth to be incarcerated and less likely to receive necessary health, mental-health, and education services. Congressional leaders and the Obama administration have made the needs of Indian country, especially improvement of tribal justice systems, an area of focus in recent years. The release of two major reports—one from a task force convened by the Attorney General to study violence and trauma among Native youth and the other from a …

A Rational Approach To Business Entity Choice, Eric H. Franklin

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This Article reinvigorates the entity rationalization movement and will ultimately argue that there are only three necessary entity options: corporations, partnerships, and nonprofit organizations. Part I defines the issue of entity proliferation and, along with the Appendix, presents a state-by-state analysis of the types of legal entities available, an endeavor that has not yet been conducted. The Appendix contains a chart that enumerates each legal entity available in each of the fifty states and the District of Columbia. Part II discusses the problems associated with entity proliferation from the perspective of the public, potential business owners, small business attorneys, and …

Reconciling The Premium Tax Credit: Painful Complications For Lower And Middle-Income Taxpayers, Francine J. Lipman, James E. Williamson

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The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) makes available to certain middle and lower-income individuals a refundable tax credit, the Premium Tax Credit (PTC), designed to help them pay the premiums on their qualified health care plans. To achieve Congress’s goal of making health insurance affordable, the PTC is most often provided directly to an individual’s insurance provider each month in advance of actually claiming the PTC on the individual’s year-end annual tax return. Of the almost twelve million individuals who have enrolled in health insurance through the federal and state health exchanges in 2015, 85% of these individuals …

From Victims To Litigants, Elizabeth L. Macdowell

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This Article reports findings from an ethnographic study of self-help programs in two western states. The study investigated how self-help assistance provided by partnerships between courts and nongovernmental organizations implicates advocacy and access to justice for domestic violence survivors. The primary finding is that self-help programs may inadvertently work to curtail, rather than expand, advocacy resources. Furthermore, problems identified with self-help service delivery and negative impacts on advocacy systems may be explained by the structure of work within self-help programs and the nature of partnerships to provide self-help services. The Author uncovers previously unseen impacts of self-help programs on survivors …

Undetected Conflict-Of-Laws Problems In Cross-Border Online Copyright Infringement Cases, Marketa Trimble

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This article provides and analyzes data on copyright infringement cases filed in U.S. federal district courts in 2013; it focuses on infringement cases involving activity on the internet and discusses actual and potential conflict-of-laws issues that the cases raised or could have raised. The article complements the report entitled "Private International Law Issues in Online Intellectual Property Infringement Disputes with Cross-Border Elements: An Analysis of National Approaches" (the "Report"), which was published by the World Intellectual Property Organization in September 2015. In the Report its author, Professor Andrew F. Christie, discusses his empirical findings about the intersection of intellectual property …

Introduction To The U.S. Feminist Judgments Project, Linda L. Berger, Kathryn M. Stanchi, Bridget J. Crawford

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The U.S. Feminist Judgments Project turns attention to the U.S. Supreme Court. Contributors to this volume challenge the formalistic concepts that U.S. Supreme Court opinions are, or should be, written from a neutral vantage point and that they are, or should be, based on deductive logic or “pure” rationality. When the project’s authors brought their own feminist consciousness or philosophy to some of the most important (and supposedly “neutral”) decisions and assertions about gender-related issues, the judicial decisions took on a very different character. Feminist consciousness broadens and widens the lens through which we view law and helps the decision …

Locked Up: Fear, Racism, Prison Economics, And The Incarceration Of Native Youth, Addie C. Rolnick

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Native youth are disproportionately incarcerated, often for relatively minor offenses. One potential solution is to move more Native youth out of federal and state courts and invest in tribal juvenile justice systems. Tribal systems are assumed to be less punitive than nontribal ones, so greater tribal control should mean less incarceration. Little is known, however, about the role of incarceration in tribally run systems. This article examines available information on Native youth in tribal juvenile justice systems from 1998 to 2013. At least sixteen new secure juvenile facilities were built to house youth under tribal court jurisdiction, with federal investment …

Alternative Conceptions Of Legal Rhetoric: Open Hand, Closed Fist, Linda L. Berger

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An open-handed image of rhetoric presents an argument against the closed fist of logic and the “nasty, brutish, and short” depictions associated with legal rhetoric. In 1985, Robert Cover laid bare the field of pain and death where legal interpretation plays itself out in human consequences. Five years later, Gerald Wetlaufer described a landscape of brutal certainty as the backdrop for much of legal rhetoric. And the arena of criminal trials has long been recognizable as a bleak setting within which “[j]ustice determines blame and administers pain in a contest between the offender and the state . . .”

My …

When Immigrants Speak: The Precarious Status Of Non-Citizen Speech Under The First Amendment, Michael Kagan

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The legal protection of free speech for immigrants in the United States is surprisingly limited, and it may be under more threat than is commonly understood. Although many unauthorized immigrants have become politically active in campaigning for immigration reform, their ability to speak out publicly may depend more on political discretion than on the Constitutional protections that we normally take for granted. Potential threats to immigrant free speech may be seen in three areas of law. First, a broad claim has been made by the Department of Justice that immigrants who have not been legally admitted to the country have …

The Humanities In The Law School Curriculum: Courtship And Consummation, Linda H. Edwards

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Today the humanities occupy a small corner of the law school curriculum. Might they instead become a more vibrant partner in legal education? Might law and humanities scholarship escape the pages of law reviews and teach us something important about how to read and understand the law?

Despite the long theoretical dominance of legal realism in scholarly circles, much of legal education as we know it has remained mired in Langdell's formalist vision of the law—a vision of a narrow, abstract, impersonal system bereft of human meaning and value. But we can do better. We can approach law, and teach …

Gambling Disorder, Vulnerability, And The Law: Mapping The Field, Stacey A. Tovino

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This Article seeks to descriptively map the sub-field of gambling disorder and the law and ask whether individuals with gambling disorder are vulnerable under the law. Like other scholarship that descriptively maps ethical, legal, and social implications of lesser known conditions and developments, this Article seeks to describe the treatment of individuals with gambling disorder in a variety of illustrative, but not exhaustive, legal contexts, to identify the limited scholarship assessing the application of the law to individuals with gambling disorder, and to invite members of the health law academy to bring their significant expertise to bear on these issues …

Complying With The Hipaa Privacy Rule: Problems And Perspectives, Stacey A. Tovino

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Twenty years ago, President Clinton signed the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) into law. Over the past two decades, the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has published several sets of rules implementing the Administrative Simplification provisions within HIPAA as well as the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical (HITECH) Act within the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). These rules include a final rule governing the use and disclosure of protected health information by covered entities and their business associates (Privacy Rule).

This Article addresses the question of what it means for …

“Law &” Meets “Law As”, Linda L. Berger

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Prof. Berger reviews The Handbook of Law and Society, edited by Austin Sarat and Patrick Ewick.

Dying Fast: Suicide In Individuals With Gambling Disorder, Stacey A. Tovino

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These published remarks carefully document the history of health insurance coverage of gambling disorder. They begin by providing examples of gambling disorder insurance benefit disparities in the contexts of public health care programs and private health plans. They proceed by reviewing the effect of three pieces of legislation, including the Mental Health Parity Act of 1996, the Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008, and the Affordable Care Act of 2010, on public and private insurance coverage of gambling disorder. They highlight the partial victory that will occur in some states beginning in …

Workplace Law Cases In The Tenth Term Of The Roberts Court: Between The Usual Ideological Lines, Ruben J. Garcia

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My review of the Supreme Court's October 2014 Term will focus on cases involving workplace law statutes such as the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA), Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII), the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947 (LMRA) and the Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989 (WPA). These cases can be viewed through the lens of the following trends: 1) the Court continues its judicial narrowing of the Fair Labor Standards Act and federal labor law; 2) plaintiffs who have the backing of the administrative agencies are more likely to be successful; and …

Research Instruction And Resources In The Transactional Skills Classroom: Approaches To Incorporating Research Instruction Into Transactional Skills Courses, Lori D. Johnson, Jeanne Price, Eric H. Franklin

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Professors Lori Johnson, Jeanne Price, and Eric Franklin discuss methods of teaching legal research skills in the context of a transactional law class.

The House Edge: On Gambling And Professional Discipline, Stacey A. Tovino

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On March 26, 2014, the Iowa Supreme Court revoked the license to practice law of Cedar Rapids attorney Susan Hense. Admitted to the Iowa Bar in 1996, Hense subsequently misappropriated $837,000 in client trust funds to feed her addiction to casino gambling. This Article assesses how attorneys like Hense who are addicted to gambling are treated in professional disciplinary actions, including license suspension, revocation, and reinstatement proceedings. Themes that emerge include public misunderstanding of gambling disorder, stigma against individuals with gambling disorder, statutory recognition of substance addictions but not behavioral addictions, and mandatory attendance at religion based fellowship meetings as …

Politics At Work After Citizens United, Ruben J. Garcia

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There are seismic changes going on in the political system. The United States Supreme Court has constitutionalized the concentration of political power in the "one percent" in several recent decisions, including Citizens United v. FEC. At the same time, unions are representing a shrinking share of the workforce, and their political power is also being diminished. In order for unions to recalibrate the balance of political power at all, they must collaborate with grassroots community groups, as they have done in several recent campaigns. There are, however, various legal structures that make coordination between unions and nonunion groups difficult, …

"An Equally Divided Court": Workplace Law In The U.S. Supreme Court 2015-2016, Ruben J. Garcia

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The 2015-2016 Term of the United States Supreme Court was scarcely halfway over when Justice Antonin Scalia passed away on February 12, 2016. This event and the political gridlock over his successor defined the Term in some ways more than the actual decisions of the Court, particularly when the resulting vacancy led an “equally divided” Supreme Court to affirm the courts below in a one sentence judgment. The most watched of these cases in workplace law was Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, where the Supreme Court’s 4-4 tie avoided the overruling of decades of precedent upholding the constitutionality of agency …

Subsidized Egg Freezing In Employment: Autonomy, Coercion, Or Discrimination?, Ann C. Mcginley

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In 2014, Apple and Facebook announced that they would provide up to $20,000 for female employees to freeze their eggs as an employment benefit. These announcements raised mixed reviews. Some applauded the decision because they believe that egg freezing may offer to women more control over their reproductive choices. Others argued that the new benefit sends the wrong message to women and that encouraging good parenting by giving better parental leave and child care policies would be more beneficial to families. Others were concerned that this “benefit” applies only to professional or managerial-class women, but may not be helpful to …

Hurrah For The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: Consumer Arbitration As A Poster Child For Regulation, Jean R. Sternlight

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Drawing on economic, psychological and philosophical considerations, this Essay considers whether consumers should be "free" to "agree" to contractually trade their opportunity to litigate in a class action for the opportunity to bring an arbitration claim against a company. The Essay suggests that by looking at the CFPB's regulation through these three lenses, one sees that the regulation is desirable—even a poster child—for the potential value of regulation when market forces are not sufficient to protect individual or public interests.

Beyond The Basketball Court: How Brittney Griner's In My Skin Illustrates Title Ix's Failure To Protect Lgbt Athletes At Religious Institutions, Leslie C. Griffin

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Symposium: Playing with Pride: LGBT Inclusion in Sports.

Unlike schoolteachers, janitors, coaches, food-service directors, organists, and other workers, professional athletes usually command center stage in society. Their successes and failures loom larger than life. Sometimes their prominent lives highlight themes hidden from public discussion or neglected by the majority. Professional basketball player Brittney Griner's autobiography does just that, by illuminating how "religious freedom" can undermine equality, especially LGBT equality.

Seeing Higher Education And Faculty Responsibility Through Richard Matasar's Critiques Of Law Schools: College Completion, Economic Viability, And The Liberal Arts Ideal In Higher Education, John Valery White

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Professor John Valery White argues that the crisis in higher education has been framed around discomfort with and critiques of changes that have taken place in the last few decades as universities grew and became more complex, and more expensive. These arguments raise valid and significant concerns about higher education and its subcomponents like legal education but on the whole have missed the true challenge to higher education of recent years. He argues that the significant current policy push to improve college attainment has led to the loss of academic authority and leadership by higher education institutions, their administrators, and …

Economic Inequality And College Admissions Policies, David Orentlicher

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As economic inequality in the United States has reached unprecedented heights, reformers have focused considerable attention on changes in the law that would provide for greater equality in wealth among Americans. No doubt, much benefit would result from more equitable tax policies, fairer workplace regulation, and more generous spending policies.

But there may be even more to gain by revising college admissions policies. Admissions policies at the Ivy League and other elite American colleges do much to exacerbate the problem of economic inequality. Accordingly, reforming those policies may represent the most effective strategy for restoring a reasonable degree of economic …

Political Dysfunction And The Election Of Donald Trump: Problems Of The U.S. Constitution's Presidency, David Orentlicher

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In this article, Professor Orentlicher examines the Constitution's design for the executive branch. He argues that by opting for a single executive rather than a multi-person executive, the Constitution causes two serious problems-it fuels the high levels of partisan polarization that we see today, and it increases the likelihood of misguided presidential decision making. Drawing on the experience in other countries with executive power shared by multiple officials, he proposes a bipartisan executive.

Off-Label Drug Marketing, The First Amendment, And Federalism, David Orentlicher

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In this article, Professor Orentlicher explores free speech and federalism issues arising from FDA regulation of off-label uses and off-label marketing of drugs. In light of the FDA's desire to respect state government authority, together with other considerations discussed in this article, he argues for the rejection of the analysis of the Caronia court and to give the FDA significant leeway in its regulation of off-label marketing.

Clinical Criteria For Physician Aid In Dying, David Orentlicher

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More than 20 years ago, even before voters in Oregon had enacted the first aid in dying (AID) statute in the United States, Timothy Quill and colleagues proposed clinical criteria AID. Their proposal was carefully considered and temperate, but there were little data on the practice of AID at the time. (With AID, a physician writes a prescription for life-ending medication for a terminally ill, mentally capacitated adult.) With the passage of time, a substantial body of data on AID has developed from the states of Oregon and Washington. For more than 17 years, physicians in Oregon have been authorized …

Finishing The Job Of Legal Education Reform, Mary Beth Beazley

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In this article, Professor Beazley advocates for the extension of tenure to skills faculty for the good of law faculty and of legal education. She argues that extending tenure to legal writing and other skills faculty will help to advance the goals of education reform in a variety of ways. First, equalizing the power of skills faculty will allow law schools to get the full benefit of their teaching and scholarship, a benefit that is currently blunted by ignorance and bias. Second, fair treatment of skills faculty will advance the values of equality, diversity, and inclusion: law students will benefit …