Law Commons^™

Empowering The Sentencing Commission: A Different Resolution To The Cocaine Sentencing Drama, Kip D. Nelson

Kip D Nelson

No abstract provided.

The Fox And The Ostrich: Is Gaap A Game Of Winks And Nods?, Arthur Acevedo

Arthur Acevedo

The fox is frequently described as sly, cunning and calculating in world literature. It is often associated with behavior that seeks advantage through trickery and pretext. The ostrich on the other hand, has been portrayed as cowardly and irrational. Its character defect is epitomized when it sticks its head in the sand at the first sign of trouble. The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) can be described as the fox; the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), the ostrich. This article examines the creation of accounting principles by the fox and the failure to govern by the ostrich. History demonstrates that the …

Sunset 2010: The Sunshine State, In Space, Timothy M. Ravich

Timothy M Ravich

In light of the imminent retirement of the Space Shuttle fleet later this year, this article addresses the recent enactment of new laws in Florida and elsewhere, together with the emergence of a space tourism industry and burgeoning cadre of private aerospace entrepreneurs. The significance of this is that space law presents serious private commercial opportunities for all Americans. This article focuses on the particular role Florida has played in national human spaceflight missions and expresses sincere concern about the state’s current and future direction as spacefarers look to different jurisdictions and platforms to support the next phase of space …

Empowering The Sentencing Commission: A Different Resolution To The Cocaine Sentencing Drama, Kip D. Nelson

Kip D Nelson

No abstract provided.

A Post-Racial Voting Rights Act, Jason Rathod (R-Z)

Jason Rathod (R-Z)

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) was enacted “to foster our transformation to a society that is no longer fixated on race.” Georgia v. Ashcroft, 539 U.S. 461, 490 (2003). This article critiques the prevailing election law scholarship and jurisprudence as out of step with VRA’s post-racial aspirations and offers proposals for Congress to correct course. The United States has long been torn between civic nationalism and racial nationalism. By the mid-20th Century, the uneasy interplay of these visions had produced a remarkable expansion of citizenship to all migrants from Europe alongside appalling discrimination against, or outright exclusion of, …

The Supreme Court's Assault On Litigation: Why (And How) It Could Be Good For Health Law, Abigail R. Moncrieff

Abigail R. Moncrieff

In recent years, the Supreme Court has narrowed or eliminated private rights of action in many legal regimes, much to the chagrin of the legal academy. That trend, although certainly not limited to health law, has had a significant impact on the field; the Court’s decisions have eliminated the private enforcement mechanism for at least three important healthcare regimes: Medicaid, employer-sponsored insurance, and medical devices. In a similar trend outside the courts, state legislatures have capped noneconomic and punitive damages for medical malpractice litigation, weakening the tort system’s deterrent capacity in those states. This Article points out that the trend …

The Pursuit Of Perfection: Congressional Power To Enforce The Reconstruction Amendments, Aaron Christopher Bryant

Aaron Christopher Bryant

ABSTRACT In June the Supreme Court avoided a decision on the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act’s pre-clearance requirement, while at the same time managing to foreshadow that provision’s ultimate demise. In a separate opinion, Justice Thomas announced that he would have reached the issue and invalidated the pre-clearance requirement. Conceding that unconstitutional racial discrimination in the administration of elections continued to be an unfortunate reality, he asserted that Congress was not permitted to pursue “perfect compliance” with the Constitution’s mandate via the use of “broad prophylactic legislation.” Justice Thomas’s statement accurately, though to be sure rather starkly, expressed an …

How Incentives Drove The Subprime Crisis, Charles W. Murdock

Charles W. Murdock

How Incentives Drove the Subprime Crisis

In order to address any systemic problem, whether the goal is to change the system, regulate the system, or change the incentives driving a system, it is necessary to appreciate all the drivers operating within the system. In the case of the subprime crisis, one of the drivers was the changing nature of the subprime loans, which was not factored into the models used by the investment bankers, the credit rating agencies, and the issuers of credit default swaps.

This paper is an attempt to look dispassionately at the subprime crisis from a particular …

Lawyers, Guns, And Money: Why The Tiahrt Amendment’S Ban On The Admissibility Of Atf Trace Data In State Court Actions Violates The Commerce Clause And The Tenth Amendment, Colin Miller

Colin Miller

The Tiahrt Amendment provides in relevant part that ATF trace data "shall be inadmissible in evidence, and shall not be used, relied on, or disclosed in any manner, nor shall testimony or other evidence be permitted based on the data, in a civil action in any State (including the District of Columbia) or Federal court..." This Amendment has hamstrung cities and localities which, in an effort to combat crime with civil litigation, have brought actions against the gun industry sounding in public nuisance, with trace data being crucial to the success of such actions. Because this Amendment regulates state as …

Trust And The Reform Of Securities Regulation, Ronald J. Colombo

Ronald J Colombo

Trust is a critically important ingredient in the recipes for a successful economy and a well-functioning securities market. Due to scandals, ranging in nature from massive incompetence, to massive irresponsibility, to massive fraud, investor trust is in shorter supply today than in years past. This is troubling, and commentators, policy makers, and industry leaders have all recognized the need for trust's restoration.

As in times of similar crises, many have turned to law and regulation for the answers to our problems. The imposition of additional regulatory oversight, safeguards, and remedies, some advocate, can help resuscitate investor trust. These advocates have …

Evaluating Children’S Competency To Testify: Developing A Rational Method To Assess A Young Child’S Capacity To Offer Reliable Testimony In Cases Alleging Child Sex Abuse, Laurie Shanks

Laurie Shanks

There are few crimes which elicit a response as emotionally charged as those involving an allegation of child sexual abuse. Given the paucity of physical and scientific evidence in many cases and the resulting need to rely almost exclusively on the testimony of a very young child, the cases present unique challenges for judges, prosecutors and criminal defense attorneys. While many scholars have addressed the dangers inherent in questioning children, such as creating false memories and improperly influencing testimony, there has been little exploration of the means employed by courts to evaluate a child’s ability to offer reliable testimony. Many …

Is "Best Mode" The Worst? Dueling Arguments, Empirical Analysis, And Recommendations For Reform, Wesley D. Markham

Wesley D Markham

The “best mode” requirement, which mandates that an inventor disclose in her patent application the best way to practice her invention, has become a polarizing force as Congress endeavors to comprehensively revamp U.S. patent law. In this article, I examine the “best mode” requirement through a variety of lenses. In doing so, my ultimate goal is to recommend the ideal course of action for “best mode” reform – to fix “best mode,” if it is indeed broken, or to scuttle it if it is beyond repair. To begin, I set forth and evaluate the arguments advanced by both proponents and …

A Million Little Takings, Dru Stevenson

Dru Stevenson

IOLTA programs are a very popular mechanism for funding legal services for the poor, and are now operating in every state. As a result, however, IOLTA has become the most frequent and widespread instance of government takings of private property in America. The post-Kelo era has seen increasing legislative restrictions on takings, and the post-Kelo reforms in several states appear to have inadvertently made their respective IOLTA programs illegal by banning all takings where the government immediately gives the taken property to another private party (in this case, private poverty-law foundations and legal aid clinics). IOLTA takings also highlight a …

Congress’S Right To Counsel In Intelligence Oversight, Kathleen Clark

Kathleen Clark

This article examines Congress’s ability to consult its lawyers and other expert staff in conducting oversight. For decades, congressional leaders have acquiesced in the executive branch’s insistence that certain intelligence information not be shared with congressional staffers, even those staffers who have high-level security clearances. As a result, Congress has been hobbled in its ability to understand and analyze key executive branch programs. This policy became particularly controversial connection with the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance program. Senate Intelligence Committee Vice-Chair Jay Rockefeller noted the “profound oversight issues” implicated by the surveillance program and lamented the fact that he felt constrained …

Understanding Vague Signing Statements, Michael J. Mccarthy

Michael J. McCarthy

This paper identifies and assesses vagueness as a reoccurring feature of modern signing statements. It analyzes how vagueness affects a signing statement’s ability to achieve a variety of objectives, from preserving executive prerogatives to shaping how the judiciary construes statutory language. While vagueness consistently decreases a signing statement’s effectiveness, specificity may unintentionally frustrate the signing statement’s purpose. The interplay between the risks of specificity and the inefficiency of vagueness may suggest that the signing statement is not as powerful a presidential tool as is commonly thought.

Congress’S Right To Counsel In Intelligence Oversight, Kathleen Clark

Kathleen Clark

This article examines Congress’s ability to consult its lawyers and other expert staff in conducting oversight. For decades, congressional leaders have acquiesced in the executive branch’s insistence that certain intelligence information not be shared with congressional staffers, even those staffers who have high-level security clearances. As a result, Congress has been hobbled in its ability to understand and analyze key executive branch programs. This policy became particularly controversial connection with the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance program. Senate Intelligence Committee Vice-Chair Jay Rockefeller noted the “profound oversight issues” implicated by the surveillance program and lamented the fact that he felt constrained …

Anna Nicole Smith Goes Shopping: The New Forum Shopping Problem In Bankruptcy, Gilbert Marcus Cole, Todd J. Zywicki

Gilbert Marcus Cole

The American bankruptcy system is a hybrid of state law and federal bankruptcy law. Under the Butner principle, federal bankruptcy courts preserve substantive non-bankruptcy law entitlements in bankruptcy unless bankruptcy policies compel a contrary result. This hybrid system, however, gives rise to the threat of forum-shopping if parties attempt to invoke bankruptcy jurisdiction for improper purposes, namely to rearrange non-bankruptcy entitlements to advance no coherent bankruptcy policy. Modern developments in bankruptcy law, as exemplified in the case of Marshall v. Marshall raise a novel threat of bankruptcy forum-shopping. Marshall involved the bankruptcy of tabloid starlet Anna Nicole Smith and her …

Legislative Rules, Nonlegislative Rules, And The Perils Of The Short Cut, David L. Franklin

David L. Franklin

Courts have long struggled to distinguish legislative rules, which are designed to have binding legal effect and must go through the rulemaking procedure known as notice and comment, from nonlegislative rules, which are not meant to have binding legal effect and are exempted from notice and comment. The distinction has been called “tenuous,” “baffling,” and “enshrouded in considerable smog.”

What is just as baffling is that prominent commentators such as John Manning, Peter Strauss, William Funk and Donald Elliot have proposed a simple solution to the problem—and courts have failed to take them up on it. Rather than inquiring into …

Should Employees Have To Choose Between Enduring Pain And Keeping Their Jobs?, Reka Bala

Reka Bala

For patients in constant pain, medical marijuana is often the only substance that offers complete relief. Yet these individuals and their employers are still at risk of job-related concerns as cannabis legislation consistently neglects employment issues. In a controversial 2008 decision, Ross v. RagingWire Telecommunications, Inc. forced California cannabis patients to cruelly decide between alleviating pain and staying employed. This Note argues that Ross contradicts legislative intent and violates state and federal law, all of which call for broader rights to medical marijuana users. It also recommends changing California law or designing a judicial remedy to better protect patients from …

Should Employees Have To Choose Between Enduring Pain And Keeping Their Jobs?, Reka Bala

Reka Bala

For patients in constant pain, medical marijuana is often the only substance that offers complete relief. Yet these individuals and their employers are still at risk of job-related concerns as cannabis legislation consistently neglects employment issues. In a controversial 2008 decision, Ross v. RagingWire Telecommunications, Inc. forced California cannabis patients to cruelly decide between alleviating pain and staying employed. This Note argues that Ross contradicts legislative intent and violates state and federal law, all of which call for broader rights to medical marijuana users. It also recommends changing California law or designing a judicial remedy to better protect patients from …

Power And Law, Bait And Switch: Debunking “Law” As A Tool Of Societal Change The Disappearing Act Of Affordable Housing In The District Of Columbia, Samuel Jefferson

Samuel Jefferson Jr.

ABSTRACT

POWER AND LAW, BAIT AND SWITCH:

DEBUNKING “LAW” AS A TOOL OF SOCIETAL CHANGE

The Disappearing Act of Affordable Housing in the District of Columbia

by Samuel L. Jefferson, Jr.

I. Introduction

“It was a typical sunny, hot and hazy July afternoon in Washington, D.C. when I, as a 17-year-old, walked down the hill towards my apartment complex. As I approached, I noticed people gathered in the street in front of my building. I also noticed that someone had been evicted. As I moved closer, I noticed that the belongings were mine and my family’s. That’s when, at least …

How Incentives Drove The Subprime Crisis, Charles W. Murdock

Charles W. Murdock

How Incentives Drove the Subprime Crisis

In order to address any systemic problem, whether the goal is to change the system, regulate the system, or change the incentives driving a system, it is necessary to appreciate all the drivers operating within the system. In the case of the subprime crisis, one of the drivers was the changing nature of the subprime loans, which was not factored into the models used by the investment bankers, the credit rating agencies, and the issuers of credit default swaps.

This paper is an attempt to look dispassionately at the subprime crisis from a particular …

Distorting Legal Principles, Steven L. Schwarcz

Steven L Schwarcz

This article explores the important but until now largely neglected problem of distorting legal principles. Although legal principles enable society to order itself by preserving broadly based expectations, parties sometimes transact in ways that are so inconsistent with accepted principles as to create uncertainty or confusion that undermines the basis for reasoning afforded by the principles. The article starts by examining a fundamental distortion of the nemo dat legal principle (one cannot give what one does not have), which was a trigger of Lehman Brothers’ recent downfall. A practice called “rehypothecation” so distorted nemo dat that Lehman’s customers were uncertain …

Reality Meets Perception For Federal Rule Of Civil Procedure 11: An Empirical Study Of Practice Under The 1983 And 1993 Versions., David B. Owens

David B. Owens

The claim that frivolous litigation is an “epidemic” plaguing our civil justice system strikes a chord with many Americans. Legal ethicists and other academics have responded by emphasizing that incidents like the McDonald’s coffee case are distorted by sensationalist media coverage and, more fundamentally, that they are not representative of civil litigation. Against the backdrop of this persistent social controversy, Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure has been twice significantly amended in the last 30 years—in 1983 and 1993. The most recent amendments in 1993 did not quell political concern about frivolous litigation. Indeed, as recently as …

Sexual Abuse Of Power, Michal Buchhandler-Raphael

michal buchhandler-raphael

This Article argues that sexual abuses of power stemming from professional and institutional relationships justify criminalization. At a normative-theoretical level, the Article contends that coerced submission to unwanted sexual acts in professional and institutional settings demonstrates not only unwanted and harmful sexual conduct but also nonconsensual sex. The Article suggests that the current understanding of consent to sexual relations is flawed, because rape law’s contemporary consent standard focuses on an objective permission-giving act, which fails to recognize that even an explicit verbal authorization sometimes constitutes merely apparent consent. This reality calls for adopting a modified definition for consent to sexual …

Special Incentives To Sue, Margaret H. Lemos

Margaret H. Lemos

In an effort to strengthen private enforcement of federal law, Congress regularly employs plaintiff-side attorneys’ fee shifts, damage enhancements, and other mechanisms that promote litigation. Standard economic theory predicts that these devices will increase the volume of suit by private actors, which in turn will bolster enforcement and encourage more voluntary compliance with the law. This Article challenges the conventional wisdom. I use empirical evidence to demonstrate that special incentives to sue do not dependably generate more litigation. More crucially, when those incentives do work, they often trigger a judicial backlash against the very rights that Congress sought to promote. …

Sexual Abuse Of Power, Michal Buchhandler-Raphael

michal buchhandler-raphael

This Article argues that sexual abuses of power stemming from professional and institutional relationships justify criminalization. At a normative-theoretical level, the Article contends that coerced submission to unwanted sexual acts in professional and institutional settings demonstrates not only unwanted and harmful sexual conduct but also nonconsensual sex. The Article suggests that the current understanding of consent to sexual relations is flawed, because rape law’s contemporary consent standard focuses on an objective permission-giving act, which fails to recognize that even an explicit verbal authorization sometimes constitutes merely apparent consent. This reality calls for adopting a modified definition for consent to sexual …

Sexual Abuse Of Power, Michal Buchhandler-Raphael

michal buchhandler-raphael

This Article argues that sexual abuses of power stemming from professional and institutional relationships justify criminalization. At a normative-theoretical level, the Article contends that coerced submission to unwanted sexual acts in professional and institutional settings demonstrates not only unwanted and harmful sexual conduct but also nonconsensual sex. The Article suggests that the current understanding of consent to sexual relations is flawed, because rape law’s contemporary consent standard focuses on an objective permission-giving act, which fails to recognize that even an explicit verbal authorization sometimes constitutes merely apparent consent. This reality calls for adopting a modified definition for consent to sexual …

Delaware For Small Fry: Jurisdictional Competition For Limited Liability Companies, Larry E. Ribstein

Larry E. Ribstein

Most of the work on jurisdictional competition for business associations has focused on publicly held corporations and the factors underlying Delaware’s dominance in attracting formations of large out-of-state corporations. We examine an analogous jurisdictional competition to attract formations by closely held limited liability companies (LLCs). The LLC offered the first attractive business form for closely held limited liability firms unconstrained by the legacy of corporate default rules. State legislatures have adopted and changed LLC statutes rapidly over the past 20 years. Unlike general and limited partnerships, which have been shaped by uniform laws, LLC statutes vary significantly. These circumstances offer …

The Aftermath Of Ruiz V. Mero: Why The New Jersey Legislature Must Rekindle The Firefighters’ Rule, Nicholas Mangold

Nicholas Mangold

This Note explores the history, common law expansion, and statutory abrogation of the firefighters’ rule in New Jersey tort law. For decades, the rule protected Garden State homeowners from civil liability for injuries to first responders. In its original form, the rule barred tort claims based only on the very negligence that necessitated the first responders’ presence on scene. However, the courts slowly expanded the reach of the rule until it eventually was used to bar recovery for injuries caused by acts of negligence completely separate from that which prompted the emergency response. In response, the state legislature sweepingly abrogated …