Law Commons^™

Platform Pleading: Analyzing Employment Disputes In The Technology Sector, Joseph Seiner

Faculty Publications

The technology sector has created thousands of new jobs for workers across the country in an emerging multi-billion dollar industry. Many companies in this platform-based sector are attempting to characterize their workers as independent contractors rather than employees, thus stripping them of both federal and state workplace protections—including the right to bargain collectively, receive fair compensation, and avoid discrimination. The federal courts, which have always grappled with the question of worker classification, are now struggling to define employment with respect to these gig sector jobs. The result has been scattered court decisions with inconsistent and conflicting analyses.

This Essay seeks …

Educational Gerrymandering: Money, Motives, And Constitutional Rights, Derek Black

Faculty Publications

Public school funding plummeted following the Great Recession and failed to recover over the next decade, prompting strikes and protests across the nation. Courts did almost nothing to stop the decline. While a majority of state supreme courts recognize a constitutional right to an adequate or equal education, they increasingly struggle to enforce the right. That right could be approaching a tipping point. Either it evolves, or risks becoming irrelevant.

In the past, courts have focused almost exclusively on the adequacy and equity of funding for at-risk students, demanding that states provide more resources. Courts have failed to ask the …

The Quiet Undoing: How Regional Electricity Market Reforms Threaten Clean Energy Goals, Shelley Welton, Danny Cullenward

Faculty Publications

In a series of largely unnoticed but extremely consequential moves, two regional electricity market operators are pursuing reforms to make it more difficult for states to achieve their clean energy goals. The federal energy regulator, FERC, has already approved one such reform and ordered a second market operator to go farther in punishing state-supported clean energy resources than it had initially proposed. In this Essay, we bring to light the ways in which the intricate, technical reforms underway in regional electricity markets threaten state climate change objectives and the durability of FERC’s regional market constructs. If FERC allows private market …

The Right To Evidence Of Innocence Before Pleading Guilty, Colin Miller

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Rule Of Law Collaborative: A Center For Practical, Interdisciplinary Research, And Engagement On Pressing Rule Of Law Issues Around The World, Joel H. Samuels

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

It's Not The Robot's Fault! Russian And American Perspectives On Responsibility For Robot Harms, Bryant Walker Smith, Andrey Neznamov

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Bar Bytes: Social Media Benefits, Risks, And Best Practices, Eve Ross

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Location, Location, Vocation? Toward A Post-Recession Analysis Of Law School Choice, Elizabeth Chambliss

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Equality Opportunity And The Schoolhouse Gate, Derek Black, Michelle Adams

Faculty Publications

Public schools have generated some of the most far-reaching cases to come before the Supreme Court. They have involved nearly every major civil right and liberty found in the Bill of Rights. The cases are often reflections of larger societal ills and anxieties, from segregation and immigration to religion and civil discourse over war. In that respect, they go to the core of the nation’s values. Yet constitutional law scholars have largely ignored education law as a distinct area of study and importance.

Justin Driver’s book cures that shortcoming, offering a three-dimensional view of how the Court’s education law jurisprudence …

Bar Bytes: Phishing Update - A Whale Of A Tale, Aaron Glenn

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

No Right To Counsel, No Access Without: The Poor Child's Unconstitutional Catch-22, Lisa V. Martin

Faculty Publications

In the midst of the push for universal access to counsel in civil cases and the increasing proportion of litigants who represent themselves, a critical barrier to access to justice for children has been overlooked. Federal courts have created a catch-22 for child litigants. Children cannot bring claims themselves, so parents must bring the claims on their behalf. Federal courts refuse to allow parents to pursue these claims pro se, stating that parents cannot provide adequate legal representation. Yet, there is no right to counsel in civil cases, and these same courts typically conclude the children’s cases do not warrant …

Data-Driven Law: Data Analytics And The New Legal Services, Eve Ross

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Reevaluating School Searches Following School-To-Prison Pipeline Reforms, Josh Gupta-Kagan

Faculty Publications

The Supreme Court held in New Jersey v. T.L.O. that school officials could search students without a warrant and with only reasonable suspicion, not probable cause, because of schools’ need for discipline and the relationship between educators and students. That case belongs to a body of Fourth Amendment cases involving, in T.L.O.’s terms, “special needs, beyond the normal need for law enforcement.” What Fourth Amendment standard, then, governs searches involving one of the roughly 20,000 school resource officers (SROs) in American schools? Most state courts to decide the issue ruled in the 1990s and 2000s that T.L.O. applied to SRO-involved …

Who Decides Fair Use -- Judge Or Jury?, Ned Snow

Faculty Publications

For more than two-hundred years, the issue of fair use has been the province of the jury. That recently changed when the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals decided Oracle America, Inc. v. Google LLC. At issue was whether Google fairly used portions of Oracle’s computer software when Google created an operating system for smartphones. The jury found Google’s use to be fair, but the Federal Circuit reversed. Importantly, the Federal Circuit applied a de novo standard of review to reach its conclusion, departing from centuries of precedent.

Oracle raises a fundamental question in jurisprudence: Who should decide an issue …

The Value Of Insider Control, Benjamin Means

Faculty Publications

According to conventional wisdom, insider control of businesses is detrimental to the interests of non-controlling investors. Family-run businesses, in particular, are seen as nepotistic and inefficient. Yet, commentators have overestimated the dangers of insider control and overlooked its potential benefits for all stakeholders. Controlling owners have a personal stake that gives them reason to identify with their business and to adopt responsible business practices capable of creating lasting value. A stewardship model of insider control helps explain the continuing vitality of family businesses as well as the success of recent public offerings by Facebook, Google, and Snapchat involving low-vote or …

Just Transitions, Ann M. Eisenberg

Faculty Publications

The transition to a low-carbon society will have winners and losers as the costs and benefits of decarbonization fall unevenly on different communities. This potential collateral damage has prompted calls for a “just transition” to a green economy. While the term, “just transition,” is increasingly prevalent in the public discourse, it remains under-discussed and poorly defined in legal literature, preventing it from helping catalyze fair decarbonization. This Article seeks to define the term, test its validity, and articulate its relationship with law so the idea can meet its potential.

The Article is the first to disambiguate and assess two main …

Marketing Legal Assistance, Elizabeth Chambliss

Faculty Publications

Much of the American conversation about access to justice focuses on regulatory barriers to new forms of service delivery and treats regulatory resistance as the primary problem to be solved. Meanwhile, obstacles to consumer awareness and engagement have received less attention. This essay reverses the order of analysis and considers strategies for expanding access first from a marketing perspective. What models of legal assistance have been most successful in building consumer awareness and trust? To what extent can successful marketing help to sidestep or overcome regulatory resistance? And what are the implications for reformers interested in expanding access to justice?

Coerced Choice: School Vouchers And Students With Disabilities, Claire Raj

Faculty Publications

The landscape of public education, once thought to be a core function of the state, is shifting towards privatization. The appointment of Betsy DeVos as U.S. Secretary of Education further cements this shift. In particular, DeVos intends to vastly expand the availability of vouchers and tax credits that use public dollars to fund private school tuition. The debate over this expansion and its impact on traditional public schools has been polarizing and combative. Thus far, commentators have framed vouchers as purely matters of choice and increased educational opportunities. Drowned out in the debate are the voices of students with disabilities. …

Evidence-Based Lawyer Regulation, Elizabeth Chambliss

Faculty Publications

The legal profession is losing its authority over the regulation of legal services. Recent changes in antitrust law have put state bar associations under a spotlight. Competition from technology companies and concerns about access to justice have increased political pressure for market liberalization. Independent research is challenging the unique value of lawyers’ services, even in formal legal proceedings, and this research is increasingly well-organized and well-funded at the national level. The organized bar is asleep at the wheel and ill-prepared to respond.

This Article argues that the United States is moving toward evidence-based lawyer regulation, and suggests strategies for equipping …

Equitable Health Savings Accounts, Samuel Estreicher, Clinton G. Wallace

Faculty Publications

This Article offers the first comprehensive legal-policy critique of existing Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), arguing that the current approach is redistributively regressive, thus exacerbating inequality, and also fails to accomplish stated healthcare goals. We propose an alternative—Equitable Health Savings Accounts—which uses cash grants as a tool to address both of these problems. Equitable HSAs are a market-based social program that calibrates size and delivery of a government subsidy to help the least well off and to facilitate participation in healthcare markets. Equitable HSAs can serve as a model for using cash grants to bridge the gap between Republican social policy …

The School Civil Rights Vacuum, Emily Suski

Faculty Publications

Recent cases of pervasive sex abuse at universities, including those committed by Larry Nassar at Michigan State University and by Jerry Sandusky at Pennsylvania State University, demonstrate the limitations of Title IX as a tool for protecting college students. What has gone far less recognized is that in the K–12 public school context, Title IX and other civil rights laws, including the Fourteenth Amendment, are at least as ineffective at protecting students from sexual, physical, and verbal abuse and harassment. Public school students rarely succeed on Fourteenth Amendment or Title IX claims, even in some of the most egregious cases. …

Free Appropriate Public Education After Andrew F. V. Douglas County School District (2017), Terrye Conroy, Mitchell Yell

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Freezing The Future: Elective Egg Freezing And The Limits Of The Medical Expense Deduction, Tessa R. Davis

Faculty Publications

Section 213 of the Internal Revenue Code (the Code) allows a deduction for unreimbursed expenses for medical care. To qualify as medical care, an individual’s outlay must meet the statutory definition of “medical care” set forth in §213. Specifically, an outlay must be for care that is either for “the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease, or for the purpose of affecting any structure or function of the body.” Many costs raise few interpretive challenges. When an individual receives chemotherapy, for example, the costs tied to that care clearly satisfy the disease prong of §213. But as medicine …

Clean Energy Justice: Charting An Emerging Agenda, Shelley Welton, Joel Eisen

Faculty Publications

The rapid transition to clean energy is fraught with potential inequities. As clean energy policies ramp up in scale and ambition, they confront challenging new questions: Who should pay for the transition? Who should live next to the industrial-scale wind and solar farms these policies promote? Will the new “green” economy be a fairer one, with more widespread opportunity, than the fossil fuel economy it is replacing? Who gets to decide what kinds of resources power our decarbonized world? In this article, we assert that it is useful to understand these challenges collectively, as part of an emerging agenda of …

The Discrimination Presumption, Joseph Seiner

Faculty Publications

Employment discrimination is a fact in our society. Scientific studies continue to show that employer misconduct in the workplace is pervasive. This social science research is further supported by governmental data and litigation statistics. Even in the face of this evidence, however, it has never been more difficult to successfully bring a claim of employment discrimination. After the Supreme Court’s controversial decisions in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544 (2007), and Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662 (2009), all civil litigants must sufficiently plead enough facts to give rise to a plausible claim. Empirical studies show that this …

Harassment, Technology, And The Modern Worker, Joseph Seiner

Faculty Publications

This symposium paper explores why sex discrimination is so prevalent in the technology sector workplace. This paper further examines what can be done to address these problems, and how employers can work to minimize the types of gender discrimination issues that currently exist in the modern economy. This ongoing issue must be examined much more closely by technology companies given the potential for this type of harm across the entire sector. There are many things that can be done to reduce this form of discrimination and to limit the potential liability for employers.

Dismantling The Master's House: Toward A Justice-Based Theory Of Community Economic Development, Etienne C. Toussaint

Faculty Publications

Since the end of the American Civil War, scholars have debated the efficacy of various models of community economic development, or CED. Historically, this debate has tracked one of two approaches: place-based models of CED, seeking to stimulate community development through market-driven economic growth programs, and people-based models of CED, focused on the removal of structural barriers to social and economic mobility that prevent human flourishing. More recently, scholars and policymakers have turned to a third model from the impact investing community — the social impact bond, or SIB. The SIB model of CED ostensibly finds a middle ground by …

The Staffer's Error Doctrine, Jesse M. Cross

Faculty Publications

Over the last forty years, a new type of legislator has arisen in Congress: one who, rather than drafting statutes, instead manages a staff bureaucracy that produces these statutes. By becoming a manager of bills, not a drafter of them, this new legislator has altered a key relationship in our democracy: that between members of Congress and the laws they enact. Yet no study has documented how this modern relationship works — i.e., has chronicled how today’s federal legislators learn the contents of bills — and thereby shown the modern relationship between legislator and law. Nor has any study reflected …

Breaking The Norm Of School Reform, Derek Black

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.