Law Commons^™

Human Rights And Lawyer’S Oaths, Lauren E. Bartlett

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Each lawyer in the United States must take an oath to be licensed to practice law. The first time a lawyer takes this oath is usually a momentous occasion in their career, marked by ceremony and celebration. Yet, many lawyer’s oaths today are unremarkable and irrelevant to modern law practice at best, and at worst, inappropriate, discriminatory, and obsolete. Drawing on a fifty-state survey of lawyer’s oaths in the United States, this article argues that it is past time to update lawyer’s oaths in the United States and suggests drawing on human rights to make lawyer’s oaths more accessible and …

A Butterfly In Covid: Structural Racism And Baltimore's Pretrial Legal System, Doug Colbert, Colin Starger

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Summer of 2020 represented a potentially pivotal moment in the movements against mass incarceration and for racial justice. The authors commenced a study of Baltimore’s pretrial legal system just as the convergence of the COVID-19 pandemic and urgent cries of Black Lives Matter appeared to present a once-in-a-generation opportunity for meaningful decarceration. Over forty-four weekdays in June and July, the team observed bail review hearings in 509 cases and collected extensive data from the arguments and recommendations offered by the pretrial agency and prosecuting and defense attorneys. Unfortunately, the hoped-for reform failed to materialize as judges held nearly 62% of …

Beyond Window Dressing: Public Participation For Marginalized Communities In The Datafied Society, Michele E. Gilman

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We live in a datafied society in which our personal data is being constantly harvested, analyzed, and sold by public and private entities, and yet we have little control over our data and little voice in how it is used. In light of the impacts of algorithmic decision-making systems—including those that run on machine learning and artificial intelligence—there are increasing calls to integrate public participation into the adoption, design, and oversight of these tech tools. Stakeholder input is particularly crucial for members of marginalized groups, who bear the disproportionate harms of data-centric technologies. Yet, recent calls for public participation have …

Turning Participation Into Power: A Water Justice Case Study, Jaime A. Lee

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This Article offers a revamped model of participatory governance—the Constituent Empowerment Model (CE Model)—which affirmatively shifts power to the voices of marginalized constituents so that they can influence governmental policy. The CE Model focuses on three concepts necessary to produce this shift in power to those who are traditionally unheard: operationalized (feasibly realized) participation; constituent primacy; and structural accountability. To illustrate how a CE system might be constructed, this Article examines a model recently adopted in the city of Baltimore, Maryland, that is designed to shift the balance of power between the water utility and its customers. Baltimore offers a …

Expanding Civil Rights To Combat Digital Discrimination On The Basis Of Poverty, Michele E. Gilman

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Low-income people suffer from digital discrimination on the basis of their socio-economic status. Automated decision-making systems, often powered by machine learning and artificial intelligence, shape the opportunities of those experiencing poverty because they serve as gatekeepers to the necessities of modern life. Yet in the existing legal regime, it is perfectly legal to discriminate against people because they are poor. Poverty is not a protected characteristic, unlike race, gender, disability, religion or certain other identities. This lack of legal protection has accelerated digital discrimination against the poor, fueled by the scope, speed, and scale of big data networks. This Article …

Empire And Politics In Eastern And Western Civilizations, Mortimer N.S. Sellers

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To speak of “empire” today is to evoke the history of China and of Rome, two great empires that vastly influenced the culture and development of half the globe. The whole world has been touched by their powerful examples, so that even someone writing, as I do, in a distant corner of North America, feels the history and influence of the Roman and Chinese empires every day. Nor are they unique. Something like “empire” has arisen wherever there was wealth and stability to support it. Rome and China had numerous rivals in the East and West who aspired to empire …

How Algorithm-Assisted Decision Making Is Influencing Environmental Law And Climate Adaptation, Sonya Ziaja

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Algorithm-based decision tools in environmental law appear policy neutral
but embody bias and hidden values that affect equity and democracy. In effect,
algorithm-based tools are new fora for law and policymaking, distinct from
legislatures and courts. In turn, these tools influence the development and
implementation of environmental law and regulation. As a practical matter,
there is a pressing need to understand how these automated decision-making
tools interact with and influence law and policy. This Article begins this timely
and critical discussion.

After introducing the challenge of adapting water and energy systems to
climate change, this Article synthesizes prior multidisciplinary work …

Me, Myself And My Digital Double: Extending Sara Greene’S Stealing (Identity) From The Poor To The Challenges Of Identity Verification, Michele E. Gilman

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Identity is an essential part of the human condition. When one’s identity is stolen or when a state rejects a citizen’s identity, the consequences can be devastating to one’s notion of selfhood as well as undermine their economic security. In Stealing (Identity) from the Poor, Sara Greene explores the serious harms suffered by low-income people who are victimized by identity theft. She explains that our plutocratic regime of identity theft laws serves the interests of wealthier Americans at the expense of those experiencing poverty.

This Essay extends Greene’s analysis and framing to the harms of identity verification systems, particularly in …

Megacorporations Are Jacking Up Prices 'Because They Can,' Pushing Red-Hot Inflation To Historic Levels, Robert H. Lande

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This article argues that corporations may be taking advantages of supply chain bottlenecks and shortages to collude and raise prices illegally. Although price fixing is illegal, the current levels of penalties are far too low. This gives firms an incentive to collude. Before the pandemic, when inflation was low, consumers and the antitrust enforcers would have been more likely to notice any sudden price increases and investigate whether they were caused by collusion. But using bottlenecks and shortages as cover, companies can take advantage of their years of consolidation and collude more easily with less chance of it being detected. …

Temporary Securities Regulation, Anita Krug

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In times of crisis, including the 2020-21 global pandemic, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has engaged in a type of securities regulation that few scholars have acknowledged, let alone evaluated. Specifically, during recent market crises, the SEC has adopted rules that are temporary, designed to help the securities markets and its participants—both public companies and public investment funds, such as mutual funds and ETFs—weather the crisis at hand but go no further. Once that goal has been accomplished, these rules usually expire, replaced by the permanent rules that they temporarily supplanted. Although the temporary-rulemaking endeavor is laudable—and arguably …

Protecting Patients From Physicians Who Inflict Harm: New Legal Resources For State Medical Boards, Elizabeth Pendo, Tristan Mcintosh, Heidi Walsh, Kari Baldwin, James M. Dubois

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State medical boards (SMBs) protect the public by ensuring that physicians uphold appropriate standards of care and ethical practice. Despite this clear purpose, egregious types of wrongdoing by physicians are alarmingly frequent, harmful, and under-reported. Even when egregious wrongdoing is reported to SMBs, it is unclear why SMBs sometimes fail to promptly remove seriously offending physicians from practice. Legal and policy tools that are targeted, well-informed, and actionable are urgently needed to help SMBs more effectively protect patients from egregious wrongdoing by physicians.

Past reviews of SMB performance have identified features of SMBs associated with higher rates of severe disciplinary …

Acknowledging The Racist Roots Of Disinvestment And Abandonment: How Local Government Can Set The Stage For Change, Dana M. Malkus

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Disinvestment and associated property abandonment are defining features of many post-industrial legacy cities. While the reasons are varied and complex, racist law and policy are at the root. Though abandoned properties negatively affect an entire city, their effects usually disproportionately fall on neighborhoods of color. Law and policy have been major drivers of how such neighborhoods look and feel today. Because law and policy have been part of the problem, they are also a necessary part of the solution.

This kind of large-scale, multi-disciplinary problem is beyond the ability of a single institution or sector to address. Stakeholders such as …

Employment Status For “Essential Workers”: The Case For Gig Worker Parity, Miriam A. Cherry

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This Article explores what I call the “essential worker paradox”: During the pandemic, gig workers have been recognized as providing critical and important services. At the same time, the law has yet to recognize gig workers fully and to commit to providing them with the same basic protections as employees. The Article argues that the stark difference in treatment between gig workers and regular employees has long created unfairness. While views of gig work as a side hustle or work driven by customer convenience may have prevailed in the past, now the meal delivery driver and the on-demand grocery shopper …

Developing Standards For Gender-Responsive Human Rights Due Diligence, Constance Z. Wagner, Nancy Kaymar Stafford

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This article addresses the current state of gender-responsive human rights due diligence (GR-HRDD) standards and advocates for greater attention to be paid to women’s human rights in the due diligence process. The 2011 United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) created a global framework for recognizing, preventing, and addressing the risk of adverse impacts of human rights violations linked to business activities. The responsibility of businesses to respect human rights under the UNGPs includes implementing a human rights due diligence process. Although the UNGPs do not provide guidance on the process for integrating women’s rights into human …

Block Rewards, Carried Interests, And Other Valuation Quandaries In Taxing Compensation, Henry M. Ordower

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In this article, Ordower contextualizes block rewards litigation with historical failures to tax compensation income paid in kind. Tax fairness principles demand current taxation of the noneconomically diluting block rewards’ market value.

Discharged And Discarded: The Collateral Consequences Of A Less-Than-Honorable Discharge, Hugh Barrett Mcclean

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Between 2011 and 2015, 57,141 soldiers, sailors, and airmen were separated from service with less-than-honorable (LTH) discharges for mi­nor misconduct related to mental health problems. These discharges dis­proportionately affected servicemembers of color. These veterans and others like them face daunting reintegration challenges when they return to civilian society, as federal agencies and state governments deny them the benefits that usually facilitate a veteran’s smooth transition to civilian society. This Essay adds to the scholarly discourse on military discharges by comparing these veterans’ plight to that of persons arrested or convicted of criminal offenses, who also suffer from collateral consequences related …

Asking The Menstruation Question To Achieve Menstrual Justice, Margaret E. Johnson

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Menstruation is a situs of discrimination, oppression, harassment, and microaggression. Employers fire workers for bleeding and experiencing period pain. Schools control menstruating students’ access to bathrooms, products, and menstrual education. Prisons control their residents’ free access to menstrual products. There are both “obvious and non-obvious relationships” between menstrual discrimination and discrimination on the basis of race, gender, class, gender identity, and disability. This Essay suggests we ask the “menstruation question” as part of our examination of all forms of intersectional oppressions and to achieve menstrual justice. For example, if we see something racist, we should ask “where is the menstrual …

Designing Nonrecognition Rules Under The Internal Revenue Code, Fred B. Brown

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Nonrecognition rules are a prominent feature of the income tax laws and are a source of considerable complexity and tax planning. Included among the nonrecognition rules contained in the Internal Revenue Code are provisions applying to like kind exchanges, corporate formations, corporate reorganizations, parent-subsidiary liquidations, and partnership formations and distributions. The policies that arguably support the nonrecognition rules include the familiar trio of tax policy concerns—efficiency, equity, and tax administration. None of these policies, however, provide a strong basis for most of the nonrecognition rules as currently formulated. The efficiency case generally lacks evidentiary support. The equity case is complicated …

Menstrual Dignity And The Bar Exam, Margaret E. Johnson, Marcy L. Karin, Elizabeth Cooper

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This Article examines the issue of menstruation and the administration of the bar exam. Although such problems are not new, over the summer and fall of 2020, test takers and commentators took to social media to critique state board of law examiners’ (“BOLE”) policies regarding menstruation. These problems persist. Menstruators worry that if they unexpectedly bleed during the exam, they may not have access to appropriately sized and constructed menstrual products or may be prohibited from accessing the bathroom. Personal products that are permitted often must be carried in a clear, plastic bag. Some express privacy concerns that the see-through …

The Authoritative Text As Imperative To Comprehensibility Of Legislation, James Maxeiner

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The most understandable of texts is of little use as law if it is not clear that it is authoritative. This is the comparative lesson of this essay. American law is—Americans say—indeterminate. American law is indeterminate because American texts, clear as they may be in wording, often are not authoritative; other texts apply too and may be inconsistent. German law is rarely indeterminate in this sense.

This essay identifies in bullet-points some comparative aspects of clarity of American and German law. Why is American law indeterminate? Why is German law not? What, if anything, do these differences …

Climate And Transportation Policy Sequencing In California And Quebec, Sonya Ziaja, Mark Purdon, Julie Witcover, Colin Murphy, Mark Winfield, Genevieve Giuliano, Charles Séguin, Colleen Kaiser, Jacques Papy, Lewis Fulton

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We compare flexible low-carbon regulations in the transportation sector and their interaction and sequencing with greenhouse gas emissions trading systems in California and Quebec. As momentum builds for greater climate action, it is necessary to better understand how carbon markets and other low-carbon transportation policies influence one another. First, we demonstrate that emissions trading between California and Quebec has been asymmetric, with linking having little influence on carbon prices from California's perspective but leading to a considerable cost reduction from the point of view of Quebec. Second, we present evidence that Quebec has replicated many of California's low-carbon transportation policies …

A More Just, Inclusive Future For Sports, Dionne L. Koller

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This issue of the Journal of Legal Aspects of Sport (JLAS) was dedicated to women in sports law, with a specific emphasis on inclusiveness and new ideas. For decades, the central focus of the law and policy directed to women and sports was Title IX enforcement and securing opportunities for participation. As we approach Title IX’s 50th anniversary, it is clear that the law has greatly expanded participation opportunities for women and powerfully altered the norms around women and sports. Nevertheless, much work remains. Women and girls still do not enjoy the full measure of equality that Title …

Republicanism: Philosophical Aspects | Republicanismo: Aspectos Filosóficos, Mortimer N.S. Sellers

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Republicanism is the doctrine that public power should always serve the common good of all those subject to its rule. This raises the question how to do so most effectively, either through particular policies or through constitutional structure (“the republican form of government”). The republican philosophical tradition began with Plato and Aristotle, flowered in the writings of Marcus Tullius Cicero, and reappeared with the revival of learning in such authors as Machiavelli, James Harrington, John Adams, and Immanuel Kant. More recently Philip Pettit, Jürgen Habermas, and others have returned to the republican conception of liberty as nondomination, and how to …

My Family Belongs To Me: A Child’S Constitutional Right To Family Integrity, Shanta Trivedi

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Every day in the United States, the government separates children from their parents based on their parents’ immigration status, incarceration, or involvement in the child welfare system—and the children have no say in the matter. The majority of these families are racial minorities and economically underprivileged.

Under current law, children’s ability to assert a constitutional right to keep their families free from government intrusion is not always apparent. This is in part because a single piece of Supreme Court dicta has muddied an otherwise clear family integrity doctrine, and many federal circuits are silent on the issue. Further, many children’s …

Student Demands: How Should Law Schools And Their Deans Respond?, Ronald Weich

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Law students are sometimes caricatured as money-hungry careerists, merely punching their ticket to an outsized law firm salary. Those of us in legal education know that stereotype is entirely invalid. In fact, most students come to law school because they want to make the world a better place.

The death of George Floyd in police custody on a Minneapolis street corner in May 2020 shocked the conscience of the nation. Unsurprisingly, many law students were moved to action and inspired to put their nascent legal skills to work in support of racial justice. Much of their advocacy focused on campaigns …

The Rule Of Law: A Necessary Pillar Of Free And Democratic Societies For Protecting Human Rights, John Bessler

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This essay traces the history and development of the concept of the Rule of Law from ancient times through the present. It describes the elements of the Rule of Law and its importance to the protection of human rights in a variety of contexts, including under domestic and international law. From ancient Greece and Rome to the Enlightenment, and from the American and French Revolutions to modern times, the Rule of Law has played a key role in societies around the world. The essay discusses definitions of the Rule of Law, its origins, and its development over time, including in …

Periods For Profit And The Rise Of Menstrual Surveillance, Michele E. Gilman

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Menstruation is being monetized and surveilled, with the voluntary participation of millions of women. Thousands of downloadable apps promise to help women monitor their periods and manage their fertility. These apps are part of the broader, multi-billion dollar, Femtech industry, which sells technology to help women understand and improve their health. Femtech is marketed with the language of female autonomy and feminist empowerment. Despite this rhetoric, Femtech is part of a broader business strategy of data extraction, in which companies are extracting people’s personal data for profit, typically without their knowledge or meaningful consent. Femtech can oppress menstruators in several …

Does Fair Use Matter? An Empirical Study Of Music Cases (Forthcoming), Edward Lee

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Copyright law recognizes fair use as a general limitation. It is assumed that fair use provides breathing room above and beyond the determination of infringement to facilitate the creation of new works of expression. This conventional account presupposes that fair use matters—that is, fair use provides greater leeway to a defendant than the test of infringement. Despite its commonsense appeal, this assumption has not been empirically tested. Except for fair uses involving exact copies (for which infringement would otherwise exist), it has not been proven that fair use makes much, if any, difference in results. Indeed, in one sector, the …

The Undead Past: How Collective Memory Configures Trade Wars (Forthcoming), Sungjoon Cho

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Conventional narratives explicate the recent trade war between the United States and China in realist terms, such as a hegemonic struggle symbolized by the “Thucydides’ trap.” Yet this universalist heuristic fatally omits ideational factors, such as beliefs, which are capable of contextualizing a particular foreign affair. The U.S.-China economic conflicts of today are characterized as much by past convictions as by simple power politics. This Article aims to remedy this analytical blind spot by employing the concept of “collective memory.” The central claim is that the particular ways and forms in which the U.S. elites and the public remember, and …

Age Diversity, Alexander Boni-Saenz

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This Article is the first to examine age diversity in the legal literature, mapping out its descriptive, normative, and legal dimensions. Age diversity is a plural concept, as heterogeneity of age can take many forms in various human institutions. Likewise, the normative rationales for these assorted age diversities are rooted in distinct theoretical foundations, making the case for or against age diversity contextual rather than universal. A host of legal rules play a significant role in regulating age diversity, influencing the presence of different generations in the workplace, judiciary, and Congress. Better understanding the nature and consequences of age diversity …