Law Commons^™

Tragedies Of The Cultural Commons, Etienne C. Toussaint

Faculty Publications

In the United States, Black cultural expressions of democratic life that operate within specific historical-local contexts, yet reflect a shared set of sociocultural mores, have been historically crowded out of the law and policymaking process. Instead of democratic cultural discourse occurring within an open and neutral marketplace of ideas, the discursive production and consumption of democratic culture in American politics has been rivalrous. Such rivalry too often enables dominant White supremacist cultural beliefs, values, and practices to exercise their hegemony upon law’s production and meaning. The result has been tragedy for politically disempowered and socioeconomically excluded communities.

This Article uses …

Equal Dignity, Colorblindness, And The Future Of Affirmative Action Beyond Grutter V. Bollinger, Thomas P. Crocker

Faculty Publications

In Grutter v. Bollinger the Supreme Court held that diversity was a compelling interest for equal protection purposes that justifies limited consideration of race through affirmative action programs. But there was a catch. The Court predicted that diversity would cease to be a compelling interest within twenty-five years. This Article examines the surprising doctrinal and conceptual implications that would follow if, having both the motive and means, the Court were to overturn Grutter before its predicted 2028 sunset. Exploring internal tensions within existing doctrine, this Article argues that even if the Court were to overturn Grutter, a form of race-conscious …

For Their Own Good: Girls, Sexuality, And State Violence In The Name Of Safety, Madalyn K. Wasilczuk

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Darnell, Latoya, Brad, And Laurie: Lawyers’ Responses To Email Requests For Representation, Elizabeth S. Chambliss

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Solving The "King Lear Problem", Benjamin Means

Faculty Publications

In Shakespeare’s play, King Lear, an aging ruler relinquished control to two of his three daughters. The succession failed miserably, destroying his family and destabilizing his kingdom. King Lear shows why few family businesses survive beyond three generations. Understanding Lear’s failure is crucial to avoiding Lear’s fate, whether the family business in question is a monarchy, a media empire, or a hardware store. The conventional wisdom is that Lear gave away his kingdom too soon and left himself vulnerable to predatory heirs. This has been referred to as the “King Lear Problem.”

The conventional wisdom is wrong. Lear’s succession plan …

Rectifying Wrongful Convictions Through The Dormant Grand Jury Clause, Colin Miller

Faculty Publications

In 1995, Lamar Johnson was convicted of a murder in St. Louis. Twenty-two years later, St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner created a Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU) to review possible wrongful convictions. After reviewing Johnson’s case, the CIU concluded that Johnson was innocent. Then, consistent with her special responsibility as a prosecutor to seek to remedy wrongful convictions, Gardner filed a motion for a new trial. The court, however, denied the motion, holding that there was no enabling legislation in Missouri authorizing CIUs to seek relief for wrongful convictions. Gardner is not alone in her inability to rectify wrongful convictions. …

Climate Change Compliance, Susan S. Kuo, Benjamin Means

Faculty Publications

Unless corporations prioritize climate change mitigation, efforts to control global warming will fail. Yet, the strategies that have been proposed for enlisting corporations are insufficient to the task. In our era of political polarization, a comprehensive “Green New Deal” to transition the U.S. economy away from fossil fuels is a nonstarter. Nor can we expect corporate risk management or social responsibility to fill the gap; there are practical limits to how far corporate managers can depart from strategies designed to maximize profits for investors.

This Article contends that climate change is a compliance issue. Scholars have overlooked compliance as a …

Creditors’ Rights In Property Subject To A Beneficiary’S Right Of Withdrawal, S. Alan Medlin, F. Ladson Boyle

Faculty Publications

Estate plans often give trust beneficiaries powers of withdrawal for both tax and nontax reasons. For tax reasons, these powers of withdrawal are typically limited, such as a “five or five power” or a so-called Crummey power commonly pegged to the annual gift tax exclusion amount. A central issue with limited powers of with-drawal is the right of a beneficiary’s creditor to reach trust property subject to the beneficiary’s power to withdraw. Recent uniform statutes, such as the Uniform Trust Code and the Uniform Power of Appointment Act, as well as the Restatement (Third) of Trusts, provide guidance. This Article …

The Lived Experience Of Health Insurance: An Analysis And Proposal For Reform, Jacqueline R. Fox

Faculty Publications

People are carrying tens of billions of dollars of medical debt, much of it in collections. We delay going to the Emergency Department while having a heart attack because it may cost too much. Doctors try to help insured patients find the best coupon to offset the high copayment for a necessary prescription drug. For inexpensive drugs, insurers make a profit by clawing back copayments that exceed what the drug costs. People who are already arbitrarily disadvantaged because of race, gender, health status, LGBTQ status, obesity, etc. are disproportionately burdened by all of this.

No one would design a system …

Institutional Betrayals As Sex Discrimination, Emily Suski

Faculty Publications

Title IX jurisprudence has a theoretical and doctrinal inadequacy. Title IX’s purpose is to protect public school students from sex discrimination in all its forms. Yet, courts have only recognized three relatively narrow forms of sex discrimination under it. Title IX jurisprudence, therefore, cannot effectively recognize as sex discrimination the independent injuries, called institutional betrayals, that schools impose on students because they have suffered sexual harassment. Institutional betrayals occur when schools betray students’ trust in or dependency on them by failing to help students in the face of their sexual harassment. These injuries cause harms that can be more severe …

The Constitutional Right To An Implicit Bias Jury Instruction, Colin Miller

Faculty Publications

The Supreme Court has gone to great lengths to prevent jurors from holding defendants’ silence against them. In a trilogy of opinions, the Court concluded that when a defendant refrains from testifying, (1) the prosecutor and judge cannot make adverse comments about that decision; (2) the judge can give a “no adverse inference” instruction even over a defense objection; and (3) the judge must give a “no adverse inference” instruction upon a defense request. Conversely, the Court has never ruled that jurors can impeach their verdict based upon jurors holding a defendant’s silence against him, and lower courts have ruled …

The Miseducation Of Public Citizens, Etienne C. Toussaint

Faculty Publications

The American Bar Association Model Rules of Professional Conduct calls upon lawyers, as public citizens, to embrace a special responsibility for the quality of justice in the legal profession and in society. Yet, some law professors have historically adopted a formalistic and doctrinally neutral approach to law teaching that elides critical perspectives of law, avoids the intersection of law and politics, and tends to overlook the way law can construct the very social injustices that it seeks to contain. The objective, apolitical, and so-called “colorblind” jurisprudential stance in many law classrooms inflicts intellectual violence upon law students who discover a …

Taxing Choices, Tessa R. Davis

Faculty Publications

Tax has a choice problem. At all stages of the making of tax, choice plays a role. Lawmakers consider how tax will impact the range and appeal of choices available to an individual. Scholars critique how tax may drive an individual toward or away from a given choice. Courts craft stories of how an individual had either free or deeply constrained choice, using their perception of the facts to guide their interpretation of tax law. And yet for all the seeming relevance of choice to tax, we have no clear definition of what we mean when we talk about choice …

The Dental Health Of Rural Elderly People And Its Social Justice Implications, Health In The Hills: Understanding The Impact Of Health Care Law In Rural Communities, Jacqueline R. Fox

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Rights To Nowhere: The Idea's Inadequacy In High-Poverty Schools, Claire Raj

Faculty Publications

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (“IDEA”) successfully opened the schoolhouse doors to millions of students with disabilities. But more than forty years after its enactment, the law has proven largely inept at confronting the educational inequities faced by the many students with disabilities attending underfunded, high-poverty public schools. This shortcoming is inconsistent with common conceptions of the IDEA: Advocates and policymakers alike treat the IDEA’s rights and privately enforceable remedies as strong, meaningful tools. This Article theorizes that the IDEA’s under-appreciated failures are overlooked because they are the products of the law’s internal structure, undue judicial deference to schools, …

For Every Rat Killed, Etienne C. Toussaint

Faculty Publications

If my grandmother had survived the sickness of old age and were alive to witness the economic injustices wrought by capitalist culture, what would she think? If my grandmother were alive to observe familiar technologies for exterminating household pests—surveil-lance, capture, imprisonment, disposal—being increasingly aimed toward low-income Black communities, what would she believe? If my grandmother were alive to discover, in the palm of her hands, a digital platform for spreading information (and misinformation) to the masses and painting new futures into the minds of lawmakers and politicians, what would she say?

Studies have shown that low-income individuals are more likely …

Public Accomodations, Public Perceptions, And Workplace Law, Joseph Seiner

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Time, Equity, And Sexual Harassment, Joseph Seiner

Faculty Publications

Sexual harassment remains a pervasive problem in the workplace. Recent studies and empirical research reveal that this unlawful conduct continues to pervade all industries and sectors of the economy. The #MeToo movement has made great progress in raising awareness of this problem and in demonstrating the lengths that some employers will go to conceal a hostile work environment. The movement has further identified the lasting emotional toll workplace harassment can have on its victims.

The research in this area demonstrates that the short timeframe harassment victims have to bring a federal discrimination charge—180 or 300 days depending on the state—is …

Preemption & Gender & Racial (In)Equity: Why State Tort Law Is Needed In The Cosmetic Context, Marie C. Boyd

Faculty Publications

Much of the legal scholarship on the preemption of state tort law in the food and drug context and beyond has focused on issues of federalism. While the literature has considered the relationship between state tort law and the regulatory system, it has not generally explored the impact the federal preemption of state tort law may have on women and people of color. Similarly, while the literature has grappled with gender and racial justice issues in the tort system, including in the context of tort reform, it has largely not examined the gender and racial equity issues raised by federal …

Unequal Investment: A Regulatory Case Study, Emily R. Winston

Faculty Publications

Growing economic inequality in the United States has reduced social mobility, placing financial security farther out of reach for a growing number of Americans. During the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. stock prices have grown simultaneously with unemployment and food insecurity, highlighting the fact that prosperity is unequally distributed in the U.S. economy.

Many Americans do not benefit when the stock market soars because they do not have the means to invest. However, even ordinary American families who do have wealth to invest in the capital markets will face enormous obstacles in narrowing the wealth divide through investment. This is because ordinary …

The Fourth Amendment And The Problem Of Social Cost, Thomas P. Crocker

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Developing Police, Madalyn K. Wasilczuk

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Divorcing Guns: How Family Law Could Change Parental Gun Ownership And Save Kids' Lives, Marcia A. Yablon-Zug

Faculty Publications

Guns are deadly. They are especially deadly for children yet, currently, parental gun ownership is not a major factor in custody disputes. This needs to change. Making irresponsible gun ownership a routine factor in custody cases could transform parental gun behavior. In other contexts, the potential loss of custody has proven to be an extremely strong deterrent. Moreover, unlike other proposed solutions to gun fatalities, this is a change that can be made right now. Making guns a part of custody disputes does not require the enactment of new legislation or even a judicial determination. By simply raising the issue …

Disaggregating Legislative Intent, Jesse M. Cross

Faculty Publications

In statutory interpretation, theorists have long argued that the U.S. Congress is a “they,” not an “it.” Under this view, Congress is plural and nonhierarchical, and so it is incapable of forming a single, institutional intent. Textualists contend that this vision of Congress means interpreters must move away from concerns about intent altogether, and that they instead should speak in the register of textualism and its associated constitutional values, such as notice and congressional incentivization.

However, even if legislators’ intentions never coalesce into an institutional intent, a disaggregated-intent theory of legislation remains possible. Under this theory, statutes are understood as …

Rural Estrangement And The Regulatory State, Ann M. Eisenberg

Faculty Publications

In today’s polarized social and political climate, rural alienation from government is often dismissed as “just more politics” or a symptom of problematic cultural norms. This Article takes rural disaffection from government seriously, with a focus on rural relationships with the federal regulatory state. The Article argues that rural disaffection from the regulatory state is not solely a cultural or political phenomenon among white conservatives. Rural disaffection is also a broader structural issue that stems in part from the regulatory state’s crisis of legitimacy.

Two factors show that rural disaffection from the regulatory state is more diffuse and profound than …

Freedom, Democracy, And The Right To Education, Derek W. Black

Faculty Publications

While litigation continues in an effort to establish a fundamental right to education under the U.S. Constitution, the full historical justification for this right remains missing—a fatal flaw for many jurists. This Article fills that gap, demonstrating that the central, yet entirely overlooked, justification for a federal right to education resides in America’s education story during the era of slavery and Reconstruction.

At that time, education was first and foremost about freedom. The South had criminalized education to maintain a racialized hierarchy that preserved slavery. Many African Americans, seeing education as the means to both mental and physical freedom, made …

Adjudicating Identity, Laura Lane-Steele

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.