Law Commons^™

Exempting High-Level Employees And Small Employers From Legislation Invalidating Predispute Employment Arbitration Agreements, E. Gary Spitko

Faculty Publications

On February 12, 2009, lawmakers in the U.S.House of Representatives introduced the "Arbitration Fairness Act of 2009. " This bill, if enacted, will invalidate any predispute arbitration agreement between an employer and its employee. Last year, the 110th Congress considered the narrower "Preservation of Civil Rights Protections Act of 2008, " which would have invalidated such predispute arbitration agreements if they required "arbitration of a dispute arising under" federal civil rights laws. This Article explores how best to structure any such invalidation of predispute employment arbitration agreements, both in light of the rationales for and against regulation of the employment …

In With The New, Out With The Old: Expanding The Scope Of Retroactive Amelioration, S. David Mitchell

Faculty Publications

The legislative decision to amend a statute and reduce a sentence but not to apply it retroactively to pending prosecutions or to finalized convictions is in accord with the principles of retroactivity, but contrary to legitimate goals of punishment, i.e. deterrence and retributivism. Genarlow Wilson, convicted at seventeen of aggravated child molestation, a felony, for consensual oral sex with a fifteen-year old classmate, was sentenced to a mandatory minimum of ten years. While his appeal was pending, the Georgia Legislature reclassified the conduct as a misdemeanor and reduced the sentence to a maximum of one year but decided not to …

I'Ll Huff And I'Ll Puff - But Then You'll Blow My Case Away: Dealing With Dismissed And Bad-Faith Defendants Under California's Anti-Slapp Statute, Jeremiah A. Ho

Faculty Publications

This Article will demonstrate that, despite efforts to recognize SLAPPs and to safeguard our legal process from abuses, SLAPP suits and their underlying interference with the legitimate exercise of the right to petition can often engender new ways of creeping back onto the legal stage to wreak havoc on the private citizen - that the devious, shape-shifting Big Bad Wolf of First Amendment rights can return to reprise its role as the subversive villain and to trot unsuspecting litigants out to slaughter. After an introduction into the general world of SLAPPs and the specific history behind California's section 425.16, this …

Death Penalty Appeals And Habeas Proceedings: The California Experience, Gerald F. Uelmen

Faculty Publications

Despite spending more than any other state on its implementation and administration, California today is saddled with a death penalty law that can be described only as completely dysfunctional. We have the longest death row in America, with approximately 670 inmates awaiting execution. Typically, the lapse of time between sentence and execution is twenty-five years, twice the national average, and is growing wider each year. One hundred nineteen inmates have spent more than twenty years on California's death row. Most of them will certainly die before they are ever executed. Since restoration of the death penalty in 1978, the leading …

Pregnancy Discrimination And Social Change: Evolving Consciousness About A Worker's Right To Job-Protected, Paid Leave, Patricia Shiu, Stephanie Wildman

Faculty Publications

This Article examines the change over the past few decades in U.S. law and societal attitudes concerning a worker's right to job-protected, paid leave. Though common around the world, job-protected, paid leave eludes the U.S. workforce. The authors begin by considering the concept of work, its relation to identity, and the construction of safety nets for workers when they need income replacement. The Article considers the movement to establish job-protected, paid leave that encompasses and values a worker's work, family, and personal life.

The modern movement originated with pregnant workers' need for time away from work during pregnancy. Women who …

Legal Holes, Noa Ben-Asher

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

In the years that followed the events of September 11, 2001, a debate crystallized between those who think that “legal grey and black holes”—which I call simply “legal holes”—are necessary and integral to U.S. law and those who think that they are dangerous and should be abolished. Legal black holes “arise when statutes or legal rules ‘either explicitly exempt[] the executive from the requirements of the rule of law or explicitly exclude[] judicial review of executive action.’” Grey holes, in contrast, “arise when ‘there are some legal constraints on executive action . . . but the[y] are so insubstantial …

The Hidden Legacy Of Holy Trinity Church: The Unique National Institution Canon, Anita S. Krishnakumar

Faculty Publications

This Article explores an underappreciated legacy of the Supreme Court's (in)famous decision in Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States. Although Holy Trinity has been much discussed in the academic literature and in judicial opinions, the discussion thus far has focused almost exclusively on the first half of the Court's opinion—which declares that the "spirit" of a statute should trump its "letter"—and relies on legislative history to help divine that spirit. Scholars and jurists have paid little, if any, attention to the opinion's lengthy second half. In that second half, the Court tells a detailed narrative about the country's …

Representation Reinforcement: A Legislative Solution To A Legislative Process Problem, Anita S. Krishnakumar

Faculty Publications

One of the most valuable—and disturbing—insights offered by public choice theory has been the recognition that wealthy, well-organized interests with narrow, intense preferences often dominate the legislative process while diffuse, unorganized interests go under-represented. Responding to this insight, legal scholars in the fields of statutory interpretation and administrative law have suggested that the solution to the problem of representational inequality lies with the courts. Indeed, over the past two decades, scholars in these fields have offered up a host of John Hart Ely-inspired representation reinforcing "canons of construction," designed to encourage judges to use their role as statutory interpreters to …

Between A Rock And A Hard Place: Landlords, Latinos, Anti-Illegal Immigrant Ordinances, And Housing Discrimination, Rigel C. Oliveri

Faculty Publications

In the face of federal inability to effectively police our national borders and to remove unauthorized immigrants, many local governments have recently sought to take measures into their own hands by passing anti-illegal immigrant ("AII") ordinances. These ordinances usually contain a combination of provisions restricting housing, employment, and public benefits for unauthorized immigrants, among other things.This Article focuses on AII provisions that are targeted at private rental housing, which typically take the form of sanctions against landlords who rent to unauthorized immigrants.