Law Commons^™

Astroturf Activism, Melissa J. Durkee

Scholarly Works

Corporate influence in government is more than a national issue; it is an international phenomenon. For years, businesses have been infiltrating international legal processes. They secretly lobby lawmakers through front groups: “astroturf” imitations of grassroots organizations. But because this business lobbying is covert, it has been underappreciated in both the literature and the law. This Article unearths the “astroturf activism” phenomenon. It offers an original descriptive account that classifies modes of business access to international officials and identifies harms, then develops a critical analysis of the laws that regulate this access. I show that the perplexing set of access rules …

The American Press Covers Jfk's Murder, And The Impossible Comes To Pass, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

Popular Media

Almost from the moment Dallas police arrested Lee Harvey Oswald two hours after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on Friday, Nov. 22, 1963, the American news media establishment began trumpeting as proven fact the story that Oswald was the killer. This article looks at how Russian and Cuban press's view of the assassination was diametrically opposed to that of the American press.

The Single-Assassin Theory, The Media Establishment And The Cia, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

Popular Media

We have long known that, criminally, outrageously and repeatedly, the Central Intelligence Agency stonewalled official government investigations of the JFK assassination. But we also now know that for the last half-century, using its numerous and influential assets and supporters in the mainstream media, the CIA has engaged in a clandestine crusade to preserve, protect, and defend the Warren Report’s sole-assassin claim from criticism, even when the criticism is warranted. This article delves into how these two entities have provided disinformation to the public.

The Preliminary Injunction Standard In Diversity: A Typical Unguided Erie Choice, David E. Shipley

Scholarly Works

The standard for granting preliminary injunctions in some states is not the same as the preliminary injunction standard that is followed in the federal district courts in the federal circuit where the state is located. For example, the interlocutory injunction standard in Georgia’s superior courts is not as demanding as the preliminary injunction standard in Georgia’s federal courts. Although state and federal courts in Georgia consider four similar factors in deciding whether to grant or deny provisional injunctive relief, a balancing or sliding scale approach can be used in Georgia’s courts; the moving party need not prove all four of …

Banks: A Broken Social Contract, Mehrsa Baradaran

Scholarly Works

This article explores how how the Financial Crisis of 2008 affected the banking industry and brought three specific problems: The first was that the banks and non‐bank financial institutions created due to deregulation were huge, interconnected, and highly leveraged; Second, the panic started in the “shadow banking” sector and showed that the short‐term credit transactions and derivatives that non‐bank financial institutions traded and used for funding for years were similar to banking, and thus prone to runs; and Third, the entire premise of deregulation rested on an assumption that individual firms and market players could accurately calculate and manage risks, …

Posthumous Organ Donation As Prisoner Agency And Rehabilitation, Amanda Seals Bersinger, Lisa Milot

Scholarly Works

Unlike U.S. citizens generally, who are encouraged to become organ donors through drivers' license designations, advance directives, and state registries, in most instances inmates are barred from donating their organs until release.

To date, the scholarship in favor of allowing inmates to donate their organs has largely focused on the benefit these donations could offer patients languishing on organ transplant lists, while objections center on the vulnerability of the imprisoned potential donors and their inability to make decisions freely. A donor-focused case for donation, however, is missing in this debate. This Article fills that gap by setting out the philosophical …

Payday Lending Isn’T Helping The Poor. Here’S What Might, Mehrsa Baradaran

Popular Media

This article appearing in the Washington Post on June 28, 2016 by Mehrsa Baradaran, J. Alton Hosch Associate Professor of Law at the University of Georgia School of Law explores how postal banking could benefit the poor and reduce their reliance on payday lending.

Against Administrative Judges, Kent H. Barnett

Scholarly Works

The single largest cadre of federal adjudicators goes largely ignored by scholars, policymakers, courts, and even litigating parties. These Administrative Judges or “AJs,” often confused with well-known federal Administrative Law Judges or “ALJs,” operate by the thousands in numerous federal agencies. Yet unlike ALJs, the significantly more numerous AJs preside over less formal hearings and have no significant statutory protections to preserve their impartiality. The national press has recently called attention to the alleged unfairness of certain ALJ proceedings, and regulated parties have successfully enjoined agencies’ use of ALJs. While fixes are necessary for ALJ adjudication, any solution that ignores …

Lee Harvey Oswald And Ted Cruz's Father, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

Popular Media

Recently, stunning accusations have been made against Rafael Cruz, father of recent presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz. It is alleged that in New Orleans in 1963 the elder Cruz accompanied Lee Harvey Oswald while Oswald was handing out pro-Fidel Castro “HANDS OFF CUBA!” leaflets. It is further alleged that there is photographic proof of this. Finally, it is alleged that because of his connections with Oswald Rafael Cruz may have been involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. This article explores the truths to these accusations.

“Oversight Of The False Claims Act” Testimony By Professor Larry D. Thompson Before The U.S. House Of Representatives Judiciary Subcommittee On The Constitution And Civil Justice, Larry D. Thompson

Presentations and Speeches

Sibley Professor in Corporate and Business Law Larry D. Thompson testifies in a U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice hearing on “Oversight of the False Claims Act.” The purpose of the hearing was to examine the act’s success and seek ways “to prevent, detect and eliminate false claims costing taxpayer dollars, while ensuring fair and just results.”

Credit Is A Double Edge Sword, Mehrsa Baradaran

Popular Media

This commentary, which appeared in the Atlantic on April 26, 2016 discusses the Marquette decision by the Supreme Court and how it de-stigmatized the practice of usury.

Louisiana Rapper’S Case Speaks To Bigger Problems In The Criminal Justice System, Andrea L. Dennis, Erik Nelson, Michael Render

Popular Media

This article published on April 25, 2016 at the Huffington Post examines the case of McKinley Phipps. He was sentenced to thirty years of hard labor for a crime that, to this day, he insists he did not commit. During the trial prosecutors used Phipps’s rap persona and lyrics - remixed for special effect - to carefully construct a story of Phipps’s guilt. The article discusses how Phipps lyrics and persona contributed to his conviction and the progress of his appeals.

What Is (And Isn't) Healthism, Jessica L. Roberts, Elizabeth Weeks Leonard

Scholarly Works

What does it mean to discriminate on the basis of health status? Health is, of course, relevant in a number of ways. It can speak to the length of our lives, our ability to perform mentally and physically, our need for health care, and our risk of injury and incapacity. But the mere relevance of a particular attribute does mean that considering it should be legally permissible. Moreover, the potential harms that may result from health-status discrimination raise important moral questions. This Essay explores when differentiating on the basis of health is socially acceptable and, by contrast, when it is …

California Fair Trade: Antitrust And The Politics Of “Fairness” In U.S. Competition Policy, Laura Phillips Sawyer

Scholarly Works

In the decades before World War II, U.S. antitrust law was anything but settled. Considerable pressure for antitrust revision came from the states. A perhaps unlikely leader, Edna Gleason, organized California’s retail pharmacists and coordinated trade networks to monitor and enforce Resale Price Maintenance (RPM) contracts, a system of price-fixing, then known as “fair trade.” Progressive jurists, including Louis Brandeis and institutional economist E. R. A. Seligman, supported RPM as a protection to independent proprietors. The breakdown of legal and economic consensus regarding what constituted “unfair competition” allowed businesspeople to act as intermediaries between heterodox economic thought and contested antitrust …

Standing For (And Up To) Separation Of Powers, Kent H. Barnett

Scholarly Works

The U.S. Constitution requires federal agencies to comply with separation-of-powers (or structural) safeguards, such as by obtaining valid appointments, exercising certain limited powers, and being sufficiently subject to the President’s control. Who can best protect these safeguards? A growing number of scholars call for allowing only the political branches — Congress and the President — to defend them. These scholars would limit or end judicial review because private judicial challenges are aberrant to justiciability doctrine and lead courts to meddle in minor matters that rarely effect regulatory outcomes.

This Article defends the right of private parties to assert justiciable structural …

The Top Five Supreme Court Nomination Myths, Paul M. Collins Jr., Lori A. Ringhand

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

The Real Danger Of Guns In Schools, Sonja R. West

Popular Media

This article that first appeared at Slate.com on March 22, 2016, looks at Georgia's "Campus Carry" Legislation. This legislation permits "any [firearm] license holder when he or she is in or on any building or real property owned by or leased to any public technical school, vocational school, college, university, or other institution of postsecondary education."

What Two Legal Scholars Learned From Studying 70 Years Of Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings, Lori A. Ringhand, Paul Collins

Popular Media

This article in The Conversation on March 21, 2016 and moves beyond the conventional wisdom espoused by Biden, Kagan and others, and presents a strong case for an alternative view of the hearings. Examining every statement made at confirmation hearings from 1939 to 2010, we conclude the hearings are important to the health of American democracy. Based on this, we’d like to see partisan politics pushed aside and Judge Merrick Garland to get a hearing.

The Persistence Of Fatal Police Taserings, Part 2, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

Popular Media

This article updates the author's previous article on the statistics on deaths resulting from police taserings.

Legal Scholarship Spotlight: The Evolution Of Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings, Lori A. Ringhand, Paul Collins

Popular Media

This article appearing at the SCOTUSblog on March 25, 2016, discusses the role of the Senate Judiciary Committee plays in the nomination of Supreme Court Justices.

Attorney’S Fees, Nominal Damages, And Section 1983 Litigation, Thomas A. Eaton, Michael Wells

Scholarly Works

Can plaintiffs recover attorney’s fees under 42 U.S.C. § 1988 when they establish constitutional violations but recover only nominal damages or low compensatory damages? Some federal appellate courts have concluded that no fee, or a severely reduced fee, should be awarded in such circumstances. This position, which we call the “low award, low fee” approach, rests primarily on the Supreme Court’s 1992 opinion in Farrar v. Hobby.

We argue that a “low award, low fee” approach is misguided for two main reasons. First, the majority opinion in Farrar is fragmented and the factual record is opaque regarding what and how …

Crossing Borders: Adventures In International Legal Research, Anne Burnett

Presentations

An overview of the resources and processes for researching international law topics in classroom H.

The Persistence Of Fatal Police Taserings, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

Popular Media

There is, newfound interest in obtaining accurate information about police use of force in this country. This means, among other things, that we need reliable statistics about police violence. We cannot address the problem of unlawful police violence unless we possess adequate statistical information about all police violence, lawful as well as unlawful.

This article explores the violence of police tasering and the statistics of this practice.

Real Resources For Researching Ip Law, Anne Burnett

Presentations

A presentation on strategies for researching intellectual property law in classroom I.

The Absurd Logic Behind Florida’S Docs Vs. Glocks Law, Dahlia Lithwick, Sonja R. West

Popular Media

This article published at Slate.com on January 8, 2016, reviews the Wollschlaeger v. Governor of the State of Florida case in which the Florida legislature passed a law that bars health care workers from discussing or recording anything about their patients’ gun ownership or safety practices that could be deemed in bad faith, irrelevant, or harassing.

Postal Banking Worked—Let’S Bring It Back, Mehrsa Baradaran

Popular Media

This article appearing in The Nation on January 9, 2016 examines how Postal Banking could assist low-income individuals.

Why The Poor Face A Higher Cost Of Banking, Mehrsa Baradaran

Popular Media

Professor Baradaran appeared on PBS Newshour to discuss inequality in the banking system on January 6, 2016.

Alexander Campbell King Law Library Strategic Plan, 2016-2017, University Of Georgia Law Library

Strategic Plan Documents

Shorter and simpler than the two previous iterations, the University of Georgia Law Library's 2016-2017 strategic plan is a single page. It includes elements from the last version such as mission, vision and values. It still includes goals, but limits them to three and trims the text of each into straight-forward bullet-list objectives including: 1. Services, 2. Resources, and 3. Expertise. This year was also the first that the law library created a counter-part infographic version of their strategic plan. It is attached below as an additional document.

The Media Exemption Puzzle Of Campaign Finance Laws, Sonja R. West

Scholarly Works

In the 2010 case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the United States Supreme Court solidified the media exemption dilemma in campaign finance law. When attempting to address concerns about corporate campaign expenditures (i.e., corporate political speech), legislatures are now stuck between a rock and a hard place. Regulate media corporations, and they violate press freedoms. Exempt media corporations from the regulations, however, and they are accused of speaker discrimination.

Thus the question of how to treat the press in campaign finance law can no longer be ignored. Can legislatures, without running afoul of the First Amendment, ever regulate …

Mindfulness - Finding Focus In A Distracted World, Heather Simmons, Kyle K. Courtney

Scholarly Works

Law school and law practice can be an intense and chaotic experience. Library outreach can include programs that support the growing movement within the legal profession toward personal wellness; that is, valuing self-care and paying attention to our emotional, psychological, and physical health while practicing law. Mindfulness and meditation fall squarely within this movement’s mission