Law Commons^™

The Viability Of Citizens’ Suits Under The Clean Water Act After Gwaltney Of Smithfield V. Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Bevery Mcqueary Smith

Beverly McQueary Smith

No abstract provided.

An Act Of War: Finding A Meaning For What Congress Has Left Undefined, Desiree Gargano

Touro Law Review

There are often environmental concerns with any new construction project. One often unforeseen aspect of this is the liability that occurs after a building is destroyed. Property owners have generally faced strict liability for the release of hazardous waste under section 107 of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act. This Comment examines why the act of war defense has consistently failed and determines if the law places too high of a burden on property owners who assert this defense.

"Health Care For All:" The Gap Between Rhetoric And Reality In The Affordable Care Act, Vinita Andrapalliyal

Vinita Andrapalliyal

The rhetoric of “universal health care” and “health care for all” that pervaded the health care debate which culminated in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA)’s passage. However, the ACA offers reduced to no protections for certain noncitizen groups, specifically: 1) recently-arrived legal permanent residents, 2) nonimmigrants, and 3) the undocumented. This Article explores how the Act fails to ensure “health care for all,” demonstrates the gap between rhetoric and reality by parsing the ACA’s legislative history, and posits reasons for the gap. The ACA’s legislative history suggests that legislators’ biases towards these noncitizen groups, particularly with respect …

A Traditional And Textualist Analysis Of The Goals Of Antitrust: Efficiency, Preventing Theft From Consumers, And Consumer Choice, Robert H. Lande

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article ascertains the overall purpose of the antitrust statutes in two very different ways. First, it performs a traditional analysis of the legislative history of the antitrust laws by analyzing relevant legislative debates and committee reports. Second, it undertakes a textualist or "plain meaning" analysis of the purpose of the antitrust statutes, using Justice Scalia's methodology. It does this by analyzing the meaning of key terms as they were used in contemporary dictionaries, legal treatises, common law cases, and the earliest U.s. antitrust cases, and it does this in light of the history of the relevant times.

Both approaches …

Joint Custody As A Parenting Alternative, Billy G. Mills, Steven P. Belzer

Pepperdine Law Review

Joint custody of children has been a recently accepted alternative to the traditional child custody/visitation orders that usually follow dissolution proceedings. In 1980, California became one of the first states to provide, by statute, a presumption in favor of an award of joint custody to the parents. The authors present the legislative history of this joint custody statute and synthesize the various views that have been expressed on the subject of joint custody. Also presented is a discussion of the legislative intent behind the statute and whether the current law is the most effective means of protecting the best interests …

Are Student Affairs Professionals “Educators?:” Student Affairs And The Scope Of The Educational Exemption Of Copyright Law, Dallas Long

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

Copyright is a critical, emerging issue in American higher education. Copyright restricts how educators use copyrighted materials in teaching activities. Although the fair use doctrine and the educational exemption in U.S. copyright law provide exceptions for educators, student affairs professionals might not meet the standards of the educational exemption. This paper serves as a primer on U.S. copyright law, the fair use doctrine, and the educational exemption. Analyses of case law suggest student affairs professionals should rely on the fair use doctrine rather than the educational exemption when using copyrighted materials for educational purposes.

Other Uses Of Legislative History, Mary Whisner

Librarians' Articles

Although we usually think of using legislative history to determine legislative intent when interpreting statutes, Ms. Whisner shows that legislative documents can be useful for other, less controversial purposes as well.

What Was Wrong With The Record?, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

Shelby County v. Holder offers three reasons for why the record Congress amassed to support the 2006 reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) was legally insufficient to justify the statute's continued regional application: (1) the problems Congress documented in 2006 were not as severe as those that prompted it to craft the regime in 1965; (2) these problems did not lead Congress to alter the statute's pre-existing coverage formula; and (3) these problems did not exclusively involve voter registration and the casting of ballots.

The Promises Of Freedom: The Contemporary Relevance Of The Thirteenth Amendment, William M. Carter Jr.

Articles

This article, an expanded version of the author's remarks at the 2013 Honorable Clifford Scott Green Lecture at the Temple University Beasley School of Law, illuminates the history and the context of the Thirteenth Amendment. This article contends that the full scope of the Thirteenth Amendment has yet to be realized and offers reflections on why it remains an underenforced constitutional norm. Finally, this article demonstrates the relevance of the Thirteenth Amendment to addressing contemporary forms of racial inequality and subordination.