Law Commons^™

Legal Tools For Climate Adaptation Advocacy: Clean Water Act Permitting And Funding Programs, Channing R. Jones

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Climate change imperils the quality of water resources and aquatic ecosystems by introducing or exacerbating supply challenges and pollution threats. Existing legal frameworks, including permitting and grant programs, can incorporate climate change adaptation into the way we protect water. In particular, the Clean Water Act – the primary tool used nationwide to protect surface waters from pollutant discharges and fill activity – can be used to promote climate change adaptation in a number of ways.

The Clean Water Act was enacted in 1972 and amended in 1977 and 1987. The statute is principally administered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, …

Leverage, Default, And Mortality: Evidence From Cancer Diagnoses, Arpit Gupta, Edward R. Morrison, Catherine Fedorenko, Scott Ramsey

Faculty Scholarship

This paper tests whether housing wealth mitigates the effects of health shocks on financial stress and mortality. We link cancer records to mortgage, bankruptcy, foreclosure, and credit report data. We find that cancer diagnoses are financially destabilizing even for households with health insurance, but the effect is driven by households without home equity. Households with equity extract it (by refinancing a mortgage or taking out a second). They are also more likely to accept recommended therapies and have higher post-diagnosis survival rates. Our findings show that housing wealth plays an important role in understanding how individuals buffer idiosyncratic shocks.

Slavery By Another Name: 'Voluntary' Immigrant Detainee Labor And The Thirteenth Amendment, Anita Sinha

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

During the McCarthy era, Congress passed an obscure law authorizing detained immigrants to work for a payment of one dollar a day. The government justified the provision, which was modeled after the 1949 Geneva Convention’s protections for prisoners of war, in the context of the period’s relative heightened detentions of noncitizens. Soon afterwards, the enactment of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 diminished the use of detention drastically, and the practice of detainee labor lay dormant for decades. Modern changes to immigration law and its systems have rendered immigration detention today the largest mass incarceration movement in U.S. history. …

Thought And Advocacy About Student Debt: Representation Of Low-Income Borrowers In Law School Clinical Programs, Ann Shalleck

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Preventing Private Inurement In Tranched Social Enterprises, Benjamin Leff

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Boys, Rape And Masculinity: Reclaiming Boys’ Narratives Of Sexual Violence In Custody, Brenda V. Smith

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This article examines a little studied area at the intersections of masculinity, feminist studies, and criminal justice — sexual abuse of boys in custody by female staff. Professor Smith outlines the scope of the problem and discusses competing narratives that attempt to explain the phenomena: (1) female staff as “mother, sister, friend”; (2) adolescent development theory; (3) complex early childhood trauma; and (4) female authority and power. There is a gap in both masculinity and feminist theory in analyzing sexual aggression and power by women over boys. The talk article concludes with policy and practice prescription and recommendations for further …

Administrative Law, Public Administration, And The Administrative Conference Of The United States, Gillian E. Metzger

Faculty Scholarship

From its birth, administrative law has claimed a close connection to governmental practice. Yet as administrative law has grown and matured it has moved further away from how agencies actually function. The causes of administrative law’s disconnect from actual administration are complex and the divide is now longstanding, but it is also a source of concern given the increasing importance of internal administration for ensuring accountable government. This Article analyzes the contemporary manifestations and historical origins of administrative law’s divide from public administration, as well as the growing costs of this disconnect. It also describes the Administrative Conference of the …

Children's Health In A Legal Framework, Elizabeth S. Scott, Clare Huntington

Faculty Scholarship

The interdisciplinary periodical Future of Children has dedicated an issue to children’s health policy. This contribution to the issue maps the legal landscape influencing policy choices. The authors demonstrate that in the U.S. legal system, parents have robust rights, grounded in the Constitution, to make decisions concerning their children’s health and medical treatment. Following from its commitment to parental rights, the system typically assumes the interests of parents and children are aligned, even when that assumption seems questionable. Thus, for example, parents who would limit their children’s access to health care on the basis of the parents’ religious belief have …

We (Still) Need To Talk About Aereo: New Controversies And Unresolved Questions After The Supreme Court's Decision, Rebecca Giblin, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

Recent judicial interpretations of U.S. copyright law have prompted businesses to design technologies in ways that enable the making and transmission of copies of works to consumers while falling outside the scope of the owner's exclusive rights. The archetypal example is Aereo Inc.'s system for providing online access to broadcast television, which the Supreme Court has now ruled results in infringing public performances by Aereo.

In previous work we urged the Court to develop a principled reading of the transmit clause focusing on the particular use rather than on the technical architecture of the delivery service (Giblin & Ginsburg, "We …

Sustainability And Infrastructure Investment: National Development Banks In Africa, Daniel D. Bradlow, Christopher Strong Humphrey

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The need for infrastructure finance in Africa is tremendous. A 2009 report by the World Bank suggests that the continent faces needs of US$93 billion per year. More recent studies, pointing to economic and population growth trends and using more sophisticated methods of assessing needs, indicate that infrastructure needs are actually much higher. Existing financing sources have not been able to keep pace.

In this context, the role of national development banks (NDBs) in the continent merits attention. As will be shown below, many African countries have NDBs, although the vast majority are quite small, with limited access to finance …

A Technical Barriers To Trade Agreement For Services?, Bernard Hoekman, Petros C. Mavroidis

Faculty Scholarship

Services are regulated for a variety of reasons. Regulation is typically influenced by political economy forces and may thus at times reflect protectionist motivations. Similar considerations arise for goods, but the potential for protectionist capture may be greater in services as many sectors are self-regulated by domestic industry. There are specific disciplines on regulation of goods (product standards) in the WTO Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT). This encourages the use of international standards and requires that norms restrict trade only to the extent necessary to achieve the regulatory objective. WTO disciplines on domestic regulation of services are weaker …

Helping Law Students Get The Help They Need: An Analysis Of Data Regarding Law Students' Reluctance To Seek Help And Policy Recommendations For A Variety Of Stakeholders, David Jaffe, Jerome M. Organ, Katherine Bender

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This article summarizes some specific results from the Survey of Law Student Well-Being, which the authors administered as a voluntary and confidential web-based survey at 15 diverse law schools in the United States from February 2014 to May 2014.

This is the first survey to assess alcohol and drug use among law students since 1991 and is the first ever to assess prescription drug use/misuse, mental health issues, and help-seeking attitudes. The primary goals of collecting and analyzing the responses from the Survey of Law Student Well-Being were to better understand:

1) alcohol and drug use among law students,

2) …

Putting The 'Financial Stability' In Financial Stability Oversight Council, Hilary Allen

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

For all the ink that has been spilled on the topic of financial regulation since the financial crisis of 2007-2008, there has been little examination of the competing normative goals of financial regulation. Should the financial system be treated as an end in itself such that the efficiency of that system is the primary goal? Or should financial regulation instead treat the financial system as a means to the end of broader economic growth? This Article argues for the latter approach, and stakes out the controversial normative position that financial stability, rather than efficiency, should be the paramount focus of …

Exploited At The Intersection: A Critical Race Feminist Analysis Of Undocumented Latina Workers And The Role Of The Private Attorney General, Llezlie Green

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Undocumented Latina workers experience wage theft and other workplace exploitation at alarmingly high rates. The stock stories associated with immigrant workers often involve male day laborers or female domestic workers and fail to capture the experiences of women toiling in the farms, restaurants, factories, and home and business cleaning services that employ hundreds of thousands of immigrant women. The resulting invisibility of undocumented Latina women in the typical narratives parallels the paucity of undocumented Latina workers who make legal claims against their exploitative employers. Their distinct experiences are characterized by multiple intersecting vulnerabilities based upon their ethnicity, gender, and immigration …

Tributes To Kent Greenawalt, Barbara Aronstein Black, Vincent A. Blasi, Elizabeth F. Emens, H. Jefferson Powell, Susan P. Sturm, William F. Young

Faculty Scholarship

There are some tasks that present themselves as, at the same time, an opportunity and a challenge. Crafting a brief tribute to Kent Greenawalt is just such a task. It is first – and I should say foremost – an opportunity to express in a public forum one’s high regard for an esteemed colleague and valued friend, and, then, it is a challenge to do justice to his extraordinary accomplishments, to the man, and to his work.

In dedicating this issue to Kent, the Columbia Law Review honors one of its own, whose association with Columbia Law School and the …

The Politicization Of Legal Expertise In The Ttip Negotiation, Fernanda Nicola

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Financial Product Complexity, Moral Hazard, And The Private Law, Heather Hughes

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Extensive debate surrounds the question of how regulators should respond to the externalization of risk associated with moral hazard in financial markets. The capacity of market actors to externalize risk is related to transactional complexity. Complexity, for example, augments reliance on valuation methods that can obscure risk, aggravating moral hazard. Recently, scholars and policymakers have articulated strategies for regulating transactional complexity that, this Article finds, reflect a shift from a contract law to a property law rubric for understanding financial products. This Article articulates this shift and assesses its regulatory implications. Some call for standardization of financial products. Others call …

Rethinking Jacob & Youngs V. Kent, Victor P. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

Most living lawyers have run into Jacob & Youngs, Inc. v. Kent in their legal education. It has long been a staple in Contracts casebooks. While the result has been widely applauded, in recent years there has been some push-back. Professor Kenneth Ching has recently criticized both Cardozo’s argument and the result. Professor Robert Scott in a number of papers, some coauthored, has also concluded that the result was wrong. Yet given the state of New York law at the time Cardozo’s result was correct. Moreover, I will argue, the outcome is one that parties would adopt today. Ironically, despite …

The President And The Constitution, Peter L. Strauss

Faculty Scholarship

That comprehensive and undefined presidential powers hold both practical advantages and grave dangers for the country will impress anyone who has served as legal adviser to a President in time of transition and public anxiety.... The purpose of the Constitution was not only to grant power, but to keep it from getting out of hand.... With all its defects, delays and inconveniences, men have discovered no technique for long preserving free government except that the Executive be under the law, and that the law be made by parliamentary deliberations.

Expunging America's Rap Sheet In The Information Age, Jenny Roberts

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

"Getting a Second Chance After a Criminal Record.", "Want to Expunge Your Record?', "South Carolina Debating If It Should be Easier to Expunge a Brush with the Law." "Making a Fresh Start in Little Village." These are only some of the headlines of newspaper articles and television segments that came up in a Google Alert for "expungement" during one typical week in late 2014. The same week, in Cincinnati, Ohio, city council members backed expungement of low-level marijuana convictions. Expungement news that week was not limited to the United States. In Jamaica, the legislature passed a bill that allows expungement …

Deregulation, Distrust, And Democracy, Lindsay Wiley

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Environmental, public health, alternative food, and food justice advocates are working together to achieve incremental agricultural subsidy and nutrition assistance reforms that increase access to fresh fruits and vegetables. When it comes to targeting food and beverage products for increased regulation and decreased consumption, however, the priorities of various food reform movements diverge. This article argues that foundational legal issues, including preemption of state and local authority to protect the public's health and welfare, increasing First Amendment protection for commercial speech, and eroding judicial deference to legislative policy judgments, present a more promising avenue for collaboration across movements than discrete …

Learning From Our Mistakes: Using Immigration Enforcement Errors To Guide Reform, Amanda Frost

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Immigration scholars and advocates frequently criticize our immigration system for imposing severe penalties akin to (or worse than) those in the criminal justice system — such as prolonged detention and permanent exile from the United States — without providing sufficient procedural protections to minimize enforcement errors. Yet there has been relatively little scholarship examining the frequency of errors in immigration enforcement and identifying recurring causes of those errors, in part because the data is hard to find. This Article begins by canvassing some of the publicly available data on enforcement errors, which reveal that such mistakes occur too frequently to …

Political Possibilities Of Reparations, Ezra Rosser

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This essay is a brief response to Gregory Alexander's article, published by Law and Social Inquiry, that generally argues against land reparations for past wrongs. This response argues that there are political reasons to leave land reparations on the table, focusing on the claims of Native American tribes.

Specialized Standards Of Review, Jonas Anderson

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

ABSTRACT The applicable standard of review on appeal is governed by a simple rule: appellate courts review questions of law de novo, questions of fact for "clear error, " and questions of discretion for "abuse of discretion. Despite the apparent simplicity of the rule, its application has been uneven, to state it mildly. Scholars have written extensively about the application of the rule, but have yet to consider whether the traditional rule of "deference " should be altered when the appellate court is a specialized court. Despite the dearth of legal scholarship on specialized deference, the Supreme Court is keenly …

Restoring The Fact/Law Distinction In Patent Claim Construction, Jonas Anderson

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

INTRODUCTION: Two decades ago, the Supreme Court sought to promote more effective, transparent patent litigation in Markman v. Westview Instruments1 by ruling that "the construction of a patent, including terms of art within its claim, is exclusively within the province of the court."'2 In so doing, the Court removed interpretation of patent claims from the black box of jury deliberations by holding that the Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial did not extend to patent claim construction. Failing to find clear historical evidence of how claim construction was handled in 179 1,' the Court turned to "the relative interpretive …

Giving As Governance: Philanthrocapitalism And Modern-Day Slavery Abolitionism, Janie Chuang

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This Essay examines the potential influence of a new breed of actor in the global antitrafficking arena: the venture philanthropist, or "philanthrocapitalist." Philanthrocapitalists have already helped rebrand "trafficking" as "modern-day slavery," and have expressed their ambitions to lead global efforts to eradicate the problem. With their deep financial resources and access to powerful networks, philanthrocapitalists hold tremendous power to shape the future trajectory of the antitrafficking movement. this Essay warns, however, against the possibility that philanthrocapitalists could also reconfigure the landscape of global antitrafficking policymaking, marginalizing or even displacing other actors' efforts to address the problem.

Judging Statutes, Peter L. Strauss

Faculty Scholarship

Chief Judge Robert Katzmann has written a compelling short book about statutory interpretation. It could set the framework for a two- or three-hour legislation class, supplemented by cases and other readings of the instructor's choosing. Or it might more simply be used as an independent reading assignment as law school begins, to apprise 21st-century law students just how important the interpretation of statutes will prove to be in the profession they are entering, and how unsettled are the judiciary's means of dealing with them. It should be required reading for all who teach in the field.

Following The Script: Narratives Of Suspicion In Terry Stops In Street Policing, Jeffery Fagan, Amanda Geller

Faculty Scholarship

Regulation of Terry stops of pedestrians by police requires articulation of the reasonable and individualized bases of suspicion that motivate their actions. Nearly five decades after Terry, courts have found it difficult to articulate the boundaries or parameters of reasonable suspicion. The behavior and appearances of individuals combine with the social and spatial contexts in which police observe them to create an algebra of suspicion. Police can proceed to approach and temporarily detain a person at a threshold of suspicion that courts have been unable and perhaps unwilling to articulate. The result has been sharp tensions within Fourth Amendment …

Mistaken Eyewitness Identifications In Maryland, David Aaronson, Julia Fox

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

The Cost Of Opportunity: Student Debt And Social Mobility, Daniela Kraiem

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.