Law Commons^™

Single Payer And The Rising Cost Of Health Care, Brianna Paolicelli

Cardozo Public Law, Policy & Ethics Journal

The New York Health Act proposes a single-payer healthcare system aimed at providing universal coverage by eliminating private insurers and reducing administrative costs. The Act, persistently advocated by Assemblyman Richard Gottfried since 1992, passed the State Assembly in 2015 but faces opposition, particularly from the insurance industry and the Republican Senate. Despite challenges, the Act is supported by economic research indicating significant cost savings and improved efficiency, drawing on international successes like Canada and Taiwan. It addresses historical and contemporary healthcare issues, offering a comprehensive solution to the state's healthcare needs.

Law, Religion, And The Purpose Of The University, John D. Inazu

Scholarship@WashULaw

This brief essay explores the relationship between law, religion, and the university. Religion asks the fundamental questions of human existence. Law is the means through which we impose our beliefs on our fellow citizens. The particulars of law and religion expose the differences among us. We respond to those differences with chaos, control, or coexistence. Coexistence requires tolerance, humility, and patience, and it requires institutions to habituate these practices within us. It is not clear that this country presently has such institutions, but if we are discover them among us, the university is one possible contender. The people, place, and …

New Research On The Stubborn Persistence Of Tax Expenditures, Conor Clarke

Scholarship@WashULaw

In this essay I examine new research on tax expenditures. By utilizing survey experiments, several new studies have explored when and why the public prefers spending programs organized as tax credits rather than direct expenditures, even when the substance and cost of the policies are the same. I argue that this 'framing effects' research can help explain why tax expenditures have continued to grow faster than government spending as a whole, and why tax expenditure budgets have failed to stop this growth.

What Are Tax Havens And Why Are They Bad?, Conor Clarke

Scholarship@WashULaw

This essay reviews Gabriel Zucman's The Hidden Wealth of Nations: The Scourge of Tax Havens. Zucman's important new book brings clarity to a confusing subject -- but occasionally does so at the expense of nuance. My review has three goals. First, I summarize and appraise Zucman's central findings, and re-estimate his revenue-loss totals for the United States using tax-rate assumptions that I believe are more realistic. Second, I position Zucman's findings against the backdrop of the wider literatures on tax havens and inequality, and attempt to answer the two questions in this essay's title. Third, I comment on Zucman's call …

Why The Supreme Court Might Not Overrule Seminole Rock, Conor Clarke

Scholarship@WashULaw

Predictions are hard, especially about the future. It’s much safer to hide behind a broad trend: There was a time, just a couple of years ago, when it seemed like Auer and Seminole Rock were not long for this world. Auer’s author, Justice Scalia, turned his back on the doctrine. The tide of scholarly opinion—led by former Scalia clerk John Manning—seemed to rise comfortably, almost casually, in opposition to Auer. Fueled by a few encouraging concurrences, cases percolated through the federal courts that seemed to provide a ripe opportunity for review.

But no longer. The Court reaffirmed Auer last year. …

Do Law Schools Adequately Prepare Students For Practice? Surveys Say . . . No!, Robert R. Kuehn

Scholarship@WashULaw

There has been much concern over declining bar passage rates, focusing attention on whether some schools are admitting students who may not be capable of passing the bar exam and whether a school’s program of legal education adequately prepares its graduates for the exam. But if studies of practicing lawyers and recent law graduates matter, it is clear that law schools are also failing in their primary mission to adequately prepare students for legal practice.

This paper examines studies by the National Conference of Bar Examiners, the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System, and the American Bar …

The President In His Labyrinth: Checks And Balances In The New Pan-American Presidentialism, Andrea Scoseria Katz

Scholarship@WashULaw

This dissertation presents a theory of the separation of powers centered on the President’s “power to persuade.” To meet the imperial public expectations placed on the office in the modern age, the President will reliably try to supplement his limited formal powers by convincing others to support his agenda, the people, party allies, and courts being the most important. The President’s techniques of persuasion fall into three regular categories. First, there is “going public,” or popular leadership, where the President turns the force of popular majorities into a tool for shaping policy or legislative outcomes. Second is executive law-making, whereby …

One Last Word On The Blackstone Principle, Daniel Epps

Scholarship@WashULaw

In "The Consequences of Error in Criminal Justice," I analyzed and critiqued the "Blackstone principle" — shorthand for the common intuition that a criminal justice system should strive to minimize false convictions, even at the expense of creating more false acquittals and more total errors overall. Joel Johnson's "Benefits of Error in Criminal Justice" is a thoughtful and well-crafted response to my article. In this short reply, I offer some thoughts on Johnson’s arguments, while also addressing two other recent responses by Laura Appleman and by John Bronsteen and Jonathan Masur. While I use this opportunity to clarify and defend …

The Combatant's Stance: Autonomous Weapons On The Battlefield, Jens David Ohlin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Do Autonomous Weapon Systems (AWS) qualify as moral or rational agents? This paper argues that combatants on the battlefield are required by the demands of behavior interpretation to approach a sophisticated AWS with the “Combatant’s Stance” — the ascription of mental states required to understand the system’s strategic behavior on the battlefield. However, the fact that an AWS must be engaged with the combatant’s stance does not entail that other persons are relieved of criminal or moral responsibility for war crimes committed by autonomous weapons. This article argues that military commanders can and should be held responsible for perpetrating war …

Is The Constitution Special?, Christopher Serkin, Nelson Tebbe

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

“[W]e must never forget, that it is a constitution we are expounding.” If there was such a danger when Chief Justice John Marshall wrote those words, there is none today. Americans regularly assume that the Constitution is special, and legal professionals treat it differently from other sources of law. But what if that is wrongheaded? In this Article, we identify and question the professional practice of constitutional exceptionalism. First, we show that standard arguments from text, structure, and history work differently in constitutional law. Second, we examine the possible justifications for such distinctive interpretation among lawyers, and we find them …

Should The Best Offenses Ever Be A Good Defense: The Public Authority To Use Force In Millitary Operations: Recalibrating The Use Of Force Rules In The Standing Rules Of Engagement, Gary Corn

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff's Standing Rules of Engagement/StandingRules for the Use of Force (SROE/SRUF)for U.S. Forces provides strategic guidance to the armed forces on the authority to use force during all military operations. The standing self-defense rules in the SROE for national, unit, and individual self-defense form the core of these use-of-force authorities. The SROE self-defense rules are incorrectly built on a unitary jus ad bellum framework, legally inapplicable below the level of national self-defense. Coupled with the pressures of sustained counter-insurgency operations, this misalignment of individual and unit self-defense authorities has led to a conflation …

The Big Data Jury, Andrew Ferguson

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This article addresses the disruptive impact of big data technologies on jury selection.Jury selection requires personal information about potential jurors. Current selection practices, however, collect very little information about citizens, and litigants picking jury panels know even less. This data gap results in a jury selection system that: (1) fails to create a representative cross-section of the community; (2) encourages the discriminatory use of peremptory challenges; (3) results in an unacceptably high juror “no show” rate; and (4) disproportionately advantages those litigants who can afford to hire expensive jury consultants.Big data has the potential to remedy these existing limitations and …

Predictive Prosecution, Andrew Ferguson

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Police in major metropolitan areas now use “predictive policing” technologies to identify and deter crime. The early successes of predictive policing have led a few prosecutor’s offices to adopt quasi-“predictive prosecution” strategies. Predictive prosecution involves the identification and targeting of suspects deemed most at risk for future serious criminal activity, and then the use of that information to shape bail determinations, charging decisions, and sentencing arguments. This type of “Moneyball” prosecution has begun in New York City and Chicago, and this essay addresses the promise and peril of this new technology.This essay for the Wake Forest Law Review’s Symposium on …

The Transformative Influence Of International Law And Practice On The Death Penalty In The United States, Richard Wilson

Contributions to Books

No region of the world has been more vocal and persistent in its opposition to U.S. death penalty practice than Europe, which has itself become a death penalty-free zone. The chapter will examine the actions taken by European legislative and judicial bodies against U.S. practice of the death penalty, as well as those of the other regional treaty bodies, with particular attention to the Inter-American human rights system, in which the U.S. reluctantly participates. It then will examine U.S. interactions with its treaty partners in the area of extradition, where death penalty policy is acted out in the exchanges of …

Reading, Riting, And Rithmetic, Shannon M. Roddy

Newsletters & Other Publications

Law Library Lights, vol. 60, issue 1

Masthead, Volume 66 Issue 3 (2016)

Case Western Reserve Law Review

No abstract provided.

Volume 66 Issue 3 (2016), Case Western Reserve Law Review

Case Western Reserve Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Time Has Come: A Proposed Revision To 17 U.S.C. § 203, Amy Gilbert

Case Western Reserve Law Review

Due to its unintended negative effects on authors, the industry, and society and, as a result, its failure to accomplish the purpose of having such a provision in the first place, this Note argues that Section 203 should be revised. The proposed solution limits the broad language that makes the statute inalienable to situations in which the purpose of the provision would be furthered and narrows the statute’s far too expansive notice requirements. This revision takes into account the nature of the industry in terms of risks and the recent technological developments by upholding the ideals of freedom of contract …

Preventing Conflict Or Descending An Iron Curtain? Buffer-Zone Laws And Balancing Histories Of Disruption With Free Speech, Nate Nasrallah

Case Western Reserve Law Review

This article proposes that courts and lawmakers look to two factors to help determine whether a given law is necessary. First, they should evaluate the extent of the law’s history of disruption. To do this, they should ask whether the history is pervasive, whether it is egregious, whether it calls for immediate action, and whether it is particular. Second, courts and lawmakers should examine the degree to which the disruption impedes upon the government’s interest. If logic dictates that the government cannot advance its interest so long as the prohibited conduct persists, then the government does not need to show …

China - Hp-Ssst And Price Undercutting, Brendan Saslow

Case Western Reserve Law Review

Chinese steel is also relevant to how China treats steel imports. China—HP-SSST involves an antidumping investigation conducted by Chinese authorities to determine whether European and Japanese manufacturers were dumping HP-SSSTs in China. This case comment presents an overview of China—HP-SSST. It focuses on the current Chinese injury analysis under WTO and Chinese law. Part I provides a brief overview of WTO antidumping laws and injury analysis proceedings. Part II summarizes the Appellate Body’s critical holdings in China— HP-SSST. Part III concludes with a critique of the case’s key holding, on price undercutting, and considers statistics about China as a respondent …

2016 Sumner Canary Memorial Lecture: Of Lions And Bears, Judges And Legislators, And The Legacy Of Justice Scalia, Honorable Neil M. Gorsuch

Case Western Reserve Law Review

Mark me down too as a believer that the traditional account of the judicial role Justice Scalia defended will endure. Let me offer you tonight three reasons for my faith on this score. *

Doubling Down On Racial Discrimination: The Racially Disparate Impacts Of Crime-Based Removals, Kevin R. Johnson

Case Western Reserve Law Review

Part I of this Article considers parallel developments in the law that contribute to what can be characterized as the emergence of nothing less than a Latina/o removal system. It first considers the Supreme Court’s implicit sanctioning of race-conscious law enforcement in the United States, with the centerpiece of this symposium, Whren v. United States, perhaps the most well-known example. Second, it summarizes the trend over the last twenty years toward greatly increased cooperation between state and local law enforcement agencies and federal immigration enforcement authorities. Part I proceeds to analyze how and why an increasing number of state and …

State Responses To The Whren Decision, Margaret M. Lawton

Case Western Reserve Law Review

In Part I, this Article briefly discusses the Whren decision. Part II discusses the three states that have considered whether to divert from the Whren decision under their own state constitutions. This Article then concludes that while these states have made efforts to combat traffic stops initiated on unconstitutional grounds, such as racial profiling, these state courts are finding it hard to do in the absence of police admission of using a pretext. While this case law suggests that other means of addressing police use of pretext would be more effective than relying on state constitutional law remedies, the Washington …

A Proposal To Eliminate A Black Market For Children, Sean Mcintyre

Case Western Reserve Law Review

Part I will analyze the factual background behind rehoming. Part II will analyze the legal background of rehoming, focusing on an analysis of international adoption law and transfer of custody pursuant to a power of attorney document. Part III will propose solutions at the federal level in order to curb the prevalence of rehoming.

The Wall That Aedpa Built: Revisiting The Suspension Clause Challenge To The Antiterrorism And Effective Death Penalty Act, Nathan Nasrallah

Case Western Reserve Law Review

Part I gives background on AEDPA, points out what Section 2254(d)(1) does, explains why AEDPA’s standard of review is problematic, and introduces the Suspension Clause challenge. Part II describes the writ of habeas corpus at common law and observes that there are two versions of habeas’s history, a narrow version and a functionalist version. The functionalist approach is essential to a strong attack on AEDPA. Part III introduces the age-old debate over the writ’s constitutional scope. To formulate the best Suspension Clause challenge to Section 2254(d)(1), a challenger should argue that: (1) the Suspension Clause impliedly guarantees a right, or …

Tribute To Professor Ken Margolis, Peter A. Joy

Case Western Reserve Law Review

No abstract provided.

Tribute To Professor Ken Margolis, Mathew J. Rossman

Case Western Reserve Law Review

No abstract provided.

Thick Marks, Thin Marks, Michael Grynberg

Case Western Reserve Law Review

This conception of thick or thin protection is part of routine trademark disputes, but it has more interesting implications for trademark law. Trademarks do more than identify a product’s source. They embody connotative and abstract meanings over which trademark owners seek control. Traditional trademark doctrine is often ill-suited to resolve the resulting litigation. One way courts respond is by calibrating thickness of protection. Judges receptive to the expansion of trademark rights may grant thick protection; skeptical judges, thin. This shortcut frustrates the development of precedent. Treating a mark as thin, for example, enables courts to resist broad trademark claims without …

Volume 67 Issue 1 (2016), Case Western Reserve Law Review

Case Western Reserve Law Review

No abstract provided.

Vawa 2013’S Right To Appointed Counsel In Tribal Court Proceedings—A Rising Tide That Lifts All Boats Or A Procedural Windfall For Non-Indian Defendants?, Jordon Gross

Case Western Reserve Law Review

No abstract provided.