Law Commons^™

The Dream Of Property Professors, Ezra Rosser

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Michael Heller and James Salzman's new book, Mine! How the Hidden Rules of Ownership Control Our Lives, is a dream come true for property professors.

I suspect that many of us have moments when we think to ourselves, "wow, this stuff is really interesting," imagining that property law could somehow be of general interest. Too often that dream is killed when the eyes of non-lawyers, including family members, start to glaze over when they hear words like rule against perpetuities or trademark. Heller and Salzman have succeeded in making the stories property professors tell the stuff of a bestseller. They …

Court Personalities And Impoverished Parents, Ezra Rosser

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Professor Tonya Brito's in-depth examination of the pursuit of child support from poor fathers continues to pay significant dividends that extend well beyond family law. Producing Justice in Poor People's Courts: Four Models of State Legal Actors highlights the that differing personalities and approaches can have on impoverished parents involved in child-support-enforcement disputes before the courts. Based on an impressive ethnographic study, Brito's article shows how the actors involved craft stories about impoverished family dynamics as a way to make sense of their own role and complicity in an often unjust system of regulating poor families.

Unmasking The Nineteenth Amendment Centennial Through The Pandemic Lenses Of Liberty, Loss, Masculinity, And Leadership [Comments], Jamie Abrams

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Celebrating the Centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment in this political, economic, and social moment was a tale of two extremes. On the one hand, the Centennial occurred contemporaneously with the election of Kamala Harris as the nation's first woman Vice President offering a tremendous celebratory bookend of political success. On the other hand, we celebrated the Centennial amid a global pandemic that has taken over 740,000 American lives2 and in a crescendo of searingly painful calls for racial justice. In reflecting on the Centennial in this political, social, and economic moment, this article unmasks the lenses of loss, liberty, masculinity, …

Prosecutors, Ethics And The Pursuit Of Racial Justice, Roger Fairfax

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The 2020 murder of George Floyd catalyzed a national reckoning on race, and scrutiny of barriers to racial justice, rightfully focused on policing. However, as this Symposium has demonstrated, it is also critical to interrogate the prosecutorial function, given the outsize role prosecutors play in the criminal legal system. Scholars and advocates have utilized a number of frames to explore a key topic of this symposium-the intersection between prosecutorial discretion, prosecutorial ethics, and racial inequity.'

Although the renewed interest in the prosecutor's role in the pursuit of racial justice raises many new questions and opportunities, the scaffolding for such work …

Debunking The Efficacy Of Standard Contract Boilerplate: Part Iii, David Spratt

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

There are several things wrong with this paragraph. First, the heading "Knowledge of Residence" is underinclusive, as the paragraph concerns more than where each party lives. A more inclusive and effective heading would be "Knowledge of Contact Information." Second, the introductory phrase is ambiguous, as one could read "for so long as the minor children are less than eighteen years of age" as requiring the parties to exchange information only until one of the parties' children turns 18. Moreover, "eighteen years of age" is archaic and clunky legalese. Keep it simple, solicitors: "eighteen" or "age eighteen" would suffice. Applying these …

Clarifying Nonprofit Purchase Rights In Affordable Housing, Brandon Weiss

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Disputes around the country are proliferating as limited partner investors attempt to thwart the ability of nonprofits to exercise statutorily defined rights of first refusal to acquire low-income housing tax credit developments upon the expiration of rent restrictions. Such efforts, increasingly being made by "aggregator" investors, frustrate congressional intent, violate long-held norms and expectations in the industry, are costly for nonprofits to litigate, jeopardize the ongoing affordability of an already scarce federally assisted housing stock, and threaten to displace low-income tenants. This Essay describes the problem, explores the collision of housing policy and tax policy that gives rise to it, …

Who Gets To Make A Living? Street Vending In America, Joseph Pileri

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Street vending has long provided those at the margins of American society with the opportunity for economic advancement. A key segment of the informal economy, street vending has low barriers of entry and attracts entrepreneurs who lack the resources, ability, or desire to start brick-and-mortar businesses or work for someone else. Street vending also contributes to the vitality and safety of urban America.

Despite the pivotal role that street vending plays, cities around the country criminalize vending by treating the violation of street vending regulations as a criminal offense. Recent high-profile vendor arrests in New York City and Washington, DC …

Explaining Florida Man, Ira P. Robbins

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

"Florida Man" is a popular cultural phenomenon in which journalists report on Floridians'unusual (and often criminal) behavior, and readers relish in and share the stories, largely on social media. A meme based on Florida Man news stories emerged in 2013 and continues to capture people's attention nationwide. Florida man is one of the latest unique trends to come from the Sunshine State and contributes to Florida's reputation as a quirky place.

Explanations for Florida Man center on Florida'sPublic Records Law, which is known as one of the most expansive open records laws in the country. All states and the District …

The Shadow Bargainers, Jenny Roberts, Ronald F. Wright, Betina Cutaia Wilkinson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Plea bargaining happens in almost every criminal case, yet there is little empirical study about what actually happens when prosecutors and defense lawyers negotiate. This Article looks into the bargaining part of plea bargaining. It reports on the responses of over 500 public defenders who participated in our nationwide survey about their objectives and practices during plea negotiations.

The survey responses create a rare empirical test of a major tenet of negotiation theory, the claim that attorneys bargain in the "shadow of the trial." This is a theory that some defenders embrace and others reject. Describing the factors they believe …

Designing Effective Regulation For Blockchain-Based Markets, Heather Hughes

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Effective regulation of blockchain-based markets calls for coordination among lawyers, businesses, coders, and lawmakers. How might we achieve adequate coordination and why is it important? This Article takes up these questions, using one example of an increasingly popular type of blockchain-based financial transaction: the issuance of tokens backed by off-chain assets. The objective here is not to advocate for a particular regulatory treatment for asset tokenization, but rather to use this deal type as a springboard to discuss what "effective regulation" means in the context of blockchain-enabled markets.

Blockchain & Secured Transactions Proceedings Of The 2021 Spring Conference: The Impact Of Blockchain On The Practice Of Law: Presentation 4, Heather Hughes

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Secured transactions are governed by Uniform Commercial Code Article 9. UCC Article 9 governs any extension of credit secured by personalty. If you think about it, this statute governs a massive swath of market activity: secured credit facilities, margin trading of securities, asset securitizations, and purchase money transactions for goods, I could name more. But it's a statute that's very wide ranging. Given this expansive scope, blockchain-based transaction platforms have numerous implications for lawyers who deal with secured transactions. In my brief time here, I'm going to identify just two of them.

Legal Education's Curricular Tipping Point Toward Inclusive Socratic Teaching, Jamie Abrams

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Two seismic curricular disruptions create a tipping point for legal education to reform and transform. COVID-19 abruptly disrupted the delivery of legal education. It aligned with a tectonic racial justice reckoning, as more professors and institutions reconsidered their content and classroom cultures, allying with faculty of color who had long confronted these issues actively. The frenzy of these dual disruptions starkly contrasts with the steady drumbeat of critical legal scholars advocating for decades to reduce hierarchies and inequalities in legal education pedagogy.

This context presents a tipping point supporting two pedagogical reforms that leverage this unique moment. First, it is …

Keynote Prosecutors And Race: Responsibility And Accountability, Angela J. Davis

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Thank you so much, Madeline. I want to thank the Rutgers University Law Review and the Rutgers Center on Criminal Justice, Youth Rights, and Race for inviting me to participate in this very important symposium on Prosecutors, Power, and Racial Justice: Building an Anti-Racist Prosecutorial System. I want to give a special thanks to Professor Cohen and Gisselly, and all of the students who worked so hard to put the symposium together. It's such an important topic. I appreciate your interest, and [I] am particularly thankful to all of you [who] are here on this Friday afternoon to talk about …

Tax Consequences Of Nonfungible Tokens (Nfts), Walter Effross, Leonard Goodman Cpa, Ph.D., Anthony Pochesci Cpa, Jay Soled Ll.M.

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

These new blockchain-created digital assets may be treated as intangibles for tax purposes, but a dearth of guidance leaves questions.

“By Accident Of Birth”: The Battle Over Birthright Citizenship After United States V. Wong Kim Ark, Amanda Frost

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

In theory, birthright citizenship has been well established in U.S. law since 1898, when the Supreme Court held in United States v. Wong Kim Ark that all born on U.S. soil are U.S. citizens. The experience of immigrants and their families over the last 120 years tells a different story, however. This article draws on government records documenting the Wong family's struggle for legal recognition to illuminate the convoluted history of birthright citizenship. Newly discovered archival materials reveal that Wong Kim Ark and his family experienced firsthand, and at times shaped, the fluctuating relationship between immigration, citizenship, and access to …

Protecting And Fostering Online Platform Competition: The Role Of Antitrust Law, Jonathan Baker

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This essay provides a perspective on the role of antitrust law in protecting and fostering competition in the digital economy, with particular attention to online platforms. It highlights the danger of anticompetitive exclusionary conduct by dominant online platforms and describes ways that antitrust law can challenge and deter such conduct. The essay also identifies a number of difficulties that U.S. courts and enforcers face in challenging harmful exclusionary conduct by dominant platforms, and discusses some ways that regulation can supplement antitrust law in fostering competition.

Conservation Easements As A Tool For Nature Protection, William Snape

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

The Insights, Uses, And Ethics Of Social Neuroscience In Anti-Discrimination Law, Susan Carle

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The article explores the uses in anti-discrimination law of social neuroscience—a broad interdisciplinary field that draws on the insights of brain science, medicine, epidemiology, social psychology, behavioral economics, moral cognitive neuroscience and many other experimentally based disciplines. It discusses the promising uses of social neuroscience findings from all these subfields on such matters as the irrational biases of “fast” thinking processes in general, and implicit biases against “out” groups more specifically, as well as group conformity, the black sheep effect, and more. The article traces a few of the ways these insights can help inform anti-discrimination law in both particular …

Governing The Global Public Square, Rebecca Hamilton

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Social media platforms are the public square of our era-a reality that has been entrenched by the widespread closure of physical public spaces in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This online space is global in nature, with over 3.6 billion users worldwide, but its governance does not fall solely to govern- ments. With the rise of social media, important decisions about what content does-and does not-stay online are made by private technology companies. Reflecting this reality, cutting-edge scholarship has converged on a triadic approach to understanding how the global public square operates-with states, users, and technology companies marking out three …

Making America A Better Place For All: Sustainable Development Recommendations For The Biden Administration, William Snape, Tony Pipa, Audra Wilson, John Bouman, Claire Babineaux-Fontenot, Corey Malone-Smolla, Alexandra Phelan, Mark Dorosin, Karol Boudreaux, Robert Adler, Uma Outka, Elizabeth Kronk Warner, Stephen Herzenberg, Samuel Markolf, Mikhail Chester, Gerlad Torres, Jonathan Rosenbloom, Leroy Paddock, Michael B. Gerrard, Anastasia M. Telesetsky, Kimberly Brown, Jane Nelson, John C. Dernbach, Scott E, Schang

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

In 2015, the United Nations Member States, including the United States, unanimously approved 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved by 2030. The SDGs are nonbinding; each nation is to implement them based on its own priorities and circumstances. This Article argues that the SDGs are a critical normative framework the United States should use to improve human quality of life, freedom, and opportunity by integrating economic and social development with environmental protection. It collects the recommendations of 22 experts on steps that the Biden-Harris Administration should take now to advance each of the SDGs. It is part of …

Improve Recitals And Consideration Clauses With Plain Language, David Spratt

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

As used in a "WHEREAS" clause, the term "whereas" simply means "considering that" or "that being the case." There is no legal effect to the word "whereas." It, like many other words used in standard contract boilerplate, is left over from some long-forgotten era of legal writing when lawyers used big words and legalese to impress clients with their intelligence and to justify their bills. These times have (or at least should have) passed. Today, documents must be accessible to those who use them: in most cases the clients for whom such documents are drafted.

Racial Disparities Inherent In America's Fragmented Parole System, Olinda Moyd

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This global health crisis has proven to be an equal opportunity discloser, in that it has spotlighted the layers of inequities and racial disparities so engrained in America’s structural systems. Nowhere else is this more evident than in our criminal legal system, where justice is often austere for African Americans. The ghastly statistics of the number of people confined in jails and prisons do not fully capture the scope and extensive reach of those swept up in our legal system. It is estimated that about 4-5 million people are on community supervision, to include probation and parole, which far outnumber …

It's All About Pasta: Protectionism, Liberalization, And The Challenge For Quality And Sustainability Of Made In Italy, Fernanda Giorgia Nicola Dr., Gino Scaccia

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This article traces the evolution of the regulation of Italian pasta from the beginning of the twentieth century until today. We show how during Fascism the production of wheat became a national battle, and pasta turned out to be the traditional product promoted by Mussolini's propaganda. During the 1960s, new regulations of Italian pasta made exclusively with durum wheat contributed to strengthening the Italian industry during the nation's economic boom. Spaghetti became a global symbol of the Dolce Vita, linking Italian pasta to a fashionable and aesthetically desirable way of life. The Italian Parliament adopted a law that obligated the …

Quarantine, Isolation, And Metaphorical Takings: Balancing Individual Rights And Public Health Responses To Disease Outbreaks, Thomas Williams

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Quarantine and isolation are methods employed by public health officials to control the spread of dangerous disease pathogens through physical isolation of those exposed or symptomatic. While use of these methods has declined in the last century through advances in medical knowledge and treatment, emerging disease threats will likely require increased reliance on them. Despite this, quarantine statutes and related regulations fail to provide compensation to those subject to them, and little recourse exists to make those individuals whole for losses incurred, though the pandemic has highlighted a need for work in this area. One means of shifting the burden …

The Next Four Years, Stephen Wermiel

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The articles in this issue lay out an ambitious agenda. We hope they serve as inspiration for the restoration of faith in democracy and for hope that our country can work to come back together in the next four years and beyond. There is much work to be done.

Are We Still Not Saved? Race, Democracy, And Educational Inequality, Lia Epperson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Thirty-four years ago, in his seminal book, "And We Are Not Saved: The Elusive Quest for Racial Justice," Derrick Bell provided a critical view of American history and constitutional jurisprudence to illustrate the challenges the United States faces in reaching true equality. In his enlightened observations about the structure of our republic, Bell refers to “the American contradiction.” To see true progress toward meaningful equality, he contends, we must reckon with the challenging truth of our history—that we are a nation founded on this “constitutional contradiction”... In his work, Professor Bell argued that this American contradiction, “shrouded by myth,” serves …

Sham Subpoenas And Prosecutorial Ethics, Ira Robbins

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Prosecutors are given broad freedom to conduct their investigations through-out the grand jury process; their power is not without legal and ethical limits, however. For example, courts have discretion to quash subpoenas that have been issued without a proper purpose.Unlike law enforcement officials who may use deceptive tactics throughout an investigation, prosecutors are subject to professional rules of responsibility. All lawyers are subject to some variation of Rule 4.2 of the Model Rules of Professional Responsibility—the No-Contact Rule—which prohibits a lawyer from communicating with a represented individual. Prosecutors, however, have escaped the Rule’s reach by communicating with represented individuals through …

Natural Oligopoly Responses, Repeated Games, And Coordinated Effects In Merger Analysis: A Perspective And Research Agenda, Jonathan Baker

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

When the 1968 Merger Guidelines were drafted, both the economics and antitrust literatures addressed how competition could be softened when oligopolists anticipated the natural and predictable responses of their rivals to their competitive moves, such as price cuts or output expansion. But when economists developed new models of oligopoly behavior, and of coordinated efects in particular, the older ideas were dropped—until the 2010 Guidelines, when the older ideas were reincorporated along with the newer ones. Our article points out limitations of the workhorse repeated game model of oligopoly conduct for analyzing coordinated efects of mergers, and suggests ways to make …

The Emerging Shape Of Global Justice: Retrogression Or Course Correction?, Diane Orentlicher

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

National Security Decision-Making In The Age Of Technology: Delivering Outcomes On Time And On Target, Gary Corn

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.