Law Commons^™

How To Measure And Value Wealth For A Federal Wealth Tax Reform, David Gamage, Ari Glogower, Kitty Richards

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Over the last several decades, wealth inequality has exploded, warping economic outcomes and limiting opportunity—for individuals and for the US at large.

Sky-high income inequality and runaway income gains for the nation’s highest earners compound that wealth inequality and are insufficiently taxed under the current tax regime.

Further, wealth in the US has always been heavily skewed by race.

Since the country’s founding, US laws and customs have prevented Black and brown people from receiving fair wages and accruing assets, thereby creating and perpetuating today’s massive racial wealth gap.

While our existing tax systems are ill-equipped to tackle these challenges, …

Judicial Independence At Twilight, Charles G. Geyh

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Judicial independence is a fixture of American government, but its structure has never been fully understood. As long as the federal judiciary has survived episodic attacks with its independence intact, there has been no pressing need to know how or why. But a confluence of cyclical, sustained, and sudden developments now threatens the federal judiciary’s autonomy in arguably unprecedented ways and demands a more comprehensive analysis of judicial independence and its vulnerabilities. This article begins by reconceptualizing the structure of judicial independence in three tiers. At the apex is an ancient, Rule of Law Paradigm, which proceeds from the premise …

Tangibility As Technology, João Marinotti

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Property law has traditionally relied on tangible boundaries to delineate legal thinghood and to inform the bounds of in rem rights and duties. Unfortunately, property doctrines have fossilized around tangibility, causing fragmentation in the legal treatment of digital assets. In the United States, for example, cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) may simultaneously be classified as commodities, securities, currencies, assets, or not property at all, depending on the jurisdiction, domain, or specific asset in question. This fragmented system of overlapping legal treatments increases the information cost of using digital assets, decreases efficiency, and ultimately hinders future innovation.

In this Article, I …

Evidence: Evidence Of Memory From Brain Data, Emily Murphy

The Judges' Book

No abstract provided.

Nature's Rights, Christiana Ochoa

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Do forests and rivers possess standing to sue? Do mountain ranges have substantive rights? A recent issue of The Judges’ Journal, a preeminent publication for American judges, alerts the bench, bar, and policymakers to the rapidly emerging “rights of nature,” predicting that state and federal courts will increasingly see claims asserting such rights. Within the United States, Tribal law has begun to legally recognize the rights of rivers, mountains, and other natural features. Several municipalities across the United States have also acted to recognize the rights of nature. United States courts have not yet addressed the issue, though in 2017, …

Toward A Law And Politics Of Racial Solidarity, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer, Guy-Uriel Charles

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The killings of George Floyd, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and others have occurred under different factual circumstances, in different states, at the hands of both state and private actors, and have engendered different levels of outrage on the basis of their perceived egregiousness. Collectively and cumulatively, they have forced Americans to, once again, wrestle with the visible manifestation of racism and structural inequality. This confrontation is not simply a function of the inability to avert one’s eyes when faced with incontrovertible evidence of evident inhumanity and abject degradation, though it is in part that. After all, how to justify the …

Rico Had A Birthday! A Fifty-Year Retrospective Of Questions Answered And Open, Randy D. Gordon

Marquette Law Review

The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) came into

the world in 1970, a time of great social upheaval that was accompanied by

shifting attitudes towards both crime and civil litigation. From the outset, the

statute’s complexity, ambiguity, and uncertain purpose have confounded courts

and commentators. At least some doubts as to the statute’s meaning and

application arise because it has criminal and civil components that subject it

to the twin—yet antithetical—social impulses to be “tough on crime” while

containing a perceived “litigation explosion.” In this Article, I situate RICO

in this larger context and offer that context as …

Foreign Affairs Federalism: The Doctrine Of Foreign Affairs Preemption And State Regulation In Light Of The Paris Agreement, Anagha Sundararajan

University of San Francisco Law Review

No abstract provided.

Promotion And Protection Of Human Rights And Fundamental Freedoms While Countering Terrorism: Re-Education Camps, Sumaya S. Bamakhrama

University of San Francisco Law Review

No abstract provided.

Antiracism, Reflection, And Professional Identity, Eduardo R.C. Capulong, Andrew King-Ries, Monte Mills

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

Intent on more systematically developing the emerging professional identities of law students, the professional identity formation movement is recasting how we think about legal education. Notably, however, the movement overlooks the structural racism imbedded in American law and legal education. While current models of professional development value diversity and cross-cultural competence, they do not adequately prepare the next generation of legal professionals to engage in the sustained work of interrupting and overthrowing race and racism in the legal profession and system. This article argues that antiracism is essential to the profession’s responsibility to serve justice and therefore key to legal …

Tribally Defined Citizenship Criteria: Countering Whiteness As Property Interpretations Of “Indian” For Restoring Inherent Sovereignty, Lori Bable

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

This article implements the framework of whiteness of property to articulate the ways in which holdings of the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) have limited Tribal Nations’ sovereignty because of the illegibility and correlative dispossession of inherent sovereignty itself. This article also highlights how these past SCOTUS opinions, especially recently, threaten to further reduce tribal sovereignty insofar as Tribal Nation citizenship remains based upon blood quantum. The case studies examined herein were selected because of the ways they strategically diminished Tribal Nation sovereignty via rhetorical precarity created using equivocations on the meaning of “Indian.” Through articulating how SCOTUS …

Masthead

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

No abstract provided.

Foreword, Ritchie Lee

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

No abstract provided.

The Challenges In Health Care For Pregnant Women In U.S. Correctional Institutions, Mahnoor Yunus

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

No abstract provided.

From Threat To Victim: Why Stand Your Ground Laws Are Inherently Prejudiced And Do Nothing To Further Justice, Rene Perez

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

Stand Your Ground laws give jurors too much leeway in determining what constitutes a reasonable threat in defense cases.2 By removing the traditional duty to retreat, the reasonableness determination makes or breaks a case and inherently discriminates against people of color. This is because reasonableness can all too easily become a character determination instead of an objective adjudgment. Because Stand Your Ground is present at the investigator’s discretion stage, the prosecutorial discretion stage, and finally the judicial stage through jury instructions and juror bias—there is a unique platform for implicit bias to dictate how defendants are advantaged or disadvantaged in …

A Necessary Job: Protecting The Rights Of Parents With Disabilities In Child Welfare Systems, Enne Mae Guerrero

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

No abstract provided.

Consequences Of Police In Schools: The Criminalization Of Children In An Era Of Mass Incarceration, Katherine Elizabeth Holloway

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

No abstract provided.

Protecting California’S Farmworkers During The Wildlife Crisis: The State’S Response And The Need For Reform, Maria Salinas

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

Wildfires are a normal part of California’s drought-prone landscape, but in recent years, blazes have become more deadly and destructive than ever before due to climate change, low precipitation, and forest mismanagement. To date, the wildfires in 2020 remain some of the worst in the state’s history in terms of acreage lost, loss of life, and structures destroyed. Experts suggest that “without greater investment in prevention and systematic changes to combat the effects of climate change. . . California almost certainly has more record-setting fire seasons in store.”

This is a very grim reality for all Californians, but particularly for …

Mistakes Were Made: Applying Lessons Learned From The Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement To The Opioid Settlement Agreement, Elizabeth Orrick

Mitchell Hamline Law Journal of Public Policy and Practice

No abstract provided.

Social Justice And The Supreme Court: Lessons From The Past, Vicki Lens

Mitchell Hamline Law Journal of Public Policy and Practice

This article revisits over sixty years of Supreme Court decisions that have affected the poor and racial minorities, using a novel approach that considers the synergistic relationship between different doctrinal areas rather than focusing on one area. Specifically, I appraise the Supreme Court’s doctrinal contributions from 1953 to the present across three foundational elements of social justice on behalf of the poor and people of color: the school integration cases under the Equal Protection Clause, a series of cases under the Fourth Amendment which sanctioned the police tactic of stop-and-frisk, and attempts to secure economic security for the poor through …

The Price Of Prime—Consumer Privacy In The Age Of Amazon, Ariana Aboulafia, Greg Fritzius, Tessa Mears, Macy Nix

Mitchell Hamline Law Journal of Public Policy and Practice

No abstract provided.

The Next Surges Are Here: What Can American Governments Lawfully Do In Response To The Ongoing Covid-19 Pandemic?, Jeff Thaler

Mitchell Hamline Law Journal of Public Policy and Practice

No abstract provided.

Redefining Healthcare To Address Racial Health Disparities & Inequities, Abdur Rahman Amin

Mitchell Hamline Law Journal of Public Policy and Practice

No abstract provided.

Reforming Sexual Health Education In Minnesota Schools: An Evidence-Based Approach, Antonia Kurtz

Mitchell Hamline Law Journal of Public Policy and Practice

No abstract provided.

Growing Burdens On Abortion Rights: An Individual Freedom During Covid-19 And Changing Judicial Interpretation, John Simpson

Mitchell Hamline Law Journal of Public Policy and Practice

No abstract provided.

The Toxic Crusaders: Exploring The History Of The Criminal Enforcement Of The Toxic Substances Control Act, Joshua Ozymy, Melissa L. Jarrell

Mitchell Hamline Law Journal of Public Policy and Practice

The criminal prosecution of defendants who violated federal laws governing chemical substances has been ongoing for roughly four decades. Yet we continue to have a poor understanding of how federal prosecutors use the U.S. Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) to charge and prosecute environmental criminals. Through content analysis of all the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) criminal prosecution case summaries from 1983 to 2019, we analyze all TSCA-focused prosecutions for two purposes. First, to gain a better historical understanding of how federal prosecutors have used TSCA as a prosecutorial tool. Second, to understand outcomes of those prosecutions. Results show that 38% …

Workplace Violence, Firearm Prohibitions, And The New Gun Rights, Dru Stevenson

University of San Francisco Law Review

No abstract provided.

Robust Unionism As A Compelling Interest: Evaluating The Exacting Policies Of Janus, Seth Santini

University of San Francisco Law Review

No abstract provided.

Heroes Among Us: Good Samaritan Laws And Paddlers Turned Swiftwater Rescuers, Jennifer Jolly-Ryan

University of San Francisco Law Review

No abstract provided.

Do The Police Protect And Serve All People In The United States?: A Survey Of The Problems Within Modern Policing And Solutions To Ensure The Police Protect And Serve Us All, Bianca Velez

University of San Francisco Law Review

No abstract provided.