Law Commons^™

The High Price Of Poverty In Arkansas’S Courts: Rethinking The Utility Of Municipal Fines And Fees, Madison Miller

Arkansas Law Review

The opposite of poverty is not wealth. It is justice. Beginning in the 1980s, a "trail of tax cuts" led to budget shortfalls and revenue gaps throughout the United States. These budgetary problems resulted in many cities and towns shifting their burden of funding courts and the justice system at large "to the 'users' of the courts, including those least equipped to pay." Although "jailing an indigent person for a fine-only, low-level offense is unconstitutional," it is still an ongoing practice in many states, including Arkansas. In 1995, Arkansas passed new legislation to govern its circuit courts' collection and enforcement …

The National Popular Vote On Trial, Keaton Barnes

Arkansas Law Review

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them …

Creating Cautionary Tales: Institutional, Judicial, And Societal Indifference To The Lives Of Incarcerated Individuals, Nicole B. Godfrey

Arkansas Law Review

It has long been said that a society’s worth can be judged by taking stock of its prisons. That is all the truer in this pandemic, where inmates everywhere have been rendered vulnerable and often powerless to protect themselves from harm. May we hope that our country’s facilities serve as models rather than cautionary tales. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, issued the above-quoted clarion call to protect the lives of incarcerated people on May 14, 2020. At that point, the COVID-19 pandemic had brought American society to a standstill for a little more than two months, …

Korematsu’S Ancestors, Mark A. Graber

Arkansas Law Review

Mark Killenbeck’s Korematsu v. United States has important affinities with Dred Scott v. Sandford. Both decisions by promoting and justifying white supremacy far beyond what was absolutely mandated by the constitutional text merit their uncontroversial inclusion in the anticanon of American constitutional law.3 Dred Scott held that former slaves and their descendants could not be citizens of the United States and that Congress could not ban slavery in American territories acquired after the Constitution was ratified.5 Korematsu held that the military could exclude all Japanese Americans from portions of the West Coast during World War II.6 Both decisions nevertheless provided …

Arkansas Law Review - Volume 74 Number 3, Review Editors

Arkansas Law Review

No abstract provided.

Russia’S Constitutional Dictatorship: A Brief History, Cindy Skach

University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review

Why is the word impeachment so terrible? After all, if the Congress passed such a motion it would have no legal force. A popularly elected president could not be removed from power by the Congress, especially this Congress, which had long ago lost the people’s trust.¹

Voter Id: Combating Voter Fraud Or Disenfranchising? A Comprehensive Analysis Of Voter Id Laws, Native American Disenfranchisement, And Their Intersection, Will Hyland

University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review

This note discusses the contentious issue of voter ID laws and their ability to disproportionately affect various racial and ethnic groups, with specific attention paid to such laws’ effects on Native Americans. Since the 2000 election catastrophe and subsequent changes to our election system, voter ID laws have become a hot-button issue. Many states have enacted voter ID laws in the years since, some of which have resulted in restrictive voting requirements that may result in disproportionately discriminatory voter disenfranchisement. This note willa first give a general overview of the complicated and convoluted recent development voter ID laws, a history …

Antonio Caballero: Conflicting U.S. Anti-Terrorism Law And U.S. International Bankruptcy Law, Jordan M. Zornes

University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review

Antonio Caballero sought retribution for his father’s kidnap and murder in the way Congress has made it possible: the American Court System. Caballero obtained a default monetary judgment against Colombian guerrilla forces, but as expected in collecting against a terrorist organization, it was an uphill battle. When finding attachable assets, Caballero must act fast, but in the present case, an international bankruptcy proceeding sought to thwart his legitimate efforts to satisfy his judgment. The question is: should Caballero win in “race to the courthouse” fashion, or does the international bankruptcy stay lead to an orderly distribution of assets? This note …

Introduction To Symposium On Birth Rights And Wrongs, By Dov Fox, Peter Schuck

The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues

This symposium consists of four essays by leading academic commentators developing their distinctive takes on the book, followed by a conclusion by Professor Fox containing detailed responses to each of them. This introduction provides a very brief, largely descriptive tour d’horizon of the commentators’ essays.

The Moral Cost Of Compensatory Damage Claims In Reproductive Negligence Cases, David Wasserman

The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues

In this original and important work, Dov Fox makes a compelling case for rethinking and reformulating the way that negligent conduct by reproductive health professionals is understood, and in the way the harms resulting from that misconduct are rectified. He seeks a unified account of this negligence and harm that recognizes the “gravamen of the offense” as the wrongful interference with reproductive planning while also recognizing three distinct categories of adverse outcomes: deprived, imposed, and confounded procreation. Fox argues that the injuries in each category differ from each other sufficiently to justify the recognition of three distinct torts.

Birth Rights And Wrongs Extended, Reuven Brandt

The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues

Dov Fox’s Birth Rights and Wrongs offers a largely compelling argument for expanding the scope of legal actions and remedies available to those whose reproductive choices are wrongfully frustrated by the actions of others. The dominant focus of the book is individuals who, due to the negligence and/‌or malice of medical professionals, suffer harms arising from reproduction imposed, denied, or confounded. A serious examination of these kinds of injuries is certainly appropriate given that medical professionals are increasingly involved in individuals’ reproductive plans and that serious harms may arise when desired medical interventions are improperly implemented. I will not take …

Birth Rights And Birth Wrongs Through A Common Law Lens: Why The No Liability Regime Is Likely To Endure, Richard A. Epstein

The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues

Dov Fox’s recent book, the aptly named Birth Rights and Wrongs, is, as its title suggests, a study of the stark conflicts that arise in the highly contested area of reproductive rights. Fox makes the powerful case that the legal protection of reproductive rights, in all their protean forms, is systematically under-protected relative to two key benchmarks: the standards of ordinary decency, and social expectations. In my view, he has an acute awareness of these failures. But his greatest strength is also his greatest weakness, as he systematically ignores the great successes wrought through the current system, as disjointed …

The Two Problems

The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues

Multimember Legislative Bodies and Intended Meaning.

Family Planning And Its Limits, Dov Fox

The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues

A doctor botches a vasectomy. Or says it’d be dangerous to keep a healthy pregnancy. Or misses a risk of passing along disease. Our laws do little to deter such reproductive negligence or compensate its victims. Some of this misconduct leaves people without the baby they desperately want. Other times, it foists on parents a child they’d set out to avoid. Or one with meaningfully different traits than what they were led to believe.

I call these three harms procreation deprived, procreation imposed, and procreation confounded.

Thousands of fertility patients were deprived of biological parenthood when their …

Joint Action, Intended Meaning, And (Statutory) Interpretation, Richard Ekins

The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues

Smith and Jones (singular) is an exporting firm, an agent. It is formed by two partners, Smith and Jones (plural), acting jointly and is thus a small purposive group. Mary is the firm’s employee. She forms part of the group insofar as her acts will be acts of the firm. Mary acts on written instructions, which means that Smith and Jones jointly direct Mary by way of instructions to which they both agree, the agreement of each partner being signified by each signing a memorandum.

Smith and Jones jointly stand to Mary as superior to inferior. The firm has a …

Multimember Legislative Bodies And Intended Meaning, Jeffrey Goldsworthy

The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues

Intentionalists agree that the meaning of an ordinary communication is either identical to or depends heavily on what the speaker or author intended it to be. But the “or” marks a disagreement between “subjective” intentionalists, such as Larry Alexander and Richard Kay, and “objective” intentionalists such as me.

Subjective intentionalists claim that the meaning of any communication is whatever its speaker intended it to mean. Objective intentionalists find this dubious because it seems possible for the meaning that people intend to communicate to differ from the meaning they do communicate. It surely cannot be the case that, whenever we speak …

(Hypothetical) Communication In (Hypothetical) Context, Gary Lawson

The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues

I will start with the second of our two “group minds” problems, involving potentially differing understandings of fruit, because I think it is conceptually simpler, or at least more amenable to an answer, than is the first problem.

The precise question is how I would handle the problem of application of the fruit tax to tomatoes and kiwi if that problem came before me as a judge. That specification of interpretative role is crucial.

At the outset, we need one very important piece of information that is not provided: What is the governmental form of Lex? If Lex is a …

Using A Firearm, Using A Word: What Interpretation Just Is, Walter Benn Michaels

The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues

My response to these hypotheticals is going to be useless, although, I hope, in a useful way. It’s going to be useless because I’m an English teacher, not a lawyer, and I have no idea what Mary or the judge should do. But, of course, Larry Alexander and Steve Smith already knew this when they asked me to contribute. Presumably, it’s in my capacity as a theorist of interpretation and in particular (since the hypotheticals might be understood to raise particular difficulties for intentionalists) as an intentionalist theorist that they asked for my views. But, as an intentionalist theorist, I …

Plural Agents, Private Intentions, And Legal Interpretation, Scott Soames

The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues

The chief problem posed in Multimember Legislative Bodies and Intended Meaning is one in which lawmakers pass a tax bill supported by two equal groups with conflicting interpretations of the bill’s content. One believes it taxes imported tomatoes, among other things; the other believes it exempts tomatoes. They disagree because they received supposedly authoritative, but in fact conflicting, information about the meaning of “fruit” in the bill’s text. One group was told it is used with its biological sense, which includes tomatoes as edible seed-bearing reproductive parts of a plant. The other group was told that “fruit” is used with …

Commentary, Stanley Fish

The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues

Suppose you are walking in the corridors of a law firm and you hear a person in one of the offices say “You have no consideration.” What do you take the speaker to have said or meant? You might reasonably assume that you have overheard a snatch of a conversation between a lawyer and a client who is being told that he cannot allege breach of contract because in the conversation he reports between himself and the one he would accuse there was an absence of reciprocally offered inducements of the kind “if you do X, I will do Y” …

Intentional Procreation, Robin L. West

The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues

Dov Fox’s book Birth Rights and Wrongs makes the case for the development, through judicial decision-making, of various torts that would respond to the disruption of intentional conception, contraception, gestation and childbirth, where those intentions are thwarted because of the negligence of professionals employed to assist or guide consumers of their services in reaching their reproductive goals.

Formalist Textualism And The Cernauskas Problem, Larry Alexander

The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues

In a recent article, Tara Grove distinguishes between what she calls “formalist textualism” and “flexible textualism.” Formalist textualism is really another term for literalism, in which statutory and constitutional language is given its semantic meaning—presumably its meaning at the time of enactment—in its “semantic context.” Grove illustrates the latter by pointing out that the phrase “domestic violence” appears in a statute that also mentions “insurrection,” thus suggesting that domestic violence there refers to acts similar to insurrection rather than to spousal abuse.

Flexible textualism, on the other hand, looks beyond the semantic meaning of the text and its semantic context …

Legal Education Reform In Africa: Time To Revisit The Two-Tier Legal Education System, Okechukwu Oko

University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review

The two-tier legal education system has become increasingly ineffective by virtue of the evolution of changes in legal practice and Africa’s unique conditions and circumstances. The problem is rooted in the fact that some African countries adopted the two-tier legal education system on the assumption that what worked in Britain offered a prescription for success in Africa. However, the two-tier legal education system has been ineffective in Africa because the infrastructure—pupilage, apprenticeship, continuing legal education—that complements and anneals it is not widely available in Africa. Where these elements exist, they tend to be frail and unreliable. Africa’s urgent challenge is …

Masthead

University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review

No abstract provided.

Cardozo Law News Brief: December 16, 2021, Benjamin N. Cardozo School Of Law

Cardozo Law News Brief 2021

Featured Faculty:

• Jessica Roth
• Kathryn Miller
• Deborah Pearlstein

Campus News:

• Cocktails & Conversation Event Raises Funds for Scholarships

Front Matter And Table Of Contents

University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review

No abstract provided.

Fear, Loathing, And The Hemispheric Consequences Of Xenophobic Hate, Ernesto Sagás, Ediberto Román

University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review

“When you have fifteen thousand people marching up . . . how do you stop these people?” “You shoot them” [crowd member shouts] [chuckling, Trump responds:] “[O]nly in the Panhandle can you get away with that thing.”¹
President Donald Trump

“Thousands of criminal aliens. They’re pouring into our country.”²
President Donald Trump

“They’re not people, these are animals.”³
President Donald Trump

“Take a look at the death and destruction that’s been caused by people coming into this country caused by people that shouldn’t be here.”⁴
President Donald Trump

“ [We] have millions and millions of people …

Falling Through The Cracks Of Education: A Comparative Analysis Of Canada’S And The United States’ Use Of Standardized Testing Within The Realm Of Public Education, Micaela Baldner

University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review

The education system is foundational to society. Public education is based on the concept of equal educational opportunities for all. Although the purpose of standardized testing is the elimination of bias to prevent certain segments of society’s students from receiving unfair academic advantages, there is little empirical verification that suggests that standardized testing actually achieves its intended purpose. In fact, the evidence indicates that standardized testing negatively impacts low-income, marginalized, and English-learning students, as achievement gaps for these groups have remained the same or have even grown with the increased use of such tests. This article will discuss the intended …

Fighting Against Black Money By Offering Amnesty For Economic Development In Bangladesh: A Stigma Can Never Be A Beauty Spot, S M. Solaiman

University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review

Black money is a global concern. However, black money has disproportionately affected Bangladesh. To combat the proliferation of black money in the country, successive governments of Bangladesh have offered amnesties to black money holders (BMHs) in contravention of the national Constitution, legislation, and international conventions. Nonetheless, responses to such incentives have been notably poor, mainly because the wrongdoers do not fear the superficial threat of law enforcement. This article examines the BMHs’ responses to amnesties so far and explains the substantial harm caused by such discriminatory favors, including increases in corruption, the price of real estate, money laundering, deposits by …

Does The Lack Of Binding Precedent In International Arbitration Affect Transparency In Arbitral Proceedings?, Emily F. Ariz

University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review

This note explores how the lack of binding precedent in both international commercial and investment arbitration affects transparency in arbitral proceedings. As arbitration increases in popularity, its deficiencies have become more apparent. The lack of binding precedent in arbitration is convenient in some ways, but problematic as it leaves arbitrators an immense amount of discretion when deciding cases. With many decisions unpublished to maintain confidentiality and those decisions that are published sometimes lack reasoning to support the award, transparency in arbitral proceedings is practically nonexistent. In recent years, there is a trend toward more transparency in certain types of arbitral …