Law Commons^™

Counting Zeros: The Every Student Succeeds Act And The Testing Opt-Out Movement, Paul A. Hoversten

Michigan Law Review Online

The story begins with threatening letters. In October 2014, the U.S. Department of Education reminded Colorado’s chief state school officer that the department “ha[d], in fact, withheld Title I, Part A administrative funds . . . from a number of States for failure to comply with the assessment requirements” under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Given the occasion, the department implied, it wouldn’t hesitate to be ruthless.

Colorado could be forgiven for assuming it was authorized to craft its own policies in this arena; according to the Wall Street Journal, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) represented “the …

Apology Within A Moral Dialectic: A Reply To Professor Robbennolt, Lee Taft

Michigan Law Review

Over the last several years, much has been written about the role of apology in facilitating the resolution of legal disputes. Within this body of work a debate has developed among legal scholars, practitioners, and legislators. Under traditional rules of evidence an apology which acknowledged fault would enter evidence as an admission against interest. Now there is a movement to legislatively "protect" apologies from the effects of the traditional rule in order to facilitate apology without evidentiary encumbrance. Scholars who have argued in favor of the relaxation of the traditional rule have largely relied on anecdotal evidence to support their …

Attainder And Amendment 2: Romer's Rightness, Akhil Reed Amar

Michigan Law Review

Call me silly. In fact, call me terminally silly. For despite Justice Scalia's remarkably confident claim, I believe, and shall try to prove below, that the Romer Court majority opinion invalidating Colorado's Amendment 2 was right both in form and in substance, both logically and sociologically. I stress "form" and "logic" at the outset because I share Justice Scalia's belief in the importance of these things in constitutional adjudication. I also share his commitment to constitutional text, history, and structure, and his suspicion of "free-form" constitutionalism. And so I shall highlight the text, history, and spirit of a constitutional clause …

Is Amendment 2 Really A Bill Of Attainder? Some Questions About Professor Amar's Analysis Of Romer, Roderick M. Hills Jr.

Michigan Law Review

As I first discovered as a law student in Professor Amar's classes on legal history and federal courts, it is generally an intellectual treat to listen to Professor Amar's legal analysis, even when he is attacking one's own arguments. So my pleasure at reading Professor Amar's analysis of the Court's decision in Romer v. Evans was only partly dampened by his disapproval of the respondents' brief that I and other plaintiffs' counsel filed with the Court. According to Amar, this respondents' brief provided the Court with "so little help" that it had to rely on an entirely different and much …

Colorado's Answer To The Local Rules Problem, William H. Erickson

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article examines the checkered history of local rules in the state and federal courts. Part I sketches the development of local rule-making power. Part II focuses on the abuses that have resulted from a nonuniform procedural system. It concludes that the most serious consequence of that abuse - an increase in court costs and delay - has not been addressed adequately by the courts. Part III explores ways in which the local rules problem can be brought under control. Although a number of proposals are discussed, the purpose of this section is to present the approach recently undertaken by …

Wills-Advancements-Joint Bank Deposit As Advancement To Child, James F. Gordy S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

Decedent opened a joint bank account in the name of himself and his daughter. Only two deposits were made, both by him, and solely from his funds. Decedent died intestate before any withdrawals had been made. The administratrix of his estate contended that the funds remaining in the joint bank account constituted an advancement to the daughter, and sought to have them brought into hotchpot in determining the distributive shares of the other heirs. A Colorado statute provided, inter alia, that when such a joint deposit is made, it may be paid to any one· of the joint depositors whether …

Constitutional Law - Interstate Compacts -- Validity - Review By United States Supreme Court, Gerald M. Stevens

Michigan Law Review

The states of Colorado and New Mexico agreed by compact on a division of the water of the La Plata river, which rises in the first state and flows into the second. The interstate compact, as administered, required that during periods of low water the whole flow of the river was to be used alternately by the states. For ten days Colorado users were to have all the water, then for a like time to allow the water to flow undiminished to New Mexico. In Colorado a ditch company engaged in distributing water for irrigation had acquired by appropriation a …

Curbing The Supreme Court-State Experiences And Federal Proposals, Katherine B. Fite, Louis Baruch Rubinstein

Michigan Law Review

The avalanche of proposals introduced in the last session of Congress seeking to curb the power of the Supreme Court to declare legislative acts unconstitutional and President Roosevelt's recent message to Congress on the judiciary have focused attention on the problem of the function of that Court in our governmental system.

This article does not take sides in the controversy. Its purpose is merely to review the developments in the four states, Colorado, Ohio, North Dakota and Nebraska, which by amendments to their constitutions have sought to place curbs on their supreme courts, and also to classify the proposals which …

Corporations - Statutes Declaring Watered Stock Void - Effect Upon The Stockholder's Liability To Creditors

Michigan Law Review

Prior to the present era of "blue sky" laws providing for the careful scrutiny by the state of the issuance of stock, the evil of watered stock was sought to be curbed by constitutional and statutory provisions of a prohibitory and often penal nature. These statutes and constitutional provisions very generally take one of two forms.

The Colorado and the Arizona provisions are typical. In practical effect the two types of provisions are indistinguishable. The phrase "bona fide subscribers" in the Arizona form is construed to mean one who actually turns something of value over to the corporation in lieu …

Juvenile Courts And Privileged Communications, Evans Holbrook

Articles

In the case of Lindsey v. People, (Colo., 1919) 181 Pac. 531, the Supreme Court of Colorado has held that Judge Lindsey of the Juvenile Court of Denver could not refuse to testify as to a communication made to him by a child who was at the time of the communication suspected of crime and against whom proceedings were later taken in the Juvenile Court. The decision was by a vote of four to three, and a vigorous dissenting opinion was written by Justice Bailey and concurred in by Justices Scott and Allen.

State Regulation Of The Canal Corporation In Colorado, Leonard P. Fox

Michigan Law Review

Inapplicability of the common law doctrine of riparian rights to conditions in the arid region moved the first territorial legislature of Colorado to recognize the counter doctrine of prior appropriation. In fact, the right to the water in the streams of Colorado, by prior appropriation, antedated any legislation. "It was the common law of the people, and legislation, both national and territorial, was but a recognition declaratory of the right as it had theretofore and then existed."-1 Adhering to territorial precedent, Colorado was the first state to incorporate the priority doctrine in its organic law.