Law Commons^™

Gender Identity, Health, And The Law: An Overview Of Key Laws Impacting The Health Of Transgender And Gender Non-Conforming People, Naomi Seiler, Amanda Spott, Mekhi Washington, Paige Organick-Lee, Aaron Karacuschansky, Gregory Dwyer, Katie Horton, Alexis Osei

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

A growing population of transgender, nonbinary, and other gender non-conforming Americans experience the burden of multiple physical and mental health inequities. Largely rooted in discrimination and stigma, these disparities are compounded by barriers to respectful, appropriate healthcare.

A range of new policies, including state laws attempting to limit access to gender-affirming care for minors, may further compound health disparities. However, in some states and at the federal level, protective laws seek to prohibit discrimination and support access to care. Meanwhile, the constitutional status of gender identity under the Equal Protection Clause, and the legality of certain federal protections challenged on …

Teaching Business Immigration: The Law And The Reality, Da'niel Rowan

Saint Louis University Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Seeing The Supreme Court As A Whole Institution: Law And Social Science, Morgan L. W. Hazelton

Saint Louis University Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Senate Bill 2-A: The Laws It Changed And Its Impact On Past, Present, And Future Claims, Michael A. Cassel

St. Thomas Law Review

Florida was admitted as the 27th state on March 3, 1845. For the majority of its existence as a state, consumer protections have been a cornerstone of Florida insurance law. In 1893, as the state grew, the Florida legislature enacted the first statute which authorized the recovery of reasonable attorney fees against life and fire insurance companies. In 1982, recognizing the need for further consumer protections, Florida created the Civil Remedy statute authorizing a first-party civil action against insurers due to bad faith conduct; however, despite such consumer protections remaining necessary to “level the playing field” between corporations and consumers, …

Stepping Up Basis In Living Taxpayer Assets With Upstream Wealth Transfers Through Intentionally Defective Grantor Trusts, Michael J. Schaum

St. Thomas Law Review

This paper will begin with a brief background discussion on the tax and estate planning principles underlying the legality of the wealth transfer including (A) the Taxable Gross Estate; (B) the Unified Tax Credit against the Estate and Gift Tax; (C) Basis and Adjustments; (D) Defective Grantor Trusts; and (E) Downstream Sale Combined with a Grantor Trust. The paper will then discuss the absence of guidance from the IRS on the legality of these trust structures and finally conclude that the IRS should allow wealth preservation through the transactions described herein because the current Code, properly construed, allows for it.

Shifting The Male Gaze Of Evidence, Teneille R. Brown

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

In this article I target the altar at which many of us worship—the pursuit of rationality. For evidence purposes, rationality is defined as decisions that are reasonable, objective, inductive, and free from the bias of emotion. This view of rationality is deeply embedded in evidence scholarship and practice. It is also reflected in evidence rules like FRE 403, which treat emotional testimony as unfairly prejudicial simply because it is emotional. The anti-emotion view of rationality reflects the thinking of Western philosophical giants. Plato, Hobbes, Descartes, and Bacon all thought that men should strive for rationality by suppressing their emotions, because …

Tsai Today (2023), Southern Methodist University, Dedman School Of Law, Tsai Center For Law, Science And Innovation

Tsai Today

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Front Matter includes Table of Contents, masthead, and faculty for Lewis & Clark Law Review Volume 27, Issue 1, 2023.

Breaking Free From "Crime-Free": State-Level Responses To Harmful Housing Ordinances, Jenna Prochaska

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Municipalities throughout the country enforce broad and harmful crime-free housing and nuisance property ordinances (CFNOs)—local laws that encourage landlords to evict or exclude tenants from housing opportunities based on their contact with the criminal legal system or calls for police help. There is little evidence that CFNOs are effective at achieving their stated goal of increasing community safety, and there is significant evidence that they harm Black and Latinx communities, survivors of domestic violence, individuals with disabilities, and low-income tenants and communities more broadly. Despite more than a decade of legal advocacy successfully challenging CFNOs using a range of legal …

The New Orleans Transformation: Foster Care As A Rare, Time-Limited Intervention, Josh Gupta-Kagan, Christopher Church, Melissa Carter, Vivek Sankaran, Andrew Barclay

Lewis & Clark Law Review

This Article offers an initial evaluation of one reformed child protection system—New Orleans, Louisiana—and describes how a system that dramatically reduces the number of children in foster care might look. This system shows how a major metropolitan area can shrink its daily population of children in foster care to the low double digits, which would correspond to a reduction of the national daily foster care population by about 360,000. This reduction was mostly due to sending children home—usually to the homes from which they were removed—within days or weeks of removal, raising questions about the necessity of the original removal. …

Class Action Cy Pres: A Call For Reform Amidst Inconsistency And Criticism, Emily Potucek

Lewis & Clark Law Review

The prevalence of cy pres awards in class action settlements has increased remarkably in the last several decades. However as class action cy pres practice has become more commonplace, so have the concerns for its propriety in the class action context. Indeed because these concerns were recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court without further clarity on how, and whether, they can be alleviated, the viability of class action cy pres practice is uncertain. In response to this uncertainty, this Comment presents an exhaustive inquiry into cy pres practice in class action settlements. It demonstrates that while certain courts’ cy pres …

Front Matter

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Front Matter includes Table of Contents, masthead, and faculty for Lewis & Clark Law Review Volume 27, Issue 3.

Abortion Rights As (Inter)National Human Rights: Dobbs And The Noncompliance Of U.S. Abortion Policies Under International Human Rights Law, Sydney Chong Ju Padgett

Lewis & Clark Law Review

The current state of reproductive rights in the United States following Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization constitutes yet another chapter in the saga of the United States’ hypocrisy in failing to uphold international human rights at the domestic level. International human rights law unequivocally provides that safe and legal abortion access is a fundamental human right. Yet, applying treaty body guidance to the cruel and irrational legislation enacted in Dobbs’ wake, it is clear: the United States has wholly and dangerously failed to comply with its international commitments to protect and uphold the fundamental rights at stake in regulating …

Blind Adoption: Oregon’S Jury Exclusion Law, Catherine Mattecheck

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Jury service is a core tenet of civic engagement and an essential part of ensuring a trial by a jury of one’s peers. Despite this, millions of Americans are barred from serving on a jury based on a prior criminal conviction. Oregon has one of the harshest jury exclusion laws in the country, barring people from serving on a jury with a felony conviction and certain misdemeanors. The modern context of the criminal justice system requires a new look at Oregon’s law.

Naïve Realism, Cognitive Bias, And The Benefits And Risks Of Ai, Harry Surden

Publications

In this short piece I comment on Orly Lobel's book on artificial intelligence (AI) and society "The Equality Machine." Here, I reflect on the complex topic of aI and its impact on society, and the importance of acknowledging both its positive and negative aspects. More broadly, I discuss the various cognitive biases, such as naïve realism, epistemic bubbles, negativity bias, extremity bias, and the availability heuristic, that influence individuals' perceptions of AI, often leading to polarized viewpoints. Technology can both exacerbate and ameliorate these biases, and I commend Lobel's balanced approach to AI analysis as an example to emulate.

Although …

Corruption: A Driving Force For Corporate Complicity In Human Rights Violations, Olayinka Reis

Intercultural Human Rights Law Review

Corruption undermines the legitimacy of institutions and processes, the rule of law, and eventually, the state. Over time, the U.N. Human Rights Council has gradually paid increasing attention to the negative impact of corruption on human rights and made recommendations to states on how to combat corruption. Corruption is an inter-national phenomenon, prevalent in all countries regardless of eco-nomic or political systems, and it requires international attention from all stakeholders. The subset of a population that feels the effects of corruption are those disadvantaged groups, who typically have less opportunities to participate in the implementation of public policies and lack …

Front Matter

Intercultural Human Rights Law Review

Front Matter includes Masthead, advisors, and Table of Contents for the Intercultural Human Rights Law Review Volume 18 (2023).

Exploring Jury Nullification: Its Political History, Current, And Potential Impact On Policy, David Harold Penny

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Jury nullification (JN) is when a jury knows a defendant is legally guilty, but states they are not guilty, believing that their verdict better serves justice in that case. The problem is the violation of the Constitution’s equal protection clause for all citizens, caused by the intentional omission in most judges’ instructions to juries of JN. The purpose of the study was to fill the gap in the literature on jury behavior and address the problem of JN. The study framework is chaos theory as applied by Horowitz to jury behavior. It describes judges and lawmakers mistrust of juries associated …

Common Sense Recommendations For The Application Of Tax Law To Digital Assets, Linda M. Beale, Jeremy Bearer-Friend, Jennifer Bird-Pollan, Samuel D. Brunson, Luís Calderón Gómez, Bryan Camp, Adam Chodorow, Mark Cochran, Lin William Cong, Matthew Foreman, Phil Gaudiano, I. Richard Gershon, Nathan C. Goldman, Jillian Grennan, Megan Justice, Young Ran (Christine) Kim, Herbert I. Lazerow, Tao Li, Lawrence Lokken, Omri Y. Marian, Orly Mazur, Stephanie Hunter Mcmahon, Tyler Menzer, Matt Metras, Ann M. Murphy, Henry Ordower, Amanda Parsons, Daniel Rabetti, Alex Raskolnikov, Tracey M. Roberts, Kerry A. Ryan, Edward A. Zelinsky

All Faculty Scholarship

In response to the Joint Committee on Taxation’s July 2023 request for comments on application of various Internal Revenue Code sections on digital assets, we propose a consistent set of rules to apply current law to digital assets. We highlight that the underlying economics and characteristics of transactions should be the primary concern for the application of rules and the valuation of digital assets. We believe any digital asset rules should (1) treat classes of digital assets with unique characteristics differently based on their economics, (2) minimize incentives for users to engage in tax-motivated structuring of transactions, and (3) allow …

Regulating The Concussion Crisis In Sports: Canada’S Initiative To Bring Prevention Into Focus, Marcus Moore

All Faculty Publications

The twenty-first century has revealed the existence of a concussion crisis in sports. The crisis is of global reach, and Canada is no exception. In recent years, the Canadian government joined citizens in recognizing sports concussion as a major public health issue. A parliamentary committee investigated the crisis, reported findings, and made recommendations which the government accepted. As far as legal responses to the sport concussion crisis, new among the recommendations was a callto- action on prevention (Recommendation 13). Since there remains no medical cure for concussions, the government agreed with the view of injured former athletes and injury prevention …

Review Of Tom Ginsburg, Democracies And International Law, Diane A. Desierto

Journal Articles

Review of Tom Ginsburg, Democracies and International Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Pp. 250. £29.99. ISBN: 9781108843133.

Exploring Jury Nullification: Its Political History, Current, And Potential Impact On Policy, David Harold Penny

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Jury nullification (JN) is when a jury knows a defendant is legally guilty, but states they are not guilty, believing that their verdict better serves justice in that case. The problem is the violation of the Constitution’s equal protection clause for all citizens, caused by the intentional omission in most judges’ instructions to juries of JN. The purpose of the study was to fill the gap in the literature on jury behavior and address the problem of JN. The study framework is chaos theory as applied by Horowitz to jury behavior. It describes judges and lawmakers mistrust of juries associated …

A Synthesis Of The Science And Law Relating To Eyewitness Misidentifications And Recommendations For How Police And Courts Can Reduce Wrongful Convictions Based On Them, Henry F. Fradella

Seattle University Law Review

The empirical literature on perception and memory consistently demonstrates the pitfalls of eyewitness identifications. Exoneration data lend external validity to these studies. With the goal of informing law enforcement officers, prosecutors, criminal defense attorneys, judges, and judicial law clerks about what they can do to reduce wrongful convictions based on misidentifications, this Article presents a synthesis of the scientific knowledge relevant to how perception and memory affect the (un)reliability of eyewitness identifications. The Article situates that body of knowledge within the context of leading case law. The Article then summarizes the most current recommendations for how law enforcement personnel should—and …

Front Matter

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Front Matter includes Table of Contents, Masthead, and faculty for Lewis & Clark Law Review Volume 26, Issue 4.

Nonconsensual Family Obligations, Emily Stolzenberg

Faculty Publications

Even as the pandemic has both highlighted and compounded the challenges many U.S. families face in meeting their members’ basic needs, efforts to expand public subsidies for caretaking have gained little traction. Scholars have identified many historical and practical reasons for Americans’ entrenched skepticism toward the welfare state. Ideas matter, too, and this Article uncovers and critiques one that works to limit collective financial responsibility for families: the conviction that family support obligations must be legitimated through consent.

In family law, as in liberal political theory, consent works to reconcile state regulation with individual freedom. But because consent is a …

Law And Culture, Tamar Frankel, Tomasz Braun

Faculty Scholarship

We often speak of law and culture in one breath. That may be so because both systems impose on each person and organization required rules of behavior. Yet, law and culture are quite different, though they relate to and affect each other. Therefore, it is desirable to examine their similarities and differences and their relationship. While the structures of law and culture are more similar than we might expect, their differences greatly affect the enforcement of the rules issued under each.

To be sure, both systems consist of rules and their enforcement. Most of our thoughts and knowledge, and many …

Ambivalent Advocates: Why Elite Universities Compromised The Case For Affirmative Action, Jonathan Feingold

Faculty Scholarship

“The end of affirmative action.” The headline is near. When it arrives, scholars will explain that a controversial set of policies could not withstand unfriendly doctrine and less friendly Justices. This story is not wrong. But it is incomplete. Critically, this account masks an underappreciated source of affirmative action’s enduring instability: elite universities, affirmative action’s formal champions, have always been ambivalent advocates.
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/="/">Elite universities are uniquely positioned to shape legal and lay opinions about affirmative action. They are formal defendants in affirmative action litigation and objects of public obsession. And yet, schools like Harvard and the University of …

Can Contract Emancipate? Contract Theory And The Law Of Work, Hanoch Dagan, Michael A. Heller

Faculty Scholarship

Contract and employment law have grown apart. Long ago, each side gave up on the other. In this Article, we re-unite them to the betterment of both. In brief, we demonstrate the emancipatory potential of contract for the law of work.

Today, the dominant contract theories assume a widget transaction between substantively equal parties. If this were an accurate description of what contract is, then contract law would be right to expel workers. Worker protections would indeed be better regulated by – and relegated to – employment and labor law. But contract law is not what contract theorists claim. Neither …

Emerging Technology’S Language Wars: Cryptocurrency, Carla L. Reyes

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Work at the intersection of blockchain technology and law suffers from a distinct linguistic disadvantage. As a highly interdisciplinary area of inquiry, legal researchers, lawmakers, researchers in the technical sciences, and the public all talk past each other, using the same words, but as different terms of art. Evidence of these language wars largely derives from anecdote. To better assess the nature and scope of the problem, this Article uses corpus linguistics to reveal the inherent value conflicts embedded in definitional differences and debates related to developing regulation in one specific area of the blockchain technology ecosystem: cryptocurrency. Using cryptocurrency …

Do All Dogs Go To Heaven? How Our Secular Culture Views Death, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.