Law Commons^™

Gandhi’S Prophecy: Corporate Violence And A Mindful Law For Bhopal, Nehal A. Patel

Nehal A. Patel

AbstractOver thirty years have passed since the Bhopal chemical disaster began,and in that time scholars of corporate social responsibility (CSR) havediscussed and debated several frameworks for improving corporate responseto social and environmental problems. However, CSR discourse rarelydelves into the fundamental architecture of legal thought that oftenbuttresses corporate dominance in the global economy. Moreover, CSRdiscourse does little to challenge the ontological and epistemologicalassumptions that form the foundation for modern economics and the role ofcorporations in the world.I explore methods of transforming CSR by employing the thought ofMohandas Gandhi. I pay particular attention to Gandhi’s critique ofindustrialization and principle of swadeshi (self-sufficiency) …

A Constitutinal Analysis Of The Ncaa’S New Autonomous Governance Model And Its Effects On Student Athletes, Non-Athletes, And Professors – Is The Termination Of Uab’S Football Program Just The Beginning Of Things To Come?, Tyler N. Wilson

Tyler N Wilson

No abstract provided.

“To Promote The General Welfare” Addressing Political Corruption In America, Bruce M. Owen

Bruce Owen

Systemic (but lawful) political corruption reduces well-being and equity in America. Madisonian democracy is no longer capable of containing such corruption. Proposals currently on the table to stem corruption are unlikely to be effective and tend to undermine basic rights. This essay describes a new approach—regulating the output of corrupted legislative and administrative processes, rather than the inputs. Providing for substantive ex post review of direct and delegated legislation would be far more protective of the “general welfare” of the People than other reforms, while no more or less difficult to implement. Supporting an umpire proposal may be a dominant …

From Reynolds To Lawrence To Brown V. Buhman: Antipolygamy Statutes Sliding On The Slippery Slope Of Same-Sex Marriage, Stephen L. Baskind

Stephen L Baskind

In 2003 in Lawrence v. Texas (striking Texas’ sodomy law), Justice Scalia predicted in his dissent the end of all morals legislation. If Justice Scalia is correct most, if not all, morals-based legislation may fall. For example, in recent years state laws prohibiting same-sex marriage have fallen to constitutional challenges. Ten years after Lawrence in 2013, a Utah Federal District Court in Brown v. Buhman, though feeling constrained by the 1878 Reynolds case (which rejected a First Amendment challenge to an antipolygamy law), nevertheless at the request of a polygamous family concluded that the cohabitation prong of Utah’s anti-bigamy …

Person, State Or Not: The Place Of Business Corporations In Our Constitutional Order, Daniel J.H. Greenwood

Daniel J.H. Greenwood

Business corporations are critical institutions in our democratic republican market-based economic order. The United States Constitution, however, is completely silent as to their status in our system. The Supreme Court has filled this silence by repeatedly granting corporations rights against the citizenry and its elected representatives.

Instead, we ought to view business corporations, like municipal corporations, as governance structures created by We the People to promote our general Welfare. On this social contract view, corporations should have the constitutional rights specified in the text: none. Instead, we should be debating which rights of citizens against governmental agencies should also apply …

Justice-As-Fairness As Judicial Guiding Principle: Remembering John Rawls And The Warren Court, Michael Anthony Lawrence

Michael Anthony Lawrence

This Article looks back to the United States Supreme Court’s jurisprudence during the years 1953-1969 when Earl Warren served as Chief Justice, a period marked by numerous landmark rulings in the areas of racial justice, criminal procedure, reproductive autonomy, First Amendment freedom of speech, association and religion, voting rights, and more. The Article further discusses the constitutional bases for the Warren Court’s decisions, principally the Fourteenth Amendment equal protection and due process clauses.

The Article explains that the Warren Court’s equity-based jurisprudence closely resembles, at its root, the “justice-as-fairness” approach promoted in John Rawls’s monumental 1971 work, A Theory of …

Nothing To Do With Personhood: Corporate Constitutional Rights And The Principle Of Confiscation, Paul Kens Dr.

Paul Kens Dr.

In its 2010 decision Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission the Supreme Court overruled a federal statute that limited a corporation’s ability to pay for political advertising out of its general treasury funds. Those limits, it ruled, violated the corporation’s right to freedom of speech. The case has since become notorious for the widely held belief that, in doing so, the Court declared that corporations are “persons,” possessing the same constitutional rights as flesh and blood human beings. Four years later the Court seemed to expand on this conclusion when it ruled in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby that a general …

Dogging Darwin: America's Revolt Against The Teaching Of Evolution, J. Herbie Difonzo, Ruth C. Stern

J. Herbie DiFonzo

Abstract

More than four in ten Americans believe that God created humans in their present form 10,000 years ago. American antagonism toward the teaching of evolution is deeply rooted in fundamentalist tradition and an aversion to intellectualism. These forces have combined to demonize Charles Darwin to such an extent that sectarian-based legal and political attacks on evolution show no signs of abating. Darwin’s day in court began in 1925 with the famous Scopes Monkey Trial. It continued into the 21^st century with Kitzmiller v. Dover Area Schools. Throughout, the core creationist agenda has remained the same, although an …

The Replicator And The First Amendment, Kyle Langvardt

Kyle Langvardt

As 3D printing technology improves, the theoretical endpoint comes into view: a machine that, like the “replicators” of Star Trek, can produce anything the user asks for out of thin air from a digital blueprint. Real-life technology may never reach that endpoint, but our progress toward it has accelerated sharply over the past few years—sharply enough, indeed, for legal scholars to weigh in on the phenomenon’s disruptive potential in areas ranging from intellectual property to gun rights. This paper is concerned with the First Amendment status of the digital blueprints. As of August 2014, it is the first law review …

Narrow Tailoring, Compelling Interests, And Free Exercise: On Aca, Rfra And Predictability, Mark Strasser

Mark Strasser

The holding in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Incorporated was narrow in scope—closely held, for-profit corporations must be afforded an exemption from providing insurance coverage for a few types of contraception if the corporation has religious objections to providing that coverage. In addition, the exemption requirement was based on a construction of federal statute rather than on the Constitution’s free exercise guarantees. Both the narrowness of the holding and the Court’s express disavowal that it was offering a constitutional analysis might make the opinion appear relatively inconsequential. However, because the opinion changes the focus and standards of federal law and …

What Impact The Supreme Court’S Recent Hobby Lobby Decision Might Have For Lgbt Civil Rights?, Vincent Samar

Vincent J. Samar

Abstract

What Impact the Supreme Court’s Recent Hobby Lobby

Decision Might Have for LGBT Civil Rights?

Vincent J. Samar

The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in the Hobby Lobby case has created shockwaves of concern among civil rights groups questioning whether for-profit corporations can assert a religious exemption from civil rights legislation under a 1993 federal law, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The matter is of particular concern in the LGBT community given the possible impact it could have on services traditionally offered to those getting married as more and more states legalize same-sex marriage. Though the Court’s conservative majority …

Nigger Manifesto: Ideological And Intellectual Discrimination Inside The Academy, Ellis Washington

Ellis Washington

Draft – 22 March 2014

Nigger Manifesto

Ideological Racism inside the American Academy

By Ellis Washington, J.D.

Abstract

I was born for War. For over 30 years I have worked indefatigably, I have labored assiduously to build a relevant resume; a unique curriculum vitae as an iconoclastic law scholar zealous for natural law, natural rights, and the original intent of the constitutional Framers—a Black conservative intellectual born in the ghettos of Detroit, abandoned by his father at 18 months, who came of age during the Detroit Race Riots of 1967… an American original. My task, to expressly transcend the ubiquitous …

When Art Becomes Free: On Artistic In-Expression & Personal Convictions, Amir H. Khoury

Amir Khoury

In this paper I argue that just as there are moral rights in copyright law, which secure attribution and integrity, so too, there should be 'inverse' moral rights that can protect artists from being impelled or compelled to create in the first place. This research comes against the backdrop of one of the most contentious issues in the Western world today, that pertaining to same-sex marriage. But the discussion applies to all other fields where creativity finds itself in a battle over personal convictions. In my view, the inverse moral rights construct is the true reflection of the extent of …

Back To The Future: The Constitution Requires Reasonableness And Particularity—Introducing The “Seize But Don’T Search” Doctrine, Adam Lamparello, Charles E. Maclean

Adam Lamparello

Issuing one-hundred or fewer opinions per year, the United States Supreme Court cannot keep pace with opinions that match technological advancement. As a result, in Riley v. California and United States v. Wurie, the Court needs to announce a broader principle that protects privacy in the digital age. That principle, what we call “seize but don’t search,” recognizes that the constitutional touchstone for all searches is reasonableness.

When do present-day circumstances—the evolution in the Government’s surveillance capabilities, citizens’ phone habits, and the relationship between the NSA and telecom companies—become so thoroughly unlike those considered by the Supreme Court thirty-four years …

A "Bare ... Desire To Harm?" Marriage And Catholic Conscience Post - Windsor, Helen M. Alvare

helen m alvare

No abstract provided.

Lights, Camera, Arrest: The Stage Is Set For A Federal Resolution Of A Citizen's Right To Record The Police In Public, Taylor R. Robertson

Taylor R Robertson

Grab your cellphone, press the record button, and amaze your friends!

No advertisement like this exists in real life, of course, because the action is already universally automatic—it needs no encouragement or instruction. But aim the camera at the police and you could be arrested and face up to fifteen years in prison under some eavesdropping or wiretapping laws simply for recording the police in public speaking at volumes audible to any unassisted ear. While wiretapping laws were originally intended to protect citizens from the snooping detective, some states have effectively turned these laws into government protection from the watchful …

Sex Is Less Offensive Than Violence: A Call To Update Obscenity Jurisprudence, Rachel Simon

Rachel Simon

This article addresses the gender bias presented by the disparate treatment of sex and violence under current obscenity jurisprudence. Under the controlling standard set forth by the Supreme Court in Miller v. California, sexual works may readily be regulated as obscenity, while violent works unequivocally may not. This article posits that this disparate treatment is the product of entrenched stereotypes about the way men and women “should” react to sex and violence, and notes the hypocrisy of failing to apply the same reasoning to assessments of violent versus sexual material.

First, reliance on “community standards” to define what material …

Presumed Imminence: Judicial Risk Assessment In The Post-9/11 World, Avidan Cover

Avidan Cover

Court opinions in the terrorism context are often distinguished by fact finding that relates to risk assessment. These risk assessments‑inherently policy decisions‑are influenced by cultural cognition and by cognitive errors common to probability determinations, particularly those made regarding highly dangerous and emotional events. In a post-9/11 world, in which prevention and intelligence are prioritized over prosecution, courts are more likely to overstate the potential harm, neglect the probability, and presume the imminence of terrorist attacks. As a result courts apt to defer to the government and require less evidence in support of measures that curtail civil liberties. This Article takes …

Clear Depictions Promote Clear Decisions: Drafting Abortion Speech-And-Display Statutes That Pass First And Fourteenth Amendment Muster, Ryan J. Pulkrabek

Ryan J Pulkrabek

Several states have passed legislation requiring physicians to take, display, and describe an ultrasound to their patients who are seeking an abortion. These statutes have been challenged under both the Fourteenth and First Amendments because the statutes place burdens on women who seek abortion and compel physician speech. Courts are divided on these questions and state legislatures need guidance as they consider reform. This Article proposes a model "speech-and-display" statute that is both consistent with the Constitution and good public policy. This model statute is designed to protect the mental health of patients and the life of the unborn by …