Law Commons^™

Funding Gideon's Promise By Viewing Excessive Caseloads As Unethical Conflicts Of Interest, Heidi Reamer Anderson

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

Some states recently have attempted to legislate around a defendant's constitutional right to effective assistance of counsel via a novel two-step method. Step one is to allocate insufficient funds for public defense, which results in excessive caseloads for public defenders. Step two-the step that has slipped by without sufficient notice or criticism-is to bar a public defender from withdrawing from representation based on his excessive caseload. Ultimately, this statutory two-step further entrenches the systematic deprivation of defendants' Sixth Amendment rights to effective assistance.

In this article, I urge courts to "constitutionalize" the excessive caseload problem via two steps of their …

The Distance Imperative: A Different Way Of Thinking About Public Official Corruption Investigations/Prosecutions And The Federal Role, Norman Abrams

Loyola University Chicago Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Derivatives: A Twenty-First Century Understanding, Timothy E. Lynch

Loyola University Chicago Law Journal

Derivatives are commonly defined as some variation of the following: financial instruments whose value is derived from the performance of a secondary source such as an underlying bond, commodity, or index. This definition is both over-inclusive and under-inclusive. Thus, not surprisingly, even many policy makers, regulators, and legal analysts misunderstand them. It is important for interested parties such as policy makers to understand derivatives because the types and uses of derivatives have exploded in the last few decades and because these financial instruments can provide both social benefits and cause social harms. This Article presents a framework for understanding modern …

Simulations In Clinics, Contract Drafting, And Upper-Level Courses, Carole O. Heyward, David M. Epstein, Helen S. Scott, Daniel B. Bogart

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

I teach in a transactional clinic called the Urban Development Law Clinic. In my Clinic, we represent non-profit tax-exempt organizations that engage in real estate, economic, and community development. Some of our clients include Greater Cleveland Habitat for Humanity and Karamu House, which is a theater and community arts center. We serve as general counsel for some clients and provide legal advice on an as needed basis for others. The Clinic provides legal advice on real estate matters, corporate governance, transactions, and tax issues. The complexity of matters that we handle ranges from drafting a code of regulations to representing …

New Professional Opportunities For Women: Nursing, Teaching, Clerical, Sara L. Kimble

School of Continuing and Professional Studies Faculty and Staff Works

No abstract provided.

Silencing The Public's Voice: The Adverse Effects Of Mountain Communities For Responsible Energy V. Public Service Commission Of West Virginia, Michelle Green

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

(Re)Complexioning A Simple Tale: Race, Speech, And Colored Leadership, Angela Mae Kupenda

Journal Articles

Rather than acting as a whitening agent, the law should reflect the natural (re)complexioning of society and adapt to the melting pot that is America. The term "(re)complexioning" is used because the idea that the complexion of America was white at the beginning is false. Prior to the "discovery" of America, native citizens were indeed more deeply complexioned than Whites. Any (re)complexioning of the law since, to reflect the colors of America, then, is just to resort to the recognition of factual premises unjustly rejected when America was usurped from those of color and denied to others of color after …

Negotiating Social Mobility And Critical Citizenship: Institutions At A Crossroads, Michelle D. Deardorff, Angela Mae Kupenda

Journal Articles

A Black law professor who teaches at a predominantly White law school and a White public law professor who teaches at a historically Black university in the same southern, urban community are co-authors of this Article. Here, in this piece, we explore the tension between the goals of our institutions and many other institutions to improve the socioeconomic status of our students with our personal goals of preparing students to challenge societal injustice and to be critical citizens who are willing to challenge a government that engages in abusive actions or is exploitative of its citizenry.

Academic War Strategies For Nonviolent Armies Of One, Angela Mae Kupenda

Journal Articles

To engage the legal system in necessary critical action, critical actors are required. The law cannot be uprooted, re-sowed, and re-cultivated, unless future legal professionals engage in such action. And for future legal professionals to engage in such action, generally, they must first be engaged in critical thought during their legal educations. Moreover, for such thought to occur, the legal academy must include a diverse group of voices, minds, and experiences to engage with those seeking such a critical education. These critical voices may be in short supply in the academy for multiple reasons. One specific reason, though, is that …

Raise Your Hand And Swear To Be Civil: Defining Civility As An Obligation Of Professional Responsibility, Donald E. Campbell

Journal Articles

The need to reclaim "civility" in the practice of law has become a rallying cry in the profession. Lack of civility has been blamed on everything from an increase in the cost of litigation to the cause of the public's lost faith in the legal profession. Further, courts are increasingly willing to sanction a lawyer solely for "uncivil" conduct. This article examines the puzzle of civility by addressing two fundamental questions. First, what are the obligations of civility? This question is answered using content analysis to analyze civility codes adopted by thirty-two state bar associations. From this analysis ten core …

Non-Deployable: The Court-Martial System In Combat From 2001 To 2009, Frank Rosenblatt

Journal Articles

There have been no empirical studies examining how well the court-martial system has actually performed in America's recent conflicts. This Article attempts such a study, and the findings largely contradict the conventional wisdom. After-action reports from deployed judge advocates show a nearly unanimous recognition that the full-bore application of military justice was impossible in the combat zone. In practice, deployed commanders and judge advocates exercised all possible alternatives to avoid the crushing burdens of conducting courts-martial, such as sending misconduct back to the home station, granting leniency, and a more frequent use of administrative discharge procedures. By any measure - …

A Shift In Power: Why Increased Urban Drilling Necessitates A Change In Regulatory Authority Comment., Riley W. Vanham

St. Mary's Law Journal

Historically, Texas has boasted a very lucrative oil and gas industry, which has been vital to the state’s successful economy. Due to increased drilling in urban areas, particularly the Barnett Shale, the number of affected surface owners multiplied overnight, attracting attention to oil and gas issues. Legislation has been purported to remedy the longtime conflict in Texas property law caused by the dominance of the mineral estate over the surface estate. But no bill has passed having major policy-change implications. Currently, local governments freely adopt and enforce oil and gas regulations. These ordinances vary from city-to-city, creating inconsistencies for operators …

Why Copperweld Was Actually Kind Of Dumb: Sound, Fury, And The Once And Still Missing Antitrust Theory Of The Firm?, Chris Sagers

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Since even before Copperweld Corp. v. Independence Tube Corp., 467 U.S. 752 (1984), it has been thought that antitrust needs some "theory of the firm" to inform its application of a "single-entity" defense in Sherman Act section 1 litigation. Not only is that sense mistaken, it is emblematic of the deep misdirection of contemporary antitrust. It shows just how far antitrust has forgotten that it is a law, a practical tool to implement policy choices made through our system of government. Much too much of the time, it seems to fancy itself rather an abstract policy seminar to be …

Standardization And Markets: Just Exactly Who Is The Government, And Why Should Antitrust Care?, Christopher L. Sagers

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

We take for granted that the basic choice in public policy is between allocation of resources by government bureaucracy, on the one hand, or allocation by markets, on the other. But that dichotomy is false, and at least under contemporary circumstances it is more accurate to describe the choice as between allocation by one kind of bureaucracy and allocation by a different kind of bureaucracy. This poses a problem for our antitrust policy, because it lacks any coherent guidance as to how to address those entities and transactions that are not governmental but are also not simply market-governed. This paper …

International Law In Crisis: Piracy Off The Coast Of Somalia, Milena Sterio

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

The rise of piracy off the coast of Somalia over the last five years has been spectacular, amounting to a true crisis in international law. During the first six months of 2011, Somali pirates attacked 163 ships and took 361 sailors hostage. As of June 30, 2011, Somali pirates were holding 20 ships and 420 crew members, demanding millions of dollars in ransom for their release. Moreover, pirates have been attacking larger ships, such as oil tankers, and using more potent weapons, such as rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons. Pirates have also been attacking during monsoon season, an otherwise risky …

Voluntary Client Testimony As A Privilege Waiver: Is Ohio's Law Caught In A Time Warp, David B. Alden, Matthew P. Silverstein

Cleveland State Law Review

The question of whether Ohio should retain the waiver through voluntary testimony rule-assuming that is the current rule-is neither close nor difficult. The relevant statute dates back to the middle of the nineteenth century when Ohio enacted its first code of civil procedure, and if it in fact leads to a waiver, has been substantively unchanged in the intervening one hundred fifty plus years. The rule undermines the policies the attorney-client privilege was designed to further, and the policy on which the rule apparently was based-preventing perjured testimony-no longer has the primacy it did in the mid-nineteenth century and, in …

Weaning Ohio Employers Off Of Lactation Discrimination: The Need For A Clear Interpretation Of Ohio's Pregnancy Discrimination Act Following Allen V. Totes/Isotoner Corp. Note, Shannon Byrne

Cleveland State Law Review

Part II of this Note will explain the relevant statutory and case law background behind pregnancy and lactation discrimination at both the federal and state levels. Part III.A will explain why the Supreme Court of Ohio's decision [in Allen v. Totes/Isotoner Corp, 123 Ohio St. 3d 21, 2009 Ohio 4231, 915 N.E.2d 622 (2009)] to affirm the appellate court's grant of summary judgment was improper. Part III.B will explain why the Supreme Court of Ohio's analysis of the accommodation issue is incorrect. Part IV.A will describe how this improper decision could open the door to facially discriminatory workplace policies that …

Proceduralisation's Triumph And Engagement's Promise In Socio-Economic Rights Litigation, Brian E. Ray

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Three of the Constitutional Court's socio-economic rights decisions of the 2009 term are the culmination of a strong trend towards the proceduralisation of socio-economic rights that many commentators have argued fails to fulfill their original promise. This triumph of proceduralisation undeniably restricts the direct transformative potential of these rights. But there is another aspect to this trend - an aspect reflected in the Court's emphasis on participatory democracy and the ability of procedural remedies to democratise the rights-enforcement process. This article considers what the triumph of proceduralisation means for future social and economic rights litigation and argues that properly developed …

Demosprudence In Comparative Perspective, Brian E. Ray

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This article critically examines the debate over demosprudence. It adopts a comparative - specifically South African - perspective to consider what it means for a court to act demosprudentially and why the practice may have particular value in developing democracies like South Africa. Guinier connects demosprudence to the broader concept of democratic constitutionalism developed by Reva Siegel and Robert Post. Democratic constitutionalism in turn is part of what Jack Balkin describes as "a renaissance of liberal constitutional thought that has emerged in the last five years." This renaissance is characterized by three major themes: constitutional fidelity, democratic constitutionalism, and redemptive …

Public Access To Private Land For Walking: Environmental And Individual Responsibility As Rationale For Limiting The Right To Exclude, Heidi Gorovitz Robertson

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Whether people have an independent right of access to walk on land they do not own is a question answered differently throughout the world, largely due to cultural, historical, and political variations amongst regions. In this decade, English citizens gained a legislated right to roam on privately owned land designated by the government for public access. The British government now designates land as access land by evaluating the nature of the land itself, not its ownership status. In Sweden, the right to roam on land owned by another has long been a deeply rooted cultural tradition, though not codified in …

Abolish The Inflation Tax On The Poor And Middle Class, John Plecnik

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Inflation erodes the purchasing power of money and distorts some income tax liabilities upward, which in turn discourages savings and investment. When inflation is caused by the central bank “printing” money to fund deficit spending, it results in a transfer of real wealth from the holders of dollars or assets denominated in dollars to the government and, in normative terms, may be conceptualized as a tax. The effect of the so-called inflation tax is regressive, because low-income taxpayers often lack the sophistication or liquidity to invest in hedges against inflation. Following the double-digit inflation of the late 1970s and early …

Taking Stare Decisis Seriously: A Cautionary Tale For A Progressive Supreme Court, James G. Wilson

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

To better understand stare decisis and to normatively explore our constitutional future, this article assumes that President Obama's election signifies a constitutional shift similar to the one occurring after President Nixon won in 1968. From that contentious, self-righteous era to the present day, all American Presidents selected Supreme Court nominees who were more conservative than the members of the Warren Court majority, much less that aggressively liberal duo, Justices Brennan and Marshall. Justice Stevens, appointed by the moderate Republican President Gerald Ford, is arguably the most liberal member on the Court. It is impossible to predict how far the country …

Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping; And Nebbia V. New York, Howard Bromberg

Book Chapters

Contributions by Howard J. Bromberg to The Thirties in America, a collection of short essays.

Exploring The Determinants Of High-Cost Mortgages To Homeowners In Low- And Moderate-Income Neighborhoods, Michael S. Barr, Jane K. Dokko, Benjamin J. Keys

Book Chapters

In spite of the recent impetus to reform home mortgage markets, particularly as they affect low- and moderate-income (LMI) households, little systematic evidence is available about how potential abuses in mortgage lending manifest in the mortgages held by those households. While racial discrimination in mortgage markets has a long history in the United States, the role of mortgage brokers in lending has only recently increased and become controversial. In this chapter, we uncover two mechanisms through which differential mortgage pricing occurs among LMI homeowners: black borrowers and borrowers who use mortgage brokers pay more for mortgage loans than other borrowers, …

A Vision For Scaling Microfinance: More Than Dollars And Smarts, Deborah Burand

Book Chapters

The following is a stock-taking of some of the key initiatives that have taken place to date in the world of microfinance at building an international financial architecture that attracts and retains flows of commercial capital to microfinance. It also is a call to those of us in the microfinance world to do much, much more.

Women Behind The Wheel: Gender And Transportation Law, 1860-1930, Margo Schlanger

Book Chapters

Gender difference is only infrequently mentioned in recent negligence cases. To contemporary (mostly non-essentialist) eyes, gender difference seems to appear only mildly relevant to tort law's area of concern: care and harm to others and self. But in the early days of modern tort law, when gender differences loomed larger in the consciousness of American jurists, and unabashedly so, judicial opinions more frequently grappled with how negligence doctrine ought to take account of female difference. This chapter explores opinions published between approximately 1860 and 1930 that illuminate this issue in cases involving women drivers and passengers of cars and wagons. …

Stones Of Hope: How African Activists Reclaim Human Rights To Challenge Global Poverty. Edited By Lucie E. White And Jeremy Perelman. Stanford, Ca:Stanford University Press, 2010 [Book Review], Dana Neacsu

Law Faculty Publications

This is a book review of Stones of Hope: How African Activists Reclaim Human Rights to Challenge Global Poverty. Lucie E. White and Jeremy Perelman (eds.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010. PP.280. ISBN 9780804769198. US$70.00 International Journal of Legal Information, 39, pp. 101-103.

The Present And Future Of Plea Bargaining: A Look At Missouri V. Frye And Lafler V. Cooper, Wesley Macneil Oliver

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Massachusetts State Public Worker Retirees: How Are They Doing?, Ellen A. Bruce, Lauren A. Martin

Gerontology Institute Publications

Although much has been made of the Massachusetts State Retirement System’s funding and abuses, little has been written about the benefits it provides. A retirement system should be judged first on whether it meets its goal of providing for workers in retirement.

The Elder Economic Security Initiative™ Program: The Elder Economic Security Standard™ Index For Washington, Gerontology Institute, University Of Massachusetts Boston, Wider Opportunities For Women

Gerontology Institute Publications

This report addresses income adequacy for Washington’s older adults using the national WOW-GI National Elder Economic Security Standard Index (Elder Index) methodology. The Elder Index benchmarks basic costs of living for elder households and illustrates how costs of living vary geographically and are based on the characteristics of elder households, including household size, home ownership or renter status and health status. The costs are based on market costs for basic needs of elder households and do not assume any public or private supports.