Law Commons^™

The Reckless Tolerance Of Unsafe Autonomous Vehicle Testing: Uber's Culpability For The Criminal Offense Of Negligent Homicide, Helen Stamp

Journal of Law, Technology, & the Internet

When Elaine Herzberg was struck and killed by an Uber autonomous vehicle on a public road in Arizona in 2018, sole criminal responsibility fell on the Uber employee operating the vehicle. Uber escaped all criminal accountability despite evidence of flawed vehicle technology and Uber’s non-existent safety culture. This lack of accountability is confronting given that legislators and courts in Arizona, and in other States, have consistently supported criminal sanctions for corporations who are culpable for the offense of negligent homicide.

The criminal proceedings against the Uber vehicle operator were settled in July 2023, closing off the court’s ability to consider …

Realizing The Right To Food In Maine: Insights From International Law, Smita Narula

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In November 2021, Maine made history as the first U.S. state to constitutionally recognize the right to food. Maine’s right to food amendment— which sought to address widespread food insecurity and corporate control of the food supply—proclaims food as a “natural, inherent and unalienable right,” and empowers Mainers to grow and consume food of their own choosing, affirming their right to food sovereignty. This Article makes three key contributions to scholarly examinations of this historic amendment. First, it situates the amendment within the broader landscape of domestic and global struggles for the right to food and food sovereignty. Second, the …

State Politics And Stress Amongst Lgbtq+ Students At Florida’S Private Colleges: A Psychological And Normative Analysis, Alise Fortune

Honors Program Theses

The recent wave of anti-LGBTQ+ politics and policies in Florida pose potential risks to the mental health and well-being of Florida’s LGBTQ+ students. The present study surveyed LGBTQ+ students attending private colleges in Florida to measure their self-reported stress levels in comparison to non-LGBTQ+ students, the level at which they believed specific sources of stress contributed to their stress levels, their level of distress upon experiencing discrimination, their sense of sexual identity distress, and their awareness of and involvement in advocacy against Florida’s anti-LGBTQ+ bills. Survey results suggested that anti-LGBTQ+ politics in Florida and the personal lives (social and family …

You Got That From Where?: Unpacking Art Imperialism In Western Museums Through The Seated Scribe And The Bust Of Nefertiti, Emmy Shouse

Honors Program Theses

This thesis examines how major Western museums perpetuate colonial narratives in their displays of cultural property through analyses of the displays of two ancient Egyptian antiquities–the Seated Scribe and the Bust of Nefertiti. Despite stated goals of decolonization, institutions like the Louvre and Neues Museum prioritize object presentations glorifying Western imperial excavations and acquisitions over providing historical and cultural context about the objects' Egyptian origins. Sparked by site visits to Egyptian museums and subsequent visits to Berlin’s Neues Museum and the Louvre in Paris, this thesis contrasts disappointing imperialist displays of Egyptian antiquities in European institutions to each object’s full …

Front Matter

City University of New York Law Review

No abstract provided.

Editors' Note

City University of New York Law Review

No abstract provided.

Access To Injustice: How Legal Reforms Reinforce Marginalization, Roni Amit

City University of New York Law Review

Marginalized individuals are largely excluded from making rights claims in the courts because their stories of rights violations fall outside of prescribed legal categories. Framing this exclusion as a lack of knowledge and access, proponents of the access to justice movement have sought to improve outcomes for unrepresented and marginalized litigants through measures that help them understand and navigate the system. The access to justice movement seeks to make the justice system more accessible to these litigants by focusing on procedural fairness. This Article draws on empirical data and observations from Tulsa’s eviction court to consider the limits of access …

On The Road To Nowhere: The Unique Challenges Stateless People Face In Removal Proceedings And The Untenable Legal Limbo Following Final Orders Of Removal, Rachel Marandett

City University of New York Law Review

Under a world order defined by nation-states, having one’s rights and dignity protected is inexorably tied to being a citizen of somewhere. Stateless people, who are citizens of nowhere, are thus left without the safeguards of a nation responsible for them. Today, there are over 200,000 stateless people living in the United States. Because the American immigration system is built upon the premise that everyone is a citizen of somewhere, stateless people are consistently trapped in a ceaseless legal limbo. In fact, the majority of stateless people in the United States have already gone through removal proceedings and have final …

Compensatory Preliminary Damages: Access To Justice As Corrective Justice, Sayid R. Bnefsi

City University of New York Law Review

The access to justice movement broadly concerns people’s ability to resolve legally actionable problems. To the extent that individuals seek resolution through civil litigation, they can be disadvantaged by their unmet need for legal services, particularly in high-stakes cases and complicated areas of law. In part, this is because legal services and litigation are cost-prohibitive, especially for indigent plaintiffs. As a result, these individuals are priced out of litigation and, by extension, unable to use law to seek justice

This Note proposes an innovative legal intervention to this problem called “compensatory preliminary damages.” This intervention builds from the work of …

Adjusting The Focus: Addressing Privacy Concerns Raised By Police Body-Camera Footage, Dalton Primeaux

City University of New York Law Review

Many public safety advocates have called for the use of police body cameras to document the interactions between officers and the public. In light of the documented incidents of police violence and misconduct, some advocates and policy experts have urged law enforcement to use body cameras to discourage future wrongdoing and create a record of when such incidents do happen. In some states, body camera footage is considered public record and can be obtained upon request. Most policies concerning requests for the release of body camera footage require the chief of police to grant permission for sharing the video with …

Idea Bank For New York City's Chief Public Realm Officer: Imagining A Broad, Equity-Enhancing Role For Creating Access To Public Space, Tara Eisenberg, Althea Lamel, Lindsay Matheos, Carolyn Weldy, Andrea Mcardle

City University of New York Law Review

By executive order on February 16, 2023, New York City Mayor Eric Adams created the position of the City’s Chief Public Realm Officer to promote a more centralized and coordinated approach to public realm policy, and appointed a chief strategy officer from his own staff, Ya-Ting Liu, to fill this position. This Article argues that the City should view the role of the Public Realm Office expansively and proactively to help achieve meaningful, equity-enhancing progress in stewarding public space. The authors, former students and a faculty member of CUNY School of Law’s Land Use and Community Lawyering seminar, offer a …

In Search Of Solid Ground: Constitutional Standing In Challenges To Corporate Diversity, Equity, Inclusion ("Dei") Programs, Ally Coll

City University of New York Law Review

This term, in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, the Supreme Court invalidated Harvard and the University of North Carolina’s (“UNC”) race-conscious admissions programs as unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In a significant departure from past precedent, the Court concluded that Harvard and UNC’s programs “cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause.” In anticipation of and in the wake of this decision, individuals and organizations who oppose similar workplace diversity programs brought lawsuits challenging the legality of …

Freedom Of The Press In Hungary & The United States: A Comparative Review, Zane Mcneill, Riley Clare Valentine

City University of New York Law Review

This paper compares both Hungary’s and the United States’ treatment of journalists’ freedom of expression and freedom of speech. Journalists in both Hungary and the United States face specific threats to these freedoms. Journalists face political pressure in Hungary and animosity and scrutiny in the United States under private consolidation. Additionally, coverage that is critical of the state and supports marginalized communities faces heightened scrutiny. Nonetheless, we contend that journalists within the United States have potential options in protecting their freedom of expression such as those indicated in Rodriguez-Cotto v. Pierluisi-Urrutia.

Fears, Faith, And Facts In Environmental Law, William W. Buzbee

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Environmental law has long been shaped by both the particular nature of environmental harms and by the actors and institutions that cause such harms or can address them. This nation’s environmental statutes remain far from perfect, and a comprehensive law tailored to the challenges of climate change is still elusive. Nonetheless, America’s environmental laws provide lofty, express protective purposes and findings about reasons for their enactment. They also clearly state health and environmental goals, provide tailored criteria for action, and utilize procedures and diverse regulatory tools that reflect nuanced choices.

But the news is far from good. Despite the ambitious …

Towards An Effective Merger Review Policy: A Defence Of Rebuttable Structural Presumptions, Filippo Lancieri, Tommaso Valletti

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

We discuss the design of an effective merger review policy for the 21st century. We argue that the practice of the past decades is inadequate and propose a move towards much stronger rebuttable structural presumptions. These presumptions establish that all mergers above certain thresholds are illegal unless the merging parties can prove that merger-specific efficiencies will be shared with consumers and yield tangible welfare gains. These presumptions are grounded on solid economics and also acknowledge the real-world limitations in enforcement resources and information asymmetries between companies and regulators. We outline how to establish such presumptions in practice, defending the implementation …

Do The Securities Laws Actually Protect Investors (And How)? Lessons From Spacs, Patrick M. Corrigan

Journal Articles

From the Article

This Article identifies transactional innovation in public offering markets as a case study of how going-public transactions would work if issuers could choose to relax some of the investor protections provided under the securities laws. In recent years, private companies that wanted to go public had a meaningful choice between a traditional initial public offering and a merger with a special purpose acquisition corporation (SPAC). Most of the direct and indirect investor protections that ordinarily apply in the initial public offering context are relaxed in the SPAC context.

The Article argues that outcomes in SPAC markets, where …

Death, Bankruptcy, And The Public Hospital, Michael A. Francus

Journal Articles

From the Article

This Article expands the purview of bankruptcy scholarship to those government businesses, assessing how Chapter 9 operates for them. It does so by taking public hospitals as a case study, offering a comprehensive look at every public-hospital bankruptcy between 1988 and 2021.

Reasons For Interpretation, Francisco J. Urbina

Journal Articles

What kinds of reasons should matter in choosing an approach to constitutional or legal interpretation? Scholars offer different types of reasons for their theories of interpretation: conceptual, linguistic, normative, legal, institutional, and reasons based on theories of law. This Article argues that normative reasons, and only normative reasons, can justify interpretive choice. This is the "normative choice thesis." This Article formulates the normative choice thesis and offers a systematic analysis of the different kinds of reasons usually canvassed to defend theories of interpretation, showing why each type of non-normative reason cannot justify interpretive choice. In doing this, this Article also …

Religious Right Countermovement Tactics: Taking Down Lgbtq+ Rights One Letter At A Time, Hannah J. O'Connor

Political Science Honors Projects

The group we know today as the “Religious Right” (“R.R.”) has been in contention with the LGBTQ+ movement since the early 1970s. Using a single case study method, I analyze how, if at all, Religious Right framing and LGBTQ+ counter-framing evolved at a point in time where the R.R. recognized it was losing its fight against same-sex marriage. Using Arizona’s 2013 Senate Bill 1045 (one of the nation’s first bathroom bills) as a case study, I find that the Religious Right translates protectionist framing from its anti-gay marriage crusade into its anti-trans rights offensive, and the LGBTQ+ movement also responds …

Avoiding A "Nine-Headed Hydra": Intervention As A Matter Of Right By Legislators In Federal Lawsuits After Berger, Taylor Lawing

Vanderbilt Law Review

Heightened political polarization across the United States has resulted in the increased use of Rule 24(a) intervention as a matter of right by elected legislators in federal litigation concerning state law. Because states differ in their approaches to intervention, with only some states expressly granting intervention in state matters, lower federal courts have been tasked with evaluating motions to intervene by reconciling Rule 24(a)'s requirements with state statutes, which poses challenging questions concerning Rule 24. This Note aims to provide lower courts with a reimagined standard for evaluating motions to intervene from state legislators that considers the administrative, political, and …

Occupational Licensing And Labor Market Mobility: Evidence From The Legal Profession, Adam Chilton, Jacob Goldin, Kyle Rozema, Sarath Sanga

Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper Series

We study how state occupational licensing requirements shape labor mobility across U.S. legal markets. Drawing on newly collected data, we link variation in state bar exam waiver policies to lawyers’ license acquisitions, professional disciplinary records, and educational histories. We find that bar exam waivers increase the number of experienced lawyers obtaining a new license by 38 percent, but that the additional lawyers are subject to more professional discipline and tend to have graduated from less selective law schools. Our results suggest that state-level occupational licensing regimes can create a trade-off between the supply and quality of professionals in an industry.

Colonial Experiences And Contemporary Laws, Yun-Chien Chang, Adam Chilton, Nuno Garoupa, Mila Versteeg

Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper Series

Although research suggests that countries’ colonial experiences are associated with a range of contemporary outcomes, the link between colonial experiences and the substance of countries’ laws remains unclear. We explore this question while making four improvements over past research. First, we use more detailed data on both countries’ colonial experiences and contemporary substantive laws. Second, we directly assess whether countries’ shared legal origins—that is, whether they had a common law or civil law system—or their colonial origins—that is, which country had previously colonized them—are more associated with differences in their contemporary laws. Third, we use a research design that makes …

Lessons From Mediation In United States Chapter 11 Cases, Anthony Casey

Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper Series

No abstract provided.

The Curious Case Of Corp Group Banking And The Problem Of Private Criminal Enforcement, Anthony J. Casey

Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Ideological Concordance Between Students And Professors, Adam Bonica, Adam Chilton, Kyle Rozema, Maya Sen

Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper Series

The largely liberal composition of American university faculties is frequently lamented in academic discourse and public debate, largely out of concern that professors “brainwash” younger generations with left-leaning principles. However, these complaints often fail to acknowledge that university students are also overwhelmingly liberal. It is thus possible that university professors are more liberal than the American public but more conservative than their students. In this article, we develop a measure of student-professor ideological concordance based on the share of faculty members who are more liberal than the students at a given school. We then use data on the ideology of …

Deconstructing The Senior Creditor, Anthony Casey, Andrew Verstein

Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper Series

No abstract provided.

The Additionality Double Standard, James Salzman, David A. Weisbach

Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper Series

Carbon offsets are widely criticized for lacking additionality. The public debate, how- ever, has failed to recognize that the problem of additionality goes far beyond offsets. It arises any time the government subsidizes an activity. Programs with longer histories than offsets and far more money at stake offer valuable lessons for managing lack of additionality in offsets. The article sets out the current efforts to prove offset additionality, explains why major gov- ernment programs present comparable additionality challenges, and show why other programs’ problems of additionality are perceived as significantly different than those for offsets. We examine the toolkit used …

A Commitment Rule For Insolvency Forum: A Response To Critics, Anthony J. Casey, Aurelio Gurrea Martínez, Robert K. Rasmussen

Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Disfavored Supreme Court Precedent In The Lower Federal Courts, Curtis A. Bradley, Tara Leigh Grove

Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper Series

There has been significant debate in recent years about the stare decisis effect of Supreme Court decisions, prompted in large part by the overturning of Roe v. Wade and, more recently, by the overturning of Chevron. Almost all of this debate has concerned whether the Court should adhere to its own decisions, a matter of “horizontal” stare decisis. But potentially even more significant is the “vertical” effect of Supreme Court precedent on the lower courts, which handle almost all of the federal judicial business. If the Supreme Court expressly overturns a precedent, the lower courts will of course stop following …

Silicon Valley Bank: A Case Study In Post-Crisis Bank Failures, Anthony Casey

Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper Series

The 2023 Silicon Valley Bank collapse was the third-largest bank failure in United States (US) history and one of the two largest since the 2008 financial crisis. This event served as the first major test for the post-crisis bank-failure regime in the US. This article evaluates how effectively that regime responded to the challenge. While some critics have questioned the effectiveness of both the regime and the US government's specific actions, others argue that the measures taken successfully mitigated systemic risk. Notably, the government felt compelled to provide discretionary depositor protection beyond what the legal framework required. This suggests that …