Legislation Commons^™

The Forgotten Jurisprudence Of Parole And State Constitutional Doctrines Of Vagueness, Kristen Bell

Cardozo Law Review

The majority of carceral sentences in the United States include the possibility of discretionary release on parole. Most such sentences, however, are unconstitutionally vague. Their unconstitutionality has gone unnoticed because contemporary scholarship and litigation about vague laws have focused on the U.S. Constitution in lieu of state constitutions. This Article unearths historic state court decisions holding that sentences that end through the discretionary judgment of a parole board are “void for uncertainty.” Although state void for uncertainty doctrines share some similarity with the federal vagueness doctrine, they are far more demanding as applied to criminal punishment. By urging revival of …

Should I Stay Or Should I Go: The Evolution Of Emergency Arbitration Procedure Within Private International Law, Katarina Resar Krasulova

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review

The emergency arbitration procedure is widely and ever increasingly used by parties around the world. Because of that, the main question in the past decade has shifted from whether emergency arbitration will endure, to how it is that emergency proceedings became a fixture of international arbitration despite a body of academic literature that doubted its viability. Answering this question, this Article shows that the international arbitral rules have evolved in response to parties' demands and concerns, and this evolution contributed to the procedure's popularity. The Article then discusses how emergency arbitrators, legislators, and national courts devised solutions to problems relating …

The Charter School Network (Almost) No One Wants: Mobilizing Regulation And Litigation To Serve The Public Interest, Joni Hersch, Colton Cronin

Cardozo Law Review

Publicly funded, independently operated charter schools entered the public sector three decades ago with the promise of innovating public education to better serve students in underperforming schools. Despite limited evidence of improved educational outcomes, charter schools are now an established part of the education system, with around 7,800 charter schools serving more than seven percent of public, school students.

Although charter schools have long been associated with the controversial school choice movement, a recent entrant into the charter school arena has created new and urgent concerns. Hillsdale College, through its affiliate Barney Charter School Initiative, has been making escalating inroads …

The Coming Copyright Judge Crisis, Saurabh Vishnubhakat, Dave Fagundes

Articles

Commentary about the Supreme Court's 2021 decision in United States v. Arthrex, Inc. has focused on the nexus between patent and administrative law. But this overlooks the decision's seismic and as-yet unappreciated implication for copyright law: Arthrex renders the Copyright Royalty Board ("CRB") unconstitutional. The CRB has suffered constitutional challenge since its 2004 inception, but these were seemingly resolved in 2011 when the D.C. Circuit held that the CRB's composition did not offend the Appointments Clause as long as Copyright Royalty Judges ("CRJs") were removable atwill. But when the Court invalidated the selection process for administrative patent judges on a …

Pacifying Professional Negligence Disputes - The Prospective Path For Mediation Within The Psilocybin Industry, Miranda Sapoznik

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

No abstract provided.

Reclaiming Feudalism For The Technological Era, Shelly Kreiczer-Levy

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

The article argues that traditional personal property law fails to adequately address the complexities of AI-capable assets, such as robots, which require a new framework to balance manufacturer control with user rights. It proposes two models—the connection model and the competition model—to regulate these relationships, emphasizing the need for collaboration, data ownership, and consumer protection in the evolving landscape of technological ownership.

Combating False Election Information In A Section 230 Protected World: To Moderate Or Not To Moderate, Caitlin Muraca

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

The note examines the challenges of combating false election information on social media platforms, focusing on the role of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. It argues that while Section 230 is crucial for protecting online speech, its current form is inadequate in addressing the spread of misinformation in the modern digital landscape. The note evaluates various proposals for reform, including the repeal or modification of Section 230, and suggests a balanced approach that maintains its protections while incentivizing improved content moderation to combat false election information.

Accelerating Toward The Inevitable: How Covid-19 Helped Alter Traditional Models Of Talent Compensation In The Film Industry, Raven Berzal

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated a significant shift in the film industry’s talent compensation models, driven by the rise of streaming platforms and the decline of traditional theatrical releases. This transformation has moved compensation structures from backend profit-sharing to upfront payments, raising legal and contractual challenges. The Johansson v. Disney case exemplifies these disputes, highlighting the need for clearer definitions of success and compensation in the streaming era. The industry is likely to adopt hybrid models, blending upfront fees with alternative compensation methods, as streaming continues to reshape how talent is paid.

The Advent Of Facial Recognition And The Erosion Of The Rule Of Law In "Moscow Smart City", Antonina Semivolos

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The Russian government's deployment of facial recognition technology in Moscow, exemplified by the Popova case, highlights the erosion of civil liberties due to insufficient legal regulation and the absence of safeguards against surveillance overreach. This deployment underscores the broader decline in democratic principles and civil society's diminished capacity to challenge authoritarian measures.

The Private Attorney General In A Time Of Hyper-Polarized Politics, Myriam E. Gilles

Articles

With the enactment of the Federal Trade Commission Act (“FTC Act”) in 1914 and the Wheeler–Lea Act in 1938, Congress sought to establish a brawny federal consumer protection regime to guard against the myriad unfair and deceptive practices that threatened harm to American consumers. But courts in this era interpreted these statutes to confer exclusive enforcement authority in the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”), declining to infer a private right of action. For many decades, the resulting enforcement gap in consumer protection law was filled largely by state Unfair and Deceptive Practices Acts (“UDAPs”), which sanction litigation by both public and …

Why A New Deal Must Address The Readability Of U.S. Consumer Contracts, Michael L. Rustad

Cardozo Law Review

United States companies are increasingly drafting consumer contracts that are complex and unreadable, thus making it difficult for many Americans to comprehend terms of use that apply to goods and services. Many U.S. companies are creating terms of use that are, in effect, rights-foreclosure schemes. Many consumer agreements cap damages at a nominal amount, disclaim all warranties, limit remedies, and impose mandatory arbitration clauses and class action waivers. U.S. courts enforce these unfair mass-market contracts with few exceptions. My proposal for a New Deal for Consumer Contracts, as described in this Article, would impose a more exacting readability standard, enforcing …

Textualism, Judicial Supremacy, And The Independent State Legislature Theory, Leah M. Litman, Katherine A. Shaw

Articles

This piece offers an extended critique of one aspect of the so-called "independent state legislature" theory. That theory, in brief, holds that the federal Constitution gives state legislatures, and withholds from any other state entity, the power to regulate federal elections. Proponents ground their theory in two provisions of the federal Constitution: Article I's Elections Clause, which provides that "[t]he Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof," and Article H's Presidential Electors Clause, which provides that "[e]ach State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature …

The Law And Finance Of Infrastructure Investment, Daisuke Asaoka

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review

Institutional design facilitates the investment of private capital in infrastructure. The Article deals with concessions, which have been a major format for infrastructure privatization in Japan since their legislation in 2011. It argues that the Japanese government, faced with mounting public debt, walks a thin line between attracting private capital and securing public interest in infrastructure under private operation. By comparing concessions with stock sales, the mainstream form of privatization until the legislation, the Article shows that while concessions have advantages in terms of economics and public interest control, they may hinder the strategic growth of private enterprises by limiting …

The Lord Is My Strength And My Shield: The Ecclesiastical Abstention Doctrine In In Re Diocese Of Lubbock, Kerri A. Matulis

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Free Speech & Abortion: The First Amendment Case Against Compelled Motherhood, Raymond Shih Ray Ku

Cardozo Law Review

The most important lessons are taught by example. Children learn the fundamental values that guide them throughout their lives from the examples set by their parents, especially their mothers. Before and after they understand language, they learn by observing and imitating the actions of their parents. For almost fifty years, Roe v. Wade guaranteed pregnant women the freedom to determine whether to carry their pregnancy to term. The right to obtain a safe abortion prior to viability is the most significant and controversial aspect of this freedom. The Supreme Court is now poised to overturn what it previously described as …

Child Pornography And Criminal Justice Reform, Dawinder S. Sidhu, Kelsey Robinson

Cardozo Law Review

Drug offenses lie at the heart of the movement for criminal justice reform, and for good reason. Drug policy is defined by severe and disproportionate penalties owing to a retributive, factually flawed, and hurried congressional process. These central characteristics apply to the child pornography context as well. Though drug sentencing is problematic enough, child pornography sentencing is arguably worse. The U.S. Sentencing Commission has disavowed the child pornography sentencing guidelines and invited judges to vary from them. Judges have done just that, varying in sixty-three percent of all cases, more than any other offense type.

In this Article, we identify …

The Coming Causation Revolution In Employment Discrimination Litigation, D’Andra Millsap Shu

Cardozo Law Review

For more than a decade, employment discrimination causation law has been a confusing, often overly restrictive quagmire that has contributed substantially to the paltry success rate of plaintiffs in employment discrimination cases. Most of these cases are dismissed pretrial, all too often based on a failure of causation. A key reason traces back to loose and misleading language—centered on a single word—in a 2009 Supreme Court opinion involving the but-for causation standard that applies in most discrimination cases. The Court said that the discriminatory motive must be “the” but-for cause of the employer’s action when it should have said “a” …

Patent Law’S Externality Asymmetry, Peter Lee

Cardozo Law Review

Technologies such as social media, autonomous vehicles, and “big data” analytics generate enormous benefits for society, but they also create substantial harms. Many of these effects take the form of externalities—external benefits and harms that a decisionmaker (such as an inventor) imposes on third parties without charge or compensation. Considering negative externalities, for example, social media networks spread misinformation throughout the electorate, autonomous vehicles threaten the jobs of millions of professional drivers, and predictive policing based on big data can lead to unreasonable searches and seizures. Externalities can cause inefficient resource allocation, and the classic remedy is to “internalize” externalities …

We Clerked For Justices Scalia And Stevens. America Is Getting Heller Wrong., Katherine A. Shaw, John Bash

Online Publications

In the summer of 2008, the Supreme Court decided District of Columbia v. Heller, in which the court held for the first time that the Second Amendment protected an individual right to gun ownership. We were law clerks to Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote the majority opinion, and Justice John Paul Stevens, who wrote the lead dissent.

Racist History And The Second Amendment: A Critical Commentary, Patrick J. Charles

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Critical Legal Studies And The Police, Nirej Sekhon

Cardozo Law Review

Constitutional police regulation is a complex tangle of substantive rights, remedies, and procedural rules. Together, they appear to scaffold a cohesive system of police restraint. Legal scholars tend to focus criticism on specific rules, impelled by faith that the system can be made to serve its core purpose: protecting civilians against police overreach and abuse. Drawing on critical legal studies, this Article contends that constitutional police regulation is incapable of realizing its putative purpose. Constitutional police regulation frames policing as a series of isolated, individual police-civilian encounters. This is compounded by the unpredictable interpretive interplay between substantive, remedial, and procedural …

Standardizing State Vote-By-Mail Deadlines In Federal Elections, Jason Nagel

Cardozo Law Review de•novo

The litigation over the vote-by-mail process during the 2020 general election revealed that absentee ballot voting disputes should not be left entirely to the courts. Rather, this Note argues that Congress should utilize its constitutional Elections Clause power to standardize federal vote-by-mail processes, and proposes specific elements that Congress should include in such legislation.

Textualism, Dynamism, And The Meaning Of "Sex", Bill Watson

Cardozo Law Review de•novo

A recent Article by Professors William N. Eskridge, Brian G. Slocum, and Stefan Th. Gries critically examines textualism, both in general and as applied in Bostock v. Clayton County. This Essay makes three points in reply. First, the authors criticize strawman versions of textualism that no mainstream legal interpreter claims to hold. Second, the authors’ examples of “societal dynamism” do not put any pressure on textualism properly understood. And third, the authors’ corpus-linguistics analysis of the word “sex” is, from a textualist perspective, irrelevant to the issue in Bostock.

Crying Cda Immunity: Tech Companies' Knee-Jerk Defense To Child Sexual Exploitation & Product Liability Claims, Carrie Goldberg, Naomi Leeds

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

The article argues that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is being misapplied by tech companies like Omegle to avoid liability in cases involving child sexual exploitation and product liability. It contends that Section 230 immunity should not shield companies when claims pertain to product design flaws and trafficking, emphasizing the need for courts to recognize the distinction between content moderation and product-related harms.

Five Reflections From Five Years Of Fosta/Sesta, Kendra Albert

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

The article critically examines the impact of the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) and the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA), arguing that these laws have disproportionately harmed sex workers by leading to widespread deplatforming and increased criminalization. While FOSTA/SESTA aimed to combat sex trafficking, the author contends that the legislation conflated sex work with trafficking, resulting in the shutdown of harm reduction platforms and exacerbating risks for sex workers. The article emphasizes the need to center the voices of marginalized communities in policy-making and advocates for decriminalization as a more effective approach to preventing exploitation.

Panel 1: Sexual Exploitation, Sex Workers, And Section 230, Mary Graw Leary, Kendra Albert, Carrie Goldberg, Felix Wu

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

The article examines the implications of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, focusing on its impact on sexual exploitation, sex workers, and online speech. Panelists discuss the unintended consequences of legislative changes like FOSTA-SESTA and propose reforms such as the EARN IT Act to address child sexual abuse material (CSAM). They emphasize the need to balance protecting victims with safeguarding legitimate speech, particularly for marginalized communities, and advocate for comprehensive reforms rather than piecemeal changes.

The Semiconductor Industry's Need For Better Negotiation To Combat China's Rise, Joshua Becker

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

No abstract provided.

The Need For Adopting Mass Arbitration Waivers In The Online Sports Betting Industry, Samuel Ditchek

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

FanDuel and DraftKings, two ascending corporate powerhouses, have been the driving force in online sports betting's surge in popularity. Akin to other online services, both of these providers have featured/currently feature binding arbitration clauses that compel users to settle disputes through arbitration. Though their Terms of Use resemble typical consumer contracts, FanDuel and DraftKings have made a costly error in failing to account for mass copycat arbitration actions. These types of actions are avenues for large groups of consumers to individually file arbitration claims in order to force a settlement. Without the intention of actually pursuing their arbitration claims, consumers …

War & The Constitution: Chemical Agents And The Rights Of Protestors, Yomidalys GüIchardo Morel

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Chevron Flip-Flops Of A Different Sort - Understanding The Shifting Politics Of Deference, Michael E. Herz

Online Publications

Like vaccinations, voter fraud, guns, taking a knee, and, well, everything, views on Chevron deference have become not just ideologically tinged but ideologically determined. Progressives are Chevron enthusiasts; conservatives are Chevron skeptics. Chevron is under siege, and the battle lines are familiar. Yet, on its face, Chevron is politically neutral. It increases agency power at the expense of judicial power; whether that is politically helpful depends on whether your team controls the White House or if it controls the courts. Furthermore, the current ideological array has not always been the case. When Chevron was decided, the enthusiasts were …