Legislation Commons^™

Department Of Insurance, J. D. Fellmeth

California Regulatory Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Special Issue "Health Care Law And The Rights Of Individuals With Disabilities", Elizabeth Pendo, Guest Editor

All Faculty Scholarship

People with disabilities are vulnerable. They carry high risk for poor health and health outcomes. As a group, they experience social disadvantages such as poverty, underemployment and unemployment, isolation, and discrimination at a higher rate than the general population. They also face multiple barriers to quality health care and report poorer health status than people without disabilities. This Special Issue will explore the key health disparities and barriers to health care experienced by people with disabilities, and explore the legal, ethical, and social issues they raise. It will investigate the legal requirements of the Americans with Disabilities and other antidiscrimination …

Tax Symposium: Introduction, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Michigan Journal of International Law

This issue of MJIL features four out of the many outstanding papers that were presented at a conference on Taxation and Citizenship held at Michigan Law in October 2015 and co-organized by Allison Christians and myself. The impetus for the conference was the realization that the unique U.S. practice of taxing its citizens on worldwide income, regardless of where they reside, has become a major flashpoint in the relationship between the United States and its citizens living overseas, and sometimes also between the United States and the country those citizens resided in.

Irreconcilable Similarities: The Inconsistent Analysis Of 212(C) And 212(H) Waivers, Kate Aschenbrenner Rodriguez

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Clicks And Tricks: How Computer Hackers Avoid 10b-5 Liability, Ryan H. Gilinson

Brooklyn Law Review

This note argues that computer hackers who sell inside information instead of trading on it themselves, referred to in the note as hacker-sellers, avoid liability under Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act and SEC Rule 10b-5. Rule 10b-5 criminalizes the use of a manipulative or deceptive device “in connection with the purchase or sale of any security.” Hacker-sellers fall outside the scope of this rule for two reasons. First, the type of hacking employed by hacker-sellers is not always “deceptive,” and only the forms of hacking which deceive the computer into thinking an authorized user is seeking access are …

Delaware’S Ban On Fee-Shifting: A Failed Attempt To Protect Shareholders At The Expense Of Officers And Directors Of Public Corporations, Ryan S. Starstrom

Brooklyn Law Review

In 2014, the Delaware Supreme Court issued its opinion in ATP Tour, Inc. v. Deutscher Tennis Bund, which held that non-stock Delaware corporations may validly enact fee-shifting provisions in their bylaws and certificate of incorporation. Subsequently, the Delaware Legislature, fearing that the ATP Tour decision would extend to stock corporations, amended Title 8 of the Delaware Code (DGCL) Sections 102(f) and 109(b). These amendments provide for a blanket prohibition of fee-shifting provisions in a Delaware corporation’s certificate of incorporation or bylaws, respectively, in regard to “internal corporate claims.” Such a prohibition eliminates the possibility for a Delaware corporation to enact …

The Conundrum Of Voluntary Intoxication And Sex, Michal Buchhandler-Raphael

Brooklyn Law Review

Research shows that a significant number of sexual assaults occur after victims have consumed an excessive amount of intoxicants, rendering them substantially impaired and incapable of opposing nonconsensual sexual acts. Existing sexual assault statutes mostly criminalize sexual acts with involuntarily intoxicated people, namely when the defendant administered the intoxicants to the victim. Most of these statutes, however, do not directly prohibit sexual intercourse with voluntarily intoxicated victims whose intoxication was self-inflicted. While general prohibitions against sexual intercourse with physically and mentally incapacitated individuals may be used to prosecute sexual assaults of intoxicated victims, they offer only an incomplete solution to …

Golden Creditors, Copper Rules: An Analysis Of Avoidance Actions Under Section 544(B) Of The Bankruptcy Code In Cases Where A Federal Creditor Holds A Claim, John F. Rabe Jr.

Brooklyn Law Review

Section 544(b) of the Bankruptcy Code endows the trustee with the power to avoid fraudulent transfers that an unsecured creditor could have avoided under applicable law. Most states have adopted versions of the Uniform Fraudulent Conveyances Act (UFCA) or Uniform Fraudulent Transfers Act (UFTA) that impose four- or six-year statutes of limitations on private creditors seeking to unwind fraudulent transfers. Certain government creditors, however, have access to longer statutes of limitation than those available to their private counterparts. Federal creditors acting pursuant to the Federal Debt Collection Procedures Act (FDCPA) or Internal Revenue Code (IRC), for example, can avail themselves …

Cannibal Cop Out: The Computer Fraud And Abuse Act, Lenity, Quasi-Strict Liability, Draconian Punishment And A Surgical Solution, Charles S. Wood

Brooklyn Law Review

The Second Circuit has recently joined in a longstanding circuit split regarding the interpretation of the phrase “exceeds authorized access” under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). The split centers around whether an otherwise authorized computer user who violates usage restrictions has exceeded authorized access. In United States v. Valle, the Second Circuit answered the question in the negative. Upon finding the phrase to be ambiguous, the Second Circuit invoked lenity, and therefore narrowly construed their interpretation in the defendant’s favor. This note argues that the Second Circuit was correct to apply lenity as the plain meaning of the …

The Tax-Immigration Nexus, Tessa R. Davis

Faculty Publications

Tax and immigration law have a shared interest in defining community. In order to implement a tax, we must know who belongs to the taxable community. At the same time, immigration law must define and administer the requirements for membership in the national community. Despite the differing objectives of tax and immigration law—raising revenue and deciding who may enter, remain, and become a citizen in the United States, respectively—both of these regimes uses a concept of citizenship to define their respective communities. Starting from this common thread of the relevance of citizenship to both immigration and tax law, this Article …

The Civil Redress And Historical Memory Act Of 2029: A Legislative Proposal, William J. Aceves

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

During the extant “War on Terror,” U.S. and foreign nationals who did not engage in hostilities were detained and mistreated abroad by the United States or by other countries with the acquiescence of the United States. These individuals were accused of being terrorists or were suspected of associating with terror groups, but they were, in fact, innocent. They were eventually released and were never charged by the United States with any crime. Despite their innocence, the United States has failed to provide them with any form of redress for their mistreatment. The Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations refused to apologize …

Tennessee V. Fcc And The Clear Statement Rule, Lee D. Whatling

Georgia Law Review

In 2016, the Sixth Circuit in Tennessee v. FCC
overturned an FCC preemption order striking down state
laws that restricted municipal broadband providers from
servicing communities outside of their respective
municipal borders. The court held Congress had not
provided a clear statement in § 706 of the
Telecommunications Act of 1996 that it intended to grant
the FCC preemption power under these circumstances.
The immediate practical consequences of the decision were
that communities previously serviced by municipal
broadband providers, but located outside of municipal
borders, were now at the mercy of state laws that sought to
restrict that service.
This …

Counting Zeros: The Every Student Succeeds Act And The Testing Opt-Out Movement, Paul A. Hoversten

Michigan Law Review Online

The story begins with threatening letters. In October 2014, the U.S. Department of Education reminded Colorado’s chief state school officer that the department “ha[d], in fact, withheld Title I, Part A administrative funds . . . from a number of States for failure to comply with the assessment requirements” under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Given the occasion, the department implied, it wouldn’t hesitate to be ruthless.

Colorado could be forgiven for assuming it was authorized to craft its own policies in this arena; according to the Wall Street Journal, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) represented “the …

Minimalism About Residence And Source, Wei Cui

Michigan Journal of International Law

In this Article, I relate the discomfort with fundamental principles in taxing individuals’ worldwide income to a problem that has attracted greater attention in recent years: the assignment of geographical sources to income. I suggest that there is substantial similarity between critiques of residence rules (of which critiques of citizenship-based taxation are examples) and critiques of source rules. However, I argue that problematic residence and source rules are only symptoms, not causes, of unsatisfactory conceptual paradigms in international taxation. Many scholars portray source and residence rules as inadequate means for achieving purportedly given normative objectives in the age of intense …

Defining Residence For Income Tax Purposes: Domicile As Gap-Filler, Citizenship As Proxy And Gap-Filler, Edward A. Zelinsky

Michigan Journal of International Law

In this paper, I place the United States’ adherence to citizenship-based taxation in the context of the states’ tax systems. Forty-one states impose general income taxes on the worldwide incomes of their respective residents. These state tax systems are important repositories of experience that confirm the administrative benefits of citizenship-based taxation. Domicile today plays an important role in state tax systems as a gap-filler when more objective statutory residence laws fail to assign any state of residence to the taxpayer. Citizenship is an administrable proxy for domicile and serves a similar gap-filling role in the taxation of individuals whose income …

Statutory Progress And Obstacles To Achieving An Effective Criminal Legislation Against The Modern Day Forms Of Slavery: The Case Of France, Bénédicte Bourgeois

Michigan Journal of International Law

In August 2013, the French Parliament passed a statute meant to bring domestic law into conformity with several European legal instruments recently adopted. The statute explicitly addressed for the first time contemporary forms of slavery, servitude, and forced labor by establishing a set of four offenses that criminalize these three types of severe labor exploitation. For lawmakers as well as for many stakeholders in the fight against modern-day slavery, that achievement marked the culmination of a series of piecemeal amendments to criminal law and narrow advances in case law, which gradually enhanced the penal repression of modern-day slavery over the …

Citizenship Overreach, Peter J. Spiro

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Article examines international law limitations on the ascription of citizenship and national self-definition. The United States is exceptionally generous in its extension of citizenship. Alone among the major developed states, it extends citizenship to almost all persons in its territory at the moment of birth. This birthright citizenship is constitutionally protected under the Fourteenth Amendment. At the same time that it is generous at the front end, U.S. citizenship is sticky at the back. Termination of citizenship on the individual’s part can involve substantial fees. Expatriation is contingent on tax compliance and, in some cases, will implicate the recognition …

A Global Perspective On Citizenship-Based Taxation, Allison Christians

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Article contends that, with regard to individuals who reside permanently outside of the United States, the global assistance sought under FATCA to enforce U.S. income taxation solely on the basis of citizenship violates international law. It argues that insisting upon foreign cooperation with the FATCA regime, under threat of serious economic penalties, is inconsistent with universally accepted norms regarding appropriate limits to the state’s jurisdiction to tax, while also being normatively unjustified. Accordingly, FATCA should be rejected by all other nation states to the extent it imposes any obligations with respect to individuals who permanently reside outside of, and …

Medical Board Of California, Kayla Watson, J. D. Fellmeth

California Regulatory Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Public Utilities Commission, Jessica Kirshner, Faye Winkler, R. C. Fellmeth, Bridget Fogarty Gramme

California Regulatory Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Book Review, Justin R. Huckaby

Journal Articles

In Conventional Wisdom: The Alternate Article V Mechanism for Proposing Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, John R. Vile discusses the thus-far unused Article V convention method of amending the U.S. Constitution. The book focuses on what an Article V convention could be and what parameters it might entail. Could such a convention be limited in scope, or must it be general in nature? Vile considers these questions and the literature behind them to develop his own interpretation of an Article V convention and how it should be implemented.

Legislating The First Amendment: A Trio Of Recommendations For Lawmakers Targeting Free Expression, Clay Calvert

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Article offers three recommendations for lawmakers attempting to restrict expression that is presumptively protected by the First Amendment. The proposals include: (1) embracing a ''prism of protection" through which all potential laws affecting expression are filtered prior to drafting; (2) mandating inclusion of sunset clauses in all statutes that may detrimentally impact free expression; and (3) adopting a comprehensive legislative oversight and review process for determining if an expired statute should be renewed, revised or abandoned. Although far from creating what Dean Roscoe Pound more than 100 years ago called a "science of legislation, " the proposals here nonetheless …

Making Meaning: Towards A Narrative Theory Of Statutory Interpretation And Judicial Justification, Randy D. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

The act of judging is complex involving finding facts, interpreting law, and then deciding a particular dispute. But these are not discreet functions: they bleed into one another and are thus interdependent. This article aims to reveal-at least in part-how judges approach this process. To do so, I look at three sets of civil RICO cases that align and diverge from civil antitrust precedents. I then posit that the judges in these cases base their decisions on assumptions about RICO's purpose. These assumptions, though often tacit and therefore not subject to direct observation, are nonetheless sometimes revealed when a judge …

Teaching Public Policy Drafting In Law School: One Professor's Approach, Lisa A. Rich

Faculty Scholarship

This article provides an overview of the Drafting for Public Policy course offered at the Texas A&M University School of Law. The article addresses the theoretical and pedagogical underpinnings of the course, including how such a course easily encompasses the teaching of cultural context and awareness, as well as professional identity, and encourages students to engage deeply in the policymaking process. It also explores the continued relevance of the work of Harold D. Lasswell, as well as that of Myres McDougal and Anthony Kronman. These works, from 1943 and 1993 respectively, resonate now because they called on law schools to …

Causing A Racket: Unpacking The Elements Of Cultural Capital In An Assessment Of Urban Noise Control, Live Music, And The Quiet Enjoyment Of Private Property, Sara Gwendolyn Ross

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

I examine the tension between and the treatment of the elements of cultural capital within dynamic mixed-use spaces, and posit that Canada's current noise control and noise pollution legislation, by-laws, and case law demonstrate a hierarchical protection framework placing greater importance on the "quiet enjoyment of private property" over live music culture, where performances are often the subject of noise complaints. While the elements of cultural capital valued by those who favour the value of quiet enjoyment of private property is well represented throughout legislation, by-laws, and case law, the elements of cultural capital valued by those who favour the …

End-Of-Life In Prison Symposium Report, Adelina Iftene, Crystal Dieleman, Hanna Garson

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In 2016, the Canadian Parliament passed “An Act to amend the Criminal Code and to make related amendments to other Acts (medical assistance in dying)” (S.C. 2016, c. 3). This statute decriminalized providing medical assistance to the dying in a defined set of circumstances. The Corrections and Conditional Release Act (CCRA) was also amended: section 19 now reads “(1.1) Subsection (1) does not apply to a death that results from an inmate receiving medical assistance in dying, as defined in section 241.1 that Act.”

Pursuant to these amendments, this meeting focused on issues that may arise in implementing MAiD in …

Theorizing Time In Abortion Law And Human Rights, Joanna Erdman

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The legal regulation of abortion by gestational age, or length of pregnancy, is a relatively undertheorized dimension of abortion and human rights. Yet struggles over time in abortion law, and its competing representations and meanings, are ultimately struggles over ethical and political values, authority and power, the very stakes that human rights on abortion engage. This article focuses on three struggles over time in abortion and human rights law: those related to morality, health, and justice. With respect to morality, the article concludes that collective faith and trust should be placed in the moral judgment of those most affected by …

Internet Surveillance, Regulation, And Chilling Effects Online: A Comparative Case Study, Jonathon Penney

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

With internet regulation and censorship on the rise, states increasingly engaging in online surveillance, and state cyber-policing capabilities rapidly evolving globally, concerns about regulatory “chilling effects” online — the idea that laws, regulations, or state surveillance can deter people from exercising their freedoms or engaging in legal activities on the internet have taken on greater urgency and public importance. But just as notions of “chilling effects” are not new, neither is skepticism about their legal, theoretical, and empirical basis; in fact, the concept remains largely un-interrogated with significant gaps in understanding, particularly with respect to chilling effects online. This work …

Next Up: A Proposal For Values-Based Law Reform On Unilateral Withholding And Withdrawal Of Potentially Life-Sustaining Treatment, Jocelyn Downie, Lindy Willmott, Ben White

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

As the legalization of assisted dying shifts from a project for law reform to one of implementation, the gaze for Canadian end of life law and policy academics and practitioners should be turned quickly to another pressing issue – the unilateral withholding and withdrawal of potentially life-sustaining treatment. What should happen when the health care team believes that treatment should not be provided and the patient’s loved ones believe that it should? While the future of end of life law and policy no doubt includes many other issues, this is an urgent and immediate horizon issue for Canada as well …

A Test For Freedom Of Conscience Under The Canadian Charter Of Rights And Freedoms: Regulating And Litigating Conscientious Refusals In Health Care, Jocelyn Downie, Francoise Baylis

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Conscientious refusal to provide insured health care services is a significant point of controversy in Canada, especially in reproductive medicine and end-of-life care. Some provincial and territorial legislatures have developed legislation or regulations, and some professional regulatory bodies have developed policies or guidelines, to better reconcile tensions between health care professionals’ conscience and patients’ access to health care services. As other groups attempt to draft standards and as challenges to existing standards head to court, the fact that the meaning of “freedom of conscience” under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is not yet settled will become ever more …