Legislation Commons^™

Restoring Effective Congressional Oversight: Reform Proposals For The Enforcement Of Congressional Subpoenas, Kia Rahnama

Journal of Legislation

This Article proposes possible legislative reforms to Congress’s exercise of its contempt power in combating non-compliance with subpoenas duly issued as part of congressional investigations. With the recent trends in leveraging congressional investigations as an effective tool of separation of powers, this Article seeks to explore the exact bounds of congressional power in responding to executive officers’ noncompliance with congressional subpoenas, and whether or not current practice could be expanded beyond what has historically been tried by the legislative branch. This Article provides a brief summary of the historic practice behind different options for responding to non-compliance with subpoenas (inherent …

The Perils And Promises Of Artificial General Intelligence, Brian S. Haney

Journal of Legislation

No abstract provided.

Lands Of Opportunity: An Analysis Of The Effectiveness And Impact Of Opportunity Zones In The Tax Cuts And Jobs Act Of 2017, Joseph Bennett

Journal of Legislation

No abstract provided.

Considering The Costs: Adopting A Judicial Test For The Least Restrictive Environment Mandate Of The Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, Edmund J. Rooney

Journal of Legislation

No abstract provided.

Do We Need To Secure A Place At The Table For Women? An Analysis Of The Legality Of California Law Sb-826, Teal N. Trujillo

Journal of Legislation

No abstract provided.

When Soft Law Meets Hard Politics: Taming The Wild West Of Nonprofit Political Involvement, Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer

Journal of Legislation

Beginning in the 1990s and continuing today, many of the legal and psychological barriers to nonprofits becoming involved in electoral politics have fallen. At the same time, political divisions have sharpened, causing candidates, political parties, and their supporters to scramble more aggressively for any possible edge in winner-take-all political contests. In the face of these developments, many nonprofits have violated the remaining legal rules applicable to their political activity with little fear of negative consequences, especially given vague rules and a paucity of enforcement resources. Such violations include under reporting of political activity in government filings, fly-by-night organizations that exist …

The Need To Codify Roe V. Wade: A Case For National Abortion Legislation, Kathryn N. Peachman

Journal of Legislation

No abstract provided.

Circuit Split On The Application Of The "Safety Valve" Provision As Applied To The Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act - Alexander And Mosquera-Murillo, Alexander D. Andruzzi

Ocean and Coastal Law Journal

When the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia decided the case of United States v. Mosquera-Murillo, it created a circuit-split on whether individuals charged under the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act (codified as 46 U.S.C. § 705) are entitled to relief under the "Safety Valve" provision of 18 U.S.C. § 3553(f). The "Safety Valve" allows individuals who meet certain criteria to be sentenced according to the sentencing guidelines, regardless of any mandatory minimum sentences. This case note compares the holding of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to the Eleventh Circuit's holding in United States …

Are Marine National Monuments "Situated On Lands Owned Or Controlled By The Government Of The United States?", Tyler C. Costello

Ocean and Coastal Law Journal

The ocean offers what may seem like endless supply of natural resources, ecosystem services, or for some, simple enjoyment. Yet, in the face of climate change and overexploitation, many of these unique ecosystems and their inhabitants face an uphill battle. A president's use of the Antiquities Act establishing a national monument is an efficient and effective method of protecting these diverse ecosystems, as long as the area to be protected satisfies one of the Act's limitations that the monument be "situated on land owned or controlled by the federal government." Prior to a 2017 lawsuit concerning President Obama's use of …

The Elusive Object Of Punishment, Gabriel S. Mendlow

Articles

All observers of our legal system recognize that criminal statutes can be complex and obscure. But statutory obscurity often takes a particular form that most observers have overlooked: uncertainty about the identity of the wrong a statute aims to punish. It is not uncommon for parties to disagree about the identity of the underlying wrong even as they agree on the statute’s elements. Hidden in plain sight, these unexamined disagreements underlie or exacerbate an assortment of familiar disputes—about venue, vagueness, and mens rea; about DUI and statutory rape; about hate crimes, child pornography, and counterterrorism laws; about proportionality in punishment; …

The Marketplace Of Ideas Online, Dawn C. Nunziato

Notre Dame Law Review

This Article surveys the severe problems in today’s online marketplace of ideas and the efforts that regulators—and the online platforms themselves—have recently adopted in an attempt to address such problems. In Part I, this Article examines the historical foundations of the “marketplace of ideas” model, as articulated in Holmes’s early opinions, as well as the Court’s eventual adoption of the marketplace model and, with it, the adoption of counterspeech, instead of censorship, as the default response to harmful speech. Part II then examines the scope and extent of the problems besieging the modern online marketplace of ideas, focusing on problems …

On Public Employees And Judicial Buck-Passing: The Respective Roles Of Statutory And Constitutional Protections For Government Whistleblowers, Heidi Kitrosser

Notre Dame Law Review

In Garcetti v. Ceballos, the Supreme Court held that public employees have no First Amendment protections for speech made “pursuant to their official duties.” Writing for the majority, Justice Kennedy assured readers that the holding did not undermine “the potential societal value of employee speech.” Among other things, Kennedy pointed to a “powerful network of legislative enactments—such as whistle-blower protection laws and labor codes—available to [public employees] who seek to expose wrongdoing.” Yet as Justice Souter pointed out in dissent and as several amici had informed the Court in their briefs, “the combined variants of statutory whistle-blower definitions and …

Skinning The Cat: How Mandatory Psychiatric Evaluations For Animal Cruelty Offenders Can Prevent Future Violence, Ashley Kunz

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

In 2017, the Texas legislature amended Texas Penal Code § 42.092, which governs acts of cruelty against non-livestock animals. The statute in its current form makes torturing, killing, or seriously injuring a non-livestock animal a third degree felony, while less serious offenses carry either a state jail felony or a Class A misdemeanor charge.

While a step in the right direction, Texas law is not comprehensive in that it fails to address a significant aspect of animal cruelty offenses: mental illness. For over fifteen years, Texas Family Code § 54.0407 has required psychiatric counseling for juveniles convicted of cruelty to …

Artificial Intelligence: Distinguishing Between Types & Definitions, Rex Martinez

Nevada Law Journal

‘We should make every effort to understand the new technology. We should take into account the possibility that developing technology may have important societal implications that will become apparent only with time. We should not jump to the conclusion that new technology is fundamentally the same as some older thing with which we are familiar. And we should not hastily dismiss the judgment of legislators, who may be in a better position than we are to assess the implications of new technology.’–Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito

Legal Sets, Jeremy N. Sheff

Cardozo Law Review

In this Article, I propose that the practices of legal reasoning and analysis are helpfully understood as being primarily concerned not with rules or propositions, but with sets. This Article develops a formal model of the role of sets in the practices of legal actors in a common-law system defined by a recursive relationship between cases and rules. In doing so, it demonstrates how conceiving of legal doctrines as a universe of discourse comprising (sometimes nested or overlapping) sets of cases can clarify the logical structure that governs marginal cases and help organize the available options for resolving such cases …

Good Of My Patient: Who Gets To Decide?, Lauren Ruvo

Tennessee Journal of Race, Gender, & Social Justice

Physicians play a crucial role in helping patients make life or death decisions. However, all healthcare professionals have personal beliefs and biases that influence these decisions. This paper explores how physicians are able to uphold the Hippocratic ideal of doing what is in the best interest of the patient while taking into account their personal beliefs and biases. The paper begins by analyzing existing schools of thought around how to do what is best for the patient. While there are many different views, this paper looks at the main three: the bioethical movement, the paternalistic approach to medicine, and the …

Department Of Managed Health Care, Kaitlyn Enticknap, Monet Mccord, Debra Jorgensen

California Regulatory Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Medical Board Of California, Mason Bettencourt, Debra Jorgensen

California Regulatory Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

State Bar Of California, Ashley Kearney, Bridget Fogarty Gramme

California Regulatory Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Committee Of Bar Examiners, Samantha Steed, Bridget Fogarty Gramme

California Regulatory Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

California Public Utilities Commission, Charles Kreuzberger, Thomas G. Routson, Negin Taleb, R. C. Fellmeth

California Regulatory Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Bureau For Private Postsecondary Education, Junhee Park, R. C. Fellmeth

California Regulatory Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Department Of Insurance, Sarah Marie Burgh, Joseph Cheng, Debra Jorgensen

California Regulatory Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Bureau Of Cannabis Control, Nicole Cohen, Guinness Castello, R. C. Fellmeth

California Regulatory Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Puffing Away Parental Rights: A Survey And Analysis Of Whether Secondhand Smoke Exposure Is Child Abuse, Karly Huml

Journal of Law and Health

The steps taken thus far to protect children in public areas, custody cases, and in vehicles show the legislature's awareness of the chemical harms of secondhand smoke for children. This article will analyze those steps and discuss what they mean for both parents' and children's constitutional rights. This article proposes that the legislature take a vital fourth step by including secondhand smoke exposure in child abuse laws. Section II of this article provides the history of smoking tobacco and its transition from a trendy social status to an unpopular, harmful habit. Section II also introduces the steps that have been …

Solving The Opioid Epidemic In Ohio, Lacy Leduc

Journal of Law and Health

On May 31, 2017, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine took a step in fighting Ohio's opioid epidemic, bringing the first of many lawsuits against five top pharmaceutical companies. However, under Federal and State law, there is an exception called the Learned Intermediary Doctrine, which can absolve drug manufacturers of liability from any misconduct that might be found and transfer that liability to a treating physician. This exception is the way many drug manufacturers were able to avoid being held responsible in the past. This Note proposes that with the current pending lawsuit in the State of Ohio, an exception to …

Fcpa Enforcement Against U.S. And Non-U.S. Companies, Michael S. Diamant, Christopher W.H. Sullivan, Jason H. Smith

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

This Article explores how U.S. authorities have enforced the FCPA against non-U.S. companies and tests the perception that the FCPA disproportionately impacts U.S. businesses. After briefly discussing the FCPA, its enforcement, and its reach, this Article examines corporate FCPA enforcement activity since the statute’s enactment in 1977. It finds that foreign firms have actually fared worse under the FCPA despite the fact that DOJ and the SEC have brought more enforcement actions against domestic companies in absolute terms. The average cost of resolving an FCPA enforcement action to non-U.S. corporations of resolving an FCPA enforcement action has been more than …

The Dialogic Aspect Of Soft Law In International Insolvency: Discord, Digression, And Development, John A. E. Pottow

Michigan Journal of International Law

In this study, I describe three important articles in the IRJ model law and discuss their development, drawing in part upon my experience as a delegate to UNCITRAL Working Group V. In doing so, I want to situate these developments within the broader discussions of international law and international relations theory regarding soft law. Doing so will both vindicate and puzzle some of the conventional understanding of how soft law instruments tend to function, although some of the conclusions must necessarily be conjectural at this stage.

The Regulatory Accountability Act And The Future Of Apa Revision, Ronald M. Levin

Chicago-Kent Law Review

This article seeks to take stock of the Regulatory Accountability Act (RAA), a set of proposals to amend the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). House and Senate versions of the proposed Act have been pending in Congress since 2011, although the impending advent of Democratic control of the House may halt further progress on the bills in their present form. Some provisions in the RAA are desirable or at least supportable, because they would codify elements of current practice or make minor repairs to the APA. But other aspects of the bill are controversial and troubling. Among them are sections that …

Prosecutorial Discretion And Environmental Crime Redux: Charging Trends, Aggravating Factors, And Individual Outcome Data For 2005-2014, David M. Uhlmann

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

In a 2014 article entitled “Prosecutorial Discretion and Environmental Crime,” I presented empirical data developed by student researchers participating in the Environmental Crimes Project at the University of Michigan Law School. My 2014 article reported that 96 percent of defendants investigated by the United States Environmental Protection Agency and charged with federal environmental crimes from 2005 through 2010 engaged in conduct that involved at least one of the aggravating factors identified in my previous scholarship, namely significant harm, deceptive or misleading conduct, operating outside the regulatory system, and repetitive violations. On that basis, I concluded that prosecutors charged violations that …