State and Local Government Law Commons^™

The Oregon Stewardship Trust: A New Type Of Purpose Trust That Enables Steward-Ownership Of A Business, Susan N. Gary

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

Covid-19 And The Provisional Licensing Of Qualified Medical School Graduates As Physicians, Paul J. Larkin Jr.

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

Each level of government has its own peculiar responsibilities to address the COVID-19 pandemic. The states are responsible for licensing physicians who can treat the affected people. Each year, a large number of American and foreign medical school graduates do not find a residency position in the United States. Medical school graduates who have passed the qualifying examination have acquired a considerable amount of education and training during their medical studies, far more than physician assistants, nurses, military corpsmen and medics, and civilian paramedics or emergency medical technicians. They comprise a pool of talent that could be immensely useful in …

State Prosecutors At The Center Of Mass Imprisonment And Criminal Justice Reform, Nora V. Demleitner

Scholarly Articles

State prosecutors around the country have played a crucial role in mass imprisonment. Little supervision and virtually unsurpassed decision making power have provided them with unrivaled influence over the size, growth, and composition of our criminal justice system. They decide which cases to prosecute, whether to divert a case, whether to offer a plea, and what sentence to recommend. Their impact does not stop at sentencing. They weigh in on alternative dockets, supervision violations, parole release, and even clemency requests. But they are also part of a larger system that constrains them. Funding, judicial limits on their power, and legislative …

Environmental Justice In Little Village: A Case For Reforming Chicago’S Zoning Law, Charles Isaacs

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

Chicago’s Little Village community bears the heavy burden of environmental injustice and racism. The residents are mostly immigrants and people of color who live with low levels of income, limited access to healthcare, and disproportionate levels of dangerous air pollution. Before its retirement, Little Village’s Crawford coal-burning power plant was the lead source of air pollution, contributing to 41 deaths, 550 emergency room visits, and 2,800 asthma attacks per year. After the plant’s retirement, community members wanted a say on the future use of the lot, only to be closed out when a corporation, Hilco Redevelopment Partners, bought the lot …

How Factors Of State Supreme Court Retention Affect Votes To Overturn Precedent: How Do Different Factors Of State Supreme Court Composition Effect The Likelihood That Salient Cases Will Result In An Overturning Of Precedent?, Autumn N. Fosteson

Political Science Theses and Capstones

Since the establishment of individual states supreme courts, there has been debate on the best way to retain individual judges to their court. With five different forms of retention, each comes with their own set of outside forces that determine how a judge behaves while on the court. Some of these outside forces like a judge’s length of service on the court can also affect the decision to overturn a standing precedent, especially when the case captures great amounts of media attention. Salient cases are often more likely to result in an overturned precedent than other cases but outside factors …

On Target? Assessing Gun Sanctuary Ordinances That Conflict With State Law, Sheila Simon

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Cities And Citizens Seethe: A Case Study Of Local Efforts To Influence Natural Gas Pipeline Routing Decisions, Heidi Gorovitz Robertson

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

North Carolina's H.B.2: A Case Study In Lgbtq Rights, Preemption, And The (Un)Democratic Process, Mark Dorosin

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

A New Urban Front For Shareholder Primacy, Anne Choike

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

The hundredth anniversary of Dodge v. Ford marks an occasion to reflect upon what, if anything, has changed about shareholder primacy in a century. Seizing this opportunity, in this Article I analyze new local laws and ordinances that promote stakeholder governance and engagement, which seek to protect the interests of non-shareholder constituencies such as workers, the environment, and the communities in which corporations operate, among others. In doing so, I argue that such local laws meaningfully differ from traditional stakeholder protections, most significantly in the way that they weaken managerial accountability to shareholders. The emergence of these city laws challenges …

States, Localities And Public Health, David Gartner

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Screened Out Of Housing: The Impact Of Misleading Tenant Screening Reports And The Potential For Criminal Expungement As A Model For Effectively Sealing Evictions, Katelyn Polk

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

Having an eviction record “blacklists” tenants from finding future housing. Even renters with mere eviction filings—not eviction orders—on their records face the harsh collateral consequences of eviction. This Note argues that eviction records should be sealed at filing and only released into the public record if a landlord prevails in court. Juvenile record expungement mechanisms in Illinois serve as a model for one way to protect people with eviction records. Recent updates to the Illinois juvenile expungement process provided for the automatic expungement of certain records and strengthened the confidentiality protections of juvenile records. Illinois protects juvenile records because it …

Enhanced Civil Rights In Home Rule Jurisdictions: Newly Emerging Uas/Drone Use Ordinances, Jennifer A. Brobst

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Political Effect On Judicial Decision Making: Does Ideology Or Election Effect The Way Judges Decide?, Kaylynne Lyons

Political Science Theses and Capstones

Politics have shown to have a strong effect on most things in our country. There has been lots of research on our state judicial systems and their effects on judicial decisions. Judges have been accused of having underlying reasons to their decisions even though they are not supposed to. Past research has suggested that how the judge is retained has a small but relevant effect on judicial decision making. The literature review discusses effects of the state's system of judicial selection. That leads us to question more about political effects on decision making. I analyze how the ideology of a …

Cities And Citizens Seethe: A Case Study Of Local Efforts To Influence Natural Gas Pipeline Routing Decisions, Heidi Gorovitz Robertson

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This Article explores the reasons local governments find difficulty influencing pipeline-routing decisions. For example, federal law controls interstate natural gas pipeline permitting, which is complicated and inaccessible. State law, particularly in Ohio, heavily favors utilities, in part by preempting local efforts to make local decisions regarding oil and gas development. Finally, the information gaps are enormous between what local governments need to influence pipeline-routing decisions and what is accessible.

This Article addresses barriers to local influence by discussing the efforts of citizens and local governments to influence the routing of NexusSpectra's natural gas transmission pipeline, which was recently constructed and …

Indigent Defense In West Virginia: A Historical Look At Public Defender Services, Ralph E. Mckinney Jr., Casey W. Baker J.D.

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Racialized Tax Inequity: Wealth, Racism, And The U.S. System Of Taxation, Palma Joy Strand, Nicholas A. Mirkay

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

This Article describes the connection between wealth inequality and the increasing structural racism in the U.S. tax system since the 1980s. A long-term sociological view (the why) reveals the historical racialization of wealth and a shift in the tax system overall beginning around 1980 to protect and exacerbate wealth inequality, which has been fueled by racial animus and anxiety. A critical tax view (the how) highlights a shift over the same time period at both federal and state levels from taxes on wealth, to taxes on income, and then to taxes on consumption—from greater to less progressivity. Both of these …

Rethinking Foster Care: Why Our Current Approach To Child Welfare Has Failed, Vivek Sankaran, Christopher Church

Articles

Over the past decade, the child welfare system has expanded, with vast public and private resources being spent on the system. Despite this investment, there is scant evidence suggesting a meaningful return on investment. This Article argues that without a change in the values held by the system, increased funding will not address the public health problems of child abuse and neglect.

How Can Pennsylvania Protect Itself From Its Own Measles Outbreak?, Megan M. Riesmeyer, Kristen Feemster

Faculty Scholarly Works

When a response to inaccurate information strives to be an informative exercise of its own, it is difficult to balance the desire to respond point by point to mischaracterized, misleading, or untrue information, with the need to simply offer a complete picture of facts. This article is a response to Abigail Wenger’s article regarding

vaccinations. To reply to each mischaracterization or inaccuracy in turn means this response loses its own informative intent and becomes simply a rebuttal. However, to ignore mischaracterizations and inaccuracies is to risk the reader’s acceptance of those points as true. Through illustrative examples in the United …

The Lasting Impacts Of Mass Consumerism And The Disposable Culture: A Proposition For The Development Of Plastic Shopping Bag Bans In Texas Law, David Brewster

St. Mary's Law Journal

This Article addresses the developing state of plastic bag bans in Texas municipal and state jurisprudence. The Article recites the history of plastic bag bans and their impacts on the environment, the issues pertinent to municipal powers as regulatory devices, and analyzes the most recent case regarding bag bans in Texas, which is the Texas Supreme Court’s opinion in City of Laredo v. Laredo Merchants Association. The Article makes suggestions about how to move forward in developing municipal plastic bag bans for the benefit of the environment, and addresses the immediate impacts of bag ban litigation and legislation in …

Reflections On The Effects Of Federalism On Opioid Policy, Matthew B. Lawrence

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

No abstract provided.

Mhpaea & Marble Cake: Parity & The Forgotten Frame Of Federalism, Taleed El-Sabawi

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

No abstract provided.

The Opioid Litigation: The Fda Is Mia, Catherine M. Sharkey

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

It is readily agreed that federal preemption of state tort law alters the balance between federal and state power. Federal preemption is a high-profile defense in almost all modern products liability cases. It is thus surprising to see how little attention has been given to federal preemption by courts and commentators in the opioid litigation. Opioid litigation provides a lens through which I explore the role of state and federal courts and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in striking the right balance of power. My purpose here is not to resolve the divide among the few courts that have …

Recognizing The Need For Mental Health Reform In The Texas Department Of Criminal Justice, Kara Mchorse

St. Mary's Law Journal

The ways in which mental health care and the criminal justice system interact are in desperate need of reform in Texas. The rate of mental illness in Texas is higher than the current state of mental health care can provide for. While state hospitals were once the primary care facilities of those with mental illness, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) has taken on that role in the last few decades; and when the criminal justice system becomes entangled with mental health care, it often leads to “unmitigated disaster.” If Texas continues to allow the TDCJ to act as …

Home Rule In West Virginia, Robert M. Bastress Jr.

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Enacting Local Workplace Regulations In An Era Of Preemption, Dilini Lankachandra

West Virginia Law Review

Since San Francisco enacted the first paid sick leave ordinance in 2007, cities and counties across the country have quietly emerged as drivers of the modern labor movement. Local governments are now increasingly playing a pivotal role in developing, enacting, and enforcing workplace regulations ranging from local minimum wage increases to LGBTQ-inclusive nondiscrimination ordinances to fair scheduling requirements. As a result, the question of which level of government should have the power to regulate business and protect workers has become a flash point in contemporary state-local conflicts, inciting state legislatures to adopt far-reaching, sweeping preemption laws that eliminate local authority …

Authority For Municipal Resilient Road Infrastructure Funding Strategies In Rhode Island, Jimmy Smith, Read Porter

Sea Grant Law Fellow Publications

No abstract provided.

Legal Limits On Recreational Fishing Near Offshore Wind Facilities, Kaitlynn Webster, Read Porter

Sea Grant Law Fellow Publications

No abstract provided.

Dismantling The Master’S House: Toward A Justice-Based Theory Of Community Economic Development, Etienne C. Toussaint

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Since the end of the American Civil War, scholars have debated the efficacy of various models of community economic development, or CED. Historically, this debate has tracked one of two approaches: place-based models of CED, seeking to stimulate community development through market-driven economic growth programs, and people-based models of CED, focused on the removal of structural barriers to social and economic mobility that prevent human flourishing. More recently, scholars and policymakers have turned to a third model from the impact investing community—the social impact bond, or SIB. The SIB model of CED ostensibly finds a middle ground by leveraging funding …

The Effects Of Anti-Immigrant Laws In The U.S. On Victims Of Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault, And Human Trafficking: A Gender-Based Human Rights Analysis, Caroline Bettinger-López, Jamila Flomo, Amanda Suarez

Articles

No abstract provided.

Associations And Cities As (Forbidden) Pure Private Attorneys General, Heather Elliott

William & Mary Law Review

The Supreme Court interprets Article III’s case-or-controversy language to require a plaintiff to show injury in fact, causation, and redressability. A plaintiff who meets that tripartite test has standing to sue and thus a personal stake in pursuing the litigation. Accordingly, in Sierra Club v. Morton, the Supreme Court prohibited pure private attorneys general: litigants who would sue without the requisite personal stake. This limitation extends to organizations. They, too, must show standing on their own account or, under Hunt v. Washington Apple Advertising Commission, identify a member with Article III standing and show how the lawsuit is germane to …