State and Local Government Law Commons^™

Panel Discussion: The Right To Education: With Liberty, Justice, And Education For All?

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

SMU Annual Texas Survey

No abstract provided.

Arbitration, John Allen Chalk

SMU Annual Texas Survey

No abstract provided.

Insurance Law, J. Price Collins, Janet Tolbert, Ashley Gilmore

SMU Annual Texas Survey

No abstract provided.

Civil Procedure: Pre-Trial & Trial, Amanda Sotak, Don Colleluori, Andrew C. Whitaker

SMU Annual Texas Survey

No abstract provided.

Intellectual Property Law, David Mccombs, Phillip Philbin, Brett Bostrom, Katharyn Zagorin

SMU Annual Texas Survey

No abstract provided.

Securities Regulation, George Lee Flint Jr.

SMU Annual Texas Survey

No abstract provided.

Professional Liability, Evan A. Kirkham, Hayden M. Baker, Tyler C. Wright

SMU Annual Texas Survey

No abstract provided.

Oil, Gas, And Mineral Law, Monika Ehrman, Owen L. Anderson

SMU Annual Texas Survey

No abstract provided.

Survey Of Recent Mandamus Decisions Of The Texas Supreme Court, Honorable Douglas S. Lang, Rachel A. Campbell

SMU Annual Texas Survey

No abstract provided.

The Incomplete Record In New York State Rifle & Pistol Association V. City Of New York, Eric J. Mogilnicki, Alexander Schultz

SMU Law Review Forum

A Second Amendment case now pending at the Supreme Court, New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. City of New York, tests the extent to which New York City may limit the movement of guns along city streets. The briefing in that case is, however, incomplete. Second Amendment jurisprudence calls for an examination of historical analogues to the firearms regulation at issue. Here, the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association asserted that there are none. This Article identifies numerous historical analogues to the City’s transportation restrictions, most of which were not identified in the briefing before the …

Down Step By Step—Ratification Of Oil And Gas Leases By Royalty Interests In Texas, Christopher S. Kulander

SMU Law Review

A sporadic series of opinions dating back seven decades has incrementally established that, in Texas, the executive has no authority to pool the royalty or nonexecutive mineral interest covered by an oil and gas lease. Conversely, the owners of nonexecutive interests do have a choice whether or not to ratify leases that purport to cover their interest. This state of the law arose first from cases involving royalty apportionment and community leases, then drawing in nonexecutive interests, before finally establishing the privileged position of freestanding royalty and nonexecutive mineral interests. Texas should instead follow the lead of Louisiana and West …

How To Deter Pedestrian Deaths: A Utilitarian Perspective On Careless Driving, John Clennan

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Criminal Usury And Its Impact On New York Business Transactions, Christopher Basile

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Caveat Emptor: Real Property Law’S “Get Out Of Jail Free” Card V. The Property Condition Disclosure Act, Alessandra E. Albano

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Lawful Permanent Residency: A Potential Solution For Temporary Protected Status Holders In The Eastern District Of New York, Cody M. Gecht

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Principles Of Home Rule For The Twenty-First Century, Richard Briffault, Nestor M. Davidson, Paul A. Diller, Sarah Fox, Laurie Reynolds, Erin A. Scharff, Richard Schragger, Rick Su

Faculty Scholarship

The National League of Cities’ “Principles of Home Rule for the Twenty-First Century” updates the American Municipal Association’s 1953 “Model Constitutional Provisions for Municipal Home Rule.” The AMA approach was widely adopted, but those provisions are now over 65 years old and intervening social, demographic, economic, and political changes necessitates a new approach to the legal structure of state-local relations. The NLC’s approach is organized around four basic principles, which are cashed-out in a model constitutional home rule provision, with commentary. The first principle states that a state’s law of home rule should provide local governments the full capacity to …

The Defender General, Daniel Epps, William Ortman

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

The Kids Are Airight: Teen Sexting, Child Pornography Charges, And The Criminalization Of Adolescent Sexuality, Blaire Bayliss

University of Colorado Law Review

"Sexting" is a term that refers to the exchange of sexually explicit or sexually suggestive messages or images between individuals using electronic messaging. Teenage sexting is a controversial legal topic because the act of taking nude or semi-nude pictures of a minor technically constitutes child pornography under federal law, even when those pictures were self-portraits taken by the minor in question. This Comment argues that the prosecution of sexting under federal child pornography law constitutes the criminalization of adolescent exploration of sexuality and that states should adopt their own sexting-specific laws to address teenage sexting in a manner that respects …

The Governor’S Clemency Power: An Underused Tool To Mitigate The Impact Of Measure 11 In Oregon, Aliza B. Kaplan, Venetia Mayhew

Lewis & Clark Law Review

In this Article, we analyze the historical use of the clemency power at both the federal and state levels, including the factors that occurred during the 20th century that resulted in both presidents and governors gradually using the power less frequently up until the 1980s. We examine how the “war on crime” and other political and legal changes, including the imposition of new mandatory minimum sentencing laws during the 1980s and 1990s, has led to mass-incarceration at both a national and Oregonian level. We discuss how this new punitive sentencing and incarceration philosophy has resulted in a general souring of …

Texas Mdl, D. Theodore Rave, Zachary D. Clopton

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Federal multidistrict litigation (MDL) gets all the attention. This mechanism for consolidating cases filed around the country in a single federal district court for pretrial proceedings has become the dominant mode of resolving mass torts in U.S. courts. But not all mass adjudications find their way into federal court. Texas, like about half of the states, has developed an MDL mechanism to coordinate proceedings within its own courts. In this Essay, we examine the history, doctrine, and data of Texas MDL. Although Texas modeled its approach on the federal MDL statute, the Texas MDL system differs in important ways from …

Disuniformity Of Federal Constitutional Rights, Joseph Blocher

Faculty Scholarship

Judge Jeffrey Sutton’s 51 Imperfect Solutions describes and celebrates the crucial role of state constitutional law in “making” American constitutional law. The fact that states do not speak with one voice in doing so is, in Sutton’s account, a feature rather than a bug. The diversity in their approaches permits experimentation and tailoring, and ultimately produces a stronger and more supple constitutional fabric.

Sutton’s enthusiasm for the diversity and dynamism of state constitutional law is entirely convincing. But is the federal alternative quite so flat? Although federal constitutional rights are undoubtedly more uniform than those of states, they are not …

Foreword: State Enforcement In An Interstate World, Margaret H. Lemos

Faculty Scholarship

“State Enforcement in an Interstate World” is an important topic—fully deserving of all the attention it has received. Past commentators on this topic have generally treated the federal government as a unitary entity. Building on prior work on the subject, this Article explores the polycentric nature of federal regulatory authority and shows how cooperation and rivalry have long been dominant realities of the modern administrative state. The Article discusses how these dynamics complicate analysis of state enforcement in an interstate world and identifies strategies for reducing the frequency and magnitude of the seemingly inevitable conflicts.

Zoning For Families, Sara C. Bronin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Is a group of eight unrelated adults and three children living together and sharing meals, household expenses, and responsibilities—and holding themselves out to the world to have long-term commitments to each other—a family? Not according to most zoning codes—including that of Hartford, Connecticut, where the preceding scenario presented itself a few years ago. Zoning, which is the local regulation of land use, almost always defines family, limiting those who may live in a dwelling unit to those who satisfy the zoning code’s definition. Often times, this definition is drafted in a way that excludes many modern living arrangements and preferences. …

We Are All Growing Old Together: Making Sense Of America's Monument-Protection Laws, Zachary A. Bray

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Monuments and the laws that protect them divide Americans today as never before. American attitudes toward monuments have always been a blend of affection, insecurity, and suspicion. But Americans are now more invested in the built and natural monuments that surround us: to be for, or against, protecting certain monuments has now become a shorthand for one’s stance on a host of cultural and political issues. These changing attitudes have thrown American monument-protection laws into sharp relief. And many local, state, and federal legislators and executive officials have taken advantage of this opportunity to exploit America’s patchwork of monument-protection laws, …

Distributive Justice And Rural America, Ann M. Eisenberg

Faculty Publications

Today’s discourse on struggling rural communities insists they are “dying” or “forgotten.” Many point to globalization and automation as the culprits that made livelihoods in agriculture, natural resource extraction, and manufacturing obsolete, fueling social problems such as the opioid crisis. This narrative fails to offer a path forward; the status quo is no one’s fault, and this “natural” rural death inspires mourning rather than resuscitation. This Article offers a more illuminating account of the rural story, told through the lens of distributive justice principles. The Article argues that rural communities have not just “died.” They were sacrificed. Specifically, distributive justice …

The Fate Of State Investor Protection, Benjamin P. Edwards

Scholarly Works

In June 2019, the Securities & Exchange Commission made significant changes to the regulation of investment advice, issuing regulations and new interpretations of the Investment Advisers Act of 1940. Industry advocates have argued that states lack power to enact their own regulations on the theory that various federal statutes and regulations combine to preempt and sharply limit state authority. This article examines the current state of reforms around the country and the policy and legal arguments for and against limiting state efforts to raise the standards for investment advice.

Superseding Money Judgments In Texas: Four Proposed Reforms To Help The Business Litigant And To Further Improve The Texas Civil Justice System, James Holmes

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract forthcoming.

Restoring The Public Interest In Western Water Law, Mark Squillace

Publications

American Western states and virtually every country and state with positive water resources law are in perfect agreement about the wisdom of treating their water resources as public property. Not surprisingly, this has led most Western states to articulate a goal of managing these resources in the public interest. But the meaning of the term “public interest,” especially in the context of water resources management, is far from clear. This Article strives to bring clarity to that issue. It begins by exploring three theoretical approaches that might be used for defining the public interest in water resources law before urging …

(Carbon) Farming Our Way Out Of Climate Change, Alexia Brunet Marks

Publications

Numerous climate-related emergencies highlight the challenges and urgency posed by climate change: the 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report, the Global Climate Action Summit in California and international student walkouts, to name a few. While the IPCC Report sent an urgent cry to reduce total emissions and to achieve specific results—45% reduction by 2030 and net-zero emissions by 2050—reductions need to be combined with capturing and storing atmospheric carbon dioxide. Scientific studies have shown that an annual increase of 0.4% of carbon stored in soils would make it possible to stop the present increase in atmospheric CO2.

This …