Jurisprudence Commons^™

Empty Voting And Hidden Ownership In Canadian Jurisprudence, Maziar Peihani

All Faculty Publications

The classic understanding of equity encompasses a suite of economic and governance rights, which typically includes the rights to vote, receive dividends, and participate in distribution of assets upon dissolution. This conventional view, outlined in corporate legislations, is supported by Canadian jurisprudence and corporate law scholarship. However, financial innovations have facilitated the separation of voting rights from the financial entitlements of shares, creating a marketplace where shareholder interests are reconfigured and traded in diverse ways. Derivatives and securities lending arrangements have led to phenomena known as empty voting and hidden ownership. In empty voting, an investor retains voting rights without …

Institutionalized Ostracism, Danieli Evans

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Belonging is a fundamental need, like food or water. Hundreds of social psychology studies find that people who are ostracized (excluded, rejected, or ignored) experience severe pain and suffering. Ostracism threatens basic needs, triggers the same neurocognitive processing system as physical pain, and impairs functioning. Furthermore, ostracized people may cope in ways that beget “deviant” labeling and further ostracism.

Belonging and ostracism are prevalent themes in social psychology research, but these constructs have received relatively little attention in law. This Article begins to explore the implications of this research for law. I make three contributions: First, I name and describe …

An Analysis Of Florida's Dual Enrollment Laws: How Florida's Model Is Uniquely Protected By The Fourteenth Amendment, William H. Hamman

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Florida’s dual enrollment program is an offering within the state’s basic education package, allowing secondary students to participate in postsecondary courses while simultaneously earning secondary and postsecondary credit. In Florida, around 80,000 students participate annually, and 1.5 million students are within the grade range eligible for participation in the program. This thesis analyzes how the program, and subsequently eligible students, are granted constitutional protections under the Fourteenth Amendment. The author conducted this research to highlight the expansive nature of constitutional law and demonstrate how Florida’s model is unique among state-mandated dual/concurrent enrollment programs. To conduct the necessary research, the author …

Green Dividends: A Case Study In Green Dividends And The Conditions For Private Ordering Solutions, Anne M. Tucker

Seattle University Law Review

This Essay introduces a novel private ordering solution to facilitate corporate investments in pro-social and environmental initiatives: Green dividends. Green dividends are an optional increase in shareholder dividends that are returned to the company to be reinvested in environmental initiatives or kept by a shareholder.

Green dividends pose an alternative to the current gridlocked debate that corporations can’t, won’t, shouldn’t, and shouldn’t even try to act in pro-social or environmental ways. Turning the common refrains on their head converts each narrative into an element for a successful private ordering solution: authority, accountability, shareholder buy-in, and government- backed enforcement. With Green …

Does Climate Disclosure Work To Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions? Emerging Evidence Suggests Cautious Optimism, Cynthia A. Williams

Seattle University Law Review

Significant regulatory resources have been spent developing global, voluntary climate and sustainability disclosure standards, such as the TCFD, TNRD, and ISSB’s Sustainability and Climate Disclosure standards, or domestically required disclosures, such as in the EU and in the U.S. Thus, it is important to evaluate whether this disclosure, particularly voluntary, qualitative disclosure, will have the power to shift the allocation of capital, will have a significant effect on the management of climate risk within firms, and ultimately will reduce climate change risk and biodiversity loss.

In this Article, several interrelated questions will be discussed. First, what does the empirical evidence …

Scientific Educations Among U.S. Judges, Christa J. Laser

American University Law Review

Should more judges have technical and scientific educations than are currently prevalent in the federal judiciary? This empirical study of the educational background of federal judges reports the undergraduate and graduate majors of active U.S. federal Article III judges. Information on the subject area of study is largely not publicly available, especially for judges appointed decades ago. This is the first and only publicly available research study of the subject areas of study of U.S. judges, collected via phone and email surveys to U.S. judges. The results of this study show that only 7.35% of federal judges have majors in …

The Right To Acquire Property, John G. Sprankling

American University Law Review

Can government prohibit the acquisition of all types of property? The intuitive answer to this question is “no.” But why? Is there a constitutional right to acquire property? And, if so, how does it apply if government merely prohibits acquisition of a certain type of property, such as contraceptives?

The Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments restrict when property may be “taken” or “seized” and when a person may be “deprived” of property. Thousands of law review articles and hundreds of books have analyzed the scope of these provisions. But almost no modern attention has been devoted to their logical counterpart—the …

The Paradox Of Continuing Risk, W. Jonathan Cardi, Ashton Jenne, Chance Villarreal

American University Law Review

The continuing-risk rule is ubiquitously cited by Restatements, casebooks, and treatises as a core duty rule in negligence cases. Indeed, as this Article reveals, the rule has been “adopted”—in the sense that at least one court in a jurisdiction has applied the rule, and no court has rejected it—in thirty-one jurisdictions. In addition to the breadth of its adoption, the continuing-risk rule is also far-reaching: it imposes an affirmative duty to warn, protect, or rescue another from a risk if the defendant’s conduct contributed to the initial creation of that risk. Because most negligence cases involve risk-creating conduct by the …

Survivors Behind Bars: The Criminalization Of Abuse, Assault, And Human Trafficking Victims And The Need For A Trauma-Informed Approach, Jamie Beck, Chelsea Estes

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

From Downes To Dobbs: Why Stare Decisis Should Not Stop The Court From Overturning The Territorial Incorporation Doctrine, Gino Piccinini

Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality

No abstract provided.

Do Federal Circuit Courts Of Appeal Provide Adequate Assistance To Self-Represented Litigants? A Review Of The Circuits’ Websites Resources, Jona Goldschmidt

Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality

No abstract provided.

Doubting Thomas And Questioning Stare Decisis Under The Roberts Court, Wilfred U. Codrington Iii

Articles

The article critically examines the erosion of stare decisis under the Roberts Court, highlighting concerns about the Supreme Court's increasing willingness to overturn established precedents. While acknowledging the importance of stare decisis in maintaining stability and equality, the author argues that its practical value is being undermined by ideological polarization and a departure from traditional legal reasoning. The article questions the Court's recent approach to precedent, particularly in cases like Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization and Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, and critiques the conservative majority's aggressive use of judicial power.

Cross-Talk, Alicia Bannon, John Q. Barrett, Tyler Rose Clemons, Wilfred U. Codrington Iii, Mark C. Niles

Articles

The symposium examines the Supreme Court's recent trend of overturning precedent, arguing that this practice undermines the principle of *stare decisis* and the Court's legitimacy. Historically, the Court has used precedent to protect marginalized groups, but recent decisions suggest a shift toward benefiting non-marginalized interests, such as big businesses and conservative groups. This change is seen as a departure from the Court's traditional role and raises concerns about judicial humility and the politicization of the judiciary.

Chevron Stare Decisis In A Post-Loper Bright World, Jonathan R. Nash

Faculty Articles

In its June 2024 decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the Supreme Court jettisoned the longstanding Chevron doctrine, which had directed courts to defer to agencies’ reasonable interpretations of ambiguous statutes. The Loper Bright Court attempted to minimize the substantial effect this change would have on administrative law and governance by declaring that “[t]he holdings” of cases that relied on the Chevron test to conclude “that specific agency actions are lawful...are still subject to statutory stare decisis despite our change in interpretive methodology.” But there are two problems with Chevron stare decisis. First, Chevron stare decisis is …

War Courts: Fdr, National Security, And The War On Terrorism, Harvey Gee

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

No abstract provided.

Lewd, Rude, Obscene, And… Violent? Analyzing Student Clothing Depicting Firearms Under The First Amendment’S Obscenity Test, Luke Gorman

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Today’s national news and social media have repeatedly exposed our school-age children to the effects of shootings occurring within their schools and communities. Each shooting brings with it commentary, sometimes from the students themselves. While in-school student speech is more limited than speech levied in the outside world, students do not shed their speech rights at the “schoolhouse gate.” As a result, courts have failed to outline a consistent approach for when a student will be punished for wearing a shirt depicting a firearm to school. This Comment addresses this delicate balance by proposing a consistent three-part test framed by …

Dobbs V. Brown, Benjamin H. Barton

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization1is the most important and impactful Supreme Court decision since at least Roe v. Wade, and potentially since Brown v. Board of Education. Past survey data show that most Americans can only name two Supreme Court opinions: Roe and Brown. Dobbs will surely join that list. This Article compares the history, drafting, and opinions of Dobbs and Brown to show what a missed opportunity Dobbs represents. Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the opinion, it should be clear that Dobbs was one of those unique times (like that of Brown) where the Court …

Structural Originalism: A Second Amendment Case Study, Ian C. Bartrum

Scholarly Works

“Originalism” is having a national moment, even if it is not entirely clear what the word means. What should we be originalist about? The leading academic approach asks us to parse the communicative content of text ratified in a very different linguistic culture; then construct a modern legal meaning consistent with our semantic speculations. Too often the result enforces policy judgments made in a radically different moral and technological world. This makes very little sense.

In this paper I recommend a more perspicuous and coherent use of constitutional history, which I call “structural originalism.” Rather than saddle ourselves with the …

Structuring The President’S Removal Power: An Agency-Specific Approach, Peter Margulies

American University Law Review

Recent Supreme Court decisions have taken a broad view of the President’s power to remove executive branch officials. According to the Court, the President’s Article II obligation to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” generally requires that the President have authority to remove officials at will. The Court has thus far declined to overrule Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, a 1935 decision upholding “forcause” restrictions on removal for multi-member “quasi-judicial” bodies such as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Nonetheless, recent Court decisions have eroded the rationale in the earlier case, which has received additional attention because of efforts …

Fourth Amendment Hydraulics And Programmatic Surveillance, David C. Gray

American University Law Review

There is a hydraulic relationship between Fourth Amendment rights and remedies. When rights expand, remedies shrink, and vice versa. That makes good sense. At its heart, the Fourth Amendment requires striking a reasonable balance between the competing interests of citizens and their government. Expanding rights by, say, adopting a more expansive definition of “searches,” or applying the Fourth Amendment to a new category of government conduct, compromises government interests. When this happens, courts can, and should, bring things back into balance by adjusting remedies.

Sometimes the Court is cognizant of this hydraulic relationship. When the Court expanded Fourth Amendment rights …