Law and Society Commons^™

Community Land Trusts: Institutionalizing The Human Flourishing Theory Of Property, John A. Lovett

Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy

Greg Alexander has made a powerful case that an owner of property in a free and democratic society will be required from time to time to provide resources, in ways appropriate to that owner, to support the development of other persons' human capabilities. In this essay, I focus attention on legal relationships epitomizing Alexander's human flourishing theory that owe their genesis in the collaborative work of community activists, who often began their efforts from positions of devout religious conviction, and public-spirited transactional lawyers. The product of that work is the property law institution known as the Community Land Trust (CLT).

Easements, Servitudes And Human Flourishing Theory, Andrea Loux Jarman

Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy

Professor Alexander's final monograph is an exploration of what he has termed "human flourishing theory." Human flourishing theory holds that the ownership of private property carries with it obligations to foster human flourishing-whether of individual neighbours or local communities. This Article examines two cases in the British law of easements and servitudes, where the judiciary expanded the scope of doctrines of land law so as to uphold the legal right of neighbours to use private land.

Past And Present: The Dialectics Of Property: An Essay In Honor Of Gregory Alexander, Shelly Kreiczer-Levy

Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy

This Essay explores the dialectic between stability and dynamism in property, inspired by the work of Gregory Alexander. Its focus is inheritance law and the conflicting commitments between the past and the present. Inheritance contributes an added layer of complexity to the familiar dialectic. It complicates the tension between communities and individualism and adds a dialectic between a commitment to past values, tradition and customs and a commitment to individual values and a fresh voice. This complexity advances a double, contradictory meaning of current inheritance rules. On the one hand, testamentary freedom symbolizes individualism and dynamism, because it provides owners …

Of Bodies Politic And Pecuniary: A Brief History Of Corporate Purpose, David B. Guenther

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

American corporate law has long drawn a bright line between for-profit and non-profit corporations. In recent years, hybrid or social enterprises have increasingly put this bright-line distinction to the test. This Article asks what we can learn about the purpose of the American business corporation by examining its history and development in the United States in its formative period from roughly 1780-1860. This brief history of corporate purpose suggests that the duty to maximize profits in the for-profit corporation is a relatively recent development. Historically, the American business corporation grew out of an earlier form of corporation that was neither …

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 …

Immigration Challenges Of The Past Decade And Future Reforms, Fatma Marouf

SMU Law Review Forum

Over the past decade, immigrants have faced numerous challenges in the United States, including a dramatic increase in deportations, the expansion and privatization of immigration detention, major changes to the asylum system combined with drastic cutbacks in refugee admissions, and a new wave of racism and xenophobia. This Article discusses these challenges and explores possible ways to address them in 2020 and beyond.

From “Mind Playing Tricks On Me” To “Trauma”: Adverse Childhood Experiences And Hip Hop’S Prescription, André Douglas Pond Cummings, Caleb Gregory Conrad

Law Faculty Scholarship

Over the past two decades, research focused on the causes and the lasting impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACEs, has been changing the way researchers, healthcare providers, and advocates approach areas like mental health, risky behaviors, and chronic disease. Numerous studies have produced and solidified results that present three undeniable truths:

(1) the vast majority of Americans have experienced some form of trauma in their childhood,

(2) people with low income or educational attainment and people of color experience increased instances of childhood trauma and adversity, and

(3) the more childhood trauma an individual experiences, the higher the risk …

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 …

Debt Bondage: How Private Collection Agencies Keep The Formerly Incarcerated Tethered To The Criminal Justice System, Bryan L. Adamson

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

This Article examines the constitutionality of statutes which allow courts to transfer outstanding legal financial obligations to private debt collection agencies. In Washington State, the clerk of courts can transfer the legal financial obligation of a formerly incarcerated person if he or she is only thirty days late making a payment. Upon transfer, the debt collection agencies can assess a “collection fee” of up to 50% of the first $100.000 of the unpaid legal financial obligation, and up to 35% of the unpaid debt over $100,000. This fee becomes part of the LFO debt imposed at sentencing, and like that …

The City And The Soul: Character And Thriving In Law And Politics, Sherman J. Clark

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article describes a way of thinking about law and politics that is ancient in origins but largely absent from modern legal scholarship. It poses a two-part question: how do our law and politics influence our character, and how does that in turn influence how well and fully we live?

Much legal scholarship asks how law can be more efficient and effective in making us richer, healthier, safer, and such. This is good: wealth, health, and safety are—or can be—good things. But material conditions are not the only things that make for a rich and full life. What also matters—and …

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 …

From Public Health To Public Wealth: The Case For Economic Justice, Barbara L. Atwell

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article examines how we can overlay the principle of serving the common good, which undergirds public health law, onto financial well-being. It suggests that we apply public health law principles to corporate law and culture. In matters of public health, we view quite broadly states' police power to protect the public good. Government is also empowered to protect the general welfare in matters of financial well-being. Using the “general welfare” as a guidepost, this Article challenges the conventional wisdom that corporations exist solely to maximize profit and shareholder value to the exclusion of virtually everything else. It proposes two …

European Citizens' Attitudes Towards The European Union And Integration, And The Question Of Sovereignty, Dylan Hruska

Political Science Theses and Capstones

Since the referendum in 2016 that stated the United Kingdom was to leave the EU, many were wondering what caused them to leave. Many point to the theory that integration into the European Union was the cause, however we will look into other factors such as attitudes by analyzing the works of theorists, researchers, professors, and others to answer the question if the EUs encroachment on sovereignty, rise of nationalism, and the attitudes towards the EU are the possible factors to leaving the EU. I analyze political identities, occupation, and overall feelings on the EU and EU policies to see …

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 …

Safe Consumption Sites And The Perverse Dynamics Of Federalism In The Aftermath Of The War On Drugs, Deborah Ahrens

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

In this Article, I explore the complicated regulatory and federalism issues posed by creating safe consumption sites for drug users—an effort which would regulate drugs through use of a public health paradigm. This Article details the difficulties that localities pursuing such sites and other non-criminal-law responses have faced as a result of both federal and state interference. It contrasts those difficulties with the carte blanche local and state officials typically receive from federal regulators when creatively adopting new punitive policies to combat drugs. In so doing, this Article identifies systemic asymmetries of federalism that threaten drug policy reform. While traditional …

Data Management Law For The 2020s: The Lost Origins And The New Needs, Przemysław Pałka

Buffalo Law Review

In the data analytics society, each individual’s disclosure of personal information imposes costs on others. This disclosure enables companies, deploying novel forms of data analytics, to infer new knowledge about other people and to use this knowledge to engage in potentially harmful activities. These harms go beyond privacy and include difficult to detect price discrimination, preference manipulation, and even social exclusion. Currently existing, individual-focused, data protection regimes leave law unable to account for these social costs or to manage them.

This Article suggests a way out, by proposing to re-conceptualize the problem of social costs of data analytics through the …

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 …

Strict Liability Upon Gunowners (Slug): A Proposed Balanced Approach, David Louis

St. Mary's Law Journal

Careless or apathetic gunowners, whose lost or stolen firearms are used in the commission of a violent crime, should be held strictly liable. Current tort law leaves victims of gun violence and their families without a mode of redress against an irresponsible gun owner whose actions played a pivotal role in the victim’s ultimate injury. Without effective liability principles to regulate gun ownership, gunowners are provided de facto immunity regardless of whether the harm suffered by the victim is intertwined with the gunowners careless behavior. This comment examines the efficacy of existing tort liability principles as provided in the Restatement …