Law and Society Commons^™

Don’T Let The Bed Bugs Bill: Landlord Liability For Bed Bug Infestations In Georgia, Megan M. Harrison

Georgia State University Law Review

Although the historical relationship between bed bugs and humans dates back to ancient Egypt, the common bed bug, or Cimex lectularius, vanished from the beds of Americans around World War II. In the late 1990s, however, our bloodsucking bedfellows returned. Bed bug infestations are a growing public health issue. Bed bugs are now found in all fifty states, with populations in five states reaching epidemic levels. Both the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC) consider bed bugs a “pest of significant public health importance."

Despite their name, bed bugs are not limited to …

Tax Compliance In A Decentralizing Economy, Manoj Viswanathan

Georgia State University Law Review

Tax compliance in the United States has long relied on information from centralized intermediaries—the financial institutions,employers, and brokers that help ensure income is reported and taxes are paid. Yet while the IRS remains tied to these centralized entities,consumers and businesses are not. New technologies, such as sharing economy platforms (companies such as Airbnb, Uber, and Instacart)and the blockchain (the platform on which various cryptocurrencies are based) are providing new, decentralized options for exchanging goods and services.

Without legislative and agency intervention, these technologies pose a critical threat to the reporting system underlying domestic and international tax compliance. Until now, legal …

Individual Accountability For Corporate Crime, Gregory Gilchrist

Georgia State University Law Review

Corporate crime is too often addressed by fining the corporation, leaving the real people who committed the crime facing no consequence at all. This failure to hold individuals accountable in cases of corporate malfeasance generates an accountability gap that undermines deterrence and introduces expressive costs. Facing heightened criticism of this trend, then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates issued a policy designed to generate prosecutions of real people in cases of corporate wrongdoing. The policy reflects a strong and continuing demand for more prosecutions of individuals in the corporate context.

This Article contends that the effort to introduce accountability by increasing prosecutions …

Newsroom: A Mentor And A Friend 2-21-2018, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Panel Discussion: Ethnography, Ethics & Law

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.

Standing Under State Search And Seizure Provision: Why The Minnesota Supreme Court Should Have Rejected The Federal Standards And Instead Invoked Greater Protection Under Its Own Constitution In State V. Carter, Rebecca C. Garrett

Maine Law Review

In State v. Carter, the Minnesota Supreme Court considered whether a criminal defendant had “standing” to challenge an alleged search under the Fourth Amendment and Article 1, Section 10 of the Minnesota Constitution. The defendant moved to suppress evidence obtained by a police officer who had peered in the window of an apartment where the defendant was participating in a drug-packaging operation with the apartment's leaseholder. A divided court held that the defendant had a legitimate expectation of privacy in the apartment. Therefore, the defendant had standing to challenge the legality of the police officer's observations pursuant to the Fourth …

Competing Liabilities: Responding To Evidence Of Child Abuse That Surface During The Attorney-Client Relationship, Alison Beyea

Maine Law Review

Kevin Adams, a practicing attorney in Maine, represents John Brown in a dispute with Brown's landlord. Brown is facing eviction as a result of his inability to pay the rent. Over the course of the representation, Adams has come to believe that Brown is abusing his son. Brown--who is working two jobs but still cannot pay his rent--has told Adams of the incredible pressure he is facing. Brown has admitted that the pressure is getting to him and that he feels bad that he has been “taking it out on the kid.” Brown also told Adams that he had been …

Towering Figures, Enigmas, And Responsive Communities In American Legal Ethics, Thomas L. Shaffer

Maine Law Review

The Annual Edward S. Godfrey Lecture at the University of Maine School of Law was held on November 12, 1998. Professor Thomas L. Shaffer, Edward S. Godfry Professor of Law, presented “Towering Figures, Enigmas, and Responsive Communities in American Legal Ethics.”

When You Should Have Known: Rethinking Constructive Knowledge In Tort Liability For Sexual Transmission Of Hiv, John A. Turcotte

Maine Law Review

AIDS is a modern epidemic that has grabbed the forefront of this nation's attention like no other disease in the twentieth century. Despite vigorous medical research and experimentation, the disease remains incurable and ultimately fatal. Protecting the health of the citizens has always been a strong policy of the law. Tort liability for the spread of contagious diseases dates back to the early nineteenth century. Tort liability for sexual transmission of AIDS began to appear in the late 1980s, not long after the appearance of the disease. Based as it was on the tort actions arising from other transmittable diseases, …

Maine's Sex Offender Registration And Notification Act: Wise Or Wicked?, James A. Billings, Crystal L. Bulges University Of Maine School Of Law

Maine Law Review

The purpose of this Comment is to discuss both the constitutionality and advisability of such sex offender notification statutes with specific reference to Maine's Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (the SORNA). This Comment will discuss, independent of their constitutionality, the advisability of such statutes on a policy level. It is the Authors' thesis that the SORNA will survive constitutional challenges, but as a means of alleviating the problem of sex offender recidivism in this country, the SORNA and similar statutes fail both in theory and in practice. Alternative approaches based on interdisciplinary study will be suggested.

Islam's (In)Compatibility With The West?: Dress Code Restrictions In The Age Of Feminism, Lisa M. La Fornara

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Many secular Western countries have adopted some form of legislation regulating a woman's ability to wear traditional "Islamic" coverings. These governments often cite concerns for gender equality to justify the regulations. Although it is certainly true that some women are forced to wear hijab, many women cover by choice. These women's choices may be rooted in their faith, but the decisions are also commonly linked to other factors like culture. Thus, this Note argues, regulations that prevent a woman from choosing how to dress do not enhance her rights. Rather, the regulations replace a feared authoritarian man with an overly …

In Pursuit Of The Public Good: Lawyers Who Care, Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Maine Law Review

The Eighth Annual Frank M. Coffin Lecture on Law and Public Service was held on November 22, 1999. The Honorable Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, delivered the lecture. Established in 1992, the lecture honors Judge Frank M. Coffin, Senior Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and long-time friend of the University of Maine School of Law.

The Maine Civil Rights Act: History, Enforcement, Application, And Analysis, J. Christopher Parr

Maine Law Review

Since the passage of the “Maine Civil Rights Act” (MCRA, Act) in 1989, the Maine Department of the Attorney General has made enforcement of that civil “hate crime” law one of its highest priorities. According to one statistic, “more than 125 people have been prosecuted in Maine's civil courts on hate crime charges since 1994,” and only two of those actions have been lost by the State. The Attorney General at the time of this writing, Andrew Ketterer, has stated that he takes the perpetration of hate crimes seriously, and that it has been important to him “that the message …

Sovereign Immunity And The Crisis Of Constitutional Absolutism: Interpreting The Eleventh Amendment After Alden V. Maine, Matthew Mustokoff

Maine Law Review

Toward the end of her article, The History of Mainstream Legal Thought, Elizabeth Mensch identifies federalism as a dominant theme in recent Supreme Court decisions. The Court's focus on questions of federalism, however, cannot be directly attributed to the emergence of any specific social or political issues dividing champions of strong central government from defenders of state sovereignty. Instead, the Court's scrutiny seems to have arisen from a perplexing, frustrating, and self-contradictory body of Eleventh Amendment jurisprudence and the perpetual call for judicial clarification it has produced. While the text of the Eleventh Amendment is unambiguous—its language specifically bestows immunity …

Where The Right Went Wrong In Southworth: Underestimating The Power Of The Marketplace, Clay Calvery

Maine Law Review

When the United States Supreme Court unanimously declared in March 2000 that mandatory student activity fees at public universities do not offend the First Amendment if distributed in viewpoint-neutral fashion, the decision dealt a severe blow to the conservative movement that had both supported the challenge to fee assessments and long railed against a perceived leftist/liberal bias in higher education. The New York Times, acknowledging the political implications of the case, hailed the Court's decision in Board of Regents v. Southworth as “a surprisingly broad and decisive victory for universities on an ideologically charged issue that has roiled higher education.” …

Life In No Trump: Property And Speech Under The Constitution, Richard A. Esptein

Maine Law Review

The editors of the Maine Law Review have been kind enough to offer me the opportunity to respond to Laura Underkuffler's criticism of my work in her recent Godfrey Lecture, “When Should Rights ‘Trump’? An Examination of Speech and Property,” which appears in the preceding issue. In my earlier writings on constitutional law, more specifically, in my paper, Property, Speech and the Politics of Distrust, I took the position that modern Supreme Court jurisprudence had taken a turn for the worse insofar as it used different standards of review in passing on the constitutionality of legislation. The current position, roughly …

Surrogate Mothers, Gestational Carriers, And A Pragmatic Adaptation Of The Uniform Parentage Act Of 2000, John C. Sheldon

Maine Law Review

Recent medical advances that permit human conception without intercourse, in combination with sociological changes in our country, dramatically enlarge the population of adults who can produce or raise children. The legal price for this broadening of opportunity, however, is a diminishment of certainty: We are no longer sure whom we should identify as a child's parents. These are important questions, of course, because ready answers will quickly dampen disputes about custody and will immediately establish support obligations and the children's eligibility for health insurance, for inheritance, for Workers' Compensation benefits, and for Social Security survivor benefits. But as important as …

Overawed And Overwhelmed: Juvenile Miranda Incomprehension, Sara P. Cressey

Maine Law Review

Each year approximately one million juveniles in the United States are arrested and read the Miranda warnings. Though studies have shown that the majority of those children do not understand the warnings, most of them must decide alone whether to waive their constitutional rights— and nearly all ultimately make that choice without the help of an attorney. The Supreme Court has recognized that children differ from adults in critical ways, and those differences have important implications for juveniles’ ability to meaningfully waive their Miranda rights. To ensure that juveniles’ constitutional rights are protected, the Supreme Court should take up the …

Newsroom: Have We Outgrown Brown? 02-06-2018, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Convergence And Divergence In International Economic Law And Politics, Sungjoon Cho, Jürgen Kurtz

All Faculty Scholarship

This article explores the phenomena of convergence and divergence in international economic law. It argues that both international trade and investment law have been forced to overcome a structural (legal-institutional) prioritization of market goals via competing social regulatory concerns. It is at this stress point that we argue that a powerful set of converging and procedurally orientated hermeneutics can be identified in the jurisprudence that, properly employed, could significantly bolster the elasticity and durability of state commitment to international economic law constraints. There remain, however, continuing textual and systemic divergences at play, which opponents will often dismiss for reasons of …