Law and Society Commons^™

Honest Services Fraud After Skilling., Pamela Mathy

St. Mary's Law Journal

The United States Supreme Court ruling in Skilling v. United States limits honest services fraud prosecutions of both public officials and private individuals to schemes involving bribes or kickbacks. Over the past two decades, federal prosecutors have used the federal mail and wire fraud statutes to reach schemes which deprive citizens of their money or property and of the intangible right to honest services. The Court’s ruling in Skilling removes a category of deceptive, fraudulent, and corrupt conduct from the scope of the honest services law. By limiting honest services fraud under the statute to bribes and kickbacks, the Court …

Admitting Light Detection And Ranging (Lidar) Evidence In Texas: A Call For Statewide Judicial Notice., Ryan V. Cox, Carl Fors

St. Mary's Law Journal

The reliability of LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) is generally questioned for one of two reasons. First, when the speeding charge is of such great importance to the defendant that he must challenge the technology. Second, when the defendant is charged with a different and more serious crime because of the traffic stop. In this instance the reliability of the equipment provides the opportunity to question the stops’ underlying probable cause. Assuming the particular jurisdiction has not settled the issue of reliability of LIDAR evidence, the court must require the prosecutor to present expert testimony to show reliability. In the …

Reflections On Class In American Legal Education, Richard O. Lempert

Articles

Professor Richard Sander's Class in American Legal Education is an almost unique effort to examine empirically the social class origins of American law school students and to relate law student class origins to law school stratification, the class structure of American society and the potential law school applicant pool. His effort, and the special attention he gives to the class composition of elite law schools comes perhaps at a fortuitous time in the history of American legal education. The law degree, like the medical degree, has long been a route for upward mobility in American society. But the access of …

Child Pornography And Community Notification: How An Attempt To Reduce Crime Can Achieve The Opposite, J. J. Prescott

Articles

Community notification laws, designed to reduce the frequency of sex offenses by alerting potential victims to nearby threats and by encouraging citizen monitoring of potential recidivists, may make sense in the context of traditional sex offenses and sex offenders. But child pornography crimes and the individuals who commit them are different, and they differ from archetypal sex crimes and criminals in ways that may unintentionally cause community notification laws to facilitate crime rather than inhibit it. Child porn offenses typically involve money or trade, and their commission hinges on successfully conspiring with others. Markets and information are necessary building blocks …

Biological Metaphors For Whiteness: Beyond Merit And Malice, Brant T. Lee

Akron Law Faculty Publications

The problem of persistent racial inequality is grounded in a failure of imagination. The general mainstream conception is that unfair racial inequality occurs only when there is intentional racism. Absent conscious racial malice, no racism is seen to exist. The only generally available alternative explanation for racial inequality is the meritocratic system. Viewing the distribution of resources as a product of a generally fair meritocratic system provides a defense against any charge of racism, and justifies the status quo.

But in economics, business, computer science, and even biology, observers of complexity are coming to understand how dominant systems can prevail …

The Meaning Of 'Sphere Of Influence' In Iso 26000, Stepan Wood

Articles & Book Chapters

The relationship between a company’s influence and its social responsibilities is the subject of persistent controversy, manifested for example in the debate over the use of the concept of “sphere of influence” (SOI) to define the scope of a company’s social responsibility. Early drafts of the ISO 26000 guide on social responsibility employed SOI in this way, stating among other things that influence can give rise to responsibility and that generally, the greater the ability to influence, the greater the responsibility. The UN Special Representative on business and human rights, John Ruggie, rejected this use of SOI as ambiguous, misleading, …

Fulfilling The Copyright Social Justice Promise: Digitizing Textual Information, Lateef Mtima, Steven D. Jamar

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Can Popular Constitutionalism Survive The Tea Party Movement?, Jared Goldstein

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Introduction: Governing Civil Society, Dana Brakman Reiser, Claire R. Kelly

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Orphan Works And The Google Book Search Settlement: An International Perspective, Bernard Lang

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Synopsis Of Texas And Federal Sovereign Immunity Principles: Are Recent Sovereign Immunity Decisions Protecting Wrongful Governmental Conduct., Marilyn Phelan

St. Mary's Law Journal

The Texas Supreme Court recently rendered several decisions involving governmental entities reflecting the court’s inflexible application of the doctrine of sovereign immunity. These decisions raise concerns that the Court may be insulating government employees from adherence to ethical codes of conduct. Just as Congress enacted legislation requiring accuracy and reliability from financial officers of corporations, there exists a similar need for Texas courts to protect the public from governmental harm through misconduct. The current awareness of governmental officials lessens the likelihood of governmental transparency and accountability. This Article analyzes the Court’s current application of the sovereign immunity doctrine to provide …

Legal Malpractice Litigation And The Duty To Report Misconduct., Vincent R. Johnson

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

Lawyers participating in legal malpractice litigation sometimes encounter evidence of serious disciplinary rule violations. Whether, and how soon, those lawyers are required to report this information to grievance authorities is a question that has received little attention from courts and scholars, despite the fact that most states have mandatory reporting rules. The dilemma for lawyers serving as testifying experts is particularly troublesome because nonreporting may result not only in discipline, but testimonial impeachment. The better view is that an expert in a pending case ordinarily has no mandatory obligation to report misconduct. This conclusion is supported by an analysis of …

Ethically Handling The Receipt Of Possibly Privileged Information., James M. Fischer

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

Inadvertently sent e-mails that contain privileged information, material negligently included in a discovery response, or employer's documents taken by a whistle-blower all share a common theme-the materials were not intended to be disclosed to the opposing party. This Article makes two contentions. First, all unintended disclosures should be treated under a single standard that asks whether the privilege holder exercised reasonable care in maintaining the confidentiality of the materials. Second, with respect to the receiving lawyer's professional obligations, a lawyer who receives materials that may be privileged should be allowed to read the materials: (1) to determine whether the materials …

Practical Ethics For The Professional Prosecutor., Enrico B. Valdez

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

In Brady v. Maryland, the United States Supreme Court held that the prosecution's withholding of material exculpatory evidence violated the defendant's due process rights regardless of the absence of bad faith. The implications of this duty can be seen in the case of John Thompson, a man who was convicted of murder in Louisiana in 1985 after the prosecution failed to turn over exculpatory evidence. Thompson was able to get his conviction reversed and subsequently sued the district attorney's office. This Article analyzes Brady and the decisions that followed it to outline the obligations of prosecutors who are in possession …

Circular 230: New Rules Governing Practice Before The Irs., C. John Muller Iv

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

This Article addresses the issue of tax preparer oversight. Currently, anyone may prepare a tax return for a fee. However, those preparers who are not lawyers, certified public accountants, or authorized to practice before the IRS are not required to meet a minimum standard of education, knowledge, training, or skill. After recent government studies revealed that these non-trained tax return preparers were making costly, egregious mistakes, the IRS proposed mandating oversight over any individual who prepares a tax return for compensation. This Article discusses, in depth, the Department of the Treasury's proposed regulations to broaden the authorities of IRS Circular …

Reaction To: Wealth, Poverty, And The Equal Protection Clause, Patricia A. Broussard

Journal Publications

No abstract provided.

An Expectation Of Empathy, Steve Leben

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Those Who Ignore The Successes Of The Past Suffer Recurrent, Intensifying Crises, William K. Black

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

D Is For Digitize: An Introduction, James Grimmelmann

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Google Book Settlement And The Fair Use Counterfactual, Matthew Sag

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.