Legislation Commons^™

(Anti)-Slapp Happy In Federal Court?: The Applicability Of State Anti-Slapp Statutes In Federal Court And The Need For Federal Protection Against Slapps, Caitlin Daday

Catholic University Law Review

In recent years, lawsuits known as Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, or SLAPPs, have become increasingly common. These suits seek to intimidate and punish people for exercising their First Amendment rights. In response to SLAPPs, over half of the states have enacted anti-SLAPP statutes to protect the targets of SLAPPs. They do so by providing a mechanism for the target to dismiss the lawsuit more quickly than they would normally be able to. In federal courts, the question has arisen as to whether anti-SLAPP statutes should be applied in diversity suits given their close alignment to Federal Rules 8, 12, …

Biden Administration U.S. Space Force Policy Literature, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Provides details on U.S. Space Force policy literature produced by the Biden Administration during its first eight months. Includes announcements that the Biden Administration will continue this new armed services branch begun during the Trump Administration. Features congressional testimony of Biden Administration officials such as Secretary of Defense Lloyd Wilson and Air Force Space Command leader General James Dickinson, the text of Space Force's 2021 Digital Force Vision document, congressionally approved FY 2022 space force budget figures, congressional committee comments and report requirements contained in emerging defense spending legislation, the emergence of collaboration between Space Force and universities such as …

Freedom Without Opportunity: Using Medicare Policy And Cms Mechanisms To Anticipate The Platform Economy’S Pitfalls And Ensure Healthcare Platform Workers Are Fairly Paid, Kim A. Aquino

Brooklyn Law Review

The rapidly aging population, along with the demand for innovative Medicare delivery models such as bundled payment programs have incentivized the use of technology in healthcare because of its potential to cut costs and improve quality of care. Like many industries embracing technological strides to automate and digitize services, the healthcare industry has welcomed new labor markets like the platform economy to facilitate connections between patients and workers with ease. Along with streamlining connections, the platform economy also promises workers flexibility and autonomy over their own schedule. The platform economy’s promise of freedom, however, is not enough to prevent the …

Shifting Antitrust Laws And Regulations In The Wake Of Hospital Mergers: Taking The Focus Off Of Elective Markets And Centering Health Care, Maya Inka Ureño-Dembar

Brooklyn Law Review

Access to health care requires access to a care center and access to comprehensive health care services. Rampant hospital mergers are uniquely poised to reduce both the number of hospitals, requiring patients to travel further, and the services provided within a newly merged hospital, namely reproductive health services. This phenomenon is clearly seen through the merging of secular and nonsecular hospitals, which often result in patients being forced to travel much further for reproductive health care. In the United States’ current model, health care is not a right, but is treated as a commodity. As such, it is governed by …

The Fight Over Frankenmeat: The Fda As The Proper Agency To Regulate Cell-Based “Clean Meat”, Zoe A. Bernstein

Brooklyn Law Review

In recent years, concern over the environmental, animal welfare, and human costs of animal agriculture has spurred an increased demand for nonanimal sourced protein. This has led to significant innovation in food technology. As part of this trend, food scientists have developed a process for in-vitro cultivation of meat cells to produce protein that is biologically and nutritionally identical to meat from traditionally raised and slaughtered animal sources, but that involves neither animal agriculture nor animal slaughter. This lab-grown “clean meat” represents a new era in food technology and is already having an effect on the existing meat industry. In …

The Rise Of Ada Title Iii: How Congress And The Department Of Justice Can Solve Predatory Litigation, Sarah E. Zehentner

Brooklyn Law Review

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was enacted in 1990 to afford equal opportunities for individuals with disabilities. Title III of the ADA, specifically, was enacted to afford disabled individuals equal access to places of public accommodation. When the ADA was enacted, the internet was still in its infancy and Congress did not contemplate the need for governing accessibility to websites of public accommodations. Today, the internet has become embedded in virtually every aspect of our lives, yet there are still millions of disabled individuals who are unable to equally access the websites of American businesses. With the ADA being …

Partnership Tax Provisions Of The Tcja As Illustrations Of Planning Simplification Versus Compliance Simplification Trade-Offs, Emily Cauble

Pepperdine Law Review

Oftentimes, efforts to simplify the process of reporting the tax consequences of events that have already occurred exacerbate complexity faced by taxpayers at the stage in time when they are deciding how to act. Efforts to simplify reporting include, for instance, provisions that obviate the need to value assets prior to their sale or methods for determining tax consequences that reduce the number of computational steps used when determining tax liability. While such efforts may, to a degree, simplify tax compliance, they can also set traps for unwary taxpayers at the planning stage. Avoiding asset valuation or taking short-cuts when …

Taxing The Ivory Tower: Evaluating The Excise Tax On University Endowments, Jennifer Bird-Pollan

Pepperdine Law Review

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 introduced the first-ever excise tax imposed on the investment income of university endowments. While it is a relatively small tax, this new law is a first step towards the exploration of taxing non-profit entities on the vast sums of wealth they hold in their endowments. In this essay I take the new tax as a starting place for investigating the justification for tax exemption for universities and thinking through the consequences of changing our approach, both in the form of the new excise tax and possible alternatives. There remain reasons to be …

May The Odds Be Ever In Your Favor: How The Tax Cuts And Jobs Act Fortified The Great Wealth Divide, Phyllis Taite

Pepperdine Law Review

Have Americans become so desensitized to inequality that we have morphed into a state of dystopia, and vast inequalities have become normalized? Discussions of dystopia typically describe acts of oppression, tyranny, inequality, and an overall undesirable societal state. Dystopia analysis also requires a hard look at societal values to determine ways to avoid adverse outcomes that vast inequalities may produce. By identifying the undesirable outcome, there is an opportunity to avoid or reverse it by enacting laws to combat inequalities. The Hunger Games is a fictional tale of wealthy society members enjoying the rewards of high society while using the …

A Gilti Fix For An Employment Tax Glitch, Richard Winchester

Pepperdine Law Review

Self-employed individuals who operate through a business entity can often dictate how much employment tax they pay, if any. That’s because the rules permit them to control whether their earnings count as labor income – which is subject to employment tax – or the returns on any capital invested in their business – which is not subject to the tax. The GILTI rules enacted as part of the 2017 Tax Act assume that capital investments generally earn a 10 percent annual rate of return. That same assumption can be used to allocate the earnings of a self-employed individual between the …

Intent, Inequality, And The Berlin Walls Of The Mind, Bobby L. Dexter

Pepperdine Law Review

Although acknowledging that various provisions in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 appear responsive to normative arguments presented in tax literature, this article posits that, true to its core intent, the law aggressively advanced the persistent effort to shift the tax burden away from the nation’s wealthiest citizens to the great bulk of taxpayers of more modest financial means. Thus, those with political power successfully employed the tax law to protect, preserve, and enhance prevailing wealth and income inequality. With the election of President Joe Biden and the assumption of Democratic control in both chambers of Congress, however, …

Comparing Capital Income And Wealth Taxes, Ari Glogower

Pepperdine Law Review

As part of the Pepperdine Law Review Symposium The Impact of the 2017 Tax Act on Income and Wealth Inequality: Lessons for 2020 and Beyond, this Essay compares two reform directions to rebuild the progressive tax system: an improved capital income tax—which would eliminate the benefit from deferring gains until a sale—or a wealth tax. The Essay first introduces the concept of a “rate-equivalent” wealth or capital income tax as a way to assess reform alternatives consistently and to identify the assumptions as to how the reforms would be structured. For any chosen capital income tax (or wealth tax) reform, …

The Public Trust Doctrine And The Climate Crisis: Panacea Or Platitude?, Joseph Regalia

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

Over a year of shutting down the global economy during the COVID pandemic achieved about .01 degrees of improvement in global warming. Not even a drop in the bucket. We continue to face a monumental climate crisis. And of the many ways that crisis threatens our environment, winnowing water resources is one of the scariest. One solution that many scholars have turned to is the public trust doctrine. At first blush, this doctrine sounds like a panacea for water management problems: When our water resources are threatened enough that current and future citizen’s access to it is in peril, the …

Composition Over Division: The Statutes Of The National Forest System, Jamison E. Colburn

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

In September 2020, the U.S. Forest Service took the extraordinary step of closing all 18 national forests in California. The risk of catastrophic fire had become so acute that tolerating any human visitors—who could ignite more—was no longer tenable. Damages from the fires of 2020 are still being tallied, but the catastrophe is hard to deny. Five of the state’s six largest fires on record occurred in 2020. Migrating birds dropped from the sky by the thousands from some combination of asphyxiation, exhaustion, and starvation. An estimated 80% of California’s watersheds had recently burned by 2019, leaving them immediately vulnerable …

Ending Injustice: Solving The Initial Appearance Crisis, Pamela R. Metzger, Janet C. Hoeffel, Kristin Meeks, Sandra Sidi

Deason Center Reports

Most Americans expect that if they are arrested, they will quickly appear before a judge, learn about the charges, and have an attorney assigned to defend them. The reality is vastly different. After arrest, a person can wait in jail for days, weeks, or even months before seeing a judge or meeting an attorney. This report chronicles the resulting initial appearance crisis and highlights its devastating consequences. More importantly, it provides policymakers and advocates with actionable recommendations.

“That Name Is Dead To Me”: Reforming Name Change Laws To Protect Transgender And Nonbinary Youth, Sarah Steadman

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Content warning: this Article discusses suicidality.

For transgender and some nonbinary youth, living under a chosen name is a first step toward becoming their authentic selves. For these youth, a name change is powerful; it allows them to choose a name that matches their gender identity. They consider their birth name to be a distressing “dead” name—one that they cannot relate to and need to bury.

Using one’s chosen name decreases suicidality among transgender youth who face many challenges, including family rejection and other severe mental health stressors. Transgender and nonbinary youth can only require others to use their chosen …

Emergency Money: Lessons From The Paycheck Protection Program, Susan C. Morse

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The Paycheck Protection Program, or PPP, was huge. Between April 2020 and May 2021, it provided almost $800 billion to more than 11 million businesses—about a third of all U.S. businesses with 500 employees or fewer. The PPP was also flawed. Treasury and the Small Business Administration faced incomplete statutory instructions and a challenging tradeoff between speed and accuracy in distributing PPP funds.

These flaws make the PPP a realistic and valuable case study; the PPP reveals tools that can be applied to similar distributions of emergency funds. One tool is back-end adjustments, meaning that funds are first distributed and …

Rethinking Immigration Enforcement, Peter L. Markowitz

Articles

As the nation turns the page away from the dark chapter of President Trump's relentless assault on immigrants, it is time to take stock of the nation's unprecedented immigration enforcement regime. During its relatively short existence, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) has deported more than twice as many people as were deported in the entire previous history of the United States. The human and fiscal costs of ICE's mass deportation agenda are astronomical, and there is almost universal agreement across the political spectrum that the United States' immigration enforcement apparatus is badly broken. That, however, is where the …

Parental Incarceration And The Costly Effects On Their Children, Briana Rae Zocher

Master of Arts in Criminal Justice Leadership

The purpose of this project is to bring awareness to the silent victims associated with parental incarceration – their children. Throughout this project, the focus will be aimed towards promoting the education of the effects of parental incarceration and the impact it has on their children in a variety of compacities and how those settings influence incarceration amongst children of incarcerated parents. In addition, this paper will discuss parental incarceration in three different lens views: administrative, ethical, and legal. First, the administrative lens pertaining to leadership and evolution to successful leadership, especially the critical component of crisis communication strategy. Second, …

The Cannabis Conundrum: Constitutional & Policy Concerns In Taxation Of The Marijuana Industry, Beckett Cantley, Geoffrey Dietrich

Legislation and Policy Brief

No abstract provided.