Law Commons^™

Data Privacy And Security Implications Of A U.S. Central Bank Digital Currency (Cbdc), Rhianna Ross

Student Works

No abstract provided.

The Unfulfilled Promise Of Environmental Constitutionalism, Amber Polk

Hastings Law Journal

The political push for the adoption of state-level “green amendments” in the United States has gained significant traction in just the last couple of years. Green amendments add an environmental right to a state’s constitution. Five such amendments were made in the 1970s in Pennsylvania, Montana, Hawaii, Massachusetts, and Illinois. This Article looks in depth at the case law that has developed the contours of these constitutional environmental rights in the wake of the political revival of environmental constitutionalism in the United States. I distill two lessons from this jurisprudence. First, constitutional environmental rights are interpreted by the courts as …

“Cancel Culture” And Criminal Justice, Steven Arrigg Koh

Hastings Law Journal

This Article explores the relationship between two normative systems in modern society: “cancel culture” and criminal justice. It argues that cancel culture—a ubiquitous phenomenon in contemporary life—may rectify deficiencies of over- and under-enforcement in the U.S. criminal justice system. However, the downsides of cancel culture’s structure—imprecise factfinding, potentially disproportionate sanctions leading to collateral consequences, a “thin” conception of the wrongdoer as beyond rehabilitation, and a broader cultural anxiety that “chills” certain human conduct—reflect problematic U.S. punitive impulses that characterize our era of mass incarceration. This Article thus argues that social media reform proposals obscure a deeper necessity: transcendence of blame …

James Oakes's Treatment Of The First Confiscation Act In Freedom National: The Destruction Of Slavery In The United States, 1861-1865, Angela Porter

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

In his work, Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865, James Oakes provides an overview of several Civil War era legal instruments regarding enslavement in the United States. One of the statutes he examines is An Act to Confiscate Property Used for Insurrectionary Purposes, passed by the Thirty Seventh Congress in August, 1861. This law, popularly known as the First Confiscation Act (FCA), is one of the several "Confiscation Acts" that contributed to the weakening of legal enslavement during the War. Fortunately, scholars have contextualized and deemphasized President Lincoln's role as the "Great Emancipator" by examining …

Does Convenience Come With A Price? The Impact Of Remote Testimony On Expert Credibility And Decision-Making, Ashley Jones

Dissertations

Legal cases involving expert testimony, especially by forensic mental health professionals, is increasingly relying on remote testimony to reduce associated costs and increase availability of such services. There is some evidence to show that expert testimony delivered via videoconference (VC) is comparable to expert testimony delivered in person; however, the most compelling evidence for this claim is unpublished. Other evidence across disciplines showed relative comparability between VC and in-person modalities across various types of outcomes. Based on both unpublished and published findings, this study tested the hypothesis that minimal differences in measures of expert credibility, efficacy, and weight assigned to …

Alternative Approaches To Police Interventions When Responding To Mental Health Crises Incidents, Karen Rivera Apolinar

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Purpose: This study explored mental health workers perspectives on alternative approaches in responding to mental health crises.

The study was carried out in Southern California, in collaboration with mental health workers who currently work or previously have worked in mental health crisis. It adopted a post-positivists paradigm and data was gathered through individual interviews with mental health workers who have direct experience with mental health crisis response in the community and with the police. The twenty participants in the study were men and women working in the mental health field, and of various backgrounds, licensures, and ages.

The study found …

A Bibliography Of Faculty Scholarship, Kathryn J. Dufour Law Library

Scholarly Articles

The purpose of this bibliography is to record in one place the substantial body of scholarship produced by the current faculty at the Catholic University, Columbus School of Law. From its humble beginnings under the tutelage of founding Dean William Callyhan Robinson, through its adolescent period when, like so many other American law schools, it was trying to define its pedagogical niche, to its eventual merger with the Columbus University Law School in 1954, the law school at Catholic University has always retained a scholarly and remarkably productive faculty. The sheer quantity of writing, the breadth of research and the …

Higher Law And Lincoln's Antislavery Constitutionalism: What It Means To Say The Civil War Was Fought Over Slavery, Joel A. Rogers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The US Civil War was fought over slavery. But what do we really mean when we say that? This paper examines that question, first by exploring the idea of “higher law,” which gained tremendous traction in American society starting around 1850. Proponents of the idea claimed that laws such as the Fugitive Slave Act are immoral; that the immorality of such laws is self-evident, and that such immoral laws should be resisted—sometimes even with violence. Meanwhile, opponents of the idea of higher law were not necessarily in favor of slavery, but they opposed the use of extra-Constitutional means to bring …

Rewriting Kendra’S Law: A More Ethical Approach To Mental Health Treatment, James Diven

Pace Law Review

Michelle Go was pushed in front of a subway car by a man suffering from schizophrenia that had fallen through the cracks of New York’s mental health care system. Michelle’s death was imminent because the severely ill man had every right to be on the streets under present law. This note will discuss the problems with New York’s mental hygiene laws that prevent courts from mandating treatment even when treatment is in the state’s best interest.

Michelle’s death is not unique. Historically, New York has struggled to enact effective legislation governing the treatment of mentally ill individuals. As a result, …

What Law Schools Must Change To Train Transactional Lawyers, Stephanie Hunter Mcmahon

Pace Law Review

Not all lawyers litigate, but you would not know that from the first-year curriculum at most law schools. Despite 50% of lawyers working in transactional practices, schools do not incorporate its legal doctrines or skills in the foundational first year. That the Progressives pushed through antitrust laws and the New Dealers founded the modern administrative state reframed how people use the law, particularly in transactional practices, and should be given equal weight as the appellate-based common law in any legal introduction. Nevertheless, the law school model created by Christopher Columbus Langdell in the 1870s remains dominant. As this review of …

Countermajoritarian Criminal Law, Michael L. Smith

Pace Law Review

Criminal law pervades American society, subjecting millions to criminal enforcement, prosecution, and punishment every year. All too often, culpability is a minimal or nonexistent aspect of this phenomenon. Criminal law prohibits a wide range of common behaviors and practices, especially when one considers the various federal, state, and municipal levels of law restricting people’s actions. Recent scholarship has criticized not only the scope and impact of these laws but has also critiqued these laws out to the extent that they fail to live up to supermajoritarian ideals that underlie criminal justice.

This Article adds to and amplifies this criticism by …

Mutually Intelligible Principles?, Andrew J. Ziaja

Pace Law Review

Are the nondelegation, major questions, and political question doctrines mutually intelligible? This article asks whether there is more than superficial resemblance between the nondelegation, major questions, and political question concepts in Wayman v. Southard, 23 U.S. (10 Wheat.) 1 (1825), an early nondelegation case that has become focal in recent nondelegation and major questions scholarship and jurisprudence. I argue that the nondelegation and political question doctrines do interact conceptually in Wayman, though not as current proponents of the nondelegation doctrine on the Supreme Court seem to understand it. The major questions doctrine by contrast conscripts the nondelegation …

Whose Discovery Rules Shall Apply?: Resolving The Circuit Split Involving 35 U.S.C. § 23 And 35 U.S.C. § 24, Thomas C. Walsh

Liberty University Law Review

When courts ignore the plain meaning of statutes, they fail to interpret the statutes in accordancewith the objective intent ofCongress. This has happened in relation to 35 U.S.C. §§ 23 and 24, which are statutes governing discovery rules for proceedings within the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s courts. As a result, the law has been in a state of flux for nearly fifty years. In 1952, Congress passed the Patent Act of 1952. As part of the Act, Congress passed 35 U.S.C. § 23, which gives discretionary authority to the Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office …

Standing At A Crossroads: How To Navigate The Intersection Of Title Vii And Rfra In Federal Employment Religious Discrimination Cases, Rylee B. Seabolt

Liberty University Law Review

What do apple pie, religious discrimination, a global pandemic, and federal employees all have in common? They are each part of the landscape surrounding the intersection of Title VII and RFRA. But the landscape is in dire need of rejuvenation pruning. To date, many lower courts have held that Title VII preempts RFRA in cases where a federal employee claims they have suffered religious discrimination in the workplace. This is problematic because, not only was RFRA passed with the intention that it would cover all cases and preempt laws passed before and after it, but more importantly, RFRA’s strict scrutiny …

Dancing In The Dark: Exploring The Collision Of Copyright With Nfts & The Works They Represent, Jake L. Bryant

Liberty University Law Review

The artist creates, by the mixing of his hands and his mind, an expression of story, life, or memory that, when offered to the world, grants others the ability to recall some element of the human experience through a perspective different from their own. The law has long recognized one’s right to one’s intangible property, offering copyright protection to authors for their works. This protection does not exist at the time of a legal declaration, but rather at the time the work is created. However, copyright protection is not unlimited, and authors do not enjoy a monopoly over every expression …

The Excessive Fines Clause: Assessing Proportionality Of Fines Through Civil Asset Forfeiture By Multi-Factor Tests In The Wake Of Timbs V. Indiana, Lauren V. Parrottino

Liberty University Law Review

This article analyzes the approaches to assessing the proportionality of fines imposed by civil asset forfeiture. In many cases, fines imposed by civil asset forfeiture consist of property. Without clear Supreme Court guidance on the matter of evaluating just what makes a fine “excessive,” I turned to the proportionality jurisprudence from the Eighth Amendment’s Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause. While many circuits have proposed their own tests for excessive fines imposed through forfeiture, I propose an objective multi-factor test that will measure a fine’s proportionality to avoid excessiveness.

Proving A Violation Of The False Claims Act Through Deliberate Ignorance, Joel D. Hesch

Liberty University Law Review

When Congress amended the False Claims Act (FCA) in 1986, it established three separate and distinct ways to establish requisite knowledge. A person violates the FCA when they (1) have actual knowledge, (2) act with deliberate ignorance of the truth, or (3) act in reckless disregard of the truth. The three FCA knowledge standards are differentiated not by ease of proof but by specific application. Merely because deliberate ignorance is the least common standard does not make it less important or harder to prove. This Article gathers and evaluates the handful of Circuit Courts of Appeals cases that specifically address …

At A Glance: Defining Missouri’S Homeschooling Regulations, Christine Hall

SLU Law Journal Online

American parents have a right to homeschool their children, and it is only growing in popularity. Each state has the power to regulate homeschooling, and some do not regulate it at all. In this article, Christine Hall analyzes the practical application of Missouri's homeschooling statute and argues for a change in these regulations.

Memorandum From The Office Of Legal Counsel On Presidential Succession, Department Of Justice Office Of Legal Counsel

Executive Branch Materials

Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel Memorandum on presidential succession issued during the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Roy E. Brownell II secured this document from the papers of Attorney General Herbert Brownell at the Eisenhower Presidential Library.

"Show-Me" No Rice Pharming: An Overview Of The Introduction Of And Opposition To Genetically Engineered Pharmaceutical Crops In The United States, Jillian S. Hishaw

Journal of Food Law & Policy

Farmers in California and Missouri have one thing in common- opposition to the production of genetically modified (GM) "pharma" crops.' A pharmaceutical crop, or "pharma" crop, is a plant that has been genetically altered so that it produces proteins which are used as drugs. Pharmaceutical companies can then harvest the crop and isolate the proteins, which may be used to make human or veterinary drugs. Farmers' fears include a variety of health and environmental hazards; in particular, they fear contamination of their regular crops and the associated market loss. These concerns surfaced in both states where Ventria Bioscience announced plans …