Public Law and Legal Theory Commons^™

United States Penal System: Approaches To Rehabilitating Minor Drug Offenders And The Efforts Of Governments To Reduce The Number Of Incarcerated Individuals, Thomas Tyler Moses

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

The War on Drugs drastically changed the criminal treatment of illicit drug users in the United States. Changes in the 1980s brought about stricter sentencing laws for simple possession of unlawful substances. While the intent of the legislature was to prevent repeat offenders through the imposition of harsher penalties, these sterner consequences have forced countless individuals into a vicious cycle of incarceration without being offered the rehabilitative services needed to address substance abuse or addiction. Historically, the legal system has treated minor drug offenders in the same regard as those committing violent crimes. Inmates leaving American prisons often find themselves …

Getting Away With Murder: How California State Law Determined Recovery In First Roundup Cancer Case Johnson V. Monsato Co., Eliza L. Quattlebaum

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind: Analyzing Inhumane Practices In Mississippi’S Correctional Institutions Due To Overcrowding, Understaffing, And Diminished Funding, Ariel A. Williams

Honors Theses

The purpose of this research is to examine the political, social, and economic factors which have led to inhumane conditions in Mississippi’s correctional facilities. Several methods were employed, including a comparison of the historical and current methods of funding, staffing, and rehabilitating prisoners based on literature reviews. State-sponsored reports from various departments and the legislature were analyzed to provide insight into budgetary restrictions and political will to allocate funds. Statistical surveys and data were reviewed to determine how overcrowding and understaffing negatively affect administrative capacity and prisoners’ mental and physical well-being. Ultimately, it may be concluded that Mississippi has high …

Organic Waste Bans: Beyond The Compost Heap, David Lee

Journal of Food Law & Policy

Food waste and food insecurity are strange bedfellows, but in the United States they shamelessly walk hand-in-hand. The USDA’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (“SNAP”) and the Emergency Food Assistance Program (“TEFAP”) are two federal programs that provide for large numbers of people in the United States. Local food recovery and donation programs serve their communities as the “backbone of the America hunger response" efforts. While many American households continue to report their struggles with food insecurity, heaping piles of good food go to waste. The repercussions of wasted food are vast, taxing American wallets, wasting our resources with every bit …

The Pandemic, Climate Change And Farm Subsidies, Allen H. Olson, Edward J. Peterson

Journal of Food Law & Policy

Many people believe that once the COVID-19 pandemic has passed, life will return to the way it was. This belief is both unrealistic and dangerous. It is unrealistic because the virus will be around for years if not indefinitely. The timeframe for the worst of the pandemic will depend on our ability to administer effective vaccines worldwide and the public’s willingness to accept continued social distancing in the meantime. The damage done to public health, the economy and individuals is already substantial and will get worse. Recovery will be slow and incomplete. The belief that life will return to the …

Farm And Food Worker Inequity Exposed And Compounded By Covid-19, Kimberly M. Bousquet

Journal of Food Law & Policy

Of the 2.4 million farm-working laborers in the United States, upwards of 73% are immigrants. And, according to the Economic Policy Institute, immigrants make up nearly 22% of all workers in the U.S. food industry, including 27% of food production workers, 37% of meat processing industry workers, 34% of commercial bakery workers, and 31% of fruit and vegetable preservation work. Another study found that “[p]eople of color make up the majority of essential workers in food and agriculture (50%) and in industrial, commercial, residential facilities and services (53%).” Many of these workers--if not the majority in some sectors--are undocumented and/or …

Understanding Modern History Of International Food Law Is Key To Building A More Resilient And Improved Global Food System, Michael T. Roberts

Journal of Food Law & Policy

This article advocates the need for a history of the development of modern international food law and suggests an analytical approach to complement the chronicling of events. Comprehension of this history will help elucidate the evolution of a complicated modern global food system, including its resiliency and vulnerability as demonstrated by Covid-19, thereby providing valuable context for change in the system where needed. This essay makes the case for such a history in three parts. First, it briefly demonstrates the need for a historical perspective through a critical examination of a journal article that speaks to Covid-19 food security in …

Iowa Land And Landowners: Fear Or Opportunity, Neil D. Hamilton

Journal of Food Law & Policy

Our relation to the land changed as modern agriculture changed. Today many issues involving the land seem to focus on fear and conflict, revealing a fragility of agriculture surprising for how it confounds the expected image of strength and stability. In many ways, our fragile relation to the land contrasts to the optimism of the relation in the past, in the years of settlement and expansion. Part of the change reflects the adverse impacts of modern agriculture catching up with us, and part stems from a society more willing to focus on issues of equity, inclusion, and inequality. The good …

Addressing Food Insecurity In The United States During And After The Covid-19 Pandemic: The Role Of The Federal Nutrition Safety Net, Sheila Fleischhacker, Sara N. Bleich

Journal of Food Law & Policy

Food insecurity has been a direct and almost immediate consequence of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and its associated ramifications on unemployment, poverty and food supply disruptions. As a social determinant of health, food insecurity is associated with poor health outcomes including diet related chronic diseases, which are associated with worst COVID-19 outcomes (e.g., COVID-19 patients of all ages with obesity face higher risk of complications, death). In the United States (US), the federal nutrition safety net is predominantly made up of the suite of 15 federal nutrition assistance programs that the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) administers and …

Suspect Spheres, Not Enumerated Powers: A Guide For Leaving The Lamppost, Richard Primus, Roderick M. Hills Jr.

Michigan Law Review

Despite longstanding orthodoxy, the Constitution’s enumeration of congressional powers does virtually nothing to limit federal lawmaking. That’s not because of some bizarrely persistent judicial failure to read the Constitution correctly. It’s because the enumeration of congressional powers is not a well-designed technology for limiting federal legislation. Rather than trying to make the enumeration do work that it will not do, decisionmakers should find better ways of thinking about what lawmaking should be done locally rather than nationally. This Article suggests such a rubric, one that asks not whether Congress has permission to do a certain thing but whether a certain …

A Modern-Day Gold-Rush: Applying Property Principles To Data Using Mineral Rights Concepts And The Rule Of Capture, Andrew Crayden

Louisiana Law Review

The article discusses how to apply the principles of mineral rights, particularly the rule of capture, and property framework in the development of data privacy regulations to protect against data breaches and other internet crimes.

Nondelegation Of Major Questions, Clinton T. Summers

Arkansas Law Review

The Supreme Court has many tools at its disposal to address improper delegations of legislative power by Congress to the executive branch. Two of these tools are the nondelegation doctrine and the major questions doctrine. The nondelegation doctrine is a sledgehammer. Able to declare entire statutory provisions unconstitutional, its ability to do a lot of damage is perhaps the reason the Court never uses it. Indeed, the Court has only used it twice, both times in 1935. Although it’s old and rusty, the Court continues to keep it in the toolbox just in case. Since 1935, the Court has been …

A Costly Victory: June Medical, Federal Abortion Legislation, And Section 5 Of The Fourteenth Amendment, Thomas J. Molony

Arkansas Law Review

The United States Supreme Court’s recent major abortion ruling in June Medical Services L.L.C. v. Russo was a win for abortion rights supporters, but a costly one. Although the June Medical Court struck down a Louisiana law requiring abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at a local hospital, a majority of the Justices—and most importantly, Chief Justice Roberts, whose concurrence constitutes the Court’s holding—stressed that Casey’s constitutional standard for pre-viability abortion regulations is not the amorphous balancing test the Court suggested in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, but a more deferential one under which a pre-viability regulation typically will be …

Farmer Cooperatives "Take Cover": The Capper-Volstead Exemption Is Under Siege, Donald M. Barnes, Jay L. Levine

Arkansas Law Review

"When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization." There can be little dispute that food production is of vital interest to any nation’s security and economy. For this reason, the United States Congress, like many other legislatures around the world, has accorded special treatment to the agricultural industry, and particularly to farmers. One example of this special treatment is the Capper-Volstead Act, which provides farmers with immunity from antitrust liability for joint conduct undertaken by and through an “association” of producers.

The Fourth Amendment Stripped Bare: Substantiating Prisoners' Reasonable Right To Bodily Privacy, Meher Babbar

Northwestern University Law Review

Prisoners’ rights to bodily privacy under the Fourth Amendment are limited, allowing detention officials to strip-search them for contraband. The extent to which the Fourth Amendment protects prisoners, however, is uncertain. Questions regarding whether strip searches require reasonable suspicion and the manner in which officials may conduct strip searches have troubled courts for decades. In the absence of clear guidance from the Supreme Court, courts have reached inconsistent conclusions, imperiling the human rights and dignity of prisoners. This Note argues that courts should define and apply prisoners’ rights to bodily privacy with reference to international human-rights law, specifically the United …

Information Fiduciaries And Political Microtargeting: A Legal Framework For Regulating Political Advertising On Digital Platforms, Kimberly Rhum

Northwestern University Law Review

Digital technologies have taken individualized advertising to an unprecedented level. But the convenience and efficiency of such highly tailored content comes at a high price: unbridled access to our personal data. The rise of sophisticated data-driven practices, otherwise known as “Big Data,” enables large datasets to be analyzed in ways that reveal useful patterns about human behavior. Thanks to these novel analytical techniques, businesses can cater to individual consumer needs better than ever before. Yet the opportunities presented by Big Data pose new ethical challenges.

Significant scholarly research has examined algorithmic discrimination and consumer manipulation, as well as the ways …

Emergencies Revisited: The Enduring Legacy Of The Police Power, Santiago Legarre

Belmont Law Review

No abstract provided.

Revisiting Hudson County Water Co. V. Mccarter: Realism, The Public Trust Doctrine, And Environmental Conservation In The Lochner Era, Steven Huffman

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Legal histories of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era tend to focus inordinately on economic regulation within a doctrinal framework in which private rights, equal protection, and “substantive” due process guided judicial decision-making. Consequently, the overarching economic context in prevailing legal historiography obscures an important yet oft-overlooked development in the linkage between public rights, natural resource trusteeship, and the early-twentieth-century environmental conservation movement. This development is inextricably tied to the evolution of water law in the late nineteenth century and the expansion of the American commercial republic. A normative understanding of public water rights during this period is confined to …

Public Compensation For Public Enforcement, Prentiss Cox, Christopher L. Peterson

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Public enforcement actions frequently result in the distribution of money to people affected by violation of market protection laws. This “public compensation” returns billions of dollars to consumers, investors, and others each year. The law of public compensation appears confusing at first impression because of inconsistent use of nomenclature and conceptual confusion, but courts have developed a discernible set of principles that allow for presumptions and loosened proof standards in awarding this relief. This doctrine held for decades despite repeated challenges by business defendants. The Supreme Court’s decision in Liu v. SEC in June 2020, followed by its grant of …

Covid-19 Impacts: How A Global Pandemic Amid The Sunsets Of The Ptc And Itc Made The U.S. Wind And Solar Industries More Resilient, Kimberly E. Diamond

Fordham Environmental Law Review

A cataclysmic event is sometimes the necessary catalyst for companies within certain industries to re- examine, radically shift, and replace their standard practices with technologically-advanced alternatives. In the United States, the occurrence of the Coronavirus pandemic (“COVID-19”) during the sunsets of the Production Tax Credit (“PTC”) and the Investment Tax Credit (“ITC”) created a unique confluence of factors that produced a perfect storm tantamount to such a cataclysmic event for companies in the wind and solar industries, particularly developers. Over the years, the domestic utility-scale wind industry has come to rely heavily upon the PTC, while the domestic utility- scale …