Public Law and Legal Theory Commons^™

"Eco" Your Own Way: An Argument For State-Specific Climate Change Legislation, Amanda Voeller

Fordham Environmental Law Review

The consequences of climate change seriously and immediately threaten the American way of life, but proposed federal legislation like the Green New Deal is overly broad, unrealistic, and inefficient. The most effective way for the United States to combat climate change is not with a one-size-fits-all plan like the Green New Deal, but with federal legislation that incentivizes states and cities to enact and enforce individualized, local climate legislation. Different states and cities have different climates, available energy sources, and transportation needs, so the federal government should use financial incentives to encourage states and cities to pass tailor-made bills and …

The Incorporation Of Government Lawyering In The Teaching Of Legal Ethics In Canadian Law Schools, Andrew Martin, Leslie Walden

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Government lawyers, and the specific legal ethics issues that arise in their practices, remain largely overlooked in Canadian legal education. The authors argue that government lawyering should be better incorporated into legal ethics curricula in law schools, for both practical and conceptual reasons. Most importantly, understanding issues unique to government lawyering helps students better understand core concepts in legal ethics, and thus better prepare for the practice of law both in the public and private sectors. While law teachers face serious challenges in incorporating government lawyering into legal ethics education, many of those challenges can be confronted and ameliorated. The …

Reframing Article I, Section 8, Richard Primus

Articles

Constitutional lawyers usually think of the Constitution's enumeration of congressional powers as a device for limiting the federal government's legislative jurisdiction. And there's something to that. But considered from the point of view of the Constitution's drafters, it makes more sense to think of the enumeration of congressional powers as primarily a device for empowering Congress, not limiting it. The Framers wanted both to empower and to limit the general government, and the Constitution's enumeration of congressional powers makes more sense as a means of empowerment than as a means of limitation. The major exception--that is, the one significant way …

The Regulatory Shifting Baseline Syndrome: Public Law As Cultural Memory, Robin Kundis Craig

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court declared unconstitutional the Voting Rights Act’s preclearance requirements for six states’ voting laws, and many of those states almost immediately enacted new voting restrictions, that disparately affected citizens of color. In the 1980s and 1990s, Congress deregulated financial markets, including dismantling protections that had been in place since the New Deal, allowing firms to introduce new forms of derivatives — and systemic risk — into the economy, leading to 2008’s housing crisis. In the early 21st century, state legislatures increasingly enacted exemptions from state vaccination requirements that allowed parents to skip their children’s vaccinations, …

The Case For The Rodeo: An Analysis Of The Houston Livestock Show And Rodeo’S Inverse Condemnation Case Against The City Of Houston, Emilio R. Longoria

St. Mary's Law Journal

On March 11, 2020, Mayor of Houston, Sylvester Turner, (the Mayor) forced the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo to close in order to slow the transmission rate of COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019). This use of the Mayor’s police powers caused a severe economic disruption, which the Rodeo is still recovering from today. This Article makes the case that the City’s forced closure of the Rodeo was a compensable taking under the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and Article 1, Section 17 of the Texas Constitution—regardless of the fact the City acted pursuant to its police powers. Such a finding …

Is This A Christian Nation? An Introduction, Carl T. Bogus

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Stanley Surrey, The 1981 Us Model, And The Single Tax Principle, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Gianluca Mazzoni

Law & Economics Working Papers

2021 marks the 40th anniversary of the 1981 U.S. Model Tax Treaty as well as the 5th anniversary of the 2016 US Model Tax Treaty. The first author has repeatedly argued that the 1981 Model gave life to the single tax principle (“STP”). The 2016 Model updates effectively implemented the principle that cross-border income should be taxed once – that is not more and but also not less than once. For example, the 2016 Model does not reduce withholding taxes on payments of highly mobile income that are made to related persons that enjoy low or no taxation with respect …

Prefatory Matter

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

No abstract provided.

Letter From The Editor, Eudora F. S. Arthur

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

No abstract provided.

No Rest For The Weary: A Survey Of Virginia's 2020 General Assembly Regular And Special Sessions, Samantha R. Galina

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

This has been possibly the most historic year in the Virginia General Assembly in decades. During the regular session alone, 3,857 bills were introduced, spanning thousands of pages covering topics as vast as criminal justice reform to election laws to natural resource protection.1 As if that wasn’t enough, the General Assembly reconvened for a Special Session in August to address the COVID-19 pandemic, related budgetary changes, and a myriad of police conduct-related bills in response to the killing of George Floyd and the national Black Lives Matter movement. This article will provide a summary of some of the major bills …

The Virginia Values Act: A Landmark Civil Rights Legislation Leapfrogs Virginia Into A Leader On Equality, Sarah Warbelow, Cathryn Oakley

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

After more than 25 years of Republican political control, Virginia passed thirteen pieces of pro-equality legislation in 2020, the most sweeping of which was the Virginia Values Act. That legislation modernized Virginia civil rights law, bringing the state into line with the overwhelming majority of other states in addressing discrimination. In addition to adding nondiscrimination protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people in existing law - which included housing, public employment, and credit it created all-new protections from discrimination in employment and places of public accommodation on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, pregnancy, …

Decriminalization In Virginia: Marijuana In The 2020 General Assembly Session, Jenn Michelle Pedini, Cassidy Crockett-Verba

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

Cannabis is regulated in over one-third of the United States and it has finally made its way to Virginia. While it is not yet legal in the Commonwealth, it has been decriminalized. This is when the criminal penalties are removed but civil penalties (often fines) remain. This is a step in the right direction but activists know that this is not enough for the communities that continue to be harmed by a failed war on drugs. The legislation in Virginia will not fix the issue of over-policing in Black and Brown communities but activists believe that it will put Virginia …

Remembering The Ladies: Taking A Look At Some Of Virginia's Most Notable Female Leaders As Virginia Fights For Recognition Of The Equal Rights Amendment, Michelle Kallen, Jessica Merry Samuels, Morgan Maloney

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

In January 2020, Virginia ratified the Equal Rights Amendment, fulfilling the constitutional ratification requirements and thus enshrining it as the Twenty-Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution. This article seeks to highlight and explore the lives and contributions of some of the Virginia women who paved the way for this monumental achievement and shaped our nation and our Commonwealth. From Pocahontas to Barbara Johns and the women of the Virginia Military Institute, the history of Virginia women has been one of grit and determination even in the face of subjugation and exploitation. This article seeks to amplify their voices and …

Unallot A Lot: Virginia's Human Services Budgeting In The Time Of Coronavirus, Valerie L'Herrou, Cassie Cunningham, Salaam Bhatti

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

Virginia’s 2020 General Assembly budgeting process for fiscal year (“FY”) 2021-2022 was upended by the global pandemic which, after a rosy economic forecast for the Commonwealth, sent revenue expectations tumbling, and necessitated a nearly complete rewrite of the budget immediately upon its enactment by the legislature. Social services, an important aspect in the economic health of the Commonwealth, seemed poised to have greater support from the new Democratic majority in both houses of the state legislature as well as the governor’s mansion. But this may or may not have been true, even before the impact of COVID-19.

The Fight Over The Virginia Redistricting Commission, Henry L. Chambers Jr.

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

In its 2020 regular session, Virginia's General Assembly debated whether to send to Virginians a constitutional amendment that transfers the General Assembly’s redistricting responsibility to a newly created Virginia Redistricting Commission (VRC). The VRC is a bipartisan commission of legislators and citizens that will redraw electoral districts before sending them to the General Assembly for up-or-down ratification without alteration. If a supermajority of the VRC fails to agree on redistricted maps or the General Assembly fails to approve the maps, the Virginia Supreme Court will draw the districts. The amendment triggered a fight over how to redistrict, how to end …

Self-Determination In American Discourse: The Supreme Court’S Historical Indoctrination Of Free Speech And Expression, Jarred Williams

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

Within the American criminal legal system, it is a well-established practice to presume the innocence of those charged with criminal offenses unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Such a judicial framework-like approach, called a legal maxim, is utilized in order to ensure that the law is applied and interpreted in ways that legislative bodies originally intended.

The central aim of this piece in relation to the First Amendment of the United States Constitution is to investigate whether the Supreme Court of the United States has utilized a specific legal maxim within cases that dispute government speech or expression regulation. …

Tax Treaties, The Constitution, And The Noncompulsory Payment Rule, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Law & Economics Working Papers

US Tax treaties have been regarded as self-executing since the first treaty (with France) was ratified in 1932. Rebecca Kysar has argued this raises a doubt on whether the treaties are constitutional, because tax treaties (like other treaties) are negotiated by the executive branch and ratified by the Senate with no involvement by the House, and all tax-raising measures must originate in the House under the Origination Clause (U.S. Const. Art I, section 7, clause 7). Her preferred solution is to make tax treaties non-self executing, but that would reverse the universal practice since 1932, and is therefore unlikely. Moreover, …

Reforming Michigan Vehicle Direct Sales Laws, Daniel A. Crane

Law & Economics Working Papers

Michigan stands at a crossroads with respect to the way that electrical vehicles (“EVs”) are sold and serviced. For many decades, Michigan—like many other states—mandated that cars could be sold and serviced only through independent, franchised dealers and prohibited car manufacturers from selling or servicing directly. Historically, those laws were put in place to protect dealers from the superior bargaining power, and sometimes unfair practices, of the Big Three car companies—General Motors (“GM”), Ford, and Chrysler. With the advent of EV technology, it became clear that these decades-old restrictions on direct sales and servicing needed to be reconsidered. Tesla, the …

Establishing A Conditional Driver's Permit In Texas, Texas A&M University School Of Law Community Development Clinic, Madeline Marguerite Byers, Olivia Countryman, Taylor Garner, Crystal Hernandez, Luz E. Herrera, Lisa Mares

Legal Clinics

This report recommends expanding access to state-issued driver permits for Texans who are unable to obtain a driver license due to state requirements imposed pursuant to federal law. Many Texans, especially some of our most vulnerable residents, have difficulty meeting heightened identification requirements under federal law, and consequently drive without state authorization and auto insurance. This report also highlights the benefits of establishing a new driver’s permit and why it should be accessible by Texans who are natural disaster victims, experiencing homelessness, family violence survivors, and immigrants with no lawful status, a complicated immigration status, or in the process of …

The Aggravating Duty Of Non-Aggravation, Steven R. Ratner

Articles

International law's duty of non-aggravation requires states to avoid actions that might inflame an international dispute, both to maintain international peace and to preserve the effectiveness of judicial or arbitral proceedings. Yet parties on the receiving end of calls for non-aggravation --whether from the Security Council or at tribunal -- have little idea of what conduct they are expected to avoid. This state of affairs is most unfortunate in light of the centrality of this norm to the peaceful resolution of disputes and, in particular, examples of seemingly provocative and aggravating acts in recent years. This article attempts to give …