State and Local Government Law Commons^™

Presidential Election Disruptions: Balancing The Rule Of Law And Emergency Response, Jason D'Andrea, Sonia Montejano, Matthew Vaughan

Fordham Law Voting Rights and Democracy Forum

Unexpected disruptions, such as natural disasters and terrorist attacks, could interfere with presidential elections. In this report, the Fordham Law School Rule of Law Clinic advances recommendations for how states should implement the federal law that allows them to extend the time for voting in response to catastrophic events. States should authorize local and state-level officials to trigger extensions, while providing for expedited judicial review of those decisions, whether to grant or deny additional voting time. By dispersing decision-making authority and ensuring prompt judicial oversight, these reforms aim to protect voters’ ability to cast ballots and to guard against the …

Candidates Of Their Choice? Paradoxical Impact Of The Voting Rights Act In Virginia, Mark E. Rush

Fordham Law Voting Rights and Democracy Forum

No abstract provided.

Title I Of The Civil Rights Act In Contemporary Voting Rights Litigation, Helen L. Brewer

Fordham Law Voting Rights and Democracy Forum

No abstract provided.

The New Laboratories Of Democracy, Gerald S. Dickinson

Fordham Law Voting Rights and Democracy Forum

No abstract provided.

Epic Fail: Harkenrider V. Hochul And New York's 2022 Misadventure In "Independent" Redistricting, Richard Briffault

Fordham Law Voting Rights and Democracy Forum

No abstract provided.

Vertical Farming: A Bottom-Up Approach, Michael Martinez

Seattle Journal of Technology, Environmental, & Innovation Law

The twenty-first century will require innovative solutions to address the effects of climate change. Vertical farming is one solution that could help conserve a significant amount of freshwater and reduce the agricultural industry’ s overuse of pesticides and intensive tilling practices, which contributes to soil erosion and pesticide runoff. There has been significant investment in vertical farming in every region of the United States; however, the cost to produce foods with vertical farming remains more costly than traditional farming, which is in large part due to the substantial amount of electricity needed to power all the technology required to grow …

Age Before Fundamental Right? Resolving The Contradiction Presented By An Age Restriction On Running For Executive Offices In Montana's Constitution, Kevin Frazier

Barry Law Review

The Montana Constitution guarantees that “[t]he rights of persons under 18 years of age shall include, but not be limited to, all the fundamental rights of this Article unless specifically precluded by laws which enhance the protection of such persons.” Adults receive similarly strong protections. According to Article II, Section 15, of the Montana Constitution, “[a] person 18 years of age or older is an adult for all purposes,” except for legislated limits on the legal age to purchase alcohol.

It follows that all Montanans have a constitutional claim to the fundamental right that "[a]ll elections shall be free and …

The History And Trajectory Of Major Vice Regulations In Massachusetts, Jonathan D. Zlotnik, David K. Muradian

School of Professional Studies

No abstract provided.

State Of Rhode Island, Minority Contractors And State Funded Public Construction Projects, Mary Piecewicz, Charon Rose

School of Professional Studies

No abstract provided.

Judicial Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion: How Do Diverse Judges Affect Sentencing Guidelines In The State Of Minnesota, Morgan Bausman

Political Science Theses and Capstones

Equal representation within the judicial system is very important. The state of Minnesota has four-hundred-forty-one judges, all different. When the legal system was created, the stereotypical judge was a white male. The legal system that represents the country should grow and diversify along with society. The issue of diversified judicial representation, with a focus on the race and gender of such judges, is a contentious debate across the country. Prior research has studied judges at the federal level and showed that diversity matters, but there have been no studies done at the state level, specifically in Minnesota. I gather data …

Plaintiff's Problem: Constitutional Concerns With Service Of Process Under Alaska Rule Of Civil Procedure 4(D)(7)-(8), Casey Sawyer

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

Rule 4 of Alaska’s Rules of Civil Procedure prescribes how service of process must be completed for a civil lawsuit, much like Rule 4 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. When filing suit against the State of Alaska or one of its agencies or officers, Alaska Civil Rule 4(d)(7)–(8) require that service of process be delivered to multiple locations. The plaintiff will usually have to serve the Attorney General’s office in the district of filing (either Anchorage or Fairbanks) and also must deliver service of process to the Attorney General’s office in Alaska’s capital city of Juneau. If they …

The Effects Of Medical Malpractice Laws In The American States On Healthcare Expenditures, Madison Fulton

Political Science Theses and Capstones

The relationship between medical malpractice laws and healthcare has been an issue battling since the early 1980s. The relationship differs among states because some states have stricter malpractice laws and others have less strict laws, which ultimately affects the healthcare costs within that state. It is argued that because of the risks of lawsuits against doctors, they tend to practice more defensive medicine, affecting health costs and lawsuit rewards. I analyze data from The National Conference of State Legislatures, The Court Statistics Project, and The Kaiser Family Foundation to assess the correlation between state tort laws and their effect on …

Florida Gun Laws Weaken: Another Setback For The Mass Shooting Generation, Riley Kendall

Barry Law Review

While gun control has been a topic of controversy in the United States for decades, one area that has seemed undebatable is the protection of children from gun violence in our Nation’s schools. The methods of achieving this end goal vary from state to state. Some states have continued the longstanding tradition of designating schools as “gun-free zones,” while others have employed armed security guards. Florida has chosen the latter option for its public and charter schools. However, the Florida Legislature has taken a dramatic deviation from this path that will negatively affect students attending private religious schools: it passed …

Progressive State Constitutionalism, Jorge M. Farinacci-Fernós

Buffalo Law Review

Unlike the U.S. Constitution, many state constitutions are truly modern documents that address important social, economic, and political issues from a progressive perspective. This is due to the combination of several key features, including: socially oriented historical circumstances; democratic creation processes; significant substantive content guided by ideas of social justice; and adequate judicial enforcement that takes into account these crucial normative elements. As a result, these progressive state constitutions can become powerful allies in the search for a transformative constitutionalism in the United States that facilitates the goals of social justice and collective prosperity.

The constitutional processes in California (1880), …

Grid Governance In The Energy-Trilemma Era: Remedying The Democracy Deficit, Daniel E. Walters, Andrew N. Kleit

Faculty Scholarship

Transforming the electric power grid is central to any viable scenario for addressing global climate change, but the process and politics of this transformation are complex. The desire to transform the grid creates an “energy trilemma” involving often conflicting desires for reliability, cost, and decarbonization; and, at least in the short run, it is difficult to avoid making tradeoffs between these different goals. It is somewhat shocking, then, that many crucial decisions about electric power service in the United States are made not by consumers or their utilities, nor by state public utilities commissions or federal regulators. Instead, for much …

Acknowledgements, Matthew L. Brock

University of Richmond Law Review

Each year, in a tradition dating back twenty-three years to Volume 33, the Editor-in-Chief of the University of Richmond Law Review authors acknowledgements to be included in their volume’s final publication. In keeping with tradition, I offer below my gratitude to those who have contributed to this publication and to the overall success of the Law Review, and reflect upon the fifty-seventh volume of our journal.

Municipal Failures, Nancy Leong

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Calls for reforming the civil rights enforcement regime often focus on individual government officers. Recent years have brought demands to abolish qualified immunity—a defense that protects individual officers from liability so long as they did not violate clearly established law—and to end indemnification—a practice in which government employers satisfy judgments against their employees.

This Article focuses instead on liability directly against municipalities and draws attention to a promising and underused avenue for recovery: the theory of municipal failure to supervise. It presents two original data sets—one including every municipal liability case decided in 2019, and the other including every case …

Primacy In Theory And Application: Lessons From A Half-Century Of New Judicial Federalism, Catherine R. Connors, Connor Finch

Maine Law Review

In his 1977 article, State Constitutions and the Protection of Individual Rights, Justice Brennan famously reminded jurists that our governmental system includes two constitutions applicable to each state, and New Judicial Federalism was born. Since then, state courts have applied their own Bills of Rights using different approaches with varying degrees of enthusiasm. The primacy approach, requiring state courts to consider the state constitution first, and turning to the federal constitution only if needed to resolve the case, is theoretically optimal but inconsistently followed, even in the few jurisdictions professing to adopt that approach. This Article posits that the reason …

O-High-O: A Policy Note On Ohio's Current Push For Recreational Marijuana Legislation And How Other States Have Created Successful Recreational Marijuana Laws, Alexander M. Stewart

Et Cetera

Many states have gone on to pass comprehensive recreational marijuana laws that have greatly benefitted their economy, public health, and criminal justice system. Ohio currently allows for the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes, and there has been past attempts to enact legislation that would legalize the recreational use of marijuana, but the past proposals failed to gain the widespread support required to become law. This Note seeks to analyze and understand other states’ legislation in an attempt to understand what successful recreational marijuana legislation looks like. This Note concludes with a comprehensive proposal that contains all the essential elements …

The Recipe For Success: How Local Massachusetts And Rhode Island Restaurants Navigated And Survived Covid Restrictions, Han Lambert

Honors Projects in History and Social Sciences

The COVID-19 pandemic and the government restrictions adopted during the pandemic have had a detrimental impact on the continued survival and growth of many industries, including the restaurant industry. This study identifies critical regulations relating to COVID-19, implemented in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, as well as on a federal level, which directly impacted the restaurant industry. It is essential that certain economic and social factors are isolated as a means of establishing trends. In the case of this study, a mixed methods approach was used. The number of restaurants open, the amount of restaurant revenue, and the level of consumer …