Supreme Court of the United States Commons^™

Is A Locomotive In Use And Therefore Subject To Locomotive Inspection Act Liability When It Makes A Temporary Stop?, Anne Marie Lofaso

Law Faculty Scholarship

Case at a Glance: LeDure v. Union Pacific Railroad Company. Bradley LeDure, a long-time locomotive engineer for Union Pacific, slipped on the slick surface of a locomotive while it was idle but powered on, seriously injuring himself. If Union Pacific violated safety regulations under the Locomotive Inspection Act, then it would be negligent per se. But that theory of liability is only available if the locomotive was in use at the time of the accident. The case presents a question of statutory interpretation of the term use.

Law Library Blog (March 2022): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Acknowledgments, Ren Warden

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Unmet Legal Needs As Health Injustice, Yael Cannon

University of Richmond Law Review

In Part I, this Article examines the health justice framework through which laws are understood as determinants of health equity. In Part II, this Article argues that when unaddressed for low-income individuals, legal needs serve as social determinants of health. Applying the health justice framework, the Article examines the major domains of social determinants of health (“SDOH”) and identifies areas of law for which unmet legal needs contribute to poor health and health inequity. Specifically, it analyzes how the five major domains of SDOH of the Healthy People 2030 paradigm of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) …

The Future Of Wastewater Monitoring For The Public Health, Natalie Ram, Lance Gable, Jeffrey L. Ram

University of Richmond Law Review

This Article thus expands the extant literature by considering the legal and ethical dimensions of wastewater surveillance more thoroughly and more broadly. It arrives at an auspicious time, as the United States moves into a vaccine-mediated phase in which COVID-19 is less likely to give rise to broad stay-at-home orders and more likely to trigger narrower, more targeted interventions. It seeks to offer guidance for the legal and ethical use of wastewater surveillance along two dimensions. The first dimension considers the circumstances under which wastewater monitoring should be deployed for detecting and responding to COVID-19 specifically. The second dimension zooms …

Trustworthy Digital Contact Tracing, Emily Berman, Leah R. Fowler, Jessica L. Roberts

University of Richmond Law Review

This Article takes a closer look at digital contact tracing in the United States during the coronavirus pandemic and why it failed. It begins by explaining the shortcomings of traditional analog methods and the resulting need for digital contact tracing. It then turns to the norms regarding consent, the scope of the data collected, and the limits on subsequent use necessary for cooperative surveillance. We argue that any successful digital contact-tracing program must incorporate these elements. Yet while necessary, those strategies alone may not be sufficient. People justifiably lack trust in public health authorities, in new technologies, and in the …

Imagining A Better Public Health (Law) Response To Covid-19, Evan Anderson, Scott Burris

University of Richmond Law Review

This Article is not a thorough-going history of the pandemic response. By way of critique and suggesting a way forward for public health, we are going to imagine how public health—both the official agencies and the interconnected nodes in academia and health systems—might have approached COVID-19 differently. This is a story that focuses on good judgment as the lynchpin of optimal pandemic response and allows us to think about where good judgment seems to have been lacking, and how public health culture and institutions might change to improve the chances of better judgment next time.

Reforming Age Cutoffs, Govind Persad

University of Richmond Law Review

This Article examines the use of minimum age cutoffs to define eligibility for social insurance, public benefits, and other governmental programs. These cutoffs are frequently used but rarely examined in detail. In Part I, I examine and catalogue policies that employ minimum age cutoffs. These include not only Medicare and Social Security but also other policies such as access to pensions and retirement benefits, eligibility for favorable tax treatment, and eligibility for discounts on governmentally provided goods and services. In Part II, I examine different rationales underlying eligibility and discuss the imperfect fit between these rationales and the use of …

The United States Supreme Court’S Enduring Misunderstanding Of Insanity, David Dematteo, Daniel A. Krauss, Sarah Fishel, Kellie Wiltsie

New Mexico Law Review

Within mental health law, the legal defense of insanity has received a disproportionate amount of attention. Classified as a legal excuse, the insanity defense generally negates legal blameworthiness for criminal defendants who successfully prove that at the time of the offense, they did not know right from wrong or were unable to conform their conduct to the requirements of the law, due to an underlying mental health condition. The insanity defense has a lengthy history in the United States, with several different formulations and numerous court decisions addressing various aspects of the defense. Despite its firm entrenchment in U.S. criminal …

Expanding Medicaid In The Postpartum Period, Madison P. Harrell

University of Richmond Law Review

This Comment will discuss how the current Medicaid law is insufficient to address the issue of disappointing maternal health outcomes in the United States and how the federal government should begin to remedy the problem. First, I will shed light on the maternal health crisis in the United States, before discussing the history of pregnancy and postpartum Medicaid coverage. Then, I will outline the enactment of the Affordable Care Act, the subsequent court battle over its constitutionality, and the effects of that decision on the current landscape of pregnancy and postpartum Medicaid coverage. Finally, I will detail my proposal for …

Random Justice, Girardeau A. Spann

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

As recent Senate confirmation practices suggest, the Supreme Court is best understood as the head of a political branch of government, whose Justices are chosen in a process that makes their ideological views dispositive. Throughout the nation’s history, the Supreme Court has exercised its governing political ideology in ways that sacrifice the interests of nonwhites in order to advance the interests of Whites. In the present moment of heightened cultural sensitivity to structural discrimination and implicit bias, it would make sense to use affirmative action to help remedy the racially disparate distribution of societal resources that has been produced by …

Law Dean’S Letter Urges Confirmation Of Biden’S Historic Scotus Pick, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Angela Onwuachi-Willig

Shorter Faculty Works

In a letter citing Black women’s underrepresentation on the federal bench, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, dean of the BU School of Law, and more than 200 other Black women law deans and professors urged the US Senate on Friday to confirm President Joe Biden’s nominee, Ketanji Brown Jackson, to the nation’s highest court “swiftly and with bipartisan support.”

Clouded Precedent: Tandon V. Newsom And Its Implications For The Shadow Docket, Alexander Gouzoules

Buffalo Law Review

The Supreme Court’s “shadow docket”—the decisions issued outside its procedures for deciding cases on the merits—has drawn increasing attention and criticism from scholars, commentators, and elected representatives. Shadow docket decisions have been criticized on the grounds that they are made without the benefit of full briefing and argument, and because their abbreviated, per curiam opinions can be difficult for lower courts to interpret.

A spate of shadow docket decisions in the context of free-exercise challenges to COVID-19 public health orders culminated in Tandon v. Newsom, a potentially groundbreaking decision that may upend longstanding doctrines governing claims brought under the Free …

Is Title Vii An "Anti-Discrimination" Law?, Anuj C. Desai

University of Colorado Law Review Forum

No abstract provided.

Brief Of Amici Curiae International Law Scholars In Support Of Petitioners, Beatrice Lindstrom, Tyler R. Giannini, Diane A. Desierto

Court Briefs

No. 21-995
Budha Jam v. International Finance Corporation

On Petition For Writ Of Certiorari To The United States Court Of Appeals For The District Of Columbia Circuit

From the Summary of Argument

The animating purpose of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (“FSIA”), 28 U.S.C. §§ 1602-1611 (1976), is to remove immunity and preferential treatment for sovereign entities when they engage in private conduct such as commercial activity. In other words, sovereigns acting as private actors should be treated as private actors. The decision below undermines this raison d’être of the FSIA while raising an important and unsettled question: whether a …

Judicial Federalism And The Appropriate Role Of The State Supreme Courts: A 20-Year (2000–2020) Study Of These Courts’ Interest Evaluations Of The Fruits And The Attenuation Doctrines, Dannye R. Holley Mr.

St. Mary's Law Journal

The current composition of the United States Supreme Court increases the probability that the Court will be more likely to side with the government with respect to identifying, evaluating, and reconciling the interest of the government versus those of the people when issues of “policing” reach the high court. This opens the door for state supreme court to independently assess individually and collectively these seemingly competing interests and potentially provide greater protections to the interest of the people.

This Article is a twenty-year study of dozens of state supreme court decisions made during the period of 2000–2020. The decisions focused …

The Aoc In The Age Of Covid—Pandemic Preparedness Planning In The Federal Courts, Zoe Niesel

St. Mary's Law Journal

The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic created a crisis for American society—and the federal courts were not exempt. Court facilities came to a grinding halt, cases were postponed, and judiciary employees adopted work-from-home practices. Having court operations impacted by a pandemic was not a new phenomenon, but the size, scope, and technological lift of the COVID-19 pandemic was certainly unique.

Against this background, this Article examines the history and future of pandemic preparedness planning in the federal court system and seeks to capture some of the lessons learned from initial federal court transitions to pandemic operations in 2020. The Article begins by …

Judicial Ethics In The Confluence Of National Security And Political Ideology: William Howard Taft And The “Teapot Dome” Oil Scandal As A Case Study For The Post-Trump Era, Joshua E. Kastenberg

St. Mary's Law Journal

Political scandal arose from almost the outset of President Warren G. Harding’s administration. The scandal included corruption in the Veterans’ Administration, in the Alien Property Custodian, but most importantly, in the executive branch’s oversight of the Navy’s ability to supply fuel to itself. The scandal reached the Court in three appeals arising from the transfer of naval petroleum management from the Department of the Navy to the Department of the Interior. Two of the appeals arose from President Coolidge’s decision to rescind oil leases to two companies that had funneled monies to the Secretary of the Interior. A third appeal …

Federally Mandated Online Sales Tax: A Logistical Solution For The Future Of E-Commerce, Daniel O'Connor

DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Economic Structural Transformation And Litigation: Evidence From Chinese Provinces, To Economic Change And Restructuring, Doug Bujakowski, Joan Schmit

DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal

No abstract provided.