Legal Studies Commons^™

Disclaiming Loyalty: M&A Advisors And Their Engagement Letters, Andrew F. Tuch

Scholarship@WashULaw

Are investment banks fiduciaries of their merger and acquisition clients? If not, what rules, if any, constrain the conflicts of interest M&A advisors may face when advising their clients? These questions are rarely asked but central to the regulation of investment banking activities. In their article Bankers and Chancellors, 93 TEX. L. REV. 1 (2014), Professors William W. Bratton & Michael L. Wachter contend that M&A advisors effectively contract out of fiduciary duties in their client engagement letters, “emerging] in practice as arm’s-length counterparties constrained less by rules of law than by a market for reputation.” They also regard recent …

The Formation And Deployment Of Swat In The Ivory Towers, Paul Grant

Online Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to investigate the formation of SWAT teams on college campuses and some of the reasoning behind their deployments. The study provides an overview of the early formation of SWAT, policing in a college setting and finally the creation of such teams that began in municipal policing but have migrated into campus law enforcement.

Data for this study was collected using a 20 question survey sent to college campuses that are members of IACLEA or International association of college law enforcement administrators. The return rate was 37% and the surveys were analyzed using SPSS version …

Intimate Partners In Crime: Utilizing Life Course To Examine Female Criminality, Emily Ann Hayden

Online Theses and Dissertations

Employing a life-course framework, this research examines how various relationship typologies expands Sampson and Laub’s (2003) discussion of ‘marriage’ as a crucial mechanism involved in desistence. Moreover, recent contributions to life-course theory has identified a void in the literature in regards to how ‘turning points’ operate within female offenders. As such, this research fills those gaps by re-conceptualizing relationship typologies and focusing on the similarities between marriage and relationships. Two research questions are explored: If marriage is a turning point for crime, do non-marital relationships have a similar effect? If so, do different qualities and typologies of relationship status provoke …

Destroying Blackness One Body At A Time: Examining The Mediated Representations Of Lynchings Past And Present, Bethany Callan Nelson

Online Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the politics of racial violence in America. Lynchings have served as a means for controlling black communities since the end of the Civil War. For southerners, the model of the plantation economy had to be followed during industrialization in order to maintain social and economic hierarchies. This paper examines numerous aspects of lynchings and their legal justifications as foundational to modern police and vigilante killings. A critical race virtual ethnography was conducted to explore the similarities and differences between historical lynchings and the recent killings of black men in the media. I have outlined that there are …

5-0 Is Not Coming To Save You: Examining The Lack Of Police Intervention In Lgbtq Intimate Partner Violence, Lucais Wallen

Online Theses and Dissertations

Intimate partner violence (IPV) has garnered a lot of attention by the criminal justice system, the media and, academia. Intimate partner violence laws have seen drastic changes over the past hundred years often coupled with the changes of culture and society. Though intimate partner violence surely warrants that attention, the growing and important issue of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) intimate partner violence has largely been ignored. The ongoing struggle of LGBTQ community for equality has not as of yet been a catalyst for drastic legal change. Utilizing narratives from victims of intimate partner violence from around the …

Everybody Matters: A Mixed-Methods Analysis Of Support Services Available To Survivors Of Human Trafficking In Central Kentucky, Arika Morgan Bow

Online Theses and Dissertations

This research is designed to identify service and capacity gaps that exist and need to be addressed in Central Kentucky to improve the provision of social services for survivors of human trafficking. Relying upon in-depth interviews with individuals from different organizations/agencies (e.g., social service providers, federal and local law enforcement agencies, human trafficking task forces) in Central Kentucky that work on human trafficking and with survivors, this research provides a comprehensive picture of the social services available to survivors of human trafficking, including the need for additional services. This research offers an analysis of the capacity gaps that exist, making …

Information Privacy Law Scholars' Brief In Spokeo, Inc. V. Robins, Neil M. Richards, Julie E. Cohen, Chris Jay Hoofnagle, William Mcgeveran, Paul Ohm, Joel R. Reidenberg, David Thaw, Lauren E. Willis

Scholarship@WashULaw

This brief, submitted to the Supreme Court of the United States by 15 information privacy law scholars in the case of Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins (No 13-1339), argues that in enacting the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), Congress crafted a bargain between aggressive, secretive data-aggregating businesses and the public: if those businesses limited disclosures and made reasonable efforts to adhere to practices ensuring “maximum possible accuracy,” they would enjoy a safe harbor from litigation under many other state and federal theories. The FCRA’s consumer transparency requirements and remedial provisions were designed to encourage steady improvement in consumer reporting practices and …

Taking Back The Streets? How Street Art Ordinances Constitute Government Takings, Sheldon Evans

Scholarship@WashULaw

As street art continues to fuel a generation of counterculture and gains popularity in pop culture, laws enacted by local governments to curb this art form raise interesting constitutional issues surrounding the Fifth Amendment's Takings Clause. More and more cities across America are classifying street art and graffiti as public nuisances. Such municipalities impose their agenda on private property owners with street art ordinances. These laws allow the government to come onto private property to remove the street art; some laws go even further by requiring the property owner to remove the street art at his own cost. This Article …

The Internet Grows Up?, Neil M. Richards

Scholarship@WashULaw

Danielle Citron’s Hate Crimes in Cyberspace is one of the most important publications to date in the emerging fields of privacy and cyberlaw. In her thoughtful and insightful book, Citron explains the uneven playing field and frequently shocking acts of abuse that women face online, and demonstrates practical steps that we can take to remedy the problem of online hate through law, education, and the development of better, more inclusive norms. Other contributors to this Symposium have examined these contributions in great detail, pointing out important nuances of Citron’s argument, urging her in at least one case to be even …

Unequal Assistance Of Counsel, Peter A. Joy

Scholarship@WashULaw

There is now, and has always been, a double standard when it comes to the criminal justice system in the United States. The system is stacked against you if you are a person of color or are poor, and is doubly unjust if you are both a person of color and poor. The potential counterweight to such a system, a lawyer by one’s side, is unequal as well. In reality, the right to counsel is a right to the unequal assistance of counsel in the United States.

The unequal treatment based on the color of one’s skin is reflected by …

Banker Loyalty In Mergers And Acquisitions, Andrew F. Tuch

Scholarship@WashULaw

When investment banks advise on merger and acquisition (M&A) transactions, are they fiduciaries of their clients, gatekeepers for investors, or simply arm’s-length counterparties with no other-regarding duties? Scholars have generally treated M&A advisors as arm’s-length counterparties, putting faith in the power of contract law and market constraints to discipline errant bank behavior. This Article counters that view, arguing that investment banks are rightly characterized as fiduciaries of their M&A clients and thus required to loyally serve client interests.

This Article also develops an analytical framework for assessing the liability rules that will most effectively deter disloyalty on the part of …

Digital Laws Evolve, Neil M. Richards

Scholarship@WashULaw

The essay from Wired Magazine (UK)'s special volume, "The Wired World in 2015," argues that although digital laws have lagged behind technological advances, they are starting to catch up, and this trend will continue in 2015. When it comes to privacy and technology, the law is catching up all over the world.

Addressing Systemic Discrimination: Public Enforcement And The Role Of The Eeoc, Pauline Kim

Scholarship@WashULaw

Cases challenging systemic discrimination have always constituted an important slice of litigation under Title VII. Early government enforcement efforts sought thorough-going reform of employment practices in major industries. Private litigants have also pursued cases alleging systemic discrimination through class action litigation. The Supreme Court’s decision in Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, however, made it considerably more difficult for private plaintiffs to pursue claims of systemic discrimination by raising the bar for certifying class actions. In the wake of the Court’s decision in Wal-Mart, many urged the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) to use its enforcement powers to take up the …

Why Data Privacy Law Is (Mostly) Constitutional, Neil M. Richards

Scholarship@WashULaw

Laws regulating the collection, use, and disclosure of personal data are (mostly) constitutional, and critics who suggest otherwise are wrong. Since the New Deal, American law has rested on the wise judgment that, by and large, commercial regulation should be made on the basis of economic and social policy rather than blunt constitutional rules. This has become one of the basic principles of American Constitutional law. Although some observers have suggested that the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Sorrell v. IMS Health (2011) changes this state of affairs, such readings are incorrect. Sorrell involved a challenge to a poorly-drafted Vermont …

A Confident Pluralism, John D. Inazu

Scholarship@WashULaw

The ongoing tension between religious liberty and gay rights is a striking example of our country’s profound and deep differences. But we are also divided over many other issues: immigration, criminal justice, abortion, contraception, poverty, and education, to name a few. Each of these differences pulls at the threads of a purported unity in pursuit of a “common good.” In light of our contemporary situation, this Article argues that we can and must live with deep and irresolvable differences in our beliefs, values, identities, and groups through a “confident pluralism.” A confident pluralism embraces a “right to differ” from state …

The First Amendment's Public Forum, John D. Inazu

Scholarship@WashULaw

The quintessential city park symbolizes a core feature of a democratic polity: the freedom of all citizens to express their views in public spaces free from the constraints of government imposed orthodoxy. The city park finds an unlikely cousin in the federal tax code’s recognition of deductions for contributions made to charitable, religious, and educational organizations. Together, these three categories of tax-exempt organizations encompass a vast array of groups in civil society.

The city park is a traditional public forum under First Amendment doctrine, and the charitable, educational, and religious deductions under the federal tax code function much like a …

Institutions In Context, John D. Inazu

Scholarship@WashULaw

This review of Paul Horwitz’s First Amendment Institutions applauds Horwitz’s call for us to take institutions and their contexts seriously. Horwitz shows why “acontextual” First Amendment thinking and doctrine lead to rigid formalism and missed opportunities. He enhances his argument with four nuanced chapters on specific institutions: universities, presses, churches, and libraries. These chapters bring to life our diverse institutions and their differences. It is less clear whether the descriptive differences that Horwitz highlights warrant the doctrinal differences that he advocates. In other words, even if Horwitz is right to call our attention to institutions, do his observations translate to …

"If You Is White, You's Alright....": Stories About Colorism In America, Kimberly Jade Norwood

Scholarship@WashULaw

This Article examines the inefficiencies of Missouri municipal courts that came into sharp focus following the killing of Michael Brown by Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. Norwood details and expands on her lone dissent in the Final Report of the Municipal Division Work Group—a group created by the Missouri Supreme Court to address the alleged abuses of black and poor residents in Missouri. Norwood argues for consolidating failing municipal courts to create larger, more functional, and just courts.

Re-Assembling Labor, John D. Inazu, Marion G. Crain

Scholarship@WashULaw

Organized labor’s judicial, political, and public image is often associated with violence and anarchy. These descriptions are not spun out of whole cloth: violent uprisings that challenged the political and economic order were common in the early days of American labor unionism. But the assumptions underlying past judicial rhetoric and labor law doctrine have outlived their original context. Historical antecedents applied to modern protests like Fast Food Forward, OUR Walmart and the Occupy Movement yield troubling and inconsistent results.

Although these tensions have not gone unnoticed, scholarly commentary to date has overlooked the important connection between the collective, group-based nature …

‪Measuring The Effects Of Legal Precedent In Us Federal Courts‬, Jens Frankenreiter, Daniel L. Chen, Susan Yeh

Scholarship@WashULaw

Using data for 2000-2004, our results suggest that new precedent has a strong effect on district court judges’ decision standards. Results are stronger when we focus on decisions in the same area of law. Extending the data to 2012, our results get blurred or even change direction.