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Volume 110 - Issue 2

Religious Exemptions and LGBTQ Child Welfare

This Article explains why we should view the experiences of LGBTQ youth in the child welfare system as an essential part of the debate over religious liberty and LGBTQ equality. It further describes why it is necessary to include eliminating LGBTQ-based child welfare inequality within a broader vision of a fully inclusive LGBTQ antidiscrimination regime. To accomplish these goals, this Article recasts religious exemptions involving LGBTQ child welfare through the lens of historical theories of sexual deviance in the fields of criminology, psychology, and sociology.

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An Empirical Examination of Agency Statutory Interpretation

How do administrative agencies interpret statutes? This Article looks behind the black box of agency statutory interpretation to review how administrative agencies use canons of construction and other tools of statutory interpretation to decide cases. Surveying over 7000 cases heard by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) from 1993–2016, I analyze the statutory methodologies the Board uses in its decisions in order to uncover patterns over time. Overall, I find no ideological coherence to statutory methodology. Board members often use statutory methodologies with dueling purposes, with majority and dissenting Board members using the same statutory methodology to support contrasting outcomes. The Board has also changed how it interprets statutes over time, relying in recent years more on policy pronouncements and textual debates and less on precedent or legislative history as the primary method of interpretation. After analyzing the empirical data, I set forth policy recommendations for how agencies should interpret statutes.

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Small Debts, Big Burdens

By Chrystin Ondersma. Full text here. For individuals struggling to make ends meet, an emergency expense or sudden drop in income can be catastrophic. Often credit is the only option available in such emergencies, but taking out credit can worsen an already precarious financial situation—individuals and families may go without food or electricity in order to…

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The Hidden Power of Compliance

By Stavros Gadinis and Amelia Miazad. Full text here. Although corporate wrongdoing can reach an immense scale with disastrous ramifications, holding boards accountable has long been perceived as elusive. Under both state fiduciary duty law and federal securities doctrine, directors and officers are liable only if they were aware of corporate failures or reckless in ignoring…

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Congress’s Agency Coordination

By Bijal Shah. Full text here. Coordination is a mechanism for administrative control. Indeed, it is well-known that the President and agencies themselves initiate it for a variety of substantive and self-interested reasons. This Article is the first to establish that Congress also creates frameworks of interagency coordination, and it bases this contention in the largest…

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Shareholder Democracy and Special Interest Governance

By John H. Matheson & Vilena Nicolet. Full text here. In the past several decades, the corporate governance landscape has changed dramatically and positively. Recently, shareholders have found new ways to directly impact the governance regime and the board of directors. These new means derive from various sources, including a more favorable regulatory environment and the…

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The Sound and Fury of Patent Activity

By Robin C. Feldman & Mark A. Lemley. Full text here. Patent reform is a hotly contested issue, occupying the attention of Congress, the Supreme Court, and many of the most innovative companies in the world. Most of that dispute centers on patent enforcement, and in particular on the role of non-practicing entities (NPEs) or “patent…

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Testing Periods and Outcome Determination in Criminal Cases

By Fiona Doherty. Full text here. This Article introduces the concept of “Testing Periods” to explain how U.S. courts sort criminal defendants for incarceratory and non-incarceratory results. A Testing Period is a time period during which a criminal defendant agrees to abide by a set of prospective rules (such as avoiding “dirty urines” and remaining…

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Regime Congruence: Rethinking the Scope of State Responsibility for Transboundary Environmental Harm

By Maria L. Banda. Full text here. The advent of the Anthropocene has extended the reach of environmental harm: from offshore drilling to geoengineering and climate change, activities in one State can increasingly injure people far beyond its borders. States have longstanding rights under international law to protect their citizens from such harms. In practice,…

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The Games They Will Play: Tax Games, Roadblocks, and Glitches Under the 2017 Tax Legislation

By David Kamin, David Gamage, Ari Glogower, Rebecca Kysar, Darien Shanske, Reuven Avi- Yonah, Lily Batchelder, J. Clifton Fleming, Daniel Hemel, Mitchell Kane, David Miller, Daniel Shaviro, & Manoj Viswanathan. Full text here. The 2017 tax legislation brought sweeping changes to the rules for taxing individuals and business, the deductibility of state and local taxes, and…

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