The Foreign Emoluments Clause and the Chief Executive
By Amandeep S. Grewal. Full text here. The 2016 presidential election brought widespread attention to a part of the Constitution, the Foreign Emoluments Clause, that had previously enjoyed a peaceful spot in the dustbin of history. That clause generally prohibits U.S. Officers from accepting emoluments from foreign governments, absent congressional consent. Several commentators believe that President…
Continue ReadingWhen Database Queries Are Fourth Amendment Searches
By Emily Berman. Full text here. According to both courts and commentators, the Fourth Amendment regulates the government’s collection of data, but not its use. That is to say, once data is lawfully in the government’s possession, the Constitution places no limits on how it is employed. I argue that we should reject this conventional wisdom…
Continue ReadingCompetence and Culpability: Delinquents in Juvenile Courts, Youths in Criminal Courts
By Barry C. Feld. Full text here. During the 1980s and ’90s, state lawmakers shifted juvenile justice policies from a nominally offender-oriented rehabilitative system toward a more punitive and criminalized justice system. Punitive pretrial detention and delinquency dispositions had a disproportionate impact on minority youths. Notwithstanding the past two decades’ drop in serious youth crime and…
Continue ReadingNote: Reconsidering Home Rule and City-State Preemption in Abandoned Fields of Law
By Franklin R. Guenthner. Full text here. When state governments overrule local ordinances, but do not replace those local laws with affirmative statewide policies, does that constitute a valid act of city-state preemption? From North Carolina, where the passage of the now infamous (and recently repealed) HB2 overruled Charlotte’s LGBT civil protections; to Arizona, where…
Continue ReadingNote: The Juvenile Ultimatum: Reframing Blended Sentencing Laws to Ensure Juveniles Receive a Genuine "One Last Chance at Success"
By Anabel Cassady. Full text here. Full text here. Blended sentencing laws allow judges to impose either or both a juvenile court disposition and an adult criminal court sentence on certain juvenile offenders. Minnesota’s blended sentencing statute, known as Extended Jurisdiction Juvenile (EJJ), was enacted in 1995 with the intention of giving juveniles “one last chance…
Continue ReadingNote: Drilling and Community Consent: How Oil and Gas Boards Can Address the Public Health Threats Posed by Fracking
By Ellie Bastian. Full text here. Natural gas is heralded by the political right as a path to energy independence; it is heralded on the left as a bridge to cleaner energy. Fracking, a commonplace method for natural gas extraction, is not going away any time soon. Along with the boon of natural gas come potential…
Continue ReadingCarbon Taxation by Regulation
By Jim Rossi. Full text here. This Article argues that carbon taxation by regulation has begun to flourish as a way of financing carbon reduction, even as a full national carbon tax remains politically elusive. For more than a century, energy rate setting has been used to promote public good and redistributive goals, akin to general…
Continue ReadingStrengthening Cybersecurity with Cyberinsurance Markets and Better Risk Assessment
By Jay P. Kesan & Carol M. Hayes. Full text here. Cybersecurity is an increasingly important element of infrastructure and commerce. Courts are starting to shape the doctrine of third-party liability for cyberattacks and data breaches. For businesses that rely on computers and the Internet, these developments affect their bottom line. There is a lot of…
Continue ReadingValuing Identity
By Osamudia R. James. Full text here. Popular engagement with black racial identity is steadily increasing. From the protest slogan “Black Lives Matter,” to the visibility of black racial identity on number-one-debuting visual albums like Lemonade, blackness is increasingly visible in mainstream American culture. At the same time, “Black Lives Matter” gave way to “All Lives…
Continue ReadingConstitutional Reasonableness
By Brandon L. Garrett. Full text here. The concept of reasonableness pervades constitutional doctrine. The concept has long served to structure common law doctrines from negligence to criminal law, but its rise in constitutional law is more recent and diverse. This Article aims to unpack surprisingly different formulations of what the term reasonable means in constitutional…
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