Strengthening Federalism: The Uniform State Law Movement in the United States
By Robert A. Stein. Full text here. This Article addresses the importance of uniform state laws in maintaining and strengthening federalism in the United States. The federal system of government established by the Constitution depends on an appropriate balance of federal and state law. Under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, powers not delegated to…
Continue ReadingSue To Adapt?
By Jacqueline Peel & Hari M. Osofsky. Full text here. Climate change litigation has influenced regulation substantially in the United States. Most notably, the Supreme Court’s decision in Massachusetts v. EPA serves as the basis for federal Clean Air Act regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles and power plants. However, most U.S. litigation thus…
Continue ReadingShould Agencies Enforce?
By Max Minzner. Full text here. This Article explores an important but understudied structural choice: the decision to vest enforcement authority in administrative agencies. Each year, agencies routinely bring enforcement actions producing billions of dollars in civil penalties and industry-reshaping consent decrees. Where do they get this power? Congress grants enforcement authority to administrative agencies because…
Continue ReadingGood Faith and Fair Dealing as an Underenforced Legal Norm
By Paul MacMahon. Full text here. American contract law includes a duty of good faith and fair dealing in the performance of every contract. The duty appears, on first reading, to authorize judges to attach sanctions whenever one party to a contract acts unreasonably towards another. But judicial practice very often falls short of such an…
Continue ReadingNote: No Longer Available: Critiquing the Contradictory Ways Courts Treat Exclusive Arbitration Forum Clauses when the Forum Can No Longer Arbitrate
By Nicole Wanlass. Full text here. A number of contracts contain clauses mandating that any disputes arising under the contract must be resolved through arbitration by a particular forum. However, disputes over these contracts can end up in court when the exclusive arbitration forum cannot, or will not, arbitrate them. Under 9 U.S.C. § 5, a…
Continue ReadingNote: Inter Partes Review: Ensuring Effective Patent Litigation Through Estoppel
By Ann E. Motl. Full text here. Inter partes review (IPR) is a relatively new proceeding before the Patent and Trademark Office in which a petitioner requests administrative patent judges to review an issued patent and declare its claims invalid. After IPR, the petitioner can continue to litigate patent validity in federal court. However, this second…
Continue ReadingNote: The Case Against Self-Representation in Capital Proceedings
By Max S. Meckstroth. Full text here. In 1972, the Supreme Court decided Furman v. Georgia, holding that the death penalty was being applied arbitrarily and capriciously—rendering its application unconstitutional. Three years later, while the death penalty was still considered unconstitutional, the Supreme Court in Faretta v. California held that the Sixth Amendment implied the right…
Continue ReadingCivil Death in Modern Times: Reconsidering Felony Disenfranchisement in Minnesota
By Mark Haase. Full text here. Civil death is a legal status with roots in ancient Greece and brought to the American colonies from England. It deprived individuals convicted of certain offenses, often those with capital or life sentences, of all of their legal rights. Although civil death mostly disappeared in the mid-twentieth century, one of…
Continue ReadingPiling On: Collateral Consequences and Community Supervision
By Christopher Uggen & Robert Stewart. Full text here. While there has been great legal, media, and policy interest in the collateral effects of imprisonment, far less attention has been devoted to collateral consequences during and after periods of community supervision. Such consequences are wide-ranging, placing limits on education, employment, family rights, gun ownership, housing, immigration…
Continue ReadingImproving Economic Sanctions in the States
By Jessica M. Eaglin. Full text here. Economic sanctions in the United States justice system have acquired newfound attention from the public and policymakers across the country in recent years. As states reconsider excessively severe sentences for low level offenders captured in the justice system, there is a renewed interest in using alternatives to incarceration—including…
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