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Decriminalization: A New Consideration for the Fourth Amendment Balance
Get PDFDuring the past several years Maine has reevaluated the wisdom of applying criminal sanctions to certain forms of conduct. In addition to the total abrogation of a number of crimes, the Maine Legislature has reduced the statutory classification of some offenses to civil violations. Moreover, certain newly established offenses have been limited to the status of civil violations. The designation of offenses as civil raises the question of what constitutional safeguards should be applied to the manner in which such violations are investigated and to the process under which civil sanctions are administered. This Comment will summarize the Supreme Court\u27s interpretation of the fourth amendment\u27s application to criminal and civil searches, emphasizing the balancing which must be done to determine the reasonableness of a search. The nature of the civil violation in Maine and some of the intrusions which might be used in the enforcement of civil violations will be examined in order to determine whether searches and seizures are a permissible method of enforcement. An approach will be suggested both for the judicial evaluation of the reasonableness of such searches in terms of the probable cause and warrant requirements, and for the legislative delineation of specific guidelines to limit the intrusiveness of civil violation enforcement efforts. In particular, the context of vehicle stops, and concomitant searches will be used to illustrate the problems that await such judicial or legislative solution
The Constitutionality of the Maine Takeover Bid Disclosure Law
Get PDFWith the March 24, 1978 enactment of the Maine Takeover Bid Disclosure Law, more than two-thirds of the states purported to regulate the making of corporate tender offers. The Maine Act, which is by and large typical, requires that persons making tender offers (or takeover bids), by which the offeror attempts to control the target company through purchase of its shares, disclose certain specified information fully and accurately so as to guarantee adequate time for the dissemination and consideration of the disclosed information. During the 1960\u27s, tender offers became a popular method of acquiring control of publicly traded corporations. Sound corporations with equity securities lower than the book value of their stock were natural targets for the competitive tender offerors, prosperous corporations with great amounts of retained earnings and working capital to invest. Although the lack of competition and resistance made acquisition by merger easier and less expensive, a merger\u27s success depended upon obtaining a favorable recommendation from the often-unresponsive management of the target company. Accordingly, offerors shifted their concentration toward the tender offer, which could be made to all shareholders of the target corporation despite the unfriendly posture of its management. The country is now experiencing a resurgence of corporate take-overs; while in number they do not match the wave of the 1960\u27s, they have surpassed it in terms of the average dollar volume of each takeover. Because the takeover climate is so competitive, and because existing federal legislation offers so few safeguards to the tendering investor, the states have moved to provide shareholders adequate protection from the abuses that may accompany takeover offers
The Validity of the Restrictions on the Modern Advisory Opinion
Get PDFIn 1831 the Maine House of Representatives, relying on its constitutional authority to request advisory opinions, sought the counsel of the Justices of the Supreme Judicial Court regarding voting requirements for the election of state officers. Because the House was about to adjourn, it requested that the Justices forward their answers to the Governor for publication. The Justices, without mentioning any constitutional limitation on their power to answer questions propounded by the Governor or the Legislature, complied with this request. One hundred and forty years later, the Senate requested the Justices\u27 advice regarding the reapportionment of the House of Representatives. In a sequence of events similar to those surrounding the 1831 Opinion, the requesting body adjourned shortly after transmitting its questions. The Justices refused to answer, stating that they no longer had the constitutional authority to respond because the Senate had adjourned before the Justices could answer. The contradictory manner in which the Justices replied to the requests of the House and Senate illustrates the transformation in judicial construction of the constitutional language defining the parameters of the use of advisory opinions in Maine. An advisory opinion generally constitutes the advice of the individual justices of the highest court in a given jurisdiction, rendered at the request of certain executive or legislative bodies. The Maine Constitution provides that: The Justices of the Supreme Judicial Court shall be obliged to give their opinion upon important questions of law, and upon solemn occasions, when requested by the Governor, Senate or House of Representatives. Except for removal of reference to the defunct executive council, this constitutional provision has remained unaltered since its adoption in 1820. Although commentators often examine the alleged benefits of the advisory opinion, they seldom address the issue whether judicial interpretation of the conditions precedent to the Justices\u27 issuance of an opinion complies with the modern purpose of this procedure. Justification of the restrictions on the rendition of the advisory opinion depends on whether those restrictions support the historical purpose of the advisory opinion as applied to the requirements of the modern governmental system
Federal Tax Immunity and the Legal Incidence of the Maine Sales Tax: Gamage v. Halperin
Get PDFEstablished constitutional doctrine grants the federal government immunity from state taxation. Application of this doctrine ordinarily depends upon the legal incidence of the state tax. A state tax imposed directly on the United States or on one of its instrumentalities violates the immunity of the federal government. Gamage v. Halperin raised the issue of whether a sale partly subsidized by the federal government is entitled to constitutional immunity from a state sales tax, at least to the extent of the government\u27s share of the tax. Taxation of a federally subsidized sale presents difficult problems of federal tax immunity. The threshold issue is whether the legal incidence of the tax is on the vendor or on the purchaser. If the incidence is on the purchaser, then immunity will depend on whether the federal government may be characterized as a purchaser by virtue of its subsidy contribution. The Supreme Judicial Court of Maine upheld the assessment of the full tax on the sale of the fishing vessel. Finding that the legal incidence of the Maine sales tax is on the vendor, the court ruled that it was the shipbuilder who was being taxed, not the federal government. There are two difficulties with the court\u27s construction of the Maine sales tax as placing the incidence of the tax on the vendor. First, the express language of the statute provides that the incidence of the tax is on the consumer, or purchaser, a problem which the court attempted to resolve with a brief citation to prior case law. Second, the court\u27s opinion ignores the provision of the statute requiring vendors to collect the tax from consumers by adding it to the sales price. In light of constitutional pronouncements by the United States Supreme Court on the incidence of taxes for purposes of federal immunity, this factor alone seems to warrant a finding that the legal incidence of the Maine sales tax is on the purchaser. Even if the court had so found, it still could have upheld the tax in Gamage by concluding that the United States was not a purchaser in the transaction
Sentencing
Get PDFOnce the legislature has defined the acts it will punish as criminal, it must then establish a sentencing system. There are two principal features of a sentencing system: it grades crimes according to seriousness, and it apportions sentencing discretion among the legislature, the courts, and administrative agencies. The device for apportionment between the legislature and the courts is the mandatory sentence, by which the legislature may fix a period of imprisonment for a crime and forbid judges to grant probation. Apportionment of sentencing discretion between the courts and administrative agencies, on the other hand, is governed by the choice between definite and indeterminate sentences. In a definite sentence, the trial judge fixes the period of imprisonment; an indeterminate sentence leaves the length of imprisonment open to continual reevaluation by an administrative agency. Thus, a legislature must decide how much criminal punishment to authorize, which crimes to subject to mandatory sentences, and whether to authorize definite or indeterminate sentences (or both). The Maine Legislature has made these critical choices in Part 3 of the Criminal Code
Maine\u27s Public Lots: The Emergence of a Public Trust
Get PDFMaine\u27s public lots were originally reserved from conveyances of townships of public domain and were held by the state for the benefit of schools in the towns which would or could someday be created among the unorganized townships of the state. Many towns came into existence and inherited their public lots for the purposes for which the lots were reserved. Unlike many other states, however, almost half of the land area of Maine has never been incorporated into towns. Because of the great number of townships which have never been incorporated into towns, there are now approximately 400,000 acres of public lots owned by the state. These lands are situated in eight counties across the northern and eastern areas of Maine at the rate of 1,000 acres per township. Most of the townships are totally uninhabited today. This article is an analysis of some of the more significant actual and potential legal rights and responsibilities of the state with respect to these lands. It does not, as indeed it could not, purport to answer every question about these diverse and peculiar public lands. Instead, it focuses primarily upon certain fundamental problems and questions raised by the Articles of Separation (a part of Maine\u27s Constitution), the deeds of public domain reserving the public lots, and the deeds granting the right to cut and carry away timber and grass from the public lots
Media Access and the First Amendment\u27s Romantic Tradition
Get PDFJerome Barron must be regarded as the legal profession\u27s leading advocate of a legally enforceable public right of access to use the communication media-both printed and electronic. This book, above all, is an advocacy of that right and a survey of the need for public access. Professor Barron further discusses certain problems that an access right might raise-such as the allocation of access time and the regulation of offensiveness in broadcasting-and explores various aspects of these problems. As advocacy, the book is much more persuasive of the need for access to the contemporary media than it is of the prospects for establishing such a right
2024 Annual Report
Get PDF3 LETTER FROM THE DIRECTORS
4 2024: YEAR IN REVIEW
6 GENERAL PRACTICE CLINIC
8 REFUGEE AND HUMAN RIGHTS CLINIC
10 RURAL PRACTICE CLINIC
12 PRISONER ASSISTANCE CLINIC
14 PROTECTION FROM ABUSE PROGRAM
16 YOUTH JUSTICE CLINIC
18 CENTER FOR YOUTH POLICY & LAW
20 ALUMNI SPOTLIGHTS
22 DONORS & FUNDING
24 CLINIC STAFFIN