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Resilience Re-Examined: Thoughts on the COVID-19 Pandemic\u27s Lessons for Communities
Get PDFPrompted by this century’s major disasters, many local governments have adopted policies, plans, and laws to help guide their response to future natural hazard events. Some communities have prepared plans informed by their firsthand experience with recent catastrophic storms. Other communities have speculated about potential disaster scenarios; they have imagined the work involved in rebuilding their towns following an event that would threaten residents’ homes, health, and livelihoods. COVID-19 gives communities reason to reshape thinking around natural hazards planning. The ongoing pandemic should cause local governments to revisit and rework their plans for facilitating community recovery following a disaster. By providing a detailed nationwide picture of populations at risk from acute shocks to our economic, healthcare, and educational systems, COVID-19 highlights how communities are broadly vulnerable—beyond even the significant adversities revealed by a major hurricane, flood, or earthquake event. This essay examines a few ways that COVID-19 is reframing how we must plan for disaster response and recovery. Discussion of these changes will include consideration of: (1) the core focus that both philanthropic and government funders must place on making investments that promote equity; (2) the increasing incidence of serial disaster events and the imperative that local governments plan to navigate response to and recovery from successive hazard events; and (3) the important role that a robust infrastructure for data collection and analysis must play in promoting effective disaster response and long-term recovery
AHS Residential, LLC., Order on Defendants\u27 Motion to Exclude Opinions of Plaintiff\u27s Expert Witness Ian Ratner and Plaintiff AHS Residential LLC\u27s Motion to Limit the Testimony
Get PDFTodd A. Brown and Michael S. Brown as plaintiffs in several consolidated matters, Consent order
Get PDFDesigning \u3ci\u3eStartup Corporate Law\u3c/i\u3e: A Minimum Viable Product
No full textStartup companies and venture capital investments are flourishing worldwide, but at different rates in different countries. The myriad of corporate law reforms designed to change those patterns have had, generally, underwhelming results. A core reason behind the discrete impact of most reforms is that they focus on features of corporate law that are relevant (e.g., business registration requirements or investor protection), but that are no longer meaningful differentiators of legal systems’ aptitude to support the emergence and growth of innovative businesses.
This paper argues that corporate law still matters, and that crucial—yet under scrutinized—legal rules could be leveraged to foster startups and venture capital finance. Specifically, the set of rules that govern boards, shares, and shareholders’ agreements in non-listed corporations, which are collectively referred to as Startup Corporate Law (SCL). SCL matters because it determines the range of bargains between founders and investors over companies’ cash flow and control rights, conditioning startups’ finance and shaping their governance structure. Thus, unobserved changes in SCL have substantial explanatory power over past and present patterns. For example, they may contribute to explaining cross-country differences in startups’ ability to raise funds and the prevalence of specific financial instruments across jurisdictions and time frames. This evidence is essential to assess legal systems’ strengths and shortcomings to develop these industries.
The careful design of SCL could also stimulate the emergence and growth of innovative firms, by expanding founder-investor bargains (e.g., over direct board representation of certain classes of shares, or the allocation of voting rights based on future contingencies). Still, legal reforms to SCL are often introduced without meaningful deliberation, creating enforcement and creditor protection challenges that remain underexplored, despite impacting businesses beyond startups’ ecosystems. The paper discusses the most salient of those challenges, focusing on legal reforms, judicial decisions, and trends in financial contracting worldwide. It also identifies avenues of research on SCL to accurately assess the relationship between corporate law and venture finance, and address up-and-coming issues in the regulation of non-listed firms across jurisdictions
Punishment through Restitution
No full textCriminal restitution is a standard part of sentencing. As criminal restitution obligations have become more common, the contours of what constitutes “restitution” have expanded. A consequence of the rise in the number of restitution orders, as well as the growth in restitution amounts, is an increase in uncollected restitution obligations. Unpaid restitution debt runs in the billions of dollars, most of which is uncollectible due to the indigence of those ordered to pay it. Unpaid restitution leaves everyone unsatisfied: crime victims are rarely compensated sufficiently and those ordered to pay restitution remain under the authority of the criminal legal system while their restitution obligation remains outstanding. Federal legislation established criminal restitution as a punitive mechanism, in addition to a compensatory one, but courts have been reluctant to fully acknowledge the implications of accepting restitution as punishment. If courts would concede restitution’s punitive purpose and effect, the Constitution could limit the scope of restitution awards — through the Sixth Amendment’s jury trial right and the Eighth Amendment’s excessive fines clause. Under the Sixth Amendment, juries could determine the amount of restitution. Despite language in the federal statutes prohibiting courts from considering a defendant’s ability to pay, courts could declare those portions of the restitution statutes unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment, and consider, instead, the proportionality of the restitution amount relative to the gravity of the offense, relying on the anti-ruination principle in determining excessiveness
\u3cem\u3e Fulton\u27s \u3c/em\u3e Flaw: In the Constitutional Clash Between Religious Liberty and LGBTQ+ Rights, Foster Kids are Neither Seen nor Heard
No full textThis essay asserts the primacy of children\u27s interests as a constitutional check on the religious liberty interests of government contractors that express in ways adverse to the best interests of foster children harmed by discriminatory foster care screening processes. The piece begins with an examination of child welfare realities characterized by increasing numbers of foster children and shrinking pools of prospective parents. It goes on to highlight the harmful effects of discriminatory, faith-based placement and certification services on foster children; explains how such policies and practices breach the City\u27s parens patriae duty to maximize the pool of prospective foster families for foster children; and presents data documenting negative outcomes for foster youth when placement options are circumscribed by categorical exclusion of LGBTQ+ families. The piece concludes with a critical examination of the Supreme Court\u27s failure to factor children\u27s best interests in its constitutional calculus and how the Court\u27s holding endorses religious based action by government contractors that will harm vulnerable children confined to our nation\u27s overcrowded foster care systems
HB 112: Extension of the Pandemic Business Safety Act
Get PDFThis Act amends the Pandemic Business Safety Act to extend its applicability for an additional year, expiring on July 14, 2022. The Pandemic Business Safety Act provides liability protection limitation to business against tort claims arising from the COVID-19 pandemic