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Lost In a Maze of Character Evidence: How the Federal Courts Lack a Cohesive Approach to Applying Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b) in Drug Distribution Cases
Get PDFThe admission of a criminal defendant’s prior bad acts can be a powerful tool for attaining a conviction. The federal courts are currently divided as to whether the defendant’s prior drug use is admissible under Rule 404(b) of the Federal Rules of Evidence when the defendant is charged with distributing a controlled dangerous substance.
Part I of this Comment will briefly explore the historical roots of Rule 404(b). Part II will examine the permissible purposes for admitting prior bad acts under Rule 404(b). Part III will discuss the circuit split that has developed as to whether the defendant’s prior drug use can be admissible under one of the exceptions to Rule 404(b) in a prosecution for possession with intent to distribute. Part IV examines a new standard for analyzing prior drug offenses under Rule 404(b) and argues that courts should move away from a mechanical framework of applying Rule 404(b). Part V will briefly summarize this Comment
Why Law Now Needs to Control Rather than Follow Neo-Classical Economics
Get PDFThis article argues that neo-classical economics places an emphasis on short-term gain over precaution, and in doing so, places the lives of a myriad of individual humans—and even the species itself—at risk. Given the foreseeable risks, if humanity wants to survive longer, we need to rethink our economic principles and priorities and the relationship between economics and law.
I begin with a most brief overview of the various sources of risk to the human species and its life support system. Then I will move on to look at how neo-classical economics interacts with significant risk
Enhancing the Urban Environment Through Green Infrastructure
Get PDFThis Article is adapted from Chapter Seven of John R. Nolon, Protecting the Environment Through Land Use Law: Standing Ground, published by ELI Press. The book describes how localities are responding to new challenges, including the imperative that they adapt to and help mitigate climate change and create sustainable neighborhoods. This Article follows the steady advance in the use of green infrastructure in recent years, and details its value as a strategy for adapting to climate change, bettering air quality, lowering heat stress, creating greater biodiversity, conserving energy, providing ecological services, sequestering carbon, preserving and expanding habitats, enhancing aesthetics, increasing property values, and improving the livability of neighborhoods
Extraterritoriality, Externalities, and Cross-Border Trade: Some Lessons from the United States, the European Union, and the World Trade Organization
Get PDFIn this article, process and production method (PPM) rules are analyzed under three jurisdictions: the United States, the European Union (EU), and the World Trade Organization (WTO. The approach is justified by the fact that their rules on interstate trade reflect very similar basic objectives related to anti-protectionism. Moreover, the regimes, to a large extent, share the same structure of rules on prohibition balanced with rules on justification. All in all, the regimes reveal similar syntax. The comparability of the U.S. Dormant Commerce Clause Doctrine with both WTO law and EU free movement law has been highlighted already in previous research
Fossil Fuel Abolition: Legal and Social Issues
Get PDFThis Article will examine the practical, ethical, legal, and socio-political implications of fossil fuel abolition. First, the Article will consider the practical, ethical, and legal arguments in favor of fossil fuel abolition. Then, the Article will examine possible legal means and authorities to implement abolition in the United States, as well as potential legal objections to fossil fuel abolition. Finally, the Article will consider legal abolition’s capacity to effect the far-reaching changes in our socioeconomic system that a ban on fossil fuels will entail. The Article also will compare the climate reform movement to other social law reform movements in the past, including the civil rights movement, the temperance movement, and the slavery abolition movement. The Article concludes that there are strong practical, ethical, and legal arguments for fossil fuel abolition. However, the climate activism movement must mature before it is likely to achieve the necessary social consensus to implement abolition
The Right for Autonomy, the Duty of Disclosure and Public Health Considerations – The 2013 Polio Crisis in Israel as a Case Study
Get PDFDespite sharing the same theoretical framework of discussion with other papers, this paper addresses an ethical and legal issue that has received little attention in academic and public discourse: the duty of disclosure in the context of vaccinations. In particular, the paper addresses the question whether public health considerations provide a justification for restricting the duty of disclosure in the case of vaccination.
Delimitating the research question to the issue of disclosure has several implications. First, the decision to vaccinate the population with bOPV as describe above and the decision to adopt a voluntary vaccination policy are not the focus of this paper, and they will not be critically discussed. Therefore, both of these decisions are accepted as reasonable and valid. Second, whether parents’ right to make decisions regarding the health of their children—that is, their right for parental autonomy—prevails in the context of vaccinations will also not be addressed. Third, the paper addresses one aspect of the communication strategy adopted by the Israeli Ministry of Health: the nature and content of the information provided to the public. Other aspects of the communication strategy, while important, exceed the scope of the paper. Such aspects include the methods used to disseminate the information; the use of nonverbal techniques; the identity of the persons providing the information; and nature of persuasion efforts addressed to parent
Plain Meaning, Precedent, and Metaphysics: Lessons in Statutory Interpretation from Analyzing the Elements of the Clean Water Act Offense
Get PDFThis Article, the fifth in a series of five, completes the author’s detailed analysis of how federal courts have interpreted each element of the Clean Water Act (CWA) offense. Compiling statistics across the four prior articles, it draws conclusions about statutory interpretation in general, finding that the depth of legal analysis increases with the level of court; that environmentally positive results decrease with the level of court; that courts use only a small number of canons and other interpretive devices; that their uses of interpretive devices change over time; and that interpretive devices are not all outcome-neutral. The author also draws other lessons about statutory interpretation that are specific to each element, and to the language and history of the CWA
The Relationship between Grandparents and the Caring, Resilience, and Emotional Intelligence of Grandchildren
No full textLittle is known about the effects of a grandchild\u27s relationship with a grandparent and their overall psychological well-being. Studies investigating the relationship of grandchildren and grandparents have primarily focused on the benefits of this relationship on the health and psychological well-being of the grandparent (Goodman & Silverstein, 2002). This study sought to examine the relationship between contact, physical proximity, and emotional closeness with grandparents throughout childhood and adolescence and caring, resilience, and emotional intelligence. It was hypothesized that there is a positive association between the amount of contact with a grandparent throughout childhood and adolescence and a grandchild\u27s resilience, caring, and emotional intelligence as an adult. Specifically, it was thought that the amount of contact with this grandparent throughout childhood and adolescence would predict adult resilience, caring, and emotional intelligence. The same was hypothesized regarding emotional closeness and physical proximity with the grandparent during childhood and adolescence. Using survey methodology, 186 participants (69 male and 117 female) over the age of 18 completed an online questionnaire that assessed their current levels of caring, resilience, and emotional intelligence. In addition, participants were asked to report on the amount of contact, physical proximity, and emotional closeness that occurred between themselves and one chosen grandparent between the ages of birth and 18 years retrospectively. Results indicated a positive correlation between these grandparent variables and caring, resilience, and emotional intelligence. Specifically, adolescent contact and emotional closeness with the grandparent was found to predict resilience and emotional intelligence in adult years. These results highlight the importance of the relationship between a grandchild and a grandparent, and the crucial role a grandparent may play in emotional development
Focusing on Human Responsibility Rather than Legal Personhood for Nonhuman Animals
Get PDFWe should focus on human legal accountability for responsible treatment of nonhuman animals rather than radically restructuring our legal system to make them legal persons. This essay, provided at the kind invitation of the Pace Environmental Law Review (PELR) and Steven Wise, President of the Nonhuman Rights Project, Inc., outlines a number of concerns about animal legal personhood. It does so primarily in the context of the plaintiff’s brief in The Nonhuman Rights Project, Inc. v. Lavery, filed in the New York Supreme Court, New York County. The first Lavery lawsuit (Lavery I) was filed in Fulton County in late 2013. After Lavery I was dismissed at the trial court and appellate levels, the second Lavery lawsuit (Lavery II) was filed in New York County in late 2015. The Pace Environmental Law Review is publishing a memorandum of law by Steve Wise and Elizabeth Stein in support of the petition for habeas corpus in Lavery II along with an amicus brief by Professor Laurence Tribe supporting the appeal of Lavery I and this essay opposing the lawsuit. The briefs will be published in a future issue of PELR
Environmental Crimes and Imprisonment: Does Prison Work to Prevent and Punish Environmental Criminals?
Get PDFEnvironmental degradation is a global problem. Humans need natural resources to survive and, as those resources are limited, humans’ use of these resources should respect a sustainable pace established by law. There are many approaches to addressing environmental degradation that do not honor the legal limitations and one of them is through criminal law. The question that is posed in this thesis is whether imprisonment, one of the most severe methods of punishment, is a suitable option to repress and prevent environmental crimes.
This thesis is divided in three chapters. The first chapter discusses why environmental crimes are relevant. It also explores why the conversation about imprisonment as a way of preventing and repressing those crimes is current and important. Through examples on illegal fishing, wildlife, and forest trade, chapter I demonstrates the harmful effects of environmental degradation – effects both in nature and throughout many levels of society (economy, health, governability, among others). The examples demonstrate why this topic should be addressed through criminal law, which allows the retribution and prevention of crime through one of the most serious means of punishment: imprisonment. However, particular examples from the United States of America and Brazil are presented to prove that imprisonment is not presently the norm when sentencing environmental crimes in both countries. As imprisonment was the option adopted by both countries to address another relevant and urgent challenge (drug crimes), the question posed is whether this option should also be used for environmental crimes. The urgency on preventing environmental degradation proves that the subject is current; the fact that imprisonment was used previously when a similar challenge faced the authorities, without a clear success, demonstrates that the discussion about its use in environmental crimes is imperative