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Unintended Consequences of Fetal Personhood Statutes: Examples from Tax, Trusts, and Estates
Get PDFThe laws of taxation, trusts, and estates are new fronts in the culture wars over abortion. After the Supreme Court\u27s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women\u27s Health Organization, some anti-abortion states enacted fetal personhood statutes that have the potential to unsettle and destabilize longstanding legal doctrines that otherwise create predictability and stability in the laws of taxation and succession. This Article makes three principal claims: descriptive, predictive, and normative. First, the Article explores how Dobbs opened the door for states like Georgia to treat zygotes-embryos-fetuses as “dependents” for state income tax purposes. Second, the Article identifies some of the most salient ways fetal personhood laws could upend longstanding rules concerning property ownership and taxpayers\u27 determination of their fiscal obligations to the government. Unless carefully circumscribed, fetal personhood laws will disrupt the orderly transmission of property at death, the ability to administer a trust, and any durational limits on trusts. Third, the Article argues that state lawmakers should explicitly limit the scope of fetal personhood laws. Somewhat counterintuitively, both those with antiabortion views and those who wish to secure access to the procedure share an interest in narrowing these laws\u27 applicability.
For symbolic-political reasons, however, it is unlikely that lawmakers in anti-abortion states will place voluntary boundaries on the applicability of fetal personhood statutes. Therefore, the Article proposes rules of construction that judges should adopt in jurisdictions that have enacted fetal personhood laws. These include presumptions that a zygote-embryo-fetus is not the beneficiary of an estate or trust, disregarding in vitro embryos for purposes of the rule against perpetuities, and fixing the generational assignment of a zygote-embryo-fetus for generation-skipping transfer tax purposes at one generation below that of the intended parents. The Supreme Court is not likely to reverse the Dobbs decision for many decades, if at all. Therefore, making fetal personhood statutes inapplicable to matters of taxation (other than the state income tax deduction for dependents or a child tax credit), trusts, and estates represents a pragmatic approach that simultaneously permits states to signal their anti-abortion commitments while limiting disruptions to the legal system and the spread of encroachments on the bodily autonomy of those with the capacity to become pregnant
INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL LAW AND THE ROLE OF NARRATIVE IN THE WAR IN UKRAINE
Get PDFThis article examines the multiple ways that international criminal law (ICL)—the body of international law that seeks to impose criminal responsibility on individuals for international crimes—has impacted the conflict in Ukraine. Most violations remain unpunished, and ICL’s legal accountability mechanisms continue to face significant obstacles. But even absent prosecutions and trials, which remain contingent on an array of shifting factors, ICL has affected the Ukraine conflict in multiple ways.
The article focuses on how ICL has helped shape narratives about the war in Ukraine. In doing so, the article cautions against a strict law/politics dichotomy and instead focuses on the more dynamic and multi-faceted interaction between international law, policy, and politics. It offers some broader conclusions about the opportunities as well as the challenges that a reliance on narrative presents for ICL’s overarching aim of holding individuals accountable for mass atrocities through prosecutions. As the article explains, narrative can advance ICL’s goals, but harnessing narrative’s full potential requires a more consistent commitment to ICL’s norms and principles, especially from the most powerful states. Further, an overreliance on narrative, without judicial enforcement, carries significant risks, particularly in today’s digital world, where facts can be distorted, stories manipulated, and disinformation widely and rapidly disseminated. Extensive reliance on narrative, moreover, can dilute the norms on which ICL is based, weakening its status as law and breeding cynicism. Thus, the more disputes about atrocity crimes are resolved through competing narratives rather than by courts, the more blurred the distinction may become between ICL’s regime of individual responsibility and the world of international power politics
Does Acculturative Stress Always Lead to Negative Outcomes? Understanding the Role Acculturative Stress Plays in Fostering Social Behaviors and Improved Well-Being Among International Students
No full textThere has been a steady increase in the international student population in the United States. While moving to another country to gain an education can be exciting, it can also be stressful. International students struggle with several challenges, including language barriers, discrimination, bias, and acculturative stress. Accordingly, most immigration literature focuses on the harmful effects of immigration. When poorly adjusted, one may experience negative outcomes from acculturative stress. However, this study argues that students who seek and find relief from acculturative stress in social interaction and affiliation are more likely than not to adapt positively to their new environment during the acculturation process. Thus, this study investigated the role acculturative stress plays in fostering social affiliative and interaction behaviors and improved well-being among international students. Specifically, it examined whether social affiliation and interaction mediate the relationship between acculturative stress and well-being. The two-wave longitudinal study sample comprised 345 international students at baseline and 130 participants in Wave 1, assessed one month apart. The results suggest that international students who struggle with acculturative stress can benefit from engaging in social affiliative and interaction behaviors, positively impacting well-being and overall satisfaction with life. However, this finding was supported only cross-sectionally rather than longitudinally. Despite this, the findings reveal that acculturative stress is not always linked with adverse outcomes. This study provides important information regarding the importance of social processes in coping. Implications of these findings for researchers, educators, and clinicians and recommendations for future research are discussed
Against a Uniform Law on the Income Taxation of Trusts
Get PDFIn many areas, uniformity of state law is both practical and desirable. The Uniform Commercial Code, for example, brought harmony to conflicting state laws regarding the sale of goods and secured transactions, smoothing the way for interstate commerce. The law of trusts and estates is another area to which the Uniform Law Commissioners have recently turned their attention. Given the multitude of conflicts in state law regarding intestacy, fiduciary powers, and remote notarization, greater consistency between the states would be welcome. One area that should be off-limits to uniform lawmaking is the state income taxation of trusts. Despite complex and conflicting state laws on the matter, attempts to harmonize the income tax laws infringes on state sovereignty and disrupts the federalist system of government
Falling Stars and Sinking Ships: How Article VII of the Outer Space Treaty Needs Maritime Law
Get PDFThe urge to go where no man has gone before has led to great leaps in space technology that only seemed real in cinema. As more private companies, such as private asteroid mining companies in China, attempt to take this leap, it has become clear that there are significant gaps in international space law regarding liability with private parties. Within Article VII of the Outer Space Treaty, there is a laid-out structure on how states can be held liable for damages caused by celestial bodies. However, the Outer Space Treaty ignores what happens if a private company causes injuries in another country or to another space craft. While there has yet to be an example of a private company causing damages from negligence under space law, we know what may happen through Maritime Law. With multiple similarities between maritime and space law, already established maritime regulations can easily be used as a supplementation for space law. In part I of this article, there will be a discussion of the history of space law and modern-day technology done by private Chinese companies. Part II will then examine maritime law concepts and outer space collisions. Part III, IV, and V will move to an in-depth analysis on limitations of liability, vessel insurance, and employees’ insurance. Part VI will finalize, discussing how limitations of liability, vessel insurance, and employee’s insurance create a stable supplement for Article VII of the Outer Space Treaty
Examining Uranium Mining in the Canyon Mine
Get PDFIn November 2020, Energy Fuels changed the name of one of its uranium mines from “Canyon Mine” to “Pinyon Plain Mine” in order to put distance between the mine and its historical controversies. However, changing the name does not change the potential harm the mine can cause. Canyon Mine sits fifteen miles from the rim of the Grand Canyon and is built on land sacred to the nearby Havasupai Tribe. The mine stands to not only destroy the health and well-being of the Havasupai people by contaminating their water supply with radioactive elements, but also to destroy the sacred ties the Havasupai Tribe holds to the land. The mine lies above the Redwall-Muav Aquifer, the same aquifer that feeds Havasu Creek – the Havasupai Tribe’s sole source of water. The Havasupai Tribe has opposed the mine since its first permit in 1978 and continues to do so. This article will examine Canyon Mine and its connection to the Havasupai people, the potential adverse effects of the mine on the Havasupai Tribe, and potential domestic legal solutions and actions that the Tribe could pursue in order to stop the mine from operating
A Balanced Prescription for More Effective Environmental Regulations
Get PDFGovernment agencies increasingly base the structure and approval of environmental regulations on a benefit-cost test. For regulations that pass this test, total benefits exceed total costs. Under a benefit-cost framework, the degree of regulatory stringency is set at an economically efficient level whereby the tightness of the regulation is increased up to the point where the incremental benefits equal the incremental costs. Setting regulatory standards to achieve the efficient degree of pollution control does not fully discourage entry into polluting industries, provide compensation to those harmed by pollution, or establish meaningful incentives for effective enforcement. This article proposes that the benefit-cost approach be retained as the guiding principle for regulatory policy, but that sanctions for regulatory violations be greatly enhanced. A different, more ambitious proposal by Elliott and Esty advocates pollution control to the lowest level that is technologically feasible, coupled with compensation for those injured by pollution. The unbounded regulatory framework advocated by Elliott and Esty sets aside benefit-cost balancing, generating the prospect of inordinate costs with few environmental dividends from the highest levels of stringency. Their more promising proposal is to establish a compensation system for environmental harms. Compensation for those harmed by pollution has some parallels with successful workers’ compensation programs, but to be successful it must address challenges not faced in the employment context. More stringent regulation of long-term risks may be more welfare-enhancing for future generations than their proposed environmental damages compensation fund. Protection may yield greater dividends for more affluent future generations than compensation
Punishing Disclosure and Silencing Victims: How the California Family Law Courts Retraumatize Abused Children By Labeling Them “Alienated”
Get PDFThis Article documents the California family law courts’ poor responses to children’s disclosures of child abuse and neglect, presuming that they are false, minimizing the impact of abuse on children, or engaging in wishful thinking that the abuse will simply cease even though the perpetrator has faced no accountability and taken no steps to reform. It focuses on the detrimental impacts that the pop psychology of “parental alienation” has for child safety when children’s reports of abuse are disbelieved and minimized, particularly when it combines with other fact-finding failures in the courts
