SelectedWorks @ Chapman University Dale E. Fowler School of Law
Not a member yet
1539 research outputs found
Sort by
The Science of Coaching Advocates: Is There Any?
No full textThis article investigates whether psychological research can assist coaches of advocacy teams in various contexts. It concludes that the principles of positive psychology and related fields, along with experience, can lead to effective coaching strategies that will help students develop lifelong advocacy skill
\u27Property\u27 in the Constitution: The View from the Third Amendment
No full textDuring World War II, after Japan attacked the Aleutian Islands off Alaska’s coast, the United States forcibly evacuated the islands’ natives and quartered soldiers in private homes. That hitherto unremarked violation of the Third Amendment gives us a fresh perspective on what “Property” means in the U.S. Constitution. As a general legal matter, property includes not just real estate - land, fixtures attached thereto, and related rights - but also various kinds of personal property, ranging from tangibles such as books to intangibles such as causes of action. That knowledge would, if we interpreted the Constitution as we do other legal documents, tell us just about everything we need to know about the scope of constitutional property. Case law and commentary do not speak as plainly, however, raising troubling questions about what “Property” means each of the four times it appears in the Constitution. In particular, some authority suggests that the Takings Clause protects personal property less completely than it does real property. The unjust treatment of Aleutian natives during World War II shows the risk of giving constitutional property so peculiar and narrow a definition. This paper describes the troubling inconsistencies that afflict the law of constitutional property and invokes the Third Amendment, that oft-forgotten relic of the American Revolution, to argue for giving “Property” a plain, generous, and consistent meaning throughout Constitution
Can California Save Its Death Sentences? Will Californians Save the Expense?
No full textImposing a death sentence in California has become symbolism with a staggering price. From 1973 through 2009, California sentenced 927 persons to death but executed only thirteen. No executions have occurred since 2006. There are presently 714 persons on death row. Average delays between death sentences and executions are among the worst in the nation and in some cases will reach 30 years. One recent study estimated that taxpayers have spent more than 184,000,000 in 2009 alone.
This Article addresses two major questions about the future of California’s death penalty. First, it asks whether California can save its pending death sentences and answers negatively. I conclude that the courts are unlikely in the near future to declare most of the death sentences unconstitutional due to delay. Yet, I also conclude that the state is not able to institute reforms that can soon achieve a large and regular flow of executions, which means that a large portion of the pending sentences will not be carried out.
The Article then asks whether Californians will soon take steps to avoid the expense of trying to save all of the death sentences. I discuss the possibilities and the doubts. Governor Brown has stated that he will not grant blanket commutations. The options for the legislature are also limited, because the state constitution requires voter approval to amend the death-penalty statutes. Because of the growing recognition that the current death-penalty system is not sensible, California may be headed toward a public referendum in which the voters will decide. I present the competing perspectives on the causes of the current malfunction and the solutions that will vie for public acceptance. Putting aside the view that the death penalty is inherently wrong, I conclude that there will be three non-abolitionist accounts plus one that favors abolition. I explain why they are all flawed. Because the California death-penalty system is unavoidably hemmed in by economic, cultural and legal constraints that create difficult trade-offs, voters can only try to find the lesser evil among bad options. I believe that abolition is the lesser evil in California, but the lesser-evil argument is disquieting in that it calls for real sacrifice, and it may not soon win out
Perspectives on Forty Years of Environmental Law
No full textEnvironmental Law is 40 years old as a distinct body of law. This article is my historical perspective from four decades of teaching Environmental Law, emphasizing the early issues that set the foundations for today\u27s Environmental Law, as well as the background in Administrative Law, Land Use Planning and Natural Resources Law that were the seeds of Environmental Law, the issues that blossomed, the issues that disappeared, and those that remain with us. The article contains kudos to the pioneers in the area. We note the changes in paradigms from resource exploitation to resource conservation and from the Master Builder to the Environmentalist
Thinking About Tax Malpractice: Outline and Hypotheticals
No full textThere may be a lot of ethical traps that face the tax practitioner but there are also common-sense ways to avoid them
Principles of Contracts for Governing Services
No full textThe state provides governance services within a specified territory, demanding payment in the form of taxes, regulations, and compulsory service. Some citizens expressly consent to that bargain, as when the President of the United States swears to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. With regard to many of its subjects, however, the state can claim no more than hypothetical consent, leaving its use of force only weakly justified. Governing services provided under contract, founded in express consent, enjoy a more justified relationship with their citizen-customers. Private institutions already provide the same legal services as the state, offering rules, dispute resolution, and armed security, often on a large scale. The success of quasi-sovereign territories such as Hong Kong and Chinaʼs Special Economic Zones has encouraged some countries to consider outsourcing government services more comprehensively. Honduras, for instance, has passed legislation that could allow owners or long-term leaseholders to exercise largely independent authority over city-sized territories. The world may soon contain many such regions, called ‘charter’ or ‘free cities’, where an owner or master leaseholder provides governing services to tenants, sub-tenants, invitees, and others by contract. What terms should we generally expect to see in contracts for governance services? Examples from history and theory suggest such features as respect for consent, protection of fundamental rights, independent adjudication, and freedom of exit. The specifics of contracts for governance services must respond to market demand, of course; we speak here not of rules but of guidelines. Field tests can tell us more about how best to serve citizen-consumers, offering millions of people the prospect of better government
The Great Recession and Its Implications for Community Policing
No full textDuring the last twenty years, community policing has been the dominant approach to local law enforcement. Community policing is based, in part, on the broken windows theory of public safety. The broken windows theory suggests a link between low-level crime and violent crime — that is, if minor offenses are allowed to pervade a community, they will lead to a proliferation of crime and, ultimately, a community plagued by violent crime. To maintain a perception of community orderliness, many local governments adopted “order maintenance” laws — such as panhandling ordinances and anti-homeless statutes. This emphasis on cracking down on such low-level offenses brought with it an increase in the needs and costs of policing, prosecutions, jails, social services, and other related resources.When the economy was flourishing, local governments were able to pay for the time- and resource-intensive broken windows approach to community policing. The Great Recession, however, has forced localities to think critically about whether they can sustain these practices given budget cuts. This Article analyzes the effects that the downturn in the economy has had on public safety budgets and the changes that many local governments have made, and are continuing to make, to adjust to decreasing revenue and resources. This Article will also explore proposed changes to the current criminal justice and social service systems that seek cost-effective approaches to deliver the same level of public safety to which communities are accustomed. In particular, this Article will assess and evaluate evidence-based decision-making — an emerging trend in some criminal justice systems — as part of an evolving trend driven by the effects of the Great Recession, but also stemming out of community policing. Finally, this Article will use Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, as an example of an evidence-based decision-making approach and explain how it can fulfill the public safety goals of the broken windows theory of community policing while creating a framework that provides for “smart” decision-making that accounts for the financial realities that most cities face
