SelectedWorks @ Chapman University Dale E. Fowler School of Law
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Government Prediction Markets: Why, Who, and How
No full textThis paper describes how prediction markets can make governments smarter, cheaper, and more responsive to changing conditions. A prediction market resembles a stock exchange where traders buy and sell not shares of companies, but claims about future events. Academic and commercial use of prediction markets suggests that they offer a useful tool for encouraging, collecting, and quantifying widely scattered expertise. Government administrators have begun experimenting with prediction markets, too. Many questions remain, however, about the proper way to implement government prediction markets. This paper opens with a brief survey of the costs and benefits of government prediction markets. It then turns to ironing out the statutory and regulatory wrinkles occasioned by government prediction markets in general, and by federal executive prediction markets in particular. Government agencies should outsource the provision of prediction markets and let employees and outside contractors trade on them. To mitigate the legal risks raised by offering cash or other valuable consideration to traders, government prediction markets should host spot transactions in negotiable conditional notes, offer traders seed funding, and contractually mandate a minimum level of trading. The paper concludes by describing a three-step plan for putting prediction markets to work for the United States government and, through it, for the People
The “Arizonification” of Immigration Law: Implications of Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting for State and Local Immigration Laws
No full textThis article explores the validity of state and local immigration-related legislation through the lens of the recent Supreme Court decision in Chamber of Commerce of the United States v. Whiting. Whiting upheld the Legal Arizona Workers Act of 2007, a state law governing through licensing provisions the employment of unauthorized alien workers. The article examines the implications that this decision will have for state and local immigration-related laws, primarily the Hazleton, Pennsylvania Illegal Immigration Reform Act Ordinance of 2006 and the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act of Arizona of 2010, otherwise known as S.B. 1070. Both of these laws are the subject of pending litigation in federal courts. In June 2011, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in the Hazleton litigation, remanding the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit – which had upheld a district court decision to enjoin portions of the Hazleton ordinance – with instructions to reconsider the case in light of the Whiting decision. In August 2011, Arizona filed a petition for writ of certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld a district court decision enjoining portions of S.B. 1070. This article predicts that Whiting may have significant implications for the Arizona and Hazleton laws as well as for similar laws passed by numerous states in recent years. On the one hand, because Whiting upholds the Legal Arizona Workers Act, it may encourage additional states to pass immigration-related laws. On the other hand, the narrowness of the decision, which dealt only with a state’s ability to penalize the hiring of unauthorized alien workers through licensing provisions allowed by federal law, may signal that state and local lawmakers may only pass immigration-related legislation specifically permitted by federal law. This article ultimately concludes that the Supreme Court stayed true to preemption doctrine and that Whiting limits rather than expands state and local government authority to pass immigration-related laws
The Rise and Fall of the Miranda Warnings in Popular Culture
No full textThe U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2000 decision in Dickerson v. United States was probably the first criminal procedure decision celebrated with an editorial in Broadcasting & Cable magazine. Noting that Chief Justice William Rehnquist opinion relied on the warnings’ well-established place in popular culture, the editorial acknowledged that, “[n]ext to the pledge of allegiance, the Miranda rights may be the most familiar common litany of the baby-boomer generation, thanks to TV.” Professors Richard Leo and George Thomas have similarly observed “suspects are likely to have heard Miranda so many times on television that the Miranda warnings may have a familiar, numbing ring,” and that “it is because of these shows and the mass media more generally—not the police, the legal system, or Supreme Court doctrine—that Miranda has become so much a part of our national culture.”
Critical to the Dickerson Court’s reaffirmation of Miranda was the fact of the public’s overwhelming awareness of Miranda and the fact that “Miranda has become embedded in routine police practice to the point where the warnings have become part of our national culture.” Clearly, television dramas, and particularly police procedurals, get the credit for informing the public about the Miranda warnings. But, whether praising or skeptical toward portrayals of Miranda and its embedding in popular culture and the public consciousness, most study and commentary presumes that the consumers of serial police dramas on American television have had repeated exposure to the Miranda warnings. Dickerson was decided in part on the same premise.
However, it may be that most people writing about the ubiquitous nature of Miranda in popular culture are describing a popular culture they remember rather than popular culture as it now exists. Judges and scholars may remember Miranda warnings used as prominent script elements in the television of their youth—the generation that came of age in the era of “Dragnet” and “Adam-12” heard Miranda warnings more times than they could count. But, as Broadcast & Cable noted, “[w]e’ve not heard a TV Miranda read in a while.” Following up on that observation, a look at several iconic cop shows from the years since Miranda demonstrates a sharply diminished role for Miranda in popular culture. What happens to the Dickerson rationale if there isn’t the repeated popular culture representations of Miranda that created a public familiar with and expecting of a caution that they have the right to remain silent? Can Miranda survive in law once its television role has been left on the cutting room floor
LA’s Taco Truck War: How Law Cooks Food Culture Contests
No full textThis paper examines the Los Angeles “Taco Truck War” (2008-9), when the city of Los Angeles and LA county used parking regulations to restrict “loncheros,” i.e. “taco trucks.” It describes the legal doctrine used by courts to invalidate these local restrictions. The California Vehicle code makes local food truck regulations illegal. Decades of court decisions affirm this. The paper sheds light, legal and cultural, on food truck debates, which will surely expand nationwide. It examines: the cultural and business arguments for food truck regulations; food’s role in migrant, community, and national identities; Mexican food’s influence in California culture; and recent trends in food trucks such as Koggi BBQ
Foreclosing on the Federal Power Grab: Dodd-Frank, Preemption, and the State Role in Mortgage Servicing Regulation
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