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A National Survey and Critical Analysis of University Police Statutes
Full text linkThis Paper provides an empirical study and critical analysis of university police statutes in all fifty jurisdictions, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia. The primary focus of the survey is to examine the regulatory framework governing campus police officers at public institutions of higher education. The study employs a crossdisciplinary approach, combining critical legal and qualitative analyses to provide a comprehensive overview of the legal landscape surrounding university police across the United States. The findings of the study include several key elements related to university police, such as police powers, jurisdiction, governing bodies, removal procedures, and use of weapons. The Paper also explores the importance of analyzing university police statutes as a body of law amid national conversations of race, justice, and policing on college and university campuses. Furthermore, this study is the third empirical study in fifty years to examine the statutory authority of campus police officers. It builds upon the previous two studies by Gelber (1972) and Bromley (1996) and provides a critical perspective to the law of university police often absent from existing literature
Prophetic Prosperity: Unveiling the Next Frontier of Socially Responsible & Sustainable Investing
Full text linkIslamic finance, poised for a significant rise in prominence, stands uniquely at the intersection of religious adherence and modern financial systems. With Islam projected to overtake Christianity as the dominant world religion by 20501 and Muslims constituting the fastestgrowing religious group, expected to reach a global population of nearly 3 billion adherents in 20602, the demand for financial products aligned with the values of Islam is set to soar. Accordingly, Islamic finance, specifically Islamic capital markets, has strong projections of growth, even amidst economic instability in traditional Western financial markets.3 Yet, despite its promising outlook, Islamic finance remains largely unfamiliar and enigmatic to Western audiences. Amidst this apprehension, Western financial markets should embrace the burgeoning captive market and compatibility of Islamic finance with traditional notions of environmental social governance (ESG) and socially responsible investing (SRI) while remaining cognizant of potential challenges. It is imperative to explore the convergence of economic development and justice against the backdrop of Islamic finance’s ascent on the global economic stage. Arguably, Islamic finance represents a just and sustainable alternative for those who are disenchanted with the current state of Western finance and actively seeking more sustainable options. There exists a profound opportunity for the global financial community to acknowledge and draw lessons from the principles of Islamic finance. By integrating foundational Islamic financial ethics and risk-sharing mechanisms into mainstream Western financial practices, a pathway emerges toward constructing a more resilient and responsible global financial landscape that prioritizes ethical conduct, social responsibility, and long-term stability over mere profit
Immature (Data) Privacy
Full text linkSharenting, a combination of the words “sharing” and “parenting,” is a double-edged sword. It can cut both ways because even though it benefits parents by being a source of support and fostering community, it harms children in various significant and nuanced ways. While the world blames parents for sharing too much of their children’s data on social media, other actors also play a role and should share the blame. In this Article, I argue that the most fundamental question sharenting raises is in what ways children’s privacy is violated, and who commits the violation. Social media, as one of the most powerful institutions in today’s world, allows not only parents, but also social media companies themselves and sponsoring companies, to profit from children’s data. Social media has created a marketplace in which processing data and making speech can generate millions of dollars which, in some cases, should deserve less or no First Amendment protection. Because data processing for instrumental purposes is not an act of communication or expression, social media giants have no First Amendment defense. Additionally, social media companies should owe a fiduciary or trust duty to safeguard children’s interests when processing data. On the other hand, when children’s data is used for making commercial speech or outside of family contexts, stronger privacy protections for children should be prioritized over the unrestricted free speech for parents. The current privacy laws are immature for the immature. We need to rethink and recognize the distinct types of privacy to protect the most vulnerable from the most powerful
Buyer, Beware of Addiction
No full textAddictive products kill more than 700,000 people in the United States every year. Despite the large-scale risks that addiction poses, the law requires manufacturers of addictive products to disclose little-to-no information about the risk of addiction—the single most consequential characteristic of a class of products contributing to mass death every year. While consumers understand that addictive products are, in fact, addictive, they generally do not understand the magnitude of the addiction risks that they face. Metaphorically, consumers understand that they are playing a game of “Russian roulette” when they consume an addictive product—but they play without knowing how many bullets are in the gun. This Article considers how and why the law fails to require meaningful addiction risk disclosure. It goes on to discuss what meaningful risk disclosure might entail, including easily digestible quantitative measures of how likely addiction is, information about risky patterns of use, and warning signs of early-stage addiction. This Article suggests that an overhaul of the current approach to addiction research and disclosure is necessary to bring decades-old disclosure requirements in line with current medical research
Manatees In Hot Water: How the Florida Manatee Became Dependent on Power Plant Warm Water Outfalls
No full textEach winter in Florida, thousands of manatees gather in the warm water outflows of power plants. These refuges play a crucial role for the Florida manatee: when ocean temperatures drop, manatees shelter at these artificial sources to survive. But in recent years, thousands of manatees wintering at the Florida Power & Light Company’s Cape Canaveral Clean Energy Center have died. The reason? Seagrass beds––a primary food source for manatees––are vanishing, killed off by pollution from agricultural, industrial, and residential sources.
This Article documents the historical, political, and regulatory conditions that led to manatees’ reliance on power plants. First, the political commitment to private property facilitated wide-scale transformation of the Florida landscape during the 19th and 20th centuries. These changes led to the decline of the natural warm water springs. Then, during the 1970s, environmental legislation rewrote the relationship between private property and governmental control.
To manage costs under this new environmental law regime, Florida Power & Light Company—a Florida-based power utility with plants that used once-through cooling systems to discharge warm water—examined multiple options. Part of its response included founding an environmental affairs department and funding studies that showed manatees’ reliance on power plants’ warm water discharges. EPA granted Florida Power & Light Company’s request for exemptions from the Clean Water Act’s prohibitions based, in part, on these studies that demonstrated benefits to manatees. But in the long-term, reliance on artificial discharges proved damaging to the overall health of manatee stocks. Taken together, the historical, political, and regulatory context leading to the Florida manatee’s decline exemplifies the importance of managing conflicts-of-interest in regulatory decision-making today
Prosecuting Police
Full text linkProsecutors face criticism for prosecuting too many minority members and too few police. Recently, some reformers have won prosecutorial elections by pledging to change these priorities. Yet scholars have identified two impediments to police prosecutions. First, county prosecutors often answer to suburban voters indifferent to the excesses of city police. Second, prosecutors depend on those police to investigate their cases and to endorse them as effective. This Article argues that the influence of residents and police on prosecutorial decisions depends on the political geography of a prosecutor’s office. As a result, whether a prosecutor’s office is “city-based,” “regional,” or “state-appointed” shapes a prosecutor’s motivation and decision to prosecute police. Examining nationwide data on charging police, we find that prosecutors are indeed more likely to prosecute police when a greater proportion of their constituents are served by the same police department. This effect is further amplified at higher levels of Black (but not Hispanic) residency. Case studies of specific prosecutorial districts suggest an explanation for this finding. Urban party organizations and Black civil society networks offer a political infrastructure for mobilizing residents against the abuses of police departments. The degree and impact of this mobilization is greater when more of the prosecutor’s constituents fall under the same police jurisdiction, especially when the prosecutor relies on the same political infrastructure to win elections
Social Thought From the Ruins: Quixote’s Dinner Party
No full textThrough stories, conversations, and essays, this book pursues interwoven critical and philosophical inquiries into the nature of the contemporary in the North Atlantic, asking how are we to live as intellectuals, individually and in community? Social Thought From the Ruins: Quixote’s Dinner Party is the product of informal discussion and academic work done over the last two decades among an international group of social scientists. An extended critique of academic life today and the context of our own thinking, this book interrogates aspects of our modernity, with its pervasive sense of crisis and uncertainty, and the difficulty of thinking clearly about things like the state and power, data and violence. Reflecting that the United States, indeed the North Atlantic countries, seem to have entered autumn, David A. Westbrook asks what spring might be. Will the critical social sciences have anything to offer the exercise of power, or are we doomed to incessant and ineffectual critique? Can bureaucracy be made at least more accountable, if not democratic? Conversely, can we feel less alienated from the structures of power that rule us, or that fail to govern at all? Can we feel at home?https://digitalcommons.law.buffalo.edu/books/1216/thumbnail.jp
From Mallory to Morality: The Compatibility of Registration-Jurisdiction Laws with the Dormant Commerce Clause
Full text linkIn June 2023, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Mallory v. Norfolk Southern Railway Co., a case that threatened to cause the largest shift in personal jurisdiction law since Daimler AG and Bristol-Myers Squibb. While the Court upheld Pennsylvania’s registration jurisdiction law under the Due Process Clause and International Shoe’s “fair play and substantial justice” standard, Justice Alito’s concurrence opined that the law may violate the Dormant Commerce Clause (DCC). This Comment argues that registration-jurisdiction laws, which permit States to assert general personal jurisdiction over out-of-state businesses merely because they have registered to do business in the State, do not violate the DCC. First, these laws are not discriminatory, either on their face or in their practical effect, as they apply uniformly to all companies and do not grant any advantage to in-state companies over out-of-state companies. On the contrary, the laws seriously harm the economic interests of the enacting State. Second, registration-jurisdiction laws are justified under the Pike balancing test because States have a legitimate interest in providing a forum for out-of-state plaintiffs as a matter of ethical solidarity, even when the State itself derives no direct benefit. The nature of this ethical interest precludes weighing it against the economic burdens imposed by the laws. Consequently, registrationjurisdiction laws, such as the one at issue in Mallory, do not violate the Dormant Commerce Clause and should be upheld as a valid exercise of State power