Alabama Law Scholarly Commons - The University of Alabama
Not a member yet
1539 research outputs found
Sort by
The Law and Political Economy of a Student Debt Jubilee
Get PDFThe notion of a student debt jubilee has begun its march from the margin of policy debates to the center, yet scholarly debate on the value of canceling student debt is negligible. This article attempts to jump start such debate in part by presenting a novel policy proposal for implementing a jubilee. In addition to reviewing the history of student debt and the arguments for canceling much or all of it, it presents a detailed legal argument that canceling public student debt (which accounts for 95% of student debt outstanding) could be undertaken by the Executive Branch without further legislation. The Secretary of Education has already been given the authority to modify and to compromise, waive, or release its claims against students. There is a strong argument under current case law that this authority is a grant of prosecutorial discretion, which would be unreviewable by courts. Even if a court were to rule otherwise, at least some cancellation plans would likely survive arbitrary and capricious review. In any case, this litigation risk is not a good enough reason for a President not to try to relieve the burdens of student debt if Congress cannot agree on a bill that will do so
Coordinating Community Reintegration Services for Deporatable Alien Defendants: A Moral and Financial Imperative
Get PDFThe Habit of a Judge: A History of Court Dress in England & Wales, and Australia Book Reviews
Get PDFRadical Method
Get PDFShould traditional liberals and insurgent scholars who disdain the system nevertheless work together? They start at different points, build on clashing presumptions, and follow different methodologies. Nevertheless, they often come out the same way. Indeed, practitioners of the standard cases-and-policies approach sometimes end up instinctively applying radical techniques, such as the flip or shift of point of view, to great effect. After analyzing a number of examples, we conclude that progressive scholars should not reflexively reject lawyering that proceeds in the time- honored manner merely because it strikes them as quaint or square. By the same token, neither should they ignore those even further to the left than they, merely because those circles may contain a Marxist or two. We conclude by describing a second source of support for progressive agendas that is even easier to ignore, namely the far left. This examination shows that progressive scholars, including our fellow race-crits, would do well to heed the powerful insights of critical legal studies even if those insights strike them as deracinated or unrealistic
Weapon of Choice: Fighting Gun Violence While Respecting Gun Rights
No full textEfforts to reduce gun violence in the United States face formidable political and constitutional barriers. Legislation that would ban or broadly restrict firearms runs afoul of the Supreme Court’s current interpretation of the Second Amendment. And gun rights advocates have joined a politically savvy firearms industry in a powerful coalition that stymies reform.
Ian Ayres and Fredrick Vars suggest a new way forward. We can decrease the number of gun deaths, they argue, by empowering individual citizens to choose common-sense gun reforms for themselves. Rather than ask politicians to impose one-size-fits-all rules, we can harness a libertarian approach—one that respects and expands individual freedom and personal choice—to combat the scourge of gun violence.
Ayres and Vars identify ten policies that can be immediately adopted at the state level to reduce the number of gun-related deaths without affecting the rights of gun owners. For example, Donna’s Law, a voluntary program whereby individuals can choose to restrict their ability to purchase or possess firearms, can significantly decrease suicide rates. Amending red flag statutes, which allow judges to restrict access to guns when an individual has shown evidence of dangerousness, can give police flexible and effective tools to keep people safe. Encouraging the use of unlawful possession petitions can help communities remove guns from more than a million Americans who are legally disqualified from owning them. By embracing these and other new forms of decentralized gun control, the United States can move past partisan gridlock and save lives now.https://scholarship.law.ua.edu/fac_books/1051/thumbnail.jp
Separating Fact from Fiction in Evaluating the Endangered Species Act: Recognizing the Need for Ongoing Conservation Management and Regulation
Get PDFJudicial Reasoning and New Technologies: Framing, Newness, Fundamental Rights and the Internet
No full textThis book analyses emerging constitutional principles addressing the regulation of the internet at both the national and the supranational level. These principles have arisen from cases involving the protection of fundamental rights. This is the reason why the book explores the topic thorough the lens of constitutional adjudication, developing an analysis of Courts’ argumentation.
The volume examines the gradual consolidation of a constitutional core of internet law at the supranational level. It addresses the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union case law, before going on to explore Constitutional or Supreme Courts’ decisions in individual jurisdictions in Europe and the US. The contributions to the volume discuss the possibility of the constitutionalization of internet law, calling into question the thesis of the so-called anarchic nature of the internet.https://scholarship.law.ua.edu/fac_bookchapter/1016/thumbnail.jp
