Digital Collections @ Suffolk
Not a member yet
8574 research outputs found
Sort by
A Blessed Union: technology Expanding Private Conversations Exempted by Massachusetts\u27s Spousal Disqualification Rule to Voicemail Messages
Get PDFLaw School Student Handbook, 2016-2017 (digital version)
No full texthttps://dc.suffolk.edu/suls-catalogs/1085/thumbnail.jp
Superfund Chaos Theory: What Happens When the Lower Federal Courts Don’t Follow the Supreme Court
No full textThere is legal chaos in the national Superfund. The Supreme Court reversed decisions of eleven federal circuit courts in United States v. Atlantic Research Corp. There is no instance in modern Supreme Court history where the Court reversed every federal circuit court in the country, as it did in Atlantic Research. The Supreme Court’s reversal was through a unanimous decision. This was extraordinary: It not only reversed the entire legal interpretation of one of America’s most critical statutes, but also re-allocated billions of dollars among private parties.The Supreme Court, when it rendered its decision, seemed to be rectifying a bottleneck in Superfund remediation of hazardous waste. However, in the decade since this Supreme Court decision, several federal trial and circuit courts have circumvented the Supreme Court command. This article illustrates how the lower federal courts have done this without violating Article III of the Constitution, by re-defining a one-word term.The practical impact has been chaos in hazardous substance remediation across the U.S., affecting an estimated 600,000 contaminated waste sites. There are huge dollar impacts: addressing the 350,000 remaining contaminated sites in the U.S. would cost up to one-quarter trillion dollars, or an expenditure of $6-8 billion annually.This Article analyzes how the lower federal courts have circumvented the Supreme Court decisions, with particular focus on decisions and legal prestidigitation in the most recent four years. This lower court inversion of the law is without much basis in law, and resurrects exactly what the Supreme Court thought it had overruled unanimously. What transpired in enforcement in the lower courts is not what the Supreme Court’s opinion contemplated. This Article examines the method by which the lower federal courts have created an ongoing legal mechanism to circumvent the most important Supreme Court holding in a critical area of the economy
Reconstituting the Right to Education
No full textConfronting persistent and widening inequality in educational opportunity, advocates have regarded the right to education as a linchpin for reform. In the forty years since the Supreme Court relegated that right to the domain of state constitutional law, its power has surged and faded in litigation challenging state school finance systems. Like so many of the students it is meant to protect, however, the right to education has generally underachieved, in part because those wielding it have not always appreciated its distinctive forms and function.
Deconstructed, the right to education held by children has been formulated doctrinally as both a claim-right, imposing affirmative duties on the state to act, and an immunity, disabling certain state action. These two strands-oft-manifested as the claim-right to educational adequacy and an immunity entailing equality of educational opportunity-once considered irreconcilable, are actually interlocked by the right\u27s core historical function to protect children\u27s liberty and equality interests.
And yet the right to education is ill equipped to fulfill its protection function. Education clauses in state constitutions do not fix the standards for mutually enforcing equality and adequacy. This encumbers already-reluctant courts in addressing educational disparities and emboldens legislative resistance when they do. Appreciating that the right to education has a protection function entailing equality and liberty interests nevertheless suggests that the right can be adjudicated in a way that unifies the demands and guarantees of substantive due process and equal protection. That union holds the potential to ameliorate the enforcement standards thereby reconstituting the right to education as a mainstay of reform
Suffolk Journal, vol. 77, no. 1, 9/2016 (Orientation Issue)
Get PDFhttps://dc.suffolk.edu/journal/1628/thumbnail.jp
Blood Relations: Analyzing Kinship Based, Gang-Related Asylum Claims under the Lens of Understanding Particular Social Groups
Get PDFCAS Honors Symposium Program, Spring 2016
Get PDFhttps://dc.suffolk.edu/honorssymposium/1002/thumbnail.jp
Torquing the Levers of International Power
No full textThe world now is at its climate’s environmental “tipping point” as it attempts to mobilize efforts to redress global warming; after which our ability to halt climate temperature below 2 degrees Centigrade (3.4 degrees Fahrenheit) is unreachable. International climate agreements have operated imperfectly: The 1997 Kyoto Protocol concluded its operative phase in 2012, and thereafter three major covered world powers– Russia, Japan and New Zealand -- refused to agree to any subsequent obligations. It remains unclear whether the levers of international power can be moved to put in place an aggressive, mandatory set of world climate restrictions to reduce rampant emissions of greenhouse gases.The technology exists to dramatically mitigate carbon emissions. The most used mechanism internationally and in the European Union to promote quick implementation of mitigating requirements, feed-in tariffs (FiTs), has been declared fundamentally unconstitutional when mandated by U.S. states. When misused, U.S. states are subject to pay challengers’ attorneys’ fees when challenged. Even though FiTs are legal in European Union countries, the record demonstrates flawed and uneconomic use of these mechanisms, causing severe financial hemorrhage in Germany, Italy and Spain, the primary countries aggressively employing FiTs.Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) are the alternative international mechanism employed by 29 U.S. states to maneuver mitigating power development. When maneuvered in a discriminatorily fashion, the RPS levers have resulted in successful constitutional attack on U.S. RPS programs. RPS programs are now gaining popularity internationally.Each of these world carbon reduction levers operates differently, exerts distinct economic impacts, and now confronts different legal barriers in different national systems of law. This article identifies, compares, contrasts, and torques these levers of international power. Thisarticle compares U.S. to international experiences, and analyzes why these same techniques have been held unconstitutional in the U.S. when implemented by California and other states. And even though legal in Europe, this article carefully analyzes the related financial and legal problems that their implementation created in Germany, Italy, and Spain