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Harvesting Highs but No Relief for the Lows: The Inconsistent Treatment of Marijuana Businesses by Bankruptcy and Tax Law
Get PDFDespite marijuana’s varying levels of legalization in thirty-three states, the U.S. federal government still regards marijuana cultivation and distribution as federal crimes, leading bankruptcy courts to deny marijuana businesses the benefits of bankruptcy for fear of aiding the illegal activities. Courts have historically prioritized protecting the bankruptcy trustee from federal prosecution over allowing creditors and debtors access to the intended benefits of the Bankruptcy Code. Court interpretations of the Controlled Substances Act and what constitutes illegal activity continue derailing marijuana businesses’ attempts at repaying creditors through bankruptcy. While Congress remains stubborn in recognizing marijuana businesses as legitimate sources of income for bankruptcy purposes, it has not hesitated in recognizing that very same income as taxable under the Internal Revenue Code. This Comment argues that courts should change their approaches to bankruptcy for marijuana businesses and ultimately proposes a hybrid solution involving bankruptcy and tax laws as avenues for relief for the debtor, creditor, and trustee in marijuana bankruptcy cases
Keynote Discussion: Analysis of the Supreme Court Opinion in Rucho v. Common Cause
No full textKEYNOTE ADDRESS:
An analysis of the Supreme Court opinion in Rucho v. Common Cause.
Emmet Bondurant, Partner, Bondurant, Mixson & Elmore, LL
Event Program
Get PDFFull event program for the 39th Annual Randolph W. Thrower Symposium held on Thursday, February 6th 2020 at the Emory University School of Law
Panel III: Violations and Enforcement: Identifying and Rectifying Campaign and Election Violations
No full textPANEL III : VIOLATIONS AND ENFORCEMENT: IDENTIFYING AND RECTIFYING CAMPAIGN AND ELECTION VIOLATIONS
Fred Smith, Associate Professor of Law, Emory University School of Law (Moderator)
Michael Latner, Professor, Department of Political Science, California Polytechnic State University
Daniel Tokaji, Fred W. & Vi Miller Dean and Professor of Law, University of Wisconsin Law School
Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, Professor, Stetson University College of La
Hey, You Stole My Avatar!: Virtual Reality and Its Risks to Identity Protection
Get PDFVirtual reality (VR) consists of technology that injects users into a virtual world and will allow users to interact on an unprecedented level of cyber intimacy. VR technology is at a consumption tipping point as the technology is now cheaper and more accessible than ever before. Given the possible applications of VR in professional and business settings, some users will use their true name and likeness to interact with others, creating an effective extension of their person into the virtual world. By injecting their real identity into VR, these users are subject to risks of identity misappropriation—or the unauthorized use of their name and likeness by others. While identity misappropriation is already a sizeable problem in current social media interaction, VR is poised to exacerbate the issue. Unlike current social media identity misappropriations that yield only fixed media such as still photos, short videos, and written thoughts, when a VR identity is appropriated the thief can both create new content and continually interact with other people as the stolen identity. The problem is further intensified by other factors such as the real-time interaction between users, sophistication of perpetrators, and increased user investment in their virtual identity. As it stands, the current substantive legal framework for redress of online identity misappropriation amounts to a web of inconsistent privacy laws leaving gaps in protection for the millions of users that log onto the VR servers. These inconsistencies are substantially caused by procedural barriers brought about by dated Internet laws. These procedural barriers include Internet personal jurisdiction, strong judicial preference toward protecting the anonymity of anonymous online users, and sweeping immunity for Internet Service Providers (ISP). Together, these barriers leave plaintiffs without a defendant to sue: Anonymity and personal jurisdiction laws make enforcement against the appropriator virtually impossible, and ISP immunity prevents the plaintiff from suing the VR provider. This Comment will argue for the lifting of these procedural barriers to give victims of VR identity misappropriation the opportunity to bring their claim to court. The proposed solutions include reworking personal jurisdiction precedent, adopting a plaintiff-friendly John Doe subpoena standard, and rewriting the Communications Decency Act to both reduce immunity and establish a victim compensation fund. Implementing these proposals will deter VR identity thieves from committing future misappropriations and incentivize VR providers to police their own products
Tuition as a Fraudulent Transfer
Get PDFThis intriguing Article by David Gray Carlson addresses the trend of bankruptcy trustees suing universities for tuition checks provided by the insolvent parents of adult students under a theory that the university is a recipient of a fraudulent transfer. The author argues that this strategy is misguided, as the university is not the recipient of a fraudulent transfer, but rather, the student is the recipient. This leads the author to conclude that the university was involved in a good faith transfer for value, and thus it should be immune from liability to the bankruptcy trustee or the estate. Of course, this would mean that the student was the recipient of a fraudulent transfer, and thus liable to the trustee for this nondischargeable debt
Corporate Bankruptcy Panel--The Fraudulent Conveyance Origins of Chapter 11: An Essay on the Unwritten Law of Corporate Reorganizations
Get PDFThe second panel was the Corporate Panel, led by Professor Douglas Baird from the University of Chicago Law School. We were fortunate enough to have the impressive Sarah R. Borders act as the moderator of this panel. The discussion, however, did not require much moderating; the panelists were familiar with one another and the discussion was entertaining. The panel was divided into two schools of thought: those who felt like the Code solely governed the practice of corporate bankruptcy, and those who felt like there was a set of unwritten rules created over the last 150 years that pulled the strings
The Supreme Court and the 117th Congress
Get PDFIf the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s successor is confirmed before the 2020 presidential election or in the post-election lame-duck period, and if Democrats come to have unified control of government on January 20, 2021, how can they respond legislatively to the Court’s new 6-3 conservative ideological balance? This Essay frames a hypothetical 117th Congress’s options, discusses its four simplest legislative responses—expand the Court, limit its certiorari discretion, restrict its jurisdiction, or reroute its jurisdiction—and offers model statutory language for enacting those responses
The Wealth Tax: Apportionment, Federalism, and Constitutionality
Get PDFProposals of wealth taxation as a mechanism to combat economic inequality and raise revenue for welfare programs have dominated recent political debate. Despite extensive academic commentary, questions surrounding the constitutionality of a wealth tax remain unresolved. Previous scholarly approaches have drawn a dichotomy between two key cases. Supporters of the wealth tax emphasize Hylton\u27s functional rule for identifying direct taxes, which must be apportioned under the Constitution, and reject Pollock, which invalidated the federal income tax on the grounds that it was a direct tax. Opponents of the wealth tax, in contrast, argue that Pollock, rather than Hylton, was correctly decided.
This Article examines the inequitable results of apportioning the wealth tax and argues that both Hylton\u27s rule of reason and the underlying, federalism rationale of Pollock disfavor classifying the wealth tax as a direct tax. Using IRS personal-wealth data, I estimate the wealth tax rates as apportioned in accordance with the geographic distribution of wealth among the states. The disparate impact of apportionment imposing tax rates ranging from 2% in D.C. to 40% in West Virginia provide strong support for the constitutionality of wealth taxation at uniform rates
Historical Foundations and Enduring Fundamentals of American Religious Freedom
Get PDFFor all of their failures and shortcomings, the eighteenth-century founders did indeed begin on the right “path” toward a free society, and today, Americans enjoy a good deal of religious, civil, and political freedom as a consequence. American principles of religious freedom have had a profound influence around the globe, and they now figure prominently in a number of national constitutions and international human rights instruments issued by political and religious bodies.
To be sure, as Adams predicted, there has always been a “glorious uncertainty of the law” of religious liberty and a noble diversity of understandings of its details. This was as true in Adams’s day as in our own. In Adams’s day, there were competing models of religious liberty that were more overtly theological than his—whether Puritan, Evangelical, Catholic, Quaker, or Anglican in inspiration. There were also competing models that were more overtly philosophical than his— whether Neoclassical, Republican, Whig, or Liberal in inclination. Today, these and other founding models of religious liberty have born ample progeny, and the great rivalries among them are fought out in the courts, legislatures, and academies throughout the land and, increasingly, the world