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Making the Path to a Law Degree More Accessible for Everyone
Get PDFUS Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch recently asked if a law degree should require seven years of college and mountains of debt. William & Mary Law School Dean A. Benjamin Spencer answers that question and provides solutions for knocking down the barriers to a legal education
Fencing the Wind: Property Rights in Renewable Energy
No full textIn the face of global warming, the rapid development of carbon-neutral energy resources is utterly imperative. However, even environmentally friendly energy production like wind power has real externalities. Those who live in the shadow of wind turbines and suffer the immediate effects of wind development can be disenfranchised by municipal and state-level siting processes. Meanwhile, absent or ad hoc governance of windstreams prevents the efficient economic use of renewable energy resources when upwind development can doom a nascent windfarm. As windstream development intensifies, each of these conflicts will only become more frequent and more severe.
This article proposes a novel property mechanism, classified-share wind unitization, as a unifying solution to the three distinct property rights conflicts facing wind development: (1) traditional private nuisance claims, (2) rivalrous economic use of the windstream commons, and (3) environmental justice issues raised by current siting regimes. In doing so, this article offers policymakers an immediate model for wind development legislation while articulating a flexible framework for discussing property conflicts surrounding distributed infrastructure development.
Part I of this article discusses the different property conflicts implicated by wind development and looks at the costs these conflicts create. Part II examines existing and proposed governance mechanisms that attempt to address these property rights. Finally, Part III examines unitization as a tool for governing windstreams, proposes a novel form of class-based unitization tailored to address the specific property rights claims implicated by wind development, and outlines a model framework for wind unitization laws
International Bridges to Justice in Geneva, Switzerland
No full textKyle Hyde [1L] will work with International Bridges to Justice in Geneva, Switzerland. IBJ’s mission is to protect human rights in countries where state sanctioned torture is used and legal representation is not easily attainable
Improving (and Avoiding) Interstate Interpretive Encounters
Get PDFState courts often encounter the statutes of other states. Any encounter with another state’s statutes raises an interesting but inconspicuous question about choice of law. In particular, the interstate encounter presents a choice of interpretive law. Despite some universal practices in statutory interpretation, there are methodological differences across jurisdictions—both at the level of overall approach and in the details of particular interpretive canons. When a state court encounters the statute of a sister state, may the forum state use its own interpretive methods or must it instead use the methods of the enacting state?
The existing doctrine on this choice-of-law question is unclear, primarily because of inattention rather than open disagreement. The inattention is understandable given the historical understandings of interpretive methodology as either universal law, an application of evidence law, or not real law at all. But those old conceptions of interpretive methodology have been changing, with methodology lately coming to be seen as more or less ordinary law that may differ from place to place. Therefore, today’s courts and commentators increasingly view methodology as part of the law that should tag along with state statutes when those statutes come before other courts.
I largely agree that states must honor other states’ interpretive methods, but this Essay seeks to advance our understanding in three ways. First, the Essay grapples with nuances involving whether enacting states mean for their methods—and which aspects of them—to apply in other courts. Second, it addresses situations in which a forum state may have legitimate reasons to resist applying sister-state methodology to a sister-state statute. In such circumstances of true conflict, the best way to honor the sister state may be to avoid adjudicating claims under its law altogether rather than to apply its substantive law in a compromised form. Third, the Essay considers the potential role of the federal courts in modeling and encouraging compliance with the general duty to apply sister-state methodology
Who Owns the Meme?: Establishing a Definitive Framework to Resolve Disputes in Social Media Account Ownership Between Employers and Employees
Get PDFThe pervasive nature of social media and its growing impact on every aspect of society has created a novel issue: who owns a social media account, an employer or an employee, following the termination of the employment relationship? Courts thus far have produced an inconsistent and confusing legal terrain that will only continue to breed uncertainty amongst parties involved in disputes over social media account ownership. This Note examines the current jurisprudence, analyzes its strengths and weaknesses, proposes a definitive framework to determine ownership between the parties, and demonstrates that framework using the facts of an ongoing case. This framework includes a five-part test that considers: (1) personal versus business usage; (2) purpose at the time of creation; (3) access to the account; (4) job function and industry custom; and (5) economic impact. In doing so, this Note offers some much-needed clarity to a body of law that both over-complicates the issue and gives the parties involved little direction on how to handle these disputes
Originalism\u27s Implementation Problem
Get PDFDespite the vast body of theoretical work produced by originalist scholars, this literature fails to address how practicing judges and attorneys should apply originalist theories. All too often, academic originalists appear to write for an audience of other originalist scholars. This results in lengthy, technical, and heavily theoretical discussions. The question of how courts and judges are to apply these increasingly technical and theoretical originalist methods is left by the wayside. All too often, judges and attorneys cherry-pick from this body of scholarship to create a veneer of academic legitimacy for their own goal-oriented arguments.
We do not seek to bridge this gap in the originalist literature or to cast aspersions on the reasons for its uptake in legal practice. Instead, we argue that originalism is difficult, if not impossible, to implement—at least in cases where a theory of interpretation matters. By demonstrating that originalism is more of an academic phenomenon than a guide for legal practice, we cast serious doubt on judicial and political treatment of originalism which tends to frame originalism as a method, if not the method, that judges should employ when interpreting the Constitution.
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We do not propose solutions for implementing originalism. Indeed, we have little hope that originalists will succeed in solving the problem of implementation should they finally decide to devote the necessary time and effort to confront this issue. We hope that this Article will prompt originalists to at least attempt to take the practice—not just the theory—of originalism seriously. Should originalists fail to rise to this challenge, academic originalism will remain little more than an abstract, theoretical exercise that is fatally disconnected from the practice of law. In such a case, originalism’s supporters, including judges and politicians, will need to acknowledge that originalism in practice lacks the rigor and nuance of originalism as theorized.
This abstract has been adapted from the authors\u27 introduction
I Have to Tell Them What? The New Corporate Transparency Act and Forming Business Entities in Virginia
Get PDFThe details and requirements of business entity formation traditionally have been solely the province of state law. Most states, such as Virginia, maintain corporate annual report filing requirements that involve the public disclosure of corporate officers and directors. However, these requirements focus on active managers of the entities, not information about beneficial ownership. The recently enacted Corporate Transparency Act ( CTA ) will fundamentally change entity disclosure on the national level.
The CTA was part of the fiscal year 2021 National Defense Authorization Act and seeks to aid national security and crime fighting through a national registry of beneficial owners of business entities in the United States. However, as this article describes, the CTA may impose burdens on clients and their counsel, while leaving significant gaps that could frustrate its purpose.
The U.S. Treasury Department was ordered to promulgate regulations implementing the CTA by Jan. 1, 2022. Treasury published proposed regulations in December 2021, and it now seems that implementation will take longer than Congress demanded. However, once effective, every new business entity created by a state filing must be accompanied by a contemporaneous transmission into a new federal database of certain beneficial owners as well as of the applicant who forms the entity, which may be an attorney. Existing entities will have longer to comply but eventually will be subject to similar disclosure
