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Out of Sight, But Not Out of Mind: Reevaluating the Role of Federalism in Adequately Regulating Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations
Get PDFAccommodating Pregnancy Five Years After \u3cem\u3eYoung v. UPS\u3c/em\u3e: Where We Are & Where We Should Go
Get PDFThis Article will explore how pregnant employees fare when they are denied accommodations in the workplace that would have allowed them to work safely through their pregnancies. The two most commonly used legal avenues for pregnant plaintiffs are the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Successful cases under the ADA were rare until Congress expanded the ADA’s definition of disability in 2008. PDA claims became easier after the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision in Young v. United Parcel Service, Inc. This Article will analyze both the body of PDA cases decided since Young, and all of the ADA cases where pregnancy is the claimed disability since the ADA was amended in 2008. Although the picture isn’t quite rosy for pregnant plaintiffs, it is perhaps more positive than many scholars predicted it would be. Nevertheless, there remain many gaps in protection— some caused by the statutes’ limitations—but many caused by litigants’ and judges’ inability (or unwillingness) to properly interpret these two statutes. This Article will explain where we are and explore options for where we should go in the future
Adverse Employment Actions in Failure-to-Accommodate Claims: Much Ado About Nothing
Get PDFThis Article addresses a circuit split in the disability law jurisprudence. Under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), employees generally bring two types of claims against their employers—discrimination claims and failure-to-accommodate claims. Succeeding on a discrimination claim requires proving that the employee suffered an adverse employment action. Succeeding on a failure-to-accommodate claim does not. But several courts—including a recent case in the Tenth Circuit—have added this adverse-employment-action requirement into failure-to-accommodate claims. In doing so, these courts have camouflaged important issues about an employer’s obligation to provide a reasonable accommodation to disabled employees. Although I believe that courts that require an adverse employment action in failure-to-accommodates claim do so in error, the main contribution of this Article is to reveal how courts have obscured and confused broader disability-accommodation issues by imposing that requirement
Smart Contracts and the Limits of Computerized Commerce
Get PDFSmart contracts and cryptocurrencies have sparked considerable interest among legal scholars in recent years, and a growing body of scholarship focuses on whether smart contracts and cryptocurrencies can sidestep law and regulation altogether. Bitcoin is famously decentralized, without any central actor controlling the system. Its users remain largely anonymous, using alphanumeric addresses instead of legal names. Ethereum shares these traits and also supports smart contracts that can automate the transfer of the Ethereum cryptocurrency (known as ether). Ethereum also supports specialized tokens that can be tied to the ownership of assets, goods, and services that exist completely outside of the Ethereum blockchain.
The goal of this Article is to evaluate the degree to which cryptocurrencies and smart contracts can operate outside the reach of law and regulation. By some accounts, cryptocurrencies and smart contracts will revolutionize private law. Some argue they have the potential to displace contract and property law. For example, in a previous article, I argued that Bitcoin represents a system of private property that exists wholly outside of traditional legal structures. In this Article, I will argue that a complete revolution is not inexorable. Facing the technical and complicated nature of this subject, we should keep in mind a simple fact: cryptocurrencies and smart contracts are computer data and computer programs. To a large extent, they will have legal force only if given force by judges, regulators, and legislators
Conservative Minimalism and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
No full textWhile Chief Justice Roberts\u27s votes do not hew closely to what either conservatives or progressives would have preferred, it is a mistake to assume the chief justice has been arbitrary or inconsistent. Rather, the October 2019 Term offered further confirmation that Chief Justice Roberts is a conservative minimalist. While his jurisprudential orientation remains quite conservative, he prefers narrow rulings over sweeping judgments. If it\u27s not necessary to decide more to dispose of a case, in my view it is necessary not to decide more, he explained in his confirmation hearings. At the same time, Chief Justice Roberts is reluctant to overturn Supreme Court precedent or declare federal laws to be unconstitutional. In cases in which such decisions are unavoidable, he still prefers to minimize change or disruption, through narrow rulings, surgical excision of constitutional infirmities, and restrained remedies that avoid disrupting settled expectations. Whatever its merits, this is the jurisprudence the chief justice has embraced in his time on the Court.
This abstract has been taken from the author\u27s introductory paragraphs
International Bridges to Justice
No full textThis summer, I will be working remotely with International Bridges to Justice (IBJ), a human rights and legal aid organization that combats torture, arbitrary detention, and other abuses worldwide. IBJ engages in numerous activities to pursue their vision of a just world, including, reporting on human rights abuses and empowering lawyers--through education and training--to protect those who face government oppression. In particular, IBJ specializes in strategizing and lobbying for criminal justice reform, which is central to its mission of promoting human rights
International Bridges to Justice in Geneva, Switzerland
No full textThis summer, I will be interning with the International Bridges to Justice (IBJ) office in Geneva, Switzerland. IBJ is a non-governmental organization devoted to the protection of basic legal rights for individuals in developing nations, specifically the rights to competent legal representation, a fair trial, and protection from cruel and unusual punishment. To achieve these goals, IBJ provides training and support to legal aid organizations, at the same time promoting the establishment of just and effective criminal law systems. During my internship, I will write grant proposals as well as contribute to the development of manuals to be used by lawyers in developing nations
Great Variety of Relevant Conditions, Political Social and Economic : the Constitutionality of Congressional Deadlines on Amendment Proposals Under Article V
Get PDFWithin a year or two, the thirty-eighth state is likely to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), setting up an unprecedented constitutional challenge. The ERA was proposed with a seven-year deadline in the resolving clause, establishing the mode of ratification. That was a shift from earlier precedents in which a deadline had been placed in the text of the amendment proposal itself. Article V is annoyingly silent on the issue of congressional deadlines in amendment proposals, and the Supreme Court has never addressed the issue of a deadline that could void an otherwise properly ratified amendment. The practice of placing deadlines on amendment proposals began in 1917 with the Eighteenth Amendment, but has not been consistent since. Deadlines appear to have originated as an effort to torpedo amendments by opponents, but have since become almost pro forma. Some argue deadlines ensure finality and closure; others argue they infringe on the power of states to control the ratification process free of unconstitutional limitations imposed by the national legislature.
With the 1992 ratification of the Twenty-Seventh Amendment after 203 years, and state ratifications of the ERA after 35 years, the issue of congressional deadlines is both front and center and of potentially enormous consequence. This Article examines the history, theory, and policy of amendment deadlines and argues that they are unconstitutional limitations on state power, inconsistent with the federalism guarantees of the founding. This issue will almost certainly require resolution by the Supreme Court, which needs to give the issue of congressional deadlines its most thoughtful attention
