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Open Development Cambodia in Phnom Penh, Cambodia
No full textOwen Tremblay [1L] will contribute to ODC’s mission to aggregate information and make it available to the public. His work will focus in part on cybersecurity issues that impact the reliability and availability of legislation, policies, regulations and frameworks relating to economic governance of small- to medium-size enterprises
Comisión Provincial por la Memoria in Buenos Aires, Argentina
No full textJulie Stanwyck [1L] will work with the Provincial Memory Commission, an independent public organization that promotes and implements public policies of preserving historical memory and ensuring human rights. The Commission’s objectives and work express the commitment to preserving the memory of State terrorism and promoting the defense and advancement of human rights in democracy. The President of CPM, Adolfo Perez Esquivel, is the recipient of a Nobel Peace Prize
George Wythe Society Award
No full textFor Exceptional Character, Leadership and a Spirit of Selfless Service by a Member of the Law School Community.https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmlsawards/1001/thumbnail.jp
Finding and Thriving with Mentors: Soft Skills for Early Career Success
No full texthttps://scholarship.law.wm.edu/ibrlposters/1032/thumbnail.jp
Recalibrating Interbranch Bargaining
Get PDFTo fulfill its constitutional functions, Congress must have access to information from within the executive branch. Whether it is assessing the need to amend the authorities of administrative agencies, determining whether to fund executive branch programs, or investigating allegations of waste, fraud, and abuse, Congress can act responsibly only if it is able to compile an accurate picture of executive branch activities. When executive branch officials resist these requests—for either legitimate or problematic reasons—the resulting conflict is traditionally resolved amicably through interbranch negotiations, not inter-branch litigation. Indeed, courts heard a total of four congressional-executive information disputes in the nation’s first two hundred and forty years. Depending on how you count, however, the Trump administration alone generated at least five.
This Article argues that Congress’s recent litigiousness is the culmination of a long-term trend. Over the past half-century, the executive branch has unilaterally developed numerous legal doctrines that aggrandize its own bargaining power at Congress’s expense, enable it to circumvent the checks and balances established by the Constitution, and justify rebuffing valid congressional information requests. The Article uses the Trump-era cases to explore this evolution, and its consequences, in the context of executive branch doctrine surrounding three issues—the claim that presidential advisors are absolutely immune from testifying before Congress, the claim that Congress must clear a high bar to request information from the executive branch, and the claim that congressional lawsuits to enforce subpoenas are not justiciable in federal court. It demonstrates the extravagance of the executive branch’s claims and explores the significance of the courts’ nearly universal rejection of them in the Trump-era suits. It concludes that the cases’ impact will not be as significant as the courts’ decisive rejections of the executive’s theories might suggest, and that both Congress and the courts must act more aggressively to recalibrate the branches’ bargaining power to bring the executive back to the bargaining table, where such disputes should be resolved
The Consequences and Constitutionality of Training Police to Blame Victims
Get PDFA common technique in American interrogations is “moral minimization,” in which investigators excuse or justify the suspect’s criminal behavior on moral grounds. A surprising type of moral minimization is explicit victim-blaming, which includes blaming the victim by endorsing negative stereotypes on the basis of gender, race, religion, or sexual orientation, what we call victim-blaming-bystereotype. No one has previously considered the policy wisdom or constitutionality of this technique. We explore the unintended consequences. One cost is the secondary victimization of those who suffer from crime, especially when they discover how detectives have disparaged them. The second is the effect on the interrogators. Using the economic concept of self-selection and psychological theories of persuasion, we explain why the training and practice in the pretense of victim-blaming produces a detective cadre that is more likely to actually blame victims. Victim-blaming detectives are less likely to effectively investigate crime. Finally, we consider constitutional objections to victim-blaming-by-stereotype. The practice does not plausibly violate the suspect’s due process or Miranda rights—the constitutional challenges that commonly garner the most attention among scholars of interrogation—but it plausibly violates the equal protection rights of the victim
Justice on the High Seas: Nonpecuniary Damages and the Death on the High Seas Act
Get PDFThe COVID-19 pandemic has brought forth many discussions on liability issues. The Death on the High Seas Act currently prohibits recovery of “loss of society” or “loss of consortium” nonpecuniary damages. This Article contends that in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the harsh results of the application of DOHSA in COVID-19 cases, Congress has an opportunity to amend DOHSA. Allowing recovery of nonpecuniary damages in DOHSA cruise line cases, currently advocated for by a bipartisan group of lawmakers, will provide consistency and fairness to DOHSA
Life, Liberty, and Freedom from Non-Consensual Pelvic Exams?
Get PDF[T]here is a need for the federal government to intervene and finally ban the practice of performing non-consensual pelvic exams, and it can do so under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees the right to refuse involuntary medical treatment. Part I will provide a brief overview of pelvic exams and informed consent; Part II draws on policy considerations for banning this practice and tackles counter-arguments; Part III will discuss the relevant federal law and case precedent; Part IV demonstrates how federal law applies to non-consensual pelvic exams; and, finally, Part V will further explain the need for federal intervention by using South Carolina as an example.
This abstract has been taken from the author\u27s introduction
The \u3cem\u3eGriffin\u27s Case\u3c/em\u3e Phenomenon and the Problem of Historical Knowledge in Legal Arguments
Get PDFThe sudden relevance of a formerly little-known historic case is surely not new; much of legal history is necessarily about discovery and rediscovery of the past. Still, I think the clarity with which we can outline the development of the Griffin’s Case phenomenon offers an opportunity to think carefully about the role of history in constitutional conversation. What follows, then, is a short exploration of the case’s recent (re)entry into our historical consciousness. Tracing this phenomenon highlights (at least for me) some potential difficulties embedded in the interaction between legal advocacy and what we know about the past.
This abstract has been taken from the author\u27s introduction
The Supreme Court Sack[ler]s Third-Party Releases in Chapter 11: Should Congress Seize the Cudgel?
Get PDFOn June 27, 2024, the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Harrington v. Purdue Pharma L.P., holding that nonconsensual third-party releases included in a Chapter 11 plan of reorganization, other than one relating to asbestos liability claims, were impermissible under the federal Bankruptcy Code. The releases at issue would have immunized members of the Sackler family, who controlled Purdue Pharma, from liability in connection with the company’s role in the opioid crisis. The Sacklers represent the epitome of the unpopular litigant, so no tears need be shed for them. In a sense, they just received a dose of their own medicine.
The decision was as narrow as it gets (five-to-four), and the majority predictably grounded its holding squarely in the statutory text (or absence thereof). I have no particular quibble with that result, as the statutory, unlike the policy, arguments in support of a release from personal liability for nondebtors were always a bit of a stretch. The decision, however, was disconcertedly overbroad in failing to clearly distinguish direct and derivative claims, and it will inevitably make it more difficult to formulate and confirm mass tort reorganizations. This effect will be unfortunate—both for mass tort debtors and their victims.
This abstract has been taken from the author\u27s introduction