16885 research outputs found
Sort by
Inequitable Infrastructure: An Empirical Assessment of Federalism, Climate Change, and Environmental Racism
Get PDFThis Article explains a critical, yet unexplored issue: How are some communities like Jackson—the 80% Black capital of Mississippi—often left without water or electricity, while their mostly white neighbors are not? The Article maps uncharted territory by interrogating the underlying causes of this disparity, untangling how three seemingly unrelated factors interplay with the accelerating effects of climate change to perpetuate systemic inequities.
First, and somewhat uniquely, the U.S. federalist construct allocates infrastructure responsibility to the states, which, under the guise of autonomy, subdelegate to often under-resourced local authorities. Second, this capital mismatch requires governmental units to borrow using complex municipal instruments that provide investors vastly underestimated power over critical assets. Finally, these dynamics are compounded by America’s segregationist past, the legacy of which involuntarily concentrated minority groups in areas most exposed to climate change, and as a result increasingly struggling to meet their constituents’ most basic needs.
The Biden administration’s keenly underappreciated legislative package reflects a welcome evolution of the prevailing construct. Yet, the “Infrastructure New Deal’s” financial and structural shortcomings suggest it may disappoint, requiring mitigating strategies which this Article recommends based in part on comparative analysis of successful approaches from other jurisdictions
What We Pretend To Be: Codifying a Right to a Religious Advisor in the Execution Chamber
Get PDFOver the last fifty years, the Supreme Court has moved the pendulum both toward religious accommodation and away from it. After a decade of oscillating Court decisions, multiple attempts at corrective action by Congress, and widespread social activism, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Person’s Act, or RLUIPA, was passed in 2000. RLUIPA was designed to fortify the rights of incarcerated persons and provide clarification to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. As of 2024, the Supreme Court has granted certiorari in only a few RLUIPA cases—and has decided even less about the application of the law to death row inmates. The swinging pendulum of accommodation rights has been detrimental to the religious rights of people on death row who seek final spiritual comfort during their execution and death. In 2022, the Supreme Court addressed the issue most notably in Ramirez v. Collier, although the decision was surrounded by a litany of other cases, many of which were on the “shadow docket.” These decisions precipitated a variety of ill effects which left lower courts confused. State legislatures were also pulled into the ambit of chaos—they were left to their own devices to strike a proper balance between an inmate’s rights under RLUIPA and their interest in maintaining prison safety during executions. Since then, people throughout the United States are left to wonder whether the American culture of spirituality and religious pluralism extends to the isolation of the execution chamber. Most importantly, people on death row seeking spiritual guidance and comfort during their execution are left at the secular mercy of prison administrators rather than the sacred and holy principles and deities that are central to their faith. In this Note, I argue that the exclusion of spiritual advisors from the execution chamber is wholly inconsistent with the First Amendment value of religious freedom, and that any proffered state interests are not compelling enough to circumvent this right or have already been satisfied through alternative mechanisms. Finally, I will argue RLUIPA should be amended to explicitly apply to death row inmates, thus providing a specific protection against government interference with final religious advisements
An Interview with Elizabeth Andrews
Get PDF...to me, being a citizen lawyer means being a leader in your life in all aspects, not just in your job 9 to 5, but in your community. And so working on real world projects that made a difference policy-wise was a great way to live out that aspiration to be a citizen lawyer. -- Elizabeth Andrews
------------------------------------
Elizabeth Andrews was interviewed on March 8, 2024, in the William & Mary Media Center’s production studio. She begins by describing how a love and respect for the natural world guided her towards public service work. She discusses her decision to attend law school and working in the Virginia Attorney General’s Office on environmental issues. Andrews then reflects on her time directing the Virginia Coastal Policy Clinic, the significance of the real-world policy experience for law students, collaborating on environmental projects, and advice for students interested in environmental law and policy. She ends the interview reflecting on the current state of environmental policy at all levels of government as well as her legacy more generally at William & Mary Law School.https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/oralhist_all/1009/thumbnail.jp
Tribes and Water in the Wake of \u3cem\u3eNavajo Nation\u3c/em\u3e and \u3cem\u3eSackett\u3c/em\u3e: Treaties, \u3cem\u3eWinters\u3c/em\u3e, \u3cem\u3eMontana\u3c/em\u3e, and Rights of Nature
Get PDFFreshwater resources in the United States face a variety of stressors, including drought, flooding, and climate change–driven shifts in precipitation, that exacerbate both water quality problems and drinking water crises. In the midst of these increasing issues regarding both water quality and quantity (allocation), Tribes are playing an ever more active role in U.S. water management. This Article provides an overview of the complex contemporary legal landscape governing tribal authority over water. After reviewing the current state of inherent tribal sovereignty with respect to water, treaty rights and reservations, the federal Winters doctrine, and Treatment-as-a-State (“TAS”) status, this Article explores how these authorities intersect with two recent Supreme Court decisions: Sackett v. EPA (May 2023), in which the Court cut back on the Clean Water Act’s jurisdictional reach, and Arizona v. Navajo Nation (June 2023), in which the Court held that the federal government has no trust duty to help Tribes get water. The Article concludes that, despite these setbacks, Tribes—especially those in the Pacific Northwest—possess a constellation of authorities over water that they can combine to allow new kinds of water management approaches, including rights of nature approaches
Renewable Energy and Defense Power in Japan
Get PDFJapan’s challenge will be how quickly it can shift its energy supply to renewable energy sources. To increase energy self-sufficiency and defense power, Japan should promote policies that encourage renewable energy use. However, under the current legal system, local governments are not involved in the legal review process for establishing nuclear power plants. Through agreements, local consent is required to restart a plant. However, this is merely a contract, and permission is granted even if the agreement is violated, as long as the plant passes a safety review. The central government is trying to facilitate communication between local governments and operators, but it is not enough. Legally requiring the establishment and funding of councils would stimulate local discussion and support local actors who file civil or administrative lawsuits if the power company’s explanation is insufficient.
This abstract has been taken from the author\u27s conclusion
No Need to Wait: Congress Has the Power Under Section Five of the Fourteenth Amendment to Abolish the Death Penalty in the States
Get PDFReformers currently proposing the abolition of capital punishment by federal legislation have only targeted the federal death penalty. They are aiming too low. Concerns about the roughly 50 prisoners facing execution by the federal government should not cause advocates to ignore the approximately 2,400 on the combined Death Rows of the states. Congress has the authority to abolish the death penalty in the states, and good reason to exercise it.
This Article takes as a given the Supreme Court’s view that the death penalty is not itself unconstitutional.
But under existing law Congress would have no difficulty in compiling a record that would support the use of its enforcement power under Section Five of the Fourteenth Amendment to enact a statute forbidding the imposition of capital punishment by those states that retain the practice. The statute would be congruent and proportional legislation to remedy and prevent an amply documented history of violations of rights that the Court has long recognized as fundamental concerns.
Those violations include the states’: (1) denial of effective assistance of counsel to capital defendants, (2) racial discrimination in the selection of capital jurors and in charging and sentencing decisions, (3) failure to structure death penalty systems so as to reliably result in the execution of the most culpable of the potentially eligible defendants, (4) execution of the mentally impaired, (5) execution of prisoners contrary to the Constitution due to the fortuities of litigation timing, (6) execution of the innocent, and (7) use of torturous methods of execution.
If death penalty reformers focus their advocacy efforts on a federal statute they may achieve surprising success. Congressional representatives from abolitionist states may support their efforts, and so may some from retentionist states, buttressed by the growing number of political conservatives who support abolition. In any event, the campaign itself may strengthen the abolitionist cause
\u3cem\u3e303 Creative LLC\u3c/em\u3e, Public Accommodations Law, and the Many Possible Futures of Rights
Get PDFThe unifying theme of the contributions to this Collection of Essays on 303 Creative LLC, which emerged from a panel held at the 2024 American Association of Law Schools meeting, is that while 303 Creative LLC may have brought these themes forward, their full expositions lie in the hands of Supreme Court jurisprudence that is yet to come...
In exploring these possibilities, this Collection seeks to anticipate what might come next for both the First Amendment and public accommodations law.
This abstract has been taken from the author\u27s introduction
Women\u27s Equality Day
Get PDFOn display in the Wolf Law Library August 2024 - January 2025.https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/libdisplays/1009/thumbnail.jp
Strolling Down Memory Lane, Touring an Historical Restoration, and the Constitution of December 11, 1865
Get PDFThe following pages [compare] a stroll down the Reconstruction section of memory lane with a tour of a historical restoration dedicated to reproducing the Constitution of December 11, 1865. Part I strolls down the Reconstruction section of memory lane by elaborating the conventional legal account of what Republicans were thinking when they sought to improve the Thirteenth Amendment’s Constitution immediately after the ratification of the constitutional ban on slavery was assured. Their most vital and often sole concern, legal opinions from the Slaughter-House Cases to Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard agree, was to alleviate doubts among anti-slavery advocates about whether the federal government was authorized to protect persons and property in the (former confederate) states. Most contemporary scholars walk that walk. Witness the percentage of contemporary scholarly books and articles with “The Fourteenth Amendment” in the title that discuss only the rights provisions in Section One. Part II tours a historical restoration by examining all available online American newspaper accounts published on December 11, 1865, that discuss the constitutional reforms Republicans considered when seeking to improve the Thirteenth Amendment’s Constitution after ratification of the constitutional ban on slavery was assured. Section II.A highlights the strong-felt need to improve how constitutional politics was configured by changing the rules for apportioning representatives and votes in the Electoral College, some felt need to adjust how constitutional politics was created by repealing the ban on export duties in Article I, Section 9, but little detectable interest in empowering Congress to protect certain fundamental rights of persons and property. Section II.B continues the tour of the historical restoration by considering the most frequent republished item in December 11, 1865, newspapers, the decision of a federal court in Kentucky to dismiss an indictment against Major General John Palmer of Kentucky for assisting alleged fugitives from slavery and General Palmer’s subsequent circular declaring all discriminations against persons of color in Kentucky void. This exhibit, combined with an exhibit detailing Southern opposition to broad readings of Section Two of the Thirteenth Amendment, helps explain why Republicans were so interested in apportionment reform and not at all interested in providing additional congressional power to protect fundamental rights. Palmer and Republican newspapers thought the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment gave persons of color all the rights of free citizens. Bingham’s proposed amendment added nothing to that Constitution. What mattered was apportionment reform that ensured Republicans exercised existing powers, not rights reform that gave Republicans in Congress no new powers. Part III provides reasons why this study in American constitutional development matters, apart from questions about how the Constitution should be interpreted. We might better understand the pathologies and possibilities of rights protection in our time by understanding why Republicans (and Federalists) insisted that the most fundamental protection for constitutional rights were institutions prone to protect those rights rather than entrenched parchment barriers.
This abstract has been taken from the author\u27s introduction