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Religious Organizations in Missouri Continue to Escape Liability in Negligence Actions Involving Abuse of Children Under the Guise of the First Amendment
Get PDF“Church allowed abuse by priest for years” was the headline of the Boston Globe on Sunday, January 6, 2002. Reporters at the Boston Globe exposed the truth about the horrendous decades of child sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic priests in the Boston area. This story launched the Catholic Church’s secrets into public view and helped unravel the pattern of abuse perpetuated by its leaders for decades. The abuse, however, was not limited to the city of Boston—or even just the United States. Claims of sexual abuse spanned the globe. Thousands of priests have been accused, and the Catholic Church has paid almost $4 billion in lawsuits stemming from sexual abuse allegations. Church officials often swept these abuse allegations under the rug and effectively allowed priests to continue abusing children for decades. This represents a deeply-rooted systemic problem—church leaders protected priests and the image of the Catholic Church at the expense of children. When allegations came to light, rather than hold abusers accountable for their actions, church leaders would simply move the abusers to another diocese where they could continue harming children
“Heads I win, tails you lose”: The End of Employers’ Exploitation of the Federal Arbitration Waiver Prejudice Requirement
Get PDFOn its face, an arbitration agreement suggests a straightforward process: should a dispute between the parties subject to the agreement arise, the dispute will be resolved through arbitration rather than litigation. But sometimes the parties do not follow this seemingly predetermined path. For example, many employers include mandatory, boilerplate arbitration agreements as conditions of employment. As is often the case, what happens when an employee sues her employer without knowledge of the contract’s arbitration clause? What if the employer allows the lawsuit to proceed for several months before it decides that it would fare better before an arbitrator? Must a court compel arbitration even if the plaintiff employee has spent considerable resources to pursue her claim in court? The Supreme Court of the United States addressed this question in Morgan v. Sundance. Plaintiff Robyn Morgan, an hourly Taco Bell employee, sued her employer’s parent corporation for withholding wages at her already low-wage job. After months of substantial litigation activity and to Ms. Morgan’s detriment, Sundance pulled out the pre-dispute arbitration agreement that Ms. Morgan was required to sign when hired
Resorbing Patent Law\u27s Kessler Cat into the General Law of Preclusion
Get PDFIt has become exceedingly common in our legal system that courts, in the guise of respect for precedent, compound upon errors. Legal precedents are written documents, but [t]he reality we can put into words is never reality itself. As such, we seldom find a court decision that embodies the entire legal reality regarding the questions presented. In this respect, the legal system inherently suffers from a lack of what mathematicians call completeness. Each decision gives rise to countless inferences because what lower courts observe by reading the precedent is not the entire legal reality but an incomplete reality exposed to their method of questioning. In such a framework, we may hope to understand [the precedent and correctly apply it], but we may have to learn at the same time anew meaning of the word \u27understanding. \u27
The recently revived and expanded Kessler doctrine demonstrates how a particularly incomplete decision sets the stage for developing a chaotic jurisprudence by lower courts, where lower courts\u27 interpretations and applications of the doctrine are no longer directed toward a unifying center
References to Babe Ruth in Advocacy and Judicial Opinions
Get PDFThe common theme of these “Writing It Right” articles is that the courts’ use of well-known cultural references in their opinions invites advocates to enhance their briefs and other submissions with references to similar well-known cultural markers. Advocates’ appropriate references to Babe Ruth, a true cultural icon, fit the bill
The Perfect Storm: Substance Abuse, Mental Illness, and Rural America
No full textAcross the United States in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, substance abuse and mental illness have clashed with the criminal justice system to produce inequitable and tragic results. The War on Drugs especially affects rural communities, where resources for rehabilitative services, mental health treatment, and transitional housing are scarce. In these areas, the significant strain on the criminal justice system caused by the frequent intersection of substance abuse and mental illness has wrought overcrowded correctional facilities, congested criminal court dockets, exhausted public defenders, and devastated families. This Article is a case study of one such rural community\u27s experience with the confluence of substance abuse and mental illness. Warren County, Tennessee, situated at the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, has been acutely affected by the War on Drugs. The County lacks any meaningful rehabilitation facilities or mental health resources; this, combined with zealous policing and prosecuting practices, has produced little results in the way of crime prevention while exacerbating inequality. Notably, Warren County\u27s recidivism rate has hovered over eighty percent, with most recidivists struggling from some combination of substance abuse and mental illness. Unfortunately, without the financial resources to treat the roots of the problems many accused persons face, the only perceived solution by those in power is incarceration. This Article surveys the effects of substance abuse and mental illness produced by the War on Drugs in Warren County, Tennessee, and demonstrates that the experience in this community is like that of other rural areas across the United States. This Article shows that the War on Drugs has failed these underprivileged regions and reform is critical to ending this inequity and injustice
Giving up the Ghost in the Machine: Emergency Cellphone Tracking Under 18 U.S.C. § 2702(c)(4) Is a Search
Get PDFIn the post-September 11th world, our judiciary has been forced to confront the truth that “all free peoples have had to balance the demands of liberty with the demands of security.” This tension is not new, and in the past, “we Americans have been able to plant our flag well down the spectrum towards liberty.” Recently, however, the interception of electronic communications and other data by local, state, and federal law-enforcement authorities has emerged as a central point in the debate. While many Americans might be willing to endure some degree of intrusion under the threat of national terrorism, the situations that implicate our most deeply held constitutional protections are rarely so clear or dramatic. Should we allow police to gather location data from a suspected robber’s cellphone as evidence without a search warrant? What about to arrest him before he strikes again? What if not a robber but a drug dealer? These examples may seem innocuous, even obvious to some. But what happens when police suspect you, and what harm will you suffer when it turns out they were wrong? These questions make up some of the murkiest depths of American Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, and confusion persists over when and within what constraints law enforcement can track your cellphone’s location in real time. Both statutory and constitutional law governs law-enforcement acquisition of information regarding cellphone service subscribers, including cellphone location data. The Stored Communications Act (“SCA,” “the Act”), specifically 18 U.S.C. § 2702(a)(3), restricts the disclosure of cellphone data to the government by cellular service providers, while § 2702(c)(4) (“the emergency provision”) provides an exception for certain emergency situations. Other sections provide civil remedies for “nonconstitutional violations” of the Act
Restorative Justice: An Alternative Dispute Resolution Approach to Criminal Behavior
Get PDFBeginning with the end of the Mass Prison Era in the late 1800s, Americans have looked for a better way to respond to crime and those who commit it. Since the Reformatory Era, the United States has swayed between punitive models based on either the Reformatory or Retributive theories. Despite the changes we have made, our criminal justice system suffers from long waiting periods for a trial, overburdened public defenders, overcrowded jails and prisons that often lead to unsafe conditions for the inmates and corrections officers, and many other problems
Creating an Impossible Burden: State ex rel. Becker v. Wood and Prosecutorial Vindictiveness
Get PDFIn the American criminal justice system, prosecutors have an enormous amount of discretion and power. With dockets growing more cramped, prosecutors often use threats of harsher charges and sentences to deter defendants from exercising their right to a jury trial or an appeal. Prosecutors can also wield this power for purely vindictive or retaliatory purposes, as one prosecutor noted when reflecting on his career: Sometimes a public defender or a defense lawyer will just try and bust your ass all the time. Frankly, you end up busting theirs back. You get irritated, but you try not to take it out on the people they represent… Should you penalize him for that? No. Do we? Probably, sometimes. You try not to, but we\u27re human. When prosecutors sidestep their ethical obligations in this way, defendants have one possible remedy: striking the enhanced charges by proving prosecutorial vindictiveness. The Supreme Court of the United States has created two tests for a defendant to prove prosecutorial vindictiveness when a prosecutor increases or enhances charges: the presumption of prosecutorial vindictiveness test and the objective evidence test. Missouri courts have adopted both of these tests and applied them to various situations beyond merely an enhancement in charges
Cross-Border Data Transfers: A Balancing Act through Federal Law
Get PDFThroughout the digital age, corporations have collected, used, and stored individuals’ digital information to efficiently market to consumers and expand their business. In fact, not only do retail companies rely on data, but also farmers, financial institutions, health services, and other businesses heavily depend on one’s in-formation. Despite the importance and necessity of data, the U.S. has failed to establish a comprehensive federal law addressing data issues. Many countries with developed or developing economies, however, have established laws related to data, a company’s usage of such data, and other data-related issues. A key obstacle plaguing U.S. businesses in terms of data law is cross-border data transfers. In adopting data-related laws, countries around the world have focused on an individual’s right to privacy and strengthened their data privacy regimes. However, because of the lack of a comprehensive federal law, other countries have been cautious or refused to allow U.S. companies to transfer the data of individuals to the United States. This wariness is rooted in the fact that current U.S. data privacy laws do not impose stringent enough standards for businesses that collect and use data, and the belief that the U.S. does not offer adequate protections for an individual’s sensitive personal information. Thus, foreign countries bar U.S. businesses from freely transferring data to the United States. As a result, U.S. businesses are required to either incur substantial compliance costs to adhere to foreign standards or cease to do business within countries with stringent data privacy laws. If the U.S. was to adopt a comprehensive data privacy law, businesses would be able to transfer data freely while protecting an individual’s sensitive personal data. Through looking at data privacy and cross-border data transfers through a comparative law lens, this article proposes that the United States should adopt a com-prehensive federal law regarding data privacy. To support this proposal, the article first compares U.S. law to Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) and other countries’ laws. This comparative analysis will illustrate how American businesses are disadvantaged by the lack of a general federal law. The comparative analysis also highlights strategies that the U.S. Congress can adopt to strike a better balance to both protect the privacy of U.S. citizens while also allowing U.S. businesses to remain efficient and financially unburdened