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Second Keynote Address: The Two Impeachments of Donald J. Trump
Get PDFIt was just two years ago this month that the Senate acquitted President Trump in the first impeachment trial, and one year ago this week, he was acquitted in the second trial for inciting an insurrection against the government of the United States. Now, in the first trial, Republican Senators voted to prohibit the trial managers, the actual prosecutors, from subpoenaing any witnesses or documents. They won because they were in the majority. Before both trials, enough Republican Senators, known as jurors, announced that they had already made up their minds to acquit the President—that the not-guilty verdicts were essentially rendered even before the trial started
The Actions of Crop Insurance Bad Faith
Get PDFThe federal crop insurance program is a critical risk management tool for agricultural producers which also provides an important safety net for farmers. Crop insurance seeks to protect against risks posed by adverse weather, drought, disease, and especially assists newer farmers who face the risk of potentially being pushed out of agriculture due to catastrophic events. In an era where bipartisanship is difficult to achieve, crop insurance has traditionally retained strong bipartisan support from Democratic, as well as Republican, lawmakers. This point was recently reaffirmed through Congress’ strong support of Farm Bills in 2014 and 2018
FDA-Approved: How PFAS-laden Food Contact Materials are Poisoning Consumers and What to do About it
Get PDFNearly every person in the United States currently has in their body dangerous amounts of chemicals proven to cause cancer, endocrine disruptions, liver and kidney failures, infertility, developmental difficulties, learning disorders, and immunodeficiencies. These chemicals are known collectively as “PFAS”—per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances—and they were designed for heavily industrial applications. However, over the last two decades, they have surreptitiously and successfully migrated from heavy machinery and building sites onto the many items that consumers use to cook, serve, or store their food. With the FDA’s blessing, PFAS are now ubiquitous in food contact materials, from where they leach directly into food. In fact, in the last 24 hours alone, many people likely ingested more of these same chemicals by the simple act of putting butter on their toast, drinking orange juice or milk, grabbing take-out food, eating baked goods, ordering pizza, making microwave popcorn, or having wrapped candy. Once ingested, PFAS stay in the human body for years, wreaking havoc in the meantime
The Influence of Foreign Jurisprudence about International Commercial Arbitration in Latin American State Courts
Get PDFInternational commercial arbitration has become regulated in an increasingly uniform manner through texts such as the UNCITRAL Model Law and the New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards. Despite the apparent uniformity, state courts still encounter instances of unclear and incomplete regulations of arbitration-related matters. This article focuses on the practice of courts in Latin America that interpret arbitration-related regulations and fill gaps with the help of a comparative jurisprudential analysis. The article reviews this jurisprudence to determine what impact, if any, landmark cases from France, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United States, and other prominent arbitral jurisdictions have had on those jurisdictions. This review shows that state courts in Latin America are aware of the existence of foreign landmark cases in advanced jurisdictions in the area of international commercial arbitration and they apply them to craft their own national jurisprudence on these matters. Across Latin America, each national jurisdiction reviews and understands the jurisprudence from foreign countries in a different way and does not necessarily apply jurisprudential concepts or doctrines developed in foreign landmark cases in the same way. The study critically assesses the epistemological challenges related to the use of the comparative method, and the inherent challenges of the comparative law approach, which is not a source of law in civil law countries. To these methodological challenges add the linguistic barriers and the lack of access to the sources of knowledge of foreign judicial practices
Chapter 11 Bankruptcy & Corporate Accountability: How Large Economic Players Use Reorganization as a Liability Shield
Get PDFCorporate reorganization, also known as Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code (“the Code”), operates under the premise that, in certain circumstances, an insolvent business entity is better equipped to repay its debts if kept “alive” rather than “dead.” In such a case, the entity maintains operations but reorganizes its assets as a means to repay creditors. Today, however, this needed tool has provided some of the country’s largest economic players with a sort of liability shield, allowing them to avoid substantial legal accountability, particularly in tort. Non-debtor release forms, which shield corporate officers from corporate conduct, courts’ liberal use of the automatic stay, and the “Texas Two-Step,” which effectively permits a company to reorganize under the laws of a different state, have incentivized companies to file for Chapter 11 in the hopes of evading liability. In addition, due to the lack of any real “good faith” or “insolvency” requirement in the Code, financially solvent corporations have been able to file for bankruptcy to temporarily, or permanently, suspend individual lawsuits and state regulation. This is not to say the tenets of corporate reorganization rested upon need be abandoned, the case is quite the opposite, but legislative reform is necessary to prevent the weaponization of the Code. The Chapter 11 shield may only be used by a few, but its impact remains significant
THE LEGAL PROFESSION, JUDICIARY, AND DISPUTE RESOLUTION
Get PDFThe January 2022 issue of Dispute Resolution Magazine reports results of a survey of past contributors conducted by Editorial Board co-chairs Andrea Schneider and Michael Moffitt.
This post uses some of the survey responses to suggest that we recognize the legal profession and judiciary as part of the dispute resolution field
Preserving the Relationship: Addressing the COVID Eviction Crisis Through Equitable Mediation
Get PDFNot only has the coronavirus pandemic (“COVID-19”) has taken many lives, another substantial side effect are that many Americans are at risk of eviction because of the current COVID-19 pandemic. Since the pandemic began, more than 20 million renters have suffered job loss because of COVID-19. One particular aspect of daily life the pandemic has impacted is landlord-tenant relationships because tenants cannot make rent payments to the landlord which then leads to a landlord filing for bankruptcy. With tenants not making rent payments due to job loss, it has produced a detriment with landlord-tenant relationships that could produce a ripple effect across the country
Money Doesn’t Grow on Trees: Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform is a Necessary Precursor to Police Reform
Get PDFCommunities are scrutinizing the credibility of law enforcement as concerns associated with unfair treatment and police misconduct mount. Despite ever-present demands for reform, law enforcement policy and practices continue to undercut efforts to build community relationships. Calls to defund police, whether by abolitionists or those who argue that modern policing encompasses job duties law enforcement should never perform, entered mainstream conversations about police reform after the death of Eric Garner in 2014, and reemerged when George Floyd was murdered in 2020. While it is true that financial constraints can force policy change, defunding the police could have unintended negative consequences to the public by increasing police reliance on revenue from civil asset forfeiture. At present, the United States Department of Justice’s Asset Forfeiture Program provides a way for state and local police departments to supplement budgets by seizing property from individual citizens
