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Two Steps Forward, One Step…Back? Missouri Legislature Targets Rise in Violent Crime
Get PDFIn May 2020, the Missouri Legislature passed Senate Bill 600, a controversial crime bill which made modifications to a handful of criminal provisions in an effort to tackle the violent crime plaguing the state’s largest cities. According to Senator Tony Luetkemeyer, the bill’s sponsor, inspiration for the legislation stemmed from an August 2019 USA Today report ranking Kansas City and St. Louis as the fifth- and first-most-dangerous cities in the country, respectively, and Springfield as the twelfth-most-dangerous. In a similar USA Today report ranking the most dangerous states, Missouri broke the top ten, coming in at number eight overall, with St. Louis and Kansas City being the most concentrated areas for violent crime. Prosecutors and law enforcement from both cities urged Governor Parson to address the increase in homicides and violent crime. In 2020, there were 262 homicides in St. Louis, compared to 194 in 2019 and 186 in 2018. Similarly, Kansas City tallied 173 homicides in 2020, surpassing the 153 homicides in 1953 – the city’s deadliest year – and the 151 homicides in 2019. To address these staggering figures, the Missouri Legislature made targeted modifications to several criminal provisions, including modernizing the state’s conspiracy and gang-related statutes. The legislature aimed to achieve two goals: (1) to keep violent criminals and reoffenders off the streets, and (2) to provide prosecutors with the requisite tools to effectively prosecute gangs and violent criminals
Race and the Cycles of Constitutional Time
Get PDFThe Cycles of Constitutional Time argues that we can understand American constitutional development in terms of three kinds of cycles. The first is the rise and fall of regimes featuring dominant political parties. The second is a very long cycle of polarization and depolarization that stretches from the Civil War through the present. The third cycle is a series of episodes of constitutional rot and constitutional renewal
Don’t Break the Internet: § 230 and Its Role Within Today’s Modern Internet Era
No full textSection 230 of the Communications Decency Act has faced increasing political opposition as the law has become a fixture of recent public discussion. Proponents of § 230 applaud the law for shaping the modern internet into the expansive, open platform for public dialogue that we know today. Opponents, however, critique the law for its blanket immunity provided to internet platforms, which allows internet platforms to exert editorial control without fear of liability. Many have considered whether § 230 provides internet platforms with too much power to shape the content people consume. If it does, how can the law be changed to create greater accountability for internet platforms without losing its intended and beneficial purpose? This article seeks to answer these questions, offering several proposed amendments to strip some protections provided to internet publishers while maintaining the internet’s status as an open channel of discourse
Balancing Purpose, Power, and Discretion Between Article III Courts and the Patent Office
Get PDFThe function of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) is to promote the industrial and technological innovation of the nation and strengthen the economy through the preservation, classification, and dissemination of patent information. The America Invents Act (“AIA”) prescribed a multitude of supporting goals to best promote innovation, such as preserving “quality patents,” “timely consideration” of issues, maintaining “cost-effective” methods, preventing “frivolous litigation,” and preventing “uncertainty.” The AIA ensures the “efficiency, objectivity, predictability, and transparency” of the patent system. Part of this act included revamping the adjudicatory forum located within the USPTO, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“PTAB”), a body that decides patentability questions via AIA trials. One type of is Inter Partes Review (“IPR”), a post-grant review proceeding. IPR has the potential to promote innovation and support the many goals of the AIA. However, that potential is unrealized. This is in part because the policies surrounding IPR are heavily influenced by the discretion of the acting USPTO Director (“the Director”). This discretion has allowed external factors, such as trial dates of district court litigation, to greatly affect the effectiveness of IPR. In the past decade, institution of IPR has been inefficient, subjective, unpredictable, and not transparent. This Note explores the relationship between IPR and the discretion of the Director, the consequences of that relationship, and how that relationship is influenced by external factors
Keeping the Elderly Quiet: The Trump Administration and the Reincarnation of Mandatory Arbitration in Nursing Home Contracts
Get PDFMandatory arbitration provisions are the current standard in nursing home admission contracts, but the legal arguments surrounding their enforcement raise questions concerning the validity of these standard provisions. Arbitration provisions allow nursing homes to limit the transparency into their operations and keep victims, and their families, quiet and out of the public eye. This, in turn, limits the understanding of the shortcoming of current regulations and where new regulations may help. The current Coronavirus Disease 2019 (“COVID-19”) pandemic has brought to light some of these otherwise hidden regulatory issues surrounding nursing homes. As a result, several states have tried to continue to keep these hidden regulatory issues secret by preventing COVID-19 related lawsuits
Beyond Stress Reduction: Mindfulness as a Skill for Developing Authentic Professional Identity
Get PDFMindfulness is often touted in the legal field for its capacity to help reduce stress and improve focus through the management of distractions. However, the potential contributions of mindfulness practice for the legal profession extend beyond stress reduction\u27 and include great promise for helping lawyers understand who they are as members of the legal profession - that is, their professional identity. This knowledge is empowering because it allows lawyers facing ethical quandaries to make choices that better align their professional values with their personal values, rather than aligning their personal values with professional values and societal expectations of success. In so doing, mindfulness practice has the capacity to help improve attorney well-being, uplift the level of professionalism throughout the field, and mitigate the need for attorney discipline
Reattribution, the Poison Pill and Inventorship
Get PDFBrian Frye\u27s Right of Reattribution proposes a mechanism for loosening the strictures of attribution associated with creative works of authorship and giving the law of attribution a pro-property spin. Authors regularly receive attribution recognizing their authorship role. Frye transforms this norm of attribution into a fully alienable property right. An author would receive original rights of attribution, but those rights could then be sold or transferred to another person seeking accolades. This secondary transfer process is knows as reattribution. Frye recognizes that a right of reattribution would require congressional action since the current scope of attribution rights is limited by the statute as interpreted by the Supreme Court in Dastar