The Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law
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Get Real: Implications and Impositions of the Real ID Act of 2005 on Vulnerable Individuals and States
Get PDFThe Act imposed strict requirements for those seeking to obtain personal identification documents. This Comment provides a background of the Real ID Act, including its controversial enactment, flawed implementation, and the effects the Act has on citizens. It will examine the various approaches states have employed during their process of coming into compliance with the Act as well as states’ struggle to achieve compliance. This Comment also provides a critical look into the unique issues that lower income and elderly individuals face as a result of the Act. Lastly, the Comment offers various practical and legal solutions that must be implemented if states and citizens are expected to comply with the Real ID Act
A Champion for the Silenced: The Prosecutor’s Role as a Voice for Victim’s Rights
No full textDuring the October 16 event, Wright discussed her faith and how it has helped her deal with some of the difficult cases that come across her desk. She also noted that although everyone wants to win, that can’t always be the case. Still, those losses provide a voice for the victims and their families with whom she works. She sees the prosecutor’s role as not only a representative of the state, but also a means by which those who have been the subject of violence, often of a terrible nature, can be heard. When those victims are children, that role is all the more profound
Decedents\u27 Estates: Cases and Materials (4th ed.)
No full textThe fourth edition of this casebook continues the use of fact-driven judicial decisions to illustrate the expanding list of transfer of wealth devices via non-probate trusts and payable-on-death options, valid Last Will and Testaments, and statutory intestate succession. But the fourth edition also includes material pertinent to the increasing usage of assisted reproduction, including surrogacy and the newly revised Uniform Parentage Act treatment of establishing paternity and maternity. The casebook also addresses the impact of nonmarital cohabitation on inheritance claims upon the death of a cohabiting partner.https://scholarship.law.edu/fac_books/1134/thumbnail.jp
Alternative Remedies for Undocumented Workers Left Behind in a Post-\u3ci\u3eHoffman Plastic\u3c/i\u3e Era
Get PDFCongress enacted the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) in 1935 in order to level the bargaining power of employees and employers to prevent burdening the flow of commerce and depressing workers’ wages. The NLRA vests the administration of promulgating the goals of the NLRA in the National Labor Relations Board (Board), broadly stating that the Board should take such affirmative action as necessary to effectuate the policies of the Act.
In 1935, however, Congress could not predict the future demographic makeup of the American workforce, and in its definition of an “employee” as covered under the NLRA, the statute makes no mention of a workers’ immigration status. As such, and through its broad discretion as upheld by the Supreme Court to speak “where the statute does not speak for itself,” the Board extended its usual remedies of backpay and reinstatement to documented and undocumented workers alike whose labor rights were violated by their employers. However, that all changed in 2002 when the Supreme Court in Hoffman Plastic Compounds, Inc. v. NLRB ruled that this very practice completely bypassed the goals of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) and exceeded the Board’s authority.
This Comment discusses the evolution of the Board’s application of the NLRA to undocumented workers prior to Hoffman Plastic, and the challenges it has faced in effectuating the goals of the NLRA since. This Comment argues that prioritizing IRCA over the NLRA instead perpetuates the pull of undocumented immigration, creates a subclass of workers, and impedes the strength of collective bargaining for all workers. In seeking to preserve the objectives of the NLRA, this Comment suggests the possibility of a common fund as an alternative solution for money owed to ineligible undocumented workers and speculates on the Board’s authority to create such a fund within the confines of its remedial authority. Finally, this Comment encourages Congress to make concrete statutory amendments to harmonize and honor the objectives of both the NLRA and IRCA
At the Intersection of Due Process and Equal Protection: Expanding the Range of Protected Interests
Get PDFAre the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses interconnected? Justice Kennedy in Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court case holding the fundamental right to marry includes the right to a same-sex marriage, stated that they are profoundly connected in that each clause “may be instructive as to the meaning and reach of the other.” But exactly what instruction each doctrine might afford the other, Justice Kennedy did not say. An earlier Supreme Court decision, Plyler v. Doe, also suggested a connection, when the Court held unconstitutional a Texas statute baring funding for the education of undocumented children. But there too the Court never explained what the connection was or whether the two doctrines must always be understood as operating together. As a consequence, lower courts and the Supreme Court itself are left without much guidance when deciding future cases seeking to expand the range of protected interests. In his Article, Vincent Samar offers a solution to this problem by subsuming fundamental rights doctrine and Equal Protection analysis under a broader theory of the person, understood collectively, that utilizes personhood’s centrality of freedom and well-being to further clarify how the two doctrines operate together so as to aid the development of criteria for resolving future cases seeking to expand the range of protected interests
Copyright Policy as Catalyst and Barrier to Innovation and Free Expression
Get PDFAt its core, copyright is an innovation policy, a competition policy, and a free expression policy. Copyright seeks to balance incentivizing a public good with providing a private interest. Copyright’s purpose to catalyze creative expression and innovation is canonical; creativity and innovation are synergetic. Copyright is a means of promoting progress; copyright is not an end in itself. Much like freedom of expression and new innovations are not ends in themselves, copyright protection is not for its own sake. Freedom of expression is often heralded as a means of fostering democratic self-governance, truth, and happiness. Innovation is seen as a means of fostering economic growth, prosperity, development, and happiness. Similarly, copyright is a means of fostering human progress and enriching the public domain from which others can freely draw. The ultimate beneficiary of copyright policy should be the public interest. This Article offers a broad-minded assessment of copyright policy’s effects on innovation and free expression before offering some sensible areas for reform
Protecting Internet Freedom at the Expense of Facilitating Online Child Sex Trafficking? An Explanation As to Why CDA\u27s Section 230 Has No Place in a New NAFTA
Get PDFSection 230 of the Communications Decency Act was passed in 1996 to promote and develop a nascent internet industry. The legislation affords protection from civil liability to internet providers that host content created by a third party. Section 230 protects internet companies that would otherwise be financially devastated by every defamation or libel lawsuit brought for each bad review or false statement posted. As the argument goes, all the familiar websites, such as Facebook, Yelp, and Twitter, would not have flourished without this vital legislation. Although Section 230 has played an important role in developing the internet today as we know it, the law has also produced negative consequences, one of which is the ability to buy and sell a child online for sex the same way one orders a new item on Amazon Prime. Survivors of these atrocious crimes have been unable to hold liable the websites responsible for their exploitation because of the broad immunity granted by Section 230. This past year Congress has taken the necessary step forward by passing the FOSTA-SESTA package, narrowing the language of Section 230 by allowing websites that knowingly facilitate sex trafficking to be held liable in civil court. However, at the time of drafting of this Comment, tech companies were also lobbying the Trump Administration to include Section 230 in the new NAFTA agreement. This Comment argues that the recent battle in Congress to pass new legislation, the illicit activities of Backpage, and the fact that the internet no longer needs the same protections it once required explains why such language should not be included in a new international trade agreement
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bots, and How I Learned to Start Worrying About Democracy Instead
Get PDFThis essay reviewing Striking Power, John Yoo and Jeremy Rabkin\u27s new book on the legal and policy implications of autonomous weapons, takes issue with the book’s assumptions and; therefore its conclusions. The essay argues that, because of technological and ethical limitations, discriminate and effective use of autonomous weapons may not serve as an adequate substitute for traditional manpower-based military forces. It further argues that traditional conceptions of international law could prove more durable than Yoo and Rabkin suggest, and finally it concludes by suggesting that a grand strategy relying primarily on technological elites managing autonomous weapons actually threatens to undermine our common democracy and its reliance on mass citizen mobilization
