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U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit to hold oral argument at the Maurer School of Law
Get PDFA three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit—one of 13 appellate courts of the United States federal judiciary—will hear oral argument at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law on Thursday, October 24.
The arguments are scheduled to begin at 9:30 a.m. in the Law School’s DeLaney Moot Court Room. The proceedings are open to the public, with seating available on a first-come, first-served basis starting at 9 a.m. An overflow room will be available if needed. The arguments are expected to conclude by 12:30 p.m.
“The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has a long tradition of sitting at in-circuit law schools when invited to do so,” said the Hon. Diane S. Sykes, the court’s chief judge. “When we emerged from the pandemic, we reinvigorated and expanded the program. Now the court sits twice a year at law schools around our circuit, and we incorporate learning opportunities and additional programming for students, local bar members, and the public. We remain committed to ensuring that the court is accessible and to enhancing the public’s understanding of the importance of our work.
Information Accountability Foundation names two Maurer faculty to leadership positions
Get PDFhe Information Accountability Foundation (IAF) has appointed two Indiana University Maurer School of Law faculty to lead the organization.
Fred H. Cate, a distinguished professor and C. Ben Dutton Professor of Law, was named the nonprofit think tank’s new executive director, while Stan Crosley, an adjunct faculty member and 1994 graduate of the Law School, was appointed chief policy strategist.
Founded in 2013, the IAF works with global regulators and industry executives to promote organizational accountability, data stewardship, and data ethics. Its mission is to help regulators and responsible companies better understand the challenges around Artificial Intelligence and data governance and respond to them while also serving the needs of people and society. IAF Board Chair Scott Taylor said Cate and Crosley are perfect choices to lead the organization
Shocking Sentences
Get PDFHarsh recidivist sentencing penalties, like three-strikes laws, have been criticized heavily among both academics and practitioners on a number of different grounds. Most arguments focus on how sentences arising from these penalties are disproportionate—that there is no sensible relationship between the wrong committed and the sentence imposed. Those critiques are valid, but there’s another important problem with recidivist sentencing penalties that has been overlooked: They lead to sentences that are totally unexpected—indeed, shocking—to the defendants who face them. Many recidivist sentencing penalties cause large leaps in sentencing exposure that amount to exponential growth when compared with a defendant’s prior sentences.
We can better understand the problem of shocking sentences (and how to solve it) by understanding the psychological phenomenon that likely causes it: the exponential growth bias. Across a number of domains, people making quantitative decisions tend to presume linear growth will occur, even in light of evidence that the growth is exponential. I argue that this phenomenon happens in sentencing as well, and it explains—at least in part—why defendants don’t anticipate these types of sentences.
Understanding the psychological underpinning of shocking sentences helps us understand why they are harmful: They undermine due process and predictability in the law, they limit potential deterrence, and they’re out of line with everyday intuitions about sentencing. Flatly, they’re bad sentencing policy, and we should reduce them or eliminate them outright. But even if eliminating shocking sentences is politically untenable, there may be ways to reduce the effect of the exponential growth bias. Applying lessons learned from the psychological literature, I suggest ways to provide increased notice of recidivist sentencing provisions aimed to make them less shocking
Big Law\u27s Immigration Advocates
Get PDFThis study examines lawyers working in the federal appellate courts who represent immigrants seeking relief from deportation. By analyzing over 23,000 appellate cases during the Trump and Obama Administrations, the research here uncovers crucial findings. To begin, there was a statistically significant difference in the win rates of lawyers working pro bono and coming from the largest and most profitable corporate “Big Law” firms compared to lawyers based in other, typically more specialized immigration practice settings. Specifically, during the Trump Administration, Big Law lawyers won at nearly three times higher a rate than non-Big Law lawyers in the federal appellate courts. During the Obama Administration, Big Law lawyers won over three times more often.
To supplement these quantitative results, interviews with Big Law and non-Big Law lawyers were conducted. As this study makes clear, it is not that those from Big Law firms are necessarily smarter or better at understanding immigration than non-Big Law practitioners. Indeed, there are certainly those lawyers in the latter cohort who do well in the appellate courts. Still, because of their enormous resource advantages, Big Law lawyers, on average, perform better because they have the luxury of selecting cases they believe are more likely to win. Additionally, Big Law firms have appellate specialists. They also have available personnel who can readily assist on these cases, as well as access to diverse research technologies and a keen familiarity with the federal courts’ norms—all of which are vital in preparing Big Law lawyers during the appeals process.
Of course, Big Law firms are only involved in a fraction of federal appellate deportation cases. Nevertheless, their relatively high win rate, and the reasons behind it, have serious implications for how immigrants who do not have this type of representation are able to obtain justice. Otherwise put, Big Law’s greater success rates sadly perpetuate the already existing inequalities within our immigration system and highlight the unfortunate reality that firms with resources are able to procure advantages and benefits that others may not be able to enjoy
Don\u27t Mess with Texans\u27 Rights: Protecting Transgender Youth from the Paternalistic Policies of State Executives
Get PDFTexas Attorney General Ken Paxton issued an opinion in 2022 detailing how gender-affirming care for transgender minors constituted child abuse under the Texas Family Code. As a result of this opinion, multiple families of trans teens engaging in various forms of gender-affirming care were investigated by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services. This Article applies the constitutional standards imposed by the equal protection clause, substantive due process, and parental authority to Paxton’s recommendation, using both the U.S. and Texas Constitutions. Ultimately, this Article concludes that Paxton’s opinion fails to meet these constitutional standards and recommends action from the Texas Legislature to prevent further misinterpretation of the Texas Family Code. Specifically, this Article implores the legislature amend the Texas Family Code to provide explicit protections for parental authority over voluntary medical procedures with proven scientific benefits
Maurer School of Law names new assistant dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion
Get PDFDr. Gabriel Escobedo has been appointed the Law School’s inaugural assistant dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Escobedo has strong ties to Indiana University, earning his Ph.D. in Anthropology of Performing Arts and Latinx Culture from the university in 2023. He was an assistant instructor in IU’s Department of Anthropology from 2013-15.
“Gabriel will be a strong leader for our DEI efforts, and we’re excited to welcome him and his family back to Bloomington,” Maurer School of Law Dean Christiana Ochoa said. “His experience and success working collaboratively with a wide range of stakeholders at Michigan Technological University stood out to us throughout the search process.
Using Practice-Based Regulations to Promote Collaborative Recovery of Threatened Species
No full textThe Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA) is one of the most cherished and reviled laws ever passed. It mandates protection and preservation of all the nation’s species and biodiversity, whatever the cost. It has been a lightning rod for controversy and conflicts between industry/business and environmentalists.
In this volume, leading Endangered Species Act experts interpret and propose legislative and administrative changes to prepare the ESA for future challenges. They explore regulations on avoiding harm to and producing benefits for species, cooperation between state and federal agencies, scientific analyses, and the necessary politics to enact their ideas.
This is a call to action to chart an enlightened future for the Endangered Species Act that embraces the nation’s moral commitment of 50 years ago to address species extinction constructively, mindful of biodiversity, and as a fixture among the nation’s values and needs. The interconnected web of life includes all living species that depend on each other for survival, us among them. The stakes—our very future—are too high to ignore.
Includes the chapter, Using Practice-Based Regulations to Promote Collaborative Recovery of Threatened Species by Maurer Professor Robert Fischman.https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/facbooks/1338/thumbnail.jp
Medical Research without Consent? It\u27s Like Deja Vu All Over Again
Get PDFWhen patients seek medical care, they trust their physician to offer treatments that are in their best medical interests and to engage them in a shared decision-making process to determine the best way forward. But today, in hospitals and doctors’ offices around the country, physicians also place patients in research studies that randomly assign them to a standard of care treatment, sometimes without the patients’ knowledge or consent. In such studies, patients may receive a treatment that results in worse outcomes for them, some of which can be serious and permanent. What’s more, there are reasons to be concerned that the burdens of this practice may fall more heavily on people of color and those who have less financial means, are less educated, or experience language barriers. Their social disadvantage or vulnerability may be further deepened by their illness.
As these studies are taking place, physician-researchers and ethics scholars have been increasingly advancing arguments in the ethics literature for bypassing consent practices that have been in place for over half a century. Though these arguments are weak and some illogical, government agencies have been funding research without consent and government oversight bodies have stood by doing little.
Advocates for bypassing consent have met some opposition, but thus far debate on this issue has taken place almost exclusively within the research and research ethics community and has focused almost entirely on ethical and regulatory requirements. The common law has been forgotten.
Yet physicians and other clinicians violate patients’ legal rights to bodily integrity and autonomy—in addition to breaching fiduciary duties of loyalty, discretion, and care—when they place their patients in these types of studies without their knowledge or consent. This Article examines common law duties to inform patients and obtain their consent prior to placing them in research studies that randomize them to medical treatments, even ones that are accepted as standard of care. Courts have yet to specifically address the scope of duties owed, although lawsuits stemming from involvement in such studies have recently been initiated and more should be anticipated in the future. Past cases reveal that patients randomized to medical treatments without their knowledge or consent could successfully sue for battery, lack of informed consent, and breach of fiduciary duty, among other claims. Understanding the common law duties associated with such claims does more than illuminate potential legal exposure for physicians and others conducting such research. Appreciating the ethical grounding of those legal duties also points the ethical way forward—for researchers to design consent processes that respect patients’ rights to know when decisions about their care will be affected by their placement in a research study and for oversight bodies to interpret existing research regulations as they traditionally have done—to honor a patient’s right to consent and its corollary—the right to refuse
The Care Bureaucracy
Get PDFThe state plays an increasingly crucial role in providing home care as an aging population leads to mounting care needs. The public care system in the United States delivers home care and compensation for care work through an increasingly bureaucratic mode of governance featuring task-list enumeration, documentation, professional supervision, and exacting surveillance. The process adopts a rigid functional approach to define, measure, and regulate care that creates tension with home care’s relational, fluid, and person-centered dimensions. Through the concept of “care bureaucracy,” this Article describes the status quo disciplinary bureaucracy governing public home care, analyzes its political economy context, including its origin in poverty law, and lays out its benefits and profound costs. The care bureaucracy not only burdens care workers and families needing care with unpaid, invasive, and bureaucratic work, but also deters participation and stifles the provision of home care, threatening the state’s capacity to adequately deliver the promised quality care. The Article also proposes an alternative way to govern public home care by drawing from the Department of Veterans Affairs’ caregiver programs for veterans with service-related disabilities.
This Article makes two contributions to legal scholarship on care and the state. First, this Article explores the tension between public responsibility and the autonomy of families and workers in a mundane form of family regulation—a disciplinary bureaucracy—in the public home care system. The care bureaucracy imposes a not-so-punitive and yet highly omnipresent regulation of the users’ family, workplace, and bodily autonomy by micro-managing their physical movements inside homes. Second, it establishes the political-economy connection between the bureaucratization and fragmentation of public home care. In analyzing the status quo political economy of the care bureaucracy, this Article provides a roadmap to reform the public care system into one more responsive to the growing care needs