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Fall 2025 - The Well-Formatted Lawyer
No full textAttendees will learn to use Microsoft Word styles, tables of contents and authorities, and cross-references to format your memos, briefs, and contracts. Recognizing text and (correctly) redacting PDFs will also be covered.
Resources covered: Microsoft Word, Adobe Acrobat, Procertas
Host:Jessica Pasquale, MLIS | Assistant Director for Scholarly Publishing & Information Serviceshttps://repository.law.umich.edu/legaltechseries/1014/thumbnail.jp
As the Rainstorm Continues, Must We Throw Out the Raincoat Too? Private Enforcement of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act
Get PDFFor almost six decades, the Voting Rights Act (VRA) has been a bulwark against the worst impulses of government actors who would rather manipulate the rules to stay in power than vigorously compete on the battleground of ideas. In the modern era, the U.S. Supreme Court has routinely weakened the Act’s protections, including its core remaining enforcement provision, Section 2, which protects voters from racially discriminatory policies. Today, Section 2’s continued vitality is at risk. In November 2023, the Eighth Circuit held that Section 2 lacks an implied private right of action—a decision at odds with three of its sister circuits. If the Supreme Court adopts the same position in the future, then only the U.S. Attorney General—and not private individuals—could sue to enforce Section 2. Such a result would upend decades of legal practice, undermine statutory text and congressional intent, and strip away from millions one of the most powerful means of protecting their voting rights. While the future of Section 2 private enforcement remains uncertain, this Note aims to critically examine how we got here and chart a path forward to protect the fundamental right to vote
Man on Mars: How Can International Space Law Limit the Environmental Consequences of the Coming Rush for Resources in Space
Get PDFThe body of international law governing space has stood at a standstill for decades. The five central treaties regulating this area of law are not only vague, but they have also become a hindrance to the global community’s ability to address the rapidly intensifying second space race. The treaties do not adequately state who space belongs to, who is entitled to take advantage of the natural resources of celestial bodies, or what protections are afforded to celestial environments in the face of impending mining and resource extraction projects. This impasse within international law has not stopped entrepreneurs and corporations from beginning to explore space on their own and challenging the traditional monopoly that nation states have had over space, creating even more pressure to act quickly. To move forward, the international legal community will have to break out of this standstill and find a way to efficiently and effectively address the new challenges that space exploration poses.
Towards this end, this note proceeds in four parts to suggest a possible solution for space’s governance. The first part contextualizes the convergence of technological developments and international relationships and interests to introduce the pressures under which international law must develop to address the ongoing space race. The second part provides a survey of the current body of international law of space including popular, competing proposals of how the legal regime should be structured. The third part reviews hard- and soft-law structures that could become partial models for the governance of space and clarifies common misconceptions that served as obstacles to progress within space law until now. The fourth part proposes a solution based on the environmentally conscious legal structures governing the Arctic Circle, a legal body largely omitted from scholarly discourse around space law, and other features from existing hard-law structures that could be incorporated over time to create a sustainable framework. The note concludes with a summary conclusion of the best path forward to alleviate ongoing tensions and save celestial environments from irreversible harm
Winter 2025 - DEMO DAY: Gavel
Get PDFGavel is an AI powered document automation tool to help streamline processes, generate legal documents, and manage complex legal forms and templates. Attendees will have the exclusive opportunity to gain valuable hands-on experience exploring the product with a free student account. Join us to enhance your skills and prepare for practical law firm work and the evolving world of legal AI technology!
Resources covered:Gavelhttps://repository.law.umich.edu/legaltechseries/1007/thumbnail.jp
The Tax Redistribution Gap
Get PDFThe tax revenue gap—the difference between how much the IRS collects in tax revenue and how much it should collect based on the text of the Internal Revenue Code—is both well-defined and well-studied. But raising revenue is just one purpose of taxation; the tax code also operates to redistribute wealth. Drawing from the tax revenue gap and redistribution literatures, this article coins a parallel concept, the tax redistribution gap, to map the extent to which the tax system falls short of its redistributive goals.
Introducing a tax redistribution gap measure challenges background assumptions in current tax discourse: first, it would call out a reliance on pre-market income as a distributive baseline, which serves to overstate the redistributive impact of the tax code; second, it would increase the profile of redistribution among policymakers and the public—understandably, measures like the tax revenue gap and tax expenditure budgets focus dialogue on tax evasion and over-spending by the government.
Ultimately, the tax redistribution gap would provide a single measure that displays how we are falling short of a key task of the state (redistribution). And by understanding and comparing the component ways our current tax systems falls short of it intended outcomes, we can better tailor redistributive policy solutions
Was the NIIT A Treaty Override?
Get PDFThree court decisions have recently addressed the interaction of the Net Investment Income Tax (NIIT) and US tax treaties. The issue was whether the treaty provided an independent basis for crediting a foreign tax against the NIIT, because no such credit is available under the Code. First, in Toulouse, the Tax Court held that there was no treaty based credit. Second, in Christensen, the Court of Federal Claims held that a treaty-based credit was available, distinguishing Toulouse. Third, in Bruyea, the Court of Federal Claims issued a broader opinion that allowed the credit. Importantly, Bruyea addressed an issue that was missing from the first two opinions, namely whether the NIIT was a treaty override. This issue has wider implications than on the NIIT, because the court`s opinion raises the possibility that no 21st century tax legislation overrode US tax treaties. In particular, it raises doubts about the applicability of the BEAT to taxpayers who are residents in a treaty country. Because of the significant revenue implications of holding that the BEAT does not apply in treaty situations, Congress should fix the problem in this year\u27s tax legislation
Pictures of a Revolution: Administrative Law in a Time of Change
Get PDFA review of multiple supplements and updates to several different titles and editions
Winter 2025 - Cool Tools for Productivity
Get PDFThis session will highlight technology designed to make your life easier as a law student and as a new attorney. Tools covered will include Boolean search operators, specialized legal writing keyboards, project management / note taking tools, artificial intelligence for drafting professional writing like emails, and more! If you are interested in maximizing your productivity and efficiency to make your life easier (and who isn\u27t?) then this is the session for you!
Resources covered: LegalPad Keyboards. Search terms/connectors for Lexis, Westlaw, & Google. Google docs note taking. Anki for flashcards.
Note: In the Libguide as Cool Tools to Boost Efficiency , presented under the title Cool Tools for Productivityhttps://repository.law.umich.edu/legaltechseries/1005/thumbnail.jp