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The Pain of Paying Taxes
Get PDFWith a few caveats, standard economic models assume that, from society’s perspective, the payment of a tax constitutes a costless transfer from the taxpayer to the government. The financial loss to the taxpayer is exactly offset by the financial gain to the government, which can use the resulting tax revenue for the benefit of its citizens. In other words, paying taxes forces taxpayers to forgo private consumption, but the resulting loss in utility can be counterbalanced by an increase in utility from government spending. In fact, if the government spends wisely on beneficial public goods that are undersupplied by private markets, then the tax-and-transfer system can produce a net gain in utility that increases social welfare
Confronting the Local Land Checkerboard
Get PDFFractured public land is hidden in plain sight. In communities across the country, a patchwork assortment of local governments share splintered ownership over surplus public properties, which can be found scattered in residential neighborhoods and alongside highways, in the shadows of development projects and in the scars of urban renewal. The ripple effect of this fragmentation extends across the spectrum of local governance. It creates needless costs and bureaucratic headaches at a time of acute fiscal distress for cities and counties. It contributes to an inequitable imbalance of local power between formal and informal landowners in a community. And curiously, the operative legal regime enables the problem while simultaneously muddying pragmatic ways to confront it. This Article seeks to shed light upon the local land checkerboard— and in doing so, the cluttered and opaque world of local government law that it inhabit
Overhauling Rules of Evidence in Pro Se Courts
Get PDFState civil courtrooms are packed to the brim with litigants, but not with lawyers. Since the early 1990s, more and more litigants in state courts have appeared without legal counsel. Pro se litigation has grown consistently and enormously over the past few decades. State court dockets are dominated by cases brought by unrepresented litigants, most often in domestic violence, family law, landlord-tenant, and small claims courts.
Yet, the American courtroom is not designed for use by those unrepresented litigants—it is designed for use by attorneys. The American civil court is built upon a foundation of dense procedural rules, thick tomes of long-evolved substantive law, and—the focus of this piece—a complex set of evidentiary prohibitions and exceptions. The American civil court is designed for two competing adversaries to face off against one another. It is built on the assumption that both of those adversaries will present the best case they can, employing an accurate understanding of the complex rules and laws that govern the proceedings. Nonlawyer pro se litigants often struggle to adhere to the norms of the adversarial American legal system. As a result, complex legal rules present an access-to-justice barrier to unrepresented litigants unable to comply with them
Appoint Candace Jackson-Akiwumi to the Seventh Circuit
Get PDFOn November 30, Seventh Circuit Judge Joel Flaum assumed senior status when he completed over four decades of rigorous public service as a prominent jurist. On that day, the Senate resumed the prolonged lame duck session, which the GOP upper chamber majority began after voters had elected Joe Biden to replace former President Donald Trump. Trump correctly refrained from nominating Flaum’s successor. Four months later, President Biden dutifully announced that he would name Candace Jackson-Akiwumi to replace Flaum. Jackson-Akiwumi is a particularly qualified, mainstream nominee. Because she comprehensively answered senators’ complex, probing questions, and the Seventh Circuit lacks any people of color, the Senate must promptly confirm her
Mindsets of criminality: predicting punitive and rehabilitative attitudes
No full textShould the goal of criminal justice be to make sure offenders get their ‘just deserts’? In the current work, we investigate why some people believe that criminal offenders should be punished. The primary goal is to explore how mindsets about the nature of criminal behavior predict punitive and rehabilitative attitudes. Drawing on the Double-Edged Sword (DES) model of mindsets in stigmatized domains, we predicted that mindsets about the relative changeability (growth mindsets) or stability (fixed mindsets) of criminality will have contradictory indirect effects on these attitudes. Across three preregistered studies (N = 1,089), in addition to finding that growth mindsets overall predicted less punitive attitudes, we found support for the DES model. That is, growth mindsets indirectly predicted less punitive and more rehabilitative attitudes via reduced essentialist thinking but stronger punitive and weaker rehabilitative attitudes via greater blame. Our findings extend the DES model to the domain of criminality, suggest avenues for additional research, and offer applications for fostering growth mindsets that keep the benefits without the costs
Sober Thoughts on Drunken Consent: Intoxication and Consent to Sexual Relations
Get PDFDrunken sex is common. Despite how common drunken sex is, we thinkvery uncritically about it. In this paper, I want to examine whether drunk individualscan consent to sex. Specifically, I answer this question: suppose that an individual,D, who is drunk but can still engage in reasoning and communication, agrees to havesex with a sober individual, S; is D’s consent to sex with S morally valid? I will arguethat, within a certain range of intoxication, an individual who is drunk can give validconsent to have sex with an individual who is sober
Award Winners
No full textDid you know that just by submitting to The Messenger, you could win one of two awards?
The Margaret Haley Carpenter Award for PoetryThis award is presented to a student who submitted an outstanding poem for publication in the University of Richmond’s literary magazine, The Messenger. The winner is chosen by a panel of three English faculty members.
The Margaret Owen Finck Award for Creative WritingThis award is presented to a student who submitted an outstanding fiction or nonfiction piece for publication in the University of Richmond’s literary magazine, The Messenger. The winner is chosen by a panel of English faculty members
University of Richmond Magazine - Autumn 2022
Get PDFThe University of Richmond\u27s Alumni Magazine was first published as The Alumni Bulletin in 1936 and continues to this day as the University of Richmond Magazine