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The Diversity Formula: A Race-Neutral Playbook for Equitable Student Assignment and its Application to Magnet Schools
Get PDFContrary to the revisionist history told by some, Brown v. Board of Education did not mark a permanent end to school segregation. Indeed, by some measures, many school districts have experienced increases in racial and socioeconomic segregation over the past few decades. And the impact of this segregation manifests itself in concerning examples of insufficient understanding and empathy across racial and socioeconomic lines. School segregation is a major threat to this nation’s pursuit of the evasive goal of equal opportunity. The Biden-Harris Administration must address school segregation if it is to meet one of its primary priorities: advancing racial equity. But reducing school segregation will also require that individual school districts and states pursue innovative desegregation strategies of their own accord. This Note offers guidance for school districts and states that wish to decrease racial and socioeconomic segregation in their schools—reducing the strong correlation between a student’s neighborhood and quality of education. It seeks to provide a race-neutral playbook for student assignment that fits within the Supreme Court’s constitutional requirements—anticipating that those requirements may soon become more restrictive. This Note also describes how the playbook could be implemented, under ideal conditions, through a comprehensive system of magnet schools. Finally, this Note recommends practical policies that the Biden-Harris Administration may adopt to support these efforts. Officials at all levels should feel free to use this Note as a starting point for brainstorming and developing a more equitable education system
Why Are There So Many Taxes?: Teleworking and the Multiple Taxation Dilemma—Time to Standardize and Apportion
Get PDFDue in large part to the COVID-19 pandemic, remote teleworking has become the new norm for many professions. This dramatic shift in the workforce has raised serious tax concerns, and it has caused double taxation troubles for millions of remote workers. The fallout from COVID-19 continues to have a significant impact on the ways employers conduct business, with some major companies planning on a remote work mode permanently. This Note examines the current complicated and inconsistent state individual income tax schemes around the country. The goal is to urge Congress and the Supreme Court to reconsider the importance of this longstanding issue, and to help structure an effective state individual income tax system that will propel states to coordinate in eliminating double taxation
Remembrance of and Tribute to Walter F. Mondale
Get PDFThis volume of Minnesota Law Review is dedicated to the memory of the Honorable Walter F. Mondale, former Vice President of the United States of America. A 1956 graduate of the University of Minnesota Law School and an editor of Minnesota Law Review Volume 39, Mondale was the 42nd Vice President of the United States, serving in office from 1977 to 1981. Following his inauguration, Vice President Mondale became the modern prototype of an activist Vice President, transforming the role from titular figurehead to valued advisor. Prior to his Vice Presidency, Mondale served as U.S. Senator for Minnesota from 1964 to 1976. Mondale also served as the Attorney General of Minnesota from 1960 to 1963. Entering politics as a young adult, Mondale played a prominent role in Hubert Humphrey’s U.S. Senatorial campaign in 1948 and Orville Freeman’s gubernatorial campaigns in 1952, 1954, and 1958. After leaving national politics, Mondale was appointed as the U.S. Ambassador to Japan in 1993 by President Clinton. In addition to his long and venerable career in politics, Mondale remained actively engaged with the University of Minnesota Law School community and mentored students as an instructor at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs. In 2002, the University of Minnesota Law School’s building was renamed Walter F. Mondale Hall in recognition of his lifetime of public service. Each issue of Volume 106 will include remembrances of and tributes to Vice President Mondale written by those who worked alongside him, including many close friends and mentees. A lifelong advocate for justice who led with compassion, Vice President Mondale’s legacy set an ambitious standard for future lawyer leaders and Minnesota Law graduates. This Volume of Minnesota Law Review is dedicated to Walter “Fritz” Mondale’s enduring legacy, and his many years of public service on behalf of Minnesotans and Americans alike
Understanding Chilling Effects
Get PDFWith digital surveillance and censorship on the rise, the amount of data available unprecedented, and corporate and governmental actors increasingly employing emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and facial recognition technology for surveillance and data analytics, concerns about “chilling effects,” that is, the capacity for these activities to “chill” or deter people from exercising their rights and freedoms, have taken on greater urgency and importance. Yet, there remains a clear dearth in systematic theoretical and empirical work points. This has left significant gaps in understanding. This Article has attempted to fill that void, synthesizing theoretical and empirical insights from law, privacy, and a range of social science fields toward a more comprehensive and unified understanding. I argue that conventional theories, based on fear of legal or privacy harm, are narrow, are empirically weak, cannot predict or explain chilling effects in a range of different contexts, and neglect the productive dimensions of chilling effects—how chilling effects shape behavior. Drawing extensively on social science literature, I argue that chilling effects are best understood as a form of social conformity. Chilling effects arise out of contexts of ambiguity and uncertainty—like the ambiguity of a vague law or surveillance—but have deeper psychological foundations as well. In moments of situational uncertainty, people conform to and comply with the relevant social norm in that context. Sometimes this means self-censorship, but most often it means more socially conforming speech or conduct. A theory of chilling effects as social conformity has important normative, theoretical, and empirical advantages, including greater explanatory and predictive power, clarifying what chilling effects theory is for and what it produces, as well as providing a basis to navigate competing and differing chilling effect claims. It also has implications, I argue, for constitutional standing as well as the First Amendment chilling effects doctrine
Show Me the Money: Addressing the Oversight Gap in Private Foundation Donations to Donor-Advised Funds
Get PDFAmericans’ charitable giving habits are changing. Since the 1990s, a new form of charitable giving (donor-advised funds, or “DAFs”) has skyrocketed in popularity. In 2018, DAFs held at least $72 billion in charitable dollars—representing a 200% increase from four years prior. DAFs’ ascendance can be attributed to their ease of use, integration into existing investment firms, and the remarkably few regulations governing their life cycle. These funds operate much like personal private foundations, but, unlike private foundations, they are subject to very few federal regulations. Donations to DAFs can sit in funds in perpetuity, the original donor can assign succession rights, and there is no requirement to disclose the recipient of the charitable gift. In stark contrast, private foundations are subject to more stringent IRS regulations, including an annual requirement to pay out five percent of its value to charities and mandatory disclosure of all organizations’ granted funds. These requirements were put in place via the Tax Reform Act of 1969, which aimed to prevent foundations from hoarding wealth and to promote public disclosure and oversight of charitable funds. Beyond the sheer amount of charitable dollars sitting and gathering dust in DAFs, another troubling trend has emerged in the past few years: private foundation grantmaking to DAFs. Because DAFs are registered 501(c)(3) organizations, a donation to a DAF counts towards foundations’ five percent payout requirement—even though the funds, once in a DAF, are under no time limit to be paid out. Further, because DAFs are subjected to fewer reporting requirements, private foundations can use DAFs as a way to anonymize charitable giving. In both ways, private foundations use DAFs as a legal loophole around the requirements put in place by the 1969 Act. This Note presents a novel analysis of the private foundation-to-DAF problem and situates its call to reform within contemporary calls for greater transparency in charitable giving. It then proposes a two-pronged federal and state solution to address the payout and transparency issues created by private foundation-to-DAF transfers. This solution fits neatly into the federalist scheme that governs charities’ oversight and carefully addresses the two substantial harms named in the Note: the delay of charitable funds to working charities and the avoidance of transparency
Remote Work Reasonable ? Why the COVID-19 Pandemic Calls for a Reinterpretation of the Reasonable Accommodation Standard, and How Companies Can Respond
Get PDFBreaking Away or Still Broken? A Critique of the Minnesota Supreme Court’s Treatment of the Severe or Pervasive Standard for Sexual Harassment Hostile Work Environment Cases in Kenneh v. Homeward Bound
Get PDFFifty Years of Patent Remedies Case Law: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back
Get PDFOver the past fifty years, courts have developed a body of case law on patent remedies that is, in many respects, solidly grounded in economic reasoning. Among the high points are the courts’ embrace, in various contexts, of the simple principle that patent damages should restore patent owners to the position they would have occupied, but for the infringement—and of an important corollary to that principle, namely the importance to damages calculations of the “noninfringing alternatives” concept. By contrast, certain other developments—including the confusing standards for determining when it is appropriate to use the “entire market value” of a product as the royalty base; the standards for awarding total profits for design patent infringement; and the intricacies of the patent marking statute—cry out for further judicial or legislative reform. Yet other developments, including the standards for granting injunctive relief (and, relatedly, for awarding ongoing royalties in lieu of injunctive relief); for calculating reasonable royalties; and for awarding enhanced damages, have in some respects been positive but could be further improved