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FSU Law Focus - 02/11/2022
Get PDFFrom the Dean: FSU Law Center for Environmental, Energy, and Land Use Law Spring 2022 Environmental Distinguished Lecture - Michael Vandenbergh, “Environmental Law in a Polarized Era”; 2022 Summer Program; Alum Profile: Jonathan D. Grabb (\u2708); Student Profile: 3L Cameron Polomskihttps://ir.law.fsu.edu/fsu-law-focus/1313/thumbnail.jp
FSU Law Focus - 03/04/2022
Get PDFFrom the Dean: President\u27s Symposium on Higher Education; FSU BLSA Wins Advocacy Competition; Alum Profile: Elmer C. Ignacio (\u2701); Student Profile: 3L Taylor Greenanhttps://ir.law.fsu.edu/fsu-law-focus/1335/thumbnail.jp
FSU Law Focus - 09/28/2022
Get PDFFrom the Dean: Animal Law Writing Competition winners; Peer Elevation Program Launches; Alum Profile: Brad deBeaubien (\u2708); Student Profile: Grace Speashttps://ir.law.fsu.edu/fsu-law-focus/1120/thumbnail.jp
FSU Law Focus - 07/29/2022
Get PDFFrom the Dean: Launching Claude Pepper Elder Law Clinic; Alumni Sought for Career Mentors Program; Alum Profile: Hon. Suzanne Van Wyk (\u2794); Celebrating Grad Blake Mathesiehttps://ir.law.fsu.edu/fsu-law-focus/1201/thumbnail.jp
FSU Law Focus - 04/15/2022
Get PDFFrom the Dean: Supreme Court of Texas Chief Justice Nathan L. Hecht visits; NBA President Carlos Moore Visits Law School; Alum Profile: Christina Diaz Gonzalez (\u2794); Student Profile: 3L Morgan Robinsonhttps://ir.law.fsu.edu/fsu-law-focus/1243/thumbnail.jp
A Portfolio Approach to Policymaking Uncertainty
Get PDFThis article examines a basic dilemma that appears across nearly all areas of the law: what is the appropriate regulatory response to uncertainty in the policymaking environment, where the costs, benefits, and other consequences of any particular legal intervention are difficult to predict, and often equally difficult to measure after the fact? Although a vast theoretical literature addresses that question, the existing scholarship almost uniformly seeks to identify a single policy rule or procedure that is most robust to uncertainty. This article takes a fundamentally different approach. By drawing on the leading theory of financial investment under uncertainty-Modern Portfolio Theory-it argues that the primary normative implication of an unpredictable legal landscape is that policymakers should apply a portfolio of overlapping rules. As this article further shows, insights from Modern Portfolio Theory do not only provide normative guidance on how the regulatory structure can account for legal uncertainty; They also explain how the law does in fact address that problem. This second, positive claim helps resolve an empirical puzzle that has long been debated among law-and-economics scholars: why is the joint use of multiple regulations so often found in contexts where a single rule would appear to suffice? The answer, it is argued, is that the widespread use of overlapping regulatory portfolios is an efficient response to the equally widespread problem of policymaking uncertainty. After laying out these theoretical claims, this article provides supporting evidence from a variety of legal areas, including: safety regulations in accident law; the financial regulation of banking crises; and, environmental law on climate change. The case studies demonstrate the flexibility of Modern Portfolio Theory to questions of regulatory design in general. Although the policy challenges posed by automobile traffic, financial crises, and climate change are essentially unrelated, the legal framework governing each of those areas implicitly reflects a portfolio approach.
Florida State Law Alumni Magazine & Annual Report (2022)
Get PDFhttps://ir.law.fsu.edu/newsletter-magazine/1076/thumbnail.jp
Rethinking Constitutionally Impermissible Punishment
Get PDFPrisons and jails endanger the health and wellbeing of incarcerated individuals and their communities. These facilities are often overcrowded and unsanitary,1 with limited access to medical care, 2 and no basic sanitation and personal hygiene products unless a person can pay the spiked prices of the jail\u27s commissary.3 Public health emergencies compound these dangers. Most recently, the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic created a crisis for people in detention, their families, and the communities surrounding jails and prisons. For over a year, there were no vaccines against COVID-19, new strains of the virus continue to evade vaccine-induced immunity, and there is still no known cure for the disease caused by the virus. For over a year, the only known measures to mitigate the spread of this pandemic were social distancing, vigilance with hygiene and disinfectants, and proper ventilation. Yet individuals in jails and prisons had no ability to implement these measures in spaces that, even in the absence of a pandemic, pose public health risks.4 Every decision to send a person into the jails or prisons, or to deny requests for release, had the potential to cause severe illness and turn into a death sentence for members of communities across the country. Now, with new variants appearing across the globe, we face an uncertain next chapter for public health. In this Essay, we discuss how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected our understanding of constitutionally permissible punishment. We argue, first, that the protracted failure to act by those who have had authority to do so during this public health emergency created a high risk that incarcerated people would suffer severe illness-and even death-in violation of due process protections and the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.5 Second, we suggest that a changed understanding of public safety in the context of detention and release during public health emergencies has the potential to shift the framework even after the emergency subsides. Conceptions of what qualifies as a danger to the community and what enhances public safety have radically shifted during this time in a way that supports release of individuals back to their communities. This shift can spur a further interrogation of how we define constitutionally permissible punishment in a system that has fueled mass incarceration
