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FSU Law Focus - 06/05/2020
Get PDFFrom the Dean: On Commitment; Alum Profile: Laura Chilcutt (’08); Student Profile: 2020 Grad Ryan Colón; Student Profile: 2020 Grad Young Kanghttps://ir.law.fsu.edu/fsu-law-focus/1152/thumbnail.jp
FSU Law Focus - 03/20/2020
Get PDFFrom the Dean: Moving to remote classes in response to COVID-19; Spring 2020 Environmental Distinguished Lecture; Alum Profile: Kenneth “Kenny” Knox (’11); Student Profile: 3L Jared Sutherlandhttps://ir.law.fsu.edu/fsu-law-focus/1214/thumbnail.jp
FSU Law Focus - 05/15/2020
Get PDFFrom the Dean: Summer job opportunities; Alum Profile: Robert A. “Trey” Goodwin, III (’05); Student Profile: 2020 Grad Camille Infantolino; Student Profile: 2020 Grad Van Millerhttps://ir.law.fsu.edu/fsu-law-focus/1272/thumbnail.jp
FSU Law Focus - 05/22/2020
Get PDFFrom the Dean: College of Law\u27s recording studio; Professor Linford Authors Amicus Brief Before the U.S. Supreme Court; Student Profile: 2020 Grad Jordan Botsch; Student Profile: 2020 Grad Dominick Mezzolinehttps://ir.law.fsu.edu/fsu-law-focus/1276/thumbnail.jp
FSU Law Focus - 02/28/2020
Get PDFFrom the Dean: Moot Court Team Wins National Championship (Jeffrey G. Miller National Environmental Law Moot Court Competition); FSU Law Hosts Local Autonomy and Energy Law Symposium; Alum Profile: Major Ambar “Raju” Vyas (’09);Student Profile: 3L Jemma Takxhttps://ir.law.fsu.edu/fsu-law-focus/1330/thumbnail.jp
FSU Law Focus - 10/30/2020
Get PDFFrom the Dean: 2020 Alumni Awards; Trial Team Wins National Buffalo-Niagara Mock Trial Competition; Virtual Networking Reception Provides Evening of Connections for Students; Alum Profile: Nina C. Welch (’15); Student Profile: 3L Kristina Brennanhttps://ir.law.fsu.edu/fsu-law-focus/1028/thumbnail.jp
FSU Law Focus - 08/21/2020
Get PDFFrom the Dean: Seeking assistance to support graduates after bar exam delay; FSU SBA is Nation\u27s Best; Alum Profile: Josiah D. Graham (’14); Student Profile: 3L Julianna Favalehttps://ir.law.fsu.edu/fsu-law-focus/1086/thumbnail.jp
Veiling Substance in Semantics: The Knotty State of the Earmarking Doctrine
Get PDFConflicting social philosophies with their infinite variations will inevitably influence law making and law interpretation. Consciously or unconsciously, social and political attitudes affect even those concerned with such an apparently technical matter as the definition of preferential transfer in bankruptcy. As it evolved over time from its English law antecedents, the law of preferential transfers in the United States gradually shifted its concern from the culpability of commercial actors to the effect of the transfer on distributive equality goals, culminating in our current law of preferences as codified in the federal Bankruptcy Code. While crafted in a highly technical and formalistic fashion, the black-letter law is simply incapable of capturing all of the nuances of behavior in the credit marketplace. Therefore, the need has remained for the bankruptcy courts to put their gloss on the statute to ensure it serves its intended purposes in any given case and also as a system. One prominent example of this judicial explication is what\u27s known as the earmarking doctrine, a court-made equitable invention intended to assure that the transfer under scrutiny truly involves property of the debtor, as opposed to circumstances where the debtor serves merely as a conduit to move funds from one creditor to another. Although its existence has been recognized almost without exception, courts, and for that matter commentators, disagree sharply over the circumstances when it is appropriate for the doctrine to be invoked and, even when there is agreement about those circumstances, similar disagreement over the standard to apply in determining if the transfer at issue is actually protected under the earmarking exception. This Article attempts to address both of these questions by proposing a fluid approach to defining the scope of the earmarking doctrine that conforms its application to what is asserted to be the foundational purpose of the preference law; namely, ratable distribution among creditors with similar rights. The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal
Controlled Substance Regulation for the COVID-19 Mental Health Crisis
Get PDFThe COVID-19 pandemic is producing widespread loss of life, unemployment, and social isolation that is triggering a mental health crisis. Experts warn there could be record levels of depression, suicide, and substance use disorders. The U.S. healthcare system is not prepared. It lacks the resources to provide prolonged psychotherapy at scale, and existing drug treatments are ineffective in about half the people who ty them. Amid worsening mental health-related morbidiy and mortaliy, the experimental drugs psilocybin and 3,4- Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) are an untapped resource. These drugs belong to a class of compounds called the psychedelics, which has been criminalized and stigmatized by the U.S. war on drugs for over fly years. The US. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) classifies them as Schedule I controlled substances with a high potential for abuse and no currently accepted medical uses. However, recent clinical trials conducted in the United States and abroad undermine the DEA\u27s position and suggest that psilocybin and MDMA can safely treat a variety of mental health conditions. Moreover, unlike existing therapies, they act quickly, and their benefits are often sustained. This Article explores the legal obstacles to administering psilocybin and MDMA to mitigate the COVID-19 mental health crisis. It surveys the scientific evidence for their use and outlines a path toward rapid deployment. Due to the urgent need for effective mental health treatments, the DEA should deschedule psilocybin, reschedule MDMA, and lift annual aggregate production quotas on these drugs. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) should issue emergency use authorizations (EUAs) for their therapeutic use. To enhance safety, the FDA Commissioner can attach conditions of use to the EUAs, comparable to Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies (REMS), such as requiring psilocybin and MDMA to be administered in controlled settings under professional supervision. Prior to the onset of COVID-19, several cities decriminalized psychedelics while acknowledging their therapeutic benefits. The U.S. Department of justice (DOJ), which enforces violations of the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA), should pledge not to prosecute individuals who use psychedelics in accordance with state and local laws. Meanwhile, amid growing national scrutiny of law enforcement policies and procedures following high-profile police killings, Congress should reevaluate the DOJ\u27s prominent role in U.S. drug policy. It has come to light that the war on drugs rests on a foundation of misinformation and racial animus, which has devastated communities of color. Moreover, due to restrictions on research and development, the drug war adversely impacts people with mental health conditions by depriving them of effective drug therapies. Accordingly, Congress should amend the CSA to shift drug control from law enforcement agencies to science and public-health oriented agencies, such as the FDA and the National Institutes of Health. This restructuring of responsibilities would align federal controlled substance regulation with state drug control, which is overseen by public health agencies instead of law enforcement
Privacy Injuries and Article III Concreteness
Get PDFThe Supreme Court\u27s 2016 decision in Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins requires federal courts to investigate the concreteness of a plaintiff\u27s injury, even after Congress has recognized the injury by statute. Spokeo\u27s concreteness discussion is a confusing mixture of several distinct considerations, and there is little rhyme or reason to how the lower courts have interpreted and applied Spokeo to other statutorily authorized injuries. This Article identifies four distinct informational injuries in the Court\u27s past cases: injuries arising from the withholding, acquiring, using, and disseminating of information. To avoid Spokeo\u27s mistakes, federal courts should give binding deference to Congress\u27s decision to make an injury privately enforceable when three conditions are met: when the plaintiff alleges one of these informational injuries; when the defendant is a non-governmental actor; and when Congress has effectively personalized the injury and the plaintiff is among the injured. The Court\u27s approach-an unmoored judicial investigation into an informational injury\u27s amorphous concreteness -erodes Congress\u27s ability to provide avenues of redress for new and novel harms, and this erosion is already undermining privacy protections. Since Spokeo, lower courts have refused to enforce provisions of the Fair Credit Reporting Act, the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act, and the Cable Communications Policy Act, among other statutes. The informational- injury lens shows that courts lack a principled way to stop Spokeo from also undermining provisions of the Wiretap Act, the Stored Communications Act, Illinois\u27s Biometric Privacy Act, and nascent privacy reform proposals that have private rights of action-including European- and California-style data processing restrictions and an information fiduciary regime. The Court\u27s Spokeo decision is in tension with historical practice, is having deleterious effects on privacy interests in the lower courts, and threatens to gut putative privacy law reform. This Article provides a mechanism for understanding how the Court\u27s standing jurisprudence goes awry, and it posits a simpler and superior alternative approach