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Jaclyn Lopez, The Major Questions Doctrine Post-West Virginia v. EPA, 54 Trends 4 (2023)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
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Walter Hellerstein and Andrew D. Appleby, The Internet Tax Freedom Act at 25, 107 Tax Notes State 7 (2023)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
In October 1998, Congress enacted the Internet Tax Freedom Act (ITFA), a temporary three-year “moratorium” on the enactment of new state and local “taxes on Internet access” and on “multiple or discriminatory taxes on electronic commerce.” After extending the act temporarily several times, Congress, in 2016, finally and controversially struck the language temporarily extending the act, thereby making it permanent.
With its idiosyncratic legislative history and statutory language, as well as the recent attention it has received in connection with legal challenges to digital services and analogous taxes, we thought it would be appropriate to commemorate ITFA’s 25th birthday by reviewing the act and the litigation it has spawned and to consider whether it is “fit for service” in today’s digital economy.
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Grant Christensen, Using Consent to Expand Tribal Court Jurisdiction, Cal. L. Rev. (2023)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
In June of 2022 the Supreme Court reversed two-hundred years of precedent and held in a 5-4 opinion that states have concurrent criminal jurisdiction over crimes committed by non-Indians against Indians in Indian country. Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta. In conducting the preemption analysis Justice Kavanaugh’s majority opinion reasoned that while states have a strong interest in prosecuting crimes in Indian country in order to keep the community safe, tribes had functionally no interest because they generally lack criminal jurisdiction over non-Indians. The court then reasoned that the lack of a tribal interest could not preempt the state interest. This article suggests, despite the general prohibition on tribes asserting criminal jurisdiction over non-Indians that was discovered by the Supreme Court in 1978’s Oliphant opinion, tribes can assert criminal jurisdiction over non-Indians who consent to the jurisdiction in tribal court. The argument extends to both affirmative and implied consent and draws its authority from both pre-Oliphant scholarship and precedent as well as from recent development by the Court, Congress, and dicta from the Ninth Circuit. If tribes are able to regularly assert some criminal jurisdiction over non-Indians, then when lower courts apply Castro-Huerta in the future there will be a strong tribal interest to preempt state criminal jurisdiction in Indian country.
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Grant Christensen, Getting Cooley Right: The Inherent Criminal Powers of Tribal Law Enforcement, 56 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 467 (2022)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
While the Supreme Court regularly decides cases defining the limits of the criminal jurisdiction of tribal courts, when it heard United States v. Cooley in 2021 it had not decided a case about the procedural powers of tribal law enforcement in more than a century. Across more than five decades lower courts at all levels struggled to decide whether the inherent criminal powers of tribal law enforcement are coterminous with the jurisdiction of tribal courts or whether tribal officers may have their own set of inherent powers distinct from the power to prosecute. This Article examines the inconsistent split in authority that existed before Cooley and anticipates the future misreading of inherent criminal power by lower courts. It argues that now that the Court has divorced the inherent criminal power of tribal law enforcement from the criminal jurisdictional power of tribal courts, tribal officers may stop, detain, search, and investigate anyone whose criminal conduct poses a danger to the health and welfare of the tribal community. The Article bolsters its application by using the first cases decided by lower courts in the post-Cooley era as artifacts to examine the full implications of the recognition of inherent criminal power exercised by tribal law enforcement.
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Marco Jimenez, Expanding the Remedial Toolbox: A Legal Analogue to Preliminary Injunctions, 2022 Jotwell: The Journal of Things We Like 1 (2022)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
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Grant Christensen, Consenting to Criminal Jurisdiction in Tribal Court, 37 Criminal Justice 34 (2022)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
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Grant Christensen, The Extradition Clause and Indian Country, 97 N.D. L. Rev. 355 (2022)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
This article looks at the enforceability of the Extradition Clause in the federal courts of the United States. In 1861 the Supreme Court held in Dennison that the federal courts could not be used to enforce a request made by one state governor to another state governor for the extradition of a suspected criminal under Article IV Section 1. In 1987 the Supreme Court reversed the Dennison decision and for the first time since the Civil War held that the federal judicial power includes the power to enforce the Extradition Clause. This article takes the position that federal judicial power is limited to cases where the state governor has both territorial and personal jurisdiction over the accused. When an individual is on an Indian reservation, even Article IV does not authorize the governor of a state to enter the reservation and return the accused subject to an extradition request. Article IV’s Extradition Clause provides a constitutional duty for the executive of one state to remit to the power of a sister state someone located within its borders and subject to its jurisdiction. Critical to the exercise of this power is the dual understanding that the individual sought must be both within the state territory and subject to the state’s jurisdiction. Indian country lies outside the general jurisdictional power of the states. States may not enter Indian country and remove persons found there absent cooperation with or permission from the Tribe. Doing so infringes upon the Tribe’s right to make its own laws and be governed by them.
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Kristen David Adams and Candace Zierdt, CISG, 77 Bus. Law. 1345 (2022)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
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Em Wright, Click It or Ticket, But Don’t Admit It? How Unrestrained Drivers and Passengers Take Us for a Ride, 73 Mercer L. Rev. 801 (2022)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
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Paul Boudreaux, No More January Sixths: A Constitutional Proposal to Take Politics Out of Presidential Election Mechanics, 24 U. Pa. J. Const. L. 1029 (2022)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
The conduct of Congress on January 6, 2021, exposed the ill-considered legal mechanics of the presidential electoral vote. In both 2017 and 2021, members of Congress “objected” to the Electoral College vote, threatening democracy. Guided by principles of neutrality and humility, this essay identifies potentially partisan vulnerabilities in the current electoral system and proposes three straightforward constitutional amendments. First, the Constitution should remove the ability of state legislatures to choose electors. Second, the Constitution should require expeditious state resolution of popular voting disputes. Third, and finally, the Constitution should remove Congress entirely from presidential electoral mechanics.