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Andrew D. Appleby et al., Heads They Win, Tails You Lose: New York Decombination and Discretionary Adjustments, Tax Analysts: State Tax Notes (2014)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
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Anne E. Mullins, Subtly Selling the System: Where Psychological Influence Tactics Lurk in Judicial Writing, 48 U. Rich. L. Rev. 1111 (2014)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
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Will Bunting, The Regulation of Sentencing Decisions: Why Information Disclosure Is Not Sufficient, and What to Do About It, 70 N.Y.U. Ann. Surv. Am. L. 41 (2014)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
This Article identifies a number of problems, both in practice and in theory, in what is denoted here as the “information disclosure model of sentencing regulation.” While the disclosure model places a lack of information at the heart of the problem of inefficient sentencing policy, the present article explains how the problem is better understood, not as informational, but incentives-based. A statutory appropriation requirement is described that seeks to correct an explained incentive to engage in myopic legislative decision-making; specifically, a one-year appropriation is required from a general budget fund into a statutorily-created special reserve fund for any proposed change in sentencing policy projected to increase the correctional population. A survey of existing statutory appropriation requirements is provided and certain best practices are identified; in addition, a novel statutory provision is proposed: monies should be appropriated from the special reserve fund to the general fund if a bill is projected to decrease the correctional population. Such withdrawals from the special reserve fund made in the current fiscal period serve as concrete, immediate evidence of the fiscal benefits of less punitive criminal sentences, where such benefits are often realized only in the long-run, and supply a novel incentive for legislators to engage in forward-looking, fiscally-responsible sentencing policy. The present article further contends that proposed changes in sentencing policy should not be subjected to cost-benefit analysis (as opposed to fiscal impact analysis as required under the statutory appropriation requirement), because the retributive value of a criminal sentence is extremely difficult to measure given the current state of estimation technology.
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Robyn Powell, Can Parents Lose Custody Simply Because They are Disabled?, 31 GP Solo 14 (2014)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
Overview of the current state of rights for parents with disabilities and advice for attorneys.
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Todd A. Lard et al., What to Expect When You Are Expecting State Tax Reform, 66 Tax Executive 15 (2014)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
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Kirsten K. Davis, “The Reports of My Death Are Greatly Exaggerated”: Reading and Writing Objective Memoranda in a Mobile Computing Age, 92 Or. L. Rev. 471 (2014)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
Is there any reason for lawyers to write legal memoranda, particularly when some lawyers report that they no longer value the “traditional” legal memo? Does the legal memorandum – a common first writing project for law students – have any application whatsoever beyond the first year of law school? Does the usefulness of the memo decrease when it is read on a mobile device?
This article takes issue with the idea that the “traditional” legal memorandum is dead. It challenges lawyers, law faculty, and law students to think more deeply about the purposes of the legal memo, its role in modern legal practice, and its readability in a mobile computing world. And it offers a view of the legal memo that draws upon not only legal practice traditions but also upon the rules of ethics, rhetorical theory, cognitive science, and on-screen readability studies.
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Rebecca C. Morgan, State Governments Face the Realities of Aging Populations: What the Future of Aging Means to All of Us: An Era of Possibilities, 48 Ind. L. Rev. 125 (2014)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
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Jason Bent, Curtailing Voter Intimidation by Employers After Citizens United, 43 Stetson L. Rev. 595– (2014)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
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Jason Bent, Hidden Priors: Toward a Unifying Theory of Systemic Disparate Treatment Law, 91 Denver University Law Review 807– (2014)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
Did the Court’s procedural decision in Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes undermine the substance of the systemic disparate treatment theory of employment discrimination? The answer to that question hinges on understanding the theoretical foundation for what one scholar calls the “most potent and least understood of the various Title VII causes of action.” The current scholarly efforts to understand systemic disparate treatment law can be sorted into two distinct strands – methodological and contextualist. Scholars in the methodological strand question whether statistical techniques currently used by courts are sufficient to support an inference of discrimination. In the contextualist strand, scholars urge a conceptual expansion of the systemic disparate treatment theory that would impose liability on employers for wrongdoing located at the organizational level, rather than simply aggregating individual-level claims. These two strands have advanced independently, with scholars in each strand often overlooking the implications of progression in the other. This Article is the first attempt to unify these two scholarly strands. It does so by exposing the inescapable role of hidden Bayesian priors – preconceptions about background rates of discrimination – in the interpretation of statistical evidence. Taking a Bayesian view, the shortcomings of traditional statistical evidence identified by methodologists are not fatal. Yet, the Bayesian view also provides the conceptual space needed for further development of the organizational approach advanced by contextualists. The Wal-Mart decision presents an opportunity to radically rethink this misunderstood area of antidiscrimination law, and this Article takes the first step in developing of a coherent theory of systemic disparate treatment that embraces Bayesian priors.
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Susan D. Rozelle, Practice Attributional Charity: Cognitive Bias in Intentional Homicide Law, 47 Tex. Tech L. Rev. 41 (2014)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.