Date of Publication:
Peter Lake, Beyond Discipline: Managing the Modern Higher Education Environment (Hierophant Enterprises, Inc., 2009)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
Date of Publication:
Catherine J. Cameron, Jumping Off the Merry-Go-Round: How the Federal Courts Will Reconcile the Circular Deference Problem Between HIPAA and FOIA, 58 Cath. U. L. Rev. 333 (2009)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
This Article introduces the conflict between HIPAA and FOIA in Part II, which explains the provisions of HIPAA and FOIA and the HHS regulations that cover access to medical records held by the federal government. Part II delineates the practical realities agency personnel will face when a record request falls under both HIPAA and FOIA. Part IV of this Article highlights how two states have dealt with HIPAA’s conflict with state statutes to see how those courts have resolved a similar conflict. Part V delves into the case law interpreting Exemption Six of FOIA to conclude that HHS’s assessment that Exemption Six should not cause a conflict with FOIA is inaccurate. Finally, this Article argues that a federal court should decide that public access to a medical record held by a government health provider is dictated by FOIA’s Exemption Six instead of HIPAA and HHS regulations.
Date of Publication:
Ann Piccard, Teaching to Different Levels of Experience: What I Learned From Working With Experienced Writers From Different Fields, 17 Perspectives 115 (2009)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
Date of Publication:
Ciara Torres-Spelliscy et al., Improving Judicial Diversity, in Women and the Law (Thomson/West, 2009)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
The United States is more diverse than ever, but its state judges are not. While we recognize that citizens are entitled to a jury of their peers who will be drawn from a pool that reflects the surrounding community, Americans who enter the courtroom often face a predictable presence on the bench: a white male. This is the case despite increasing diversity within law school populations and within state bars across the country. Most of the legal disputes adjudicated in America are heard in state courts. As such, they must serve a broad range of constituencies and an increasingly diverse public. So why are state judiciaries consistently less diverse than the communities they serve? Unfortunately, studies show that both merit selection systems and judicial elections are equally challenged when it comes to creating diversity. Today, white males are overrepresented on state appellate benches by a margin of nearly two-to-one. Almost every other demographic group is underrepresented when compared to their share of the nation’s population. There is also evidence that the number of black male judges is actually decreasing (one study found that there were proportionately fewer black male state appellate judges in 1999 than there were in 1985). There are still fewer female judges than male, despite the fact that the majority of today’s law students are female, as are approximately half of all recent law degree recipients. This pattern is most prevalent in states’ highest courts, where women have historically been almost completely absent.
Date of Publication:
Catherine J. Cameron and Jeffrey J. Minneti, Teaching Every Student: A Demonstration Lesson that Adapts Instruction to Students’ Learning Styles, 17 Perspectives 161 (2009)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
Armed with the knowledge that law students have unique and diverse learning styles, we have an opportunity and perhaps an obligation to mold our teaching to the way our students best learn new and difficult information. Through the vehicle of an demonstration lesson that was used in a first-year legal research and writing class at Stetson University College of Law, this article briefly illustrates what such molding might look like and accomplish in a legal research and writing classroom. The article first describes how the authors developed the demonstration lesson. It then describes the lesson itself, and it concludes with student and professor feedback on the lesson.
Date of Publication:
James W. Fox, Fourteenth Amendment Citizenship and the Reconstruction-Era Black Public Sphere, 42 Akron L. Rev. 1245 (2009)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
This article, which is part of a symposium on the 140th anniversary of the fourteenth amendment, explores the Reconstruction-Era black public sphere as a source for possible meanings for the fourteenth amendment. Similar to some of the work of popular constitutionalism scholars, I propose that an important and overlooked source for meanings of constitutional citizenship lies in the statements and actions of those who attempted to redefine citizenship in a more egalitarian and democratic manner and who established meanings for citizenship on the ground. To do this I borrow theoretical frameworks from political and social theory: civil society and the public sphere. I do so because these concepts capture the structure of nineteenth century social experience while at the same time also connecting this experience to modern notions of politics and society. After explicating some of the main principles of civil society and public sphere theory, I analyze a particular form of civil society and the public sphere that I think reveals important aspects of democratic citizenship - the black convention movement. This movement both enacted citizenship on the ground and engaged in a discourse about citizenship in the public sphere that presented alternative, progressive visions of citizenship, ones that included political rights (suffrage) and social rights (access to the public sphere). The article concludes with thoughts on how the black public sphere reflected different and significant understandings of democratic citizenship, equality, freedom compared to how those concepts were constructed in the dominant public sphere.
Date of Publication:
Peter Lake, Student Discipline: The Case Against Legalistic Approaches, 56 Chronicle of Higher Education A31 (2009)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
Date of Publication:
Kristen David Adams, Homeownership: American Dream or Illusion of Empowerment?, 60 S.C. L. Rev. 573 (2009)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
In this Article, I endeavor to show that because Americans value homeownership so much — in fact, more than we should — we have placed ourselves in an untenable position as a country and now find ourselves in the midst of a well-documented housing crisis. In addition, we have used the primacy of homeownership as an excuse not to fulfill our country’s commitment to provide housing assistance to those persons who need it most. We have done this in part by undervaluing quality, affordable rental property (and quality renters) just as we have overvalued homeownership (and homeowners). Some have used the word “myth” in talking about the American view of homeownership; however, the word I prefer is “illusion,” which I intend to be less pejorative while still acknowledging that homeownership does not always deliver the benefits it promises, particularly for lower income homeowners. This Article is not particularly concerned with the question of who is to blame for the current housing crisis, because I believe fault in this context is too complicated to be laid at the feet of just one party or another. Part II of this Article examines the median American household, mortgage, and house, concluding that many Americans cannot afford the homes they have purchased. Next, Part III addresses the question of why our country overvalues homeownership to such an extent that it now finds itself in this position. In doing so, Part III examines the many benefits that homeownership supposedly provides to both individuals and society. Part IV contrasts society’s customary treatment of homeownership as a virtue with its stigmatization of renters, concluding that the latter is unfounded. Part IV also explores how the very interests that have promoted homeownership have also benefited most from its growth. Part V considers several factors that contributed to the real estate boom that culminated in the mid-2000s, including homeowners’ treatment of mortgage debt as wealth, financing options such as no-down-payment and interest-only loans, increased utilization of home equity loans, and certain features of subprime lending. Part VI concludes by suggesting that universal homeownership does not provide the benefits Americans have come to expect from it and proposing four steps policymakers should follow in creating healthier, more sustainable housing policy.
Date of Publication:
Susan D. Rozelle, He Had it Coming: Provocation as a Partial Justification, in Criminal Law Conversations (Paul H. Robinson et al. eds., Oxford University Press, 2009)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
Date of Publication:
Louis J. Virelli, Scientific Peer Review and Administrative Legitimacy, 61 Admin. L. Rev. 723 (2009)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
The alleged misuse of scientific information to support public policy decisions has become one of the most prominent and controversial topics in American politics. Perceived government misuse of scientific data in highly controversial areas such as global warming, environmental protection, stem cell research, and contraception threatens to lead us not only toward policy positions that are inconsistent with scientific reality, but perhaps more importantly into a political environment where science-based policy decisions are no longer viewed as legitimate within our constitutional democracy. Due in part to these concerns about scientific integrity in administrative decisions, there is also a significant amount of attention being paid to scientific peer review in the administrative process ("administrative peer review"), a movement highlighted by a 2005 OMB bulletin mandating that administrative agencies obtain peer review of all important scientific information that they disseminate to the public.
This article addresses the cross-section of these two issues through a normative analysis of peer review's impact on administrative legitimacy. To date, commentary on peer review in the administrative context has been limited to treating peer review either descriptively or as a largely monolithic enterprise. This article departs from that approach by asking the next logical questions - what model(s) of peer review are available to administrative agencies, and which of these is best suited to promote legitimacy in administrative decisions - and by creating a framework for answering them, first through the development of four distinct models of administrative peer review, and then by establishing a series of normative approaches, including a cost-benefit analysis, through which to evaluate each of the models. In addition to providing a new theoretical context in which to consider peer review, the results of the analyses are interesting in that they overwhelmingly support the multifaceted treatment of peer review developed here and raise serious questions about the most commonly used model of administrative peer review.