Keeping Current-Property Incollection
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Darryl Wilson, Keeping Current-Property, 35 Probate and Property 16 (2021)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
2021
The Political Branding of Us and Them: The Branding of Asian Immigrants in the Democratic and Republican Party Platforms and Supreme Court Opinions 1876-1924 Article
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Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, The Political Branding of Us and Them: The Branding of Asian Immigrants in the Democratic and Republican Party Platforms and Supreme Court Opinions 1876-1924, 96 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 1214 (2021)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
In this piece, I examine the political branding of Asian immigrants by comparing the rhetoric used in the political platforms of the Democratic and Republican parties from 1876 to 1924 to the language deployed in U.S. Supreme Court opinions during the same time period. The negative verbiage repeated at national political conventions branded the Chinese is a threat to labor, immoral, unassimilable, diseased, and invaders. Interestingly, the Republican authors of their political platforms were multiracial, and yet they produced rhetoric as harshly anti-Asian as their Democratic counterparts, who included ex-Confederate soldiers and even KKK members. And disappointingly, the Supreme Court picked up this derogatory language found in both parties’ political platforms and continued to echo it in cases that diminished the rights of Chinese and other Asian immigrants. This history is then linked to the present day through the example of the negative impact of politicians’ calling the contemporary COVID-19 pandemic “Kung Flu.”
Ending the War Against Sex Work: Why it’s time to decriminalize prostitution Article
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Linda S. Anderson, Ending the War Against Sex Work: Why it’s time to decriminalize prostitution, 21 U. Md. L.J. Race Relig. Gender & Class 72 (2021)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
Efforts to decriminalize sex work have gained momentum recently. After years of abolitionist rhetoric inflaming the public by conflating consensual sex work with human trafficking, sex workers and their allies are making themselves heard. The debate about whether exchanging sex for money should be legal is drawing attention. Sex worker advocates have gathered data to support their assertions that sex workers are harmed by efforts to eliminate an activity that has existed for as long as people have lived in communities.
This article reviews the short history of the criminalization of prostitution, providing a glimpse into the reasons it was criminalized in the first place. Like many efforts to legitimize personal decisions about intimate behaviors, discussions of sex work initially focused on whether fundamental rights to liberty and privacy mandated decriminalization. The article explains those positions and why decriminalization arguments based solely on privacy and liberty interests have not made progress. Ultimately, the article incorporates data about sex workers’ experiences and the work of sex workers and their close allies to provide documented reasons that continued criminalization is harmful and full decriminalization of sex work will reduce that harm
The Constitution of Black Abolitionism: Reframing the Second Founding Article
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James W. Fox, The Constitution of Black Abolitionism: Reframing the Second Founding, 23 U. Pa. J. Const. L. 267 (2021)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
Eric Foner has observed that historians of the Thirteenth Amendment have struggled “to find ways to get the voice of African Americans into discussions of the Amendment’s original meaning, scope, and limitation.” This article is part of a project to answer Professor Foner’s challenge to recover nineteenth-century African American constitutionalism. While there are many sources for accessing the views of African American writers, speakers, and activists, this article focuses on the rich contributions of the Black Convention Movement. Despite its importance in helping to set the terms for Reconstruction, the Black Convention Movement and the Black public sphere more generally have been under-utilized and under-studied as a part of our constitutional history. The documents from the state and national conventions of African Americans that took place from 1831 through the 1860s provide evidence of how African Americans understood constitutional ideals, principles, interpretations, and text in the period of time when significant constitutional change was about to take place. As we will see, the conventions included debates and statements about a range of constitutional ideas, from the meaning of freedom in a society infused with slavery and race prejudice, to complex views about the meaning of national citizenship, to fundamental questions about the validity and morality of the constitution itself.By the 1860s, as the Civil War revealed the possibility of an America freed from slavery, African American Conventions began to present a broad vision of civil society where constitutionally protected freedom and citizenship encompassed everything from suffrage to employment to property to education. This vision, while shared intermittently by some white abolitionist allies, was both more insistent and more encompassing than those ideas of freedom most often articulated in the white public sphere. This vision, I argue, is the lost meaning of African American constitutionalism and is one well worth exploring as we consider how and whether American constitutionalism in the twenty-first century can speak to us
Systematic Injustice: The Need for Disaster and Pandemic Preparedness Legislation Article
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Christine E. Cerniglia, Systematic Injustice: The Need for Disaster and Pandemic Preparedness Legislation, 99 U. Det. Mercy L. Rev. 53 (2021)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
A Provisional Definition of Legal Writing Scholarship Article (Online)
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Kirsten K. Davis, A Provisional Definition of Legal Writing Scholarship, in 2University of Oregon Proceedings: Online Journal of Legal Writing Conference Presentations (2021)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
CISG Article
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Kristen David Adams and Candace Zierdt, CISG, 76 Bus. Law. 1407 (2021)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
Reply to Bridgewater (2021), “Response to Davies et al., ‘Towards a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Wetlands’” Article
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Gillian T. Davies et al., Reply to Bridgewater (2021), “Response to Davies et al., ‘Towards a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Wetlands’”, 72 Marine and Freshwater Research 1401 (2021)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
We reply to the main concerns raised by Bridgewater (2021) in his response to Davies et al. (2021a), ‘Towards a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Wetlands’. We appreciate the contribution of Bridgewater (2021) to this emerging conversation and, although we disagree with some of his assessments and statements, we do not find his points to be incompatible with support for the Declaration of the Rights of Wetlands (ROW). This reply focuses on four areas of concern raised by Bridgewater (2021). First, we describe why a wetlands-specific declaration will add important value to other Rights of Nature declarations. Second, we discuss how the ROW does not detract from, but rather can contribute to and complement, existing conservation and management approaches and mechanisms. Third, we agree on the importance of weaving Indigenous and local knowledge with other knowledges and emphasise that the ROW should not be confused with or misused to undermine the rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities. Finally, we explain how legal rights can and have been granted to non-humans, including elements of Nature, such as wetlands.
Designing the Tax Supermajority Requirement Article
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Andrew D. Appleby, Designing the Tax Supermajority Requirement, 71 Syracuse L. Rev. 959 (2021)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
States are rekindling the trend of broad constitutional amendments that require supermajority approval to create or increase taxes. This trend may inadvertently harm states' already precarious fiscal footing, particularly with several new imminent expenditure demands. States can minimize negative economic consequences, however, through proper supermajority requirement design.
This article makes three contributions. First, it examines broad constitutional tax supermajority requirements' history, asserted justifications, and effectiveness. This examination concludes that the motivations underlying the first and second supermajority waves differ importantly from those underlying the possible third wave. Recognizing this novel motivation-signaling low-tax competitive advantage-allows this article to present optimal supermajority provision design principles.
Second, this article investigates several new sources that can generate immense tax revenue for states, but that will likely be obstructed by tax supermajority provisions if not designed properly. This article also identifies several expenditure demands that are unlikely to be satisfied without new or increased taxes.
Finally, this article presents tax supermajority requirement design principles that achieve a strong low-tax signaling function while allowing flexibility to maintain a low-tax competitive advantage. Fundamentally, the constitutional tax supermajority requirement should expressly encompass personal income tax, business taxes, and fees, while excluding transaction taxes. If a state decides to pursue a broad tax supermajority requirement, these design principles will best position a state to attract businesses and wealthy individuals while also achieving fiscal stability.
How to Adjust Your Employment Policies for the Covid Era: Tips for Avoiding a Legal Quagmire Article
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Peter Lake, How to Adjust Your Employment Policies for the Covid Era: Tips for Avoiding a Legal Quagmire, Chronicle of Higher Education (2021)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.