Spillover commons are common-pool resources that cross jurisdictional boundaries. Governing spillover commons poses unique and significant challenges. If jurisdictional boundaries are drawn too narrowly, jurisdictions can externalize costs to neighbors. If the jurisdictional boundaries are drawn too broadly, too many remote stakeholders unnecessarily increase transaction costs. The jurisdictional...
Of the large, public companies that seek to remain in business through bankruptcy reorganization, only 70 percent succeed. The assets of the other 30 percent are absorbed into other businesses. Success is important both because it is efficient and because it preserves jobs, communities, supplier and customer relationships, and tax revenues. This Article reports the findings of the first...
This Comment advocates for a particular definition of “preferential treatment.” On April 22, 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the State of Michigan’s constitutional amendment forbidding preferential treatment based on race or gender was consistent with the U.S. Constitution. The case was Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action. The amendment, known as Proposal 2, has effectively...
The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Hollingsworth v. Perry—which held that the official proponents of California’s Proposition 8 did not have standing to appeal an adverse district court judgment—deals a heavy blow to voter-enacted legislation in the twenty-four states that make use of voter initiative processes. Challenges to voter-enacted legislation are increasingly being brought in federal...
The finances of many states, cities, and other localities are in dire straits. In this Article, we argue that partial responsibility for this situation lies with the outdated and ineffective financial reporting regime for public entities. Ineffective reporting has obscured and continues to obscure the extent of municipal financial problems, thus delaying or even preventing corrective actions...
A common assumption underlying the current public discourse and legal treatment of unauthorized immigrants is that unauthorized immigrants are lawless individuals who will break the law—any law—in search of economic gain. This notion persists despite substantial empirical evidence to the contrary. Drawing on original empirical data, this Article examines unauthorized immigrants and their...
Although there is no universal definition of “decriminalization,” approaches to decriminalization largely focus on modifying how conduct is sanctioned or punished. This Article argues that there is a need to broaden approaches to decriminalization beyond sanctions and give more consideration to the other ways in which criminalization fosters state control over civilians—including police authority...
Drones “allow for the most discriminating uses of force in the history of military technology,” and can thus be a profound humanitarian advancement in warfare. State actors alone, however, can actualize this potential. Although the United States complies with international humanitarian law from strike authorization through strike execution within the Afghanistan theatre of war, its methods for...
Since the passage of the 1968 Fair Housing Act (FHA), there have been clear legal tools and strategies for combating segregation and promoting diverse cities and towns. While the FHA and zoning laws have been used successfully to ensure that formerly all-white city neighborhoods and towns are accessible to diverse residents, a new problem is emerging for those who value integrated neighborhoods:...
It is notoriously difficult for copyright owners to bring small infringement claims. Just finding an attorney willing to take the case can be a challenge. Then there is the high cost of litigating in United States District Court—the only court with jurisdiction. For many, the obstacles are so daunting that they do not even try. The U.S. Congress has recognized the problem and asked the Copyright...
Marijuana is being decriminalized in many states and localities throughout the United States. While recreational use of marijuana is legal in only a handful of states, in many other areas it has become a type of pseudo-violation with such low criminal penalties that defendants may be issued just a citation or ticket and are often not entitled to the assistance of a public defender. While low...
In this Article, Mario Barnes, Erwin Chemerinsky, and Angela Onwuachi-Willig examine and analyze one recent, affirmative action case, Fisher v. University of Texas, Austin, as a means of highlighting why the anti-subordination or equal opportunity approach, as opposed to the anti-classification approach, is the correct approach for analyzing equal protection cases. In so doing, these authors...
Courts frequently confine constitutional litigation to a single remedial avenue. For example, courts typically allow enforcement of Fourth Amendment rights by providing either exclusion of evidence or a civil remedy under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, but not both. Yet this practice is at odds with judicial treatment of remedies in other arenas. Courts rarely limit common law litigants to a single remedy...
Over the last sixty years, the courts, Congress, and the President—but mostly the courts—first increased integration in schools and neighborhoods, and then changed course, allowing schools to resegregate. The impact of these decisions is illustrated by the comparative legal histories of Detroit and Louisville, two cities which demonstrate the many benefits of metropolitan-level cooperation on...