CategoryPrint

Welfare economics suggests that the tax system is the appropriate place to effect redistribution from those with more command over material resources to those with less: in short, to serve "equity." Society should set other mechanisms of private and public law, including public finance systems, to maximize welfare: in short, to serve "efficiency." The populace, however, may not always accept...

At the turn of the twentieth century, the U.S. system of public finance underwent a dramatic, structural transformation. The late nineteenth-century system of indirect taxes, associated mainly with the tariff, was eclipsed in the early decades of the twentieth century by a progressive income tax. This shift in U.S. tax policy marked the emergence of a new fiscal polity - one that was guided not...

The earned income tax credit (EITC) is a transfer program aimed primarily at low income working parents, administered by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as part of the federal income tax. Although generally tax-like in its administration, in substance it resembles nontax antipoverty transfer programs, such as Food Stamps and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). In recent years...

Each year, the UCLA School of Law hosts the Melville B. Nimmer Memorial Lecture. Since 1986, the lecture series has served as a forum for leading scholars in the fields of copyright and First Amendment law. In recent years, the lecture has been presented by such distinguished scholars as Lawrence Lessig, Robert Post, Mark Rose, Kathleen Sullivan, and David Nimmer. The UCLA Law Review has...

During World War II, the lawyers of the NAACP considered the problem of discrimination in employment as one of the two most pressing problems (along with voting) facing African Americans. In a departure from past practice, they pursued the cases of African American workers vigorously in state and federal courts and before state and federal administrative agencies. These cases offered the NAACP...

This Article explores the original meaning of the Recess Appointments Clause. Under the current interpretation, the Clause gives the President extremely broad authority to make recess appointments. The Article argues, however, that the original meaning of the Clause actually confers quite limited power on the President and would not permit most of the recess appointments that are currently made...

Labor law scholars have long recognized that the National Labor Relations Act no longer deters employers from committing unfair labor practices, especially during the crucial time periods of union organizing drives and first contract negotiations. As a result, the Act's promise of "full freedom of association" has become increasingly illusory. Recent scholarship suggests that discharges based on...

Legal scholars tend to segregate the Supreme Court's criminal justice cases from the rest of the Court's constitutional jurisprudence. Leading accounts of the Rehnquist Court, for instance, understandably will focus on the Court's noteworthy work in federalism, national power, race, and religion, while scarcely making even passing mention of the Court's work in criminal justice. The consequence...

Although the Free Exercise Clause prohibits governmental interference with religion, American Indians have been unsuccessful in challenging government actions that harm tribal sacred sites located on federal public lands. The First Amendment dimensions of these cases have been well studied by scholars, but this Article contends that it is also important to analyze them through a property law lens...

This Article challenges the First Amendment critique of data privacy regulation - the claim that data privacy rules restrict the dissemination of truthful information and thus violate the First Amendment. The critique, which is ascendant in privacy discourse, warps legislative and judicial processes and threatens the constitutionalization of information policy. The First Amendment critique should...

This Article examines how conservative and libertarian lawyers created a field of legal advocacy organizations in the image of public interest organizations of the political left and how they adapted the model and rhetoric of public interest law practice to serve different political ends. As conservatives developed a cadre of competent and committed advocates and deployed nonprofit legal advocacy...

Advocates of colorblindness doctrine argue that the time has come to look beyond racial categories. In October 2003, Californians voted against an initiative premised on the idea that eliminating the state's power to collect racial data would further the advancement of equality. This Comment proposes that even if the initiative is recast in revised form and wins a majority of California's popular...

Most farm animals suffer for the entirety of their lives, both on the farm and at the slaughterhouse. While there are state and federal laws designed to protect these animals from abuse, such laws are rarely enforced by the public officials who have the authority to do so. Animal advocacy groups have taken matters into their own hands by utilizing state unfair competition laws, including...

Constitutional comparativism—the notion that international and foreign material should be used to interpret the U.S. Constitution—is gaining currency. Yet proponents of this practice rarely offer a firm theoretical justification for the practice. This Article contends that constitutional comparativism should be examined from the perspective of constitutional theory. The use of comparative and...