Beyond Budget-Cut Criminal Justice: The Future of Penal Law

Mary D. Fan American criminal justice is experiencing a perfect storm of budget-cut criminal justice reform and the awakening of courts to the role of checking penal severity.  A wave of reforms is sweeping the states as budgetary shortfalls are leading to measures once virtually impossible or very difficult to enact such as expanded early release, conversion of felonies to misdemeanors and scaling down sentences.  On the judicial front, the Supreme Court has… READ MORE

Culture Clash: Special Education in Charter Schools

Robert A. Garda, Jr. Charter schools and special education for disabled students are based on conflicting education reforms and agency oversight principles. Charter schools operate in a culture of regulatory freedom and flexibility. They arose out of the modern era of accountability reform, in which student outcomes are the primary measure of school success and the driving engine of agency oversight. In stark contrast, special education laws were conceived in the civil rights era… READ MORE

The Earned Income Tax Credit and the Administration of Tax Expenditures

Jonathan S. Schneller The field of tax expenditure analysis has generally assumed a binary choice between tax expenditures and direct outlays. Because tax expenditures have multiple traits that are said to render them a suboptimal spending mechanism, scholars have tended to argue that they should be eliminated outright, or that they should be recast as direct expenditures. But despite such arguments, tax expenditures have proven to be a resilient (and politically popular) part… READ MORE

Flag on the Play: The Ineffectiveness of Athlete-Agent Laws and Regulations — and How North Carolina Can Take Advantage of a Scandal To Be a Model for Reform

Timothy G. Nelson In January 2010, fans of the University of North Carolina’s (“UNC”) football program received unexpected, fantastic news. Star defensive tackle Marvin Austin announced on his Twitter account that he planned to return to Chapel Hill for his senior season, rather than—as many predicted he would—forego his final year of collegiate eligibility for the fame and fortune of the National Football League (“NFL”): “I will be a Tar Heel for 2010!… READ MORE

Unwarranted Discrepancies in the Advancement of Animal Law: The Growing Disparity in Protection Between Companion Animals and Agricultural Animals

Elizabeth Ann Overcash In August of 2009, Lashawn Whitehead was at home with his baby, his mother, and his girlfriend’s three-month-old puppy, Susie. Susie, a German shepherd-pit bull mix, jumped onto the couch where Whitehead’s baby was resting. According to Whitehead’s mother, when Susie jumped onto the couch, Whitehead became enraged. He grabbed Susie by the fur, took her outside, and dripped lighter fluid over her. Whitehead then held her down and beat her for about fifteen… READ MORE

The “Substantial Uncertainty” of the Viability of Woodson Claims After Valenzuela v. Pallet Express, Inc.

Leah D'Aurora Richardson Two decades ago, the Supreme Court of North Carolina, compelled to discourage egregious employer misconduct, carved out an important exception to the exclusive remedy provision of the North Carolina Workers’ Compensation Act (the “Act”) which generally limits an employee’s recovery for work-related injuries and precludes common law remedies. A claim based on this exception, commonly called a Woodson claim, is a cause of action for employees’ injuries resulting from an employer’s intentional… READ MORE

The Dark Side of Unattributed Copying and the Ethical Implications of Plagiarism in the Legal Profession

Cooper J. Strickland Plagiarism is an intriguing subject. Though support for this statement is not likely needed—it is undoubtedly common knowledge—a simple example puts this widely accepted opinion into context. In 1988, during the Democratic Party’s campaign for the presidential nomination, one of the candidates made the following statement in a speech before a gathering of the California Democratic Party: “ ‘Few of us have the greatness to bend history itself. But each… READ MORE

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