Articles
Sovereign Immunity and Interstate Government Tort (pdf)
Louise Weinberg
The Role of Trust Law Principles in Defining Public Trust Duties for Natural Resources (pdf)
John C. Dernbach
Clashing Canons and the Contract Clause (pdf)
T. Leigh Anenson & Jennifer K. Gershberg
A Fresh Start: The Evolving Use of Juvenile Records in College Admissions (pdf) (Appendix)
Eve Rips
The Michigan Journal of Law Reform is pleased to announce that its 2021 Symposium, “The Poverty Penalty: America’s Overuse of Fines and Fees” will take place January 25-29, 2021 as a series of five virtual talks from 12:00 – 1:00 pm EST. Each panel will take place via zoom and registration is required for each panel. Zoom links will be provided to all registered participants prior to the start of each panel. Please visit our website povertypenaltyjlr.com to register and for more information about the event.
Introduction
Dispossessing Detroit: How the Law Takes Property (pdf)
Mary Kathlin Sickel
Articles
Dispossessing Resident Voice: Municipal Receiverships and the Public Trust (pdf)
Juliet M. Moringiello
Tell Me How It Ends: The Path to Nationalizing the U.S. Pharmaceutical Industry (pdf)
Fran Quigley
Note
Eighteen Is Not a Magic Number: Why the Eighth Amendment Requires Protection for Youth Aged Eighteen to Twenty-Five (pdf)
Tirza A. Mullin
Articles
Dignity Transacted: Emotional Labor and the Racialized Workplace (pdf)
Lu-in Wang and Zachary W. Brewster
Revisiting Immutability: Competing Frameworks for Adjudicating Asylum Claims Based on Membership in a Particular Social Group (pdf)
Talia Shiff
Calculating Compensation Sums for Private Law Wrongs: Underlying Imprecisions, Necessary Questions, and Toward a Plausible Account of Damages for Lost Years of Life (pdf)
Michael Pressman
Notes
A More Perfect Pickering Test: Janus v. AFSCME Council 31 and the Problem of Public Employee Speech (pdf)
Alexandra J. Gilewicz
Resolving ALJ Removal Protections Problem Following Lucia (pdf)
Spencer Davenport
(PDF) 54 U. Mich. J. L. Reform Caveat 1 (2020)
Cynthia G. Hawkins* and Taylor Scribner**
I. Introduction
Continue readingThe damage done to us during our childhood cannot be undone, since we cannot change anything in our past. We can, however, change ourselves. We can repair ourselves and gain our lost integrity by choosing to look more closely at the knowledge that is stored inside our bodies and bringing this closer to our awareness. This path, although certainly not easy, is the only route by which we can leave behind the cruel, invisible prison of our childhood. We become free by transforming ourselves from unaware victims of the past into responsible individuals in the present, who are aware of our past and are thus able to live with it.1
(PDF) 54 U. Mich. J. L. Reform Caveat 1 (2020)
Matthew J. Razzano*
Introduction
Historically, state usury laws prohibited lending above certain interest rates, but in 1978 the Supreme Court interpreted the National Bank Act (NBA) to allow chartered banks to issue loans at rates based on where they were headquartered rather than where the loan originated.1 States like South Dakota virtually eliminated interest rate ceilings to attract business, incentivizing national banks to base credit operations there and avoid local usury laws.2 In 2015, however, the Second Circuit decided Madden v. Midland Funding, LLC and reversed long-standing banking practices, ruling that non-chartered financial institutions were not covered by the NBA and were therefore subject to state usury laws where the loan originated.3 The underlying reasoning for the court’s decision was well-intentioned and based on (a) an unwillingness to allow non-chartered institutions to function as pseudo-banks4 and (b) a desire to protect consumers.5 The court’s radical decision received widespread criticism,6 and empirical studies have demonstrated a noteworthy decrease in credit availability in the Second Circuit7—negating the court’s own policy rationales. Since Madden, Congress and federal agencies have attempted an outright reversal, but none of their solutions address the Madden court’s fundamental concerns. This Essay argues that a Madden fix is needed, but the most effective solution must incorporate and address the Second Circuit’s underlying concerns.
Articles
“A World of Steel-Eyed Death”: An Empirical Evaluation of the Failure of the Strickland Standard to Ensure Adequate Counsel to Defendants with Mental Disabilities Facing the Death Penalty (pdf)
Michael L. Perlin, Talia Roitberg Harmon, and Sarah Chatt
Dismantling the Master’s House: Toward a Justice-Based Theory of Community Economic Development (pdf)
Etienne C. Toussaint
The City and the Soul: Character and Thriving in Law and Politics (pdf)
Sherman J. Clark
Waiving Federal Sovereign Immunity in Original Actions Between States (pdf)
Sandra Zellmer
Notes
Making a Reasonable Calculation: A Strategic Amendment to the IDEA (pdf)
Hetali M. Lodaya
Articles
Age of Unreason: Rationality and the Regulatory State (pdf)
Louise Weinberg
Making and Unmaking Citizens: Law and the Shaping of Civic Capacity (pdf)
Tabatha Abu El-Haj
Searching for Humanitarian Discretion in Immigration Enforcement: Reflections on a Year as an Immigration Attorney in the Trump Era (pdf)
Nina Rabin
Constitutional Cohesion and the Right to Public Health (pdf)
James G. Hodge Jr.; Daniel Aaron; Haley R. Augur; Ashley Cheff; Joseph Daval; Drew Hensley;
Notes
Policing Corporate Conduct Toward Minority Communities: An Insurance Law Perspective on the Use of Race in Calculating Tort Damages (pdf)
Dhruti J. Patel
We hope you were able to join us for “Dispossessing Detroit”! The JLR team was thrilled to host a wonderful day of engaging sessions and conversation.
Recordings of each talk can be found below. We hope you’ll re-watch your favorite parts and let these questions continue to challenge you!
Property Dispossession is Nothing New: A Historical Overview
Panel discussion on the historical instances of land dispossession experienced by people living in the Detroit area and more broadly.
Municipal Bankruptcy: Who Gets What?
Panel discussion comparing the experiences of Detroit, Puerto Rico, and Harrisburg, PA and the citizens who call these places home during and after bankruptcy proceedings.
Dispossession in Other Forms: A Closer Look at Detroit
Right of Refusal
Changes in the Detroit Real Estate Market
MorningSide v. Sabree: The Tax Foreclosure Crisis
How Data Informs Policy
No video available
Ramifications of Dispossession: Activism and Lived Experiences
A panel discussion addressing the ways dispossession has affected community members and activists.
Revitalization Today: Urban Renewal and Eminent Domain
Panel discussion on the role of revitalization efforts in cities throughout the country.
Closing Remarks
Small group discussions with speakers and participants discussing reforms to current issues of land dispossession. Small groups will reconvene to report possible reforms.
Special thanks to Shawn Deloach for AV assistance!
Juliet Moringiello, Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development, Widener University Commonwealth Law School, Harrisburg, PA
Municipal bankruptcy occupies an obscure corner of bankruptcy law. Although the federal law for resolving municipal financial distress is located in chapter 9 of the Bankruptcy Code, there are significant differences between the bankruptcy processes used for municipal bankruptcy and the bankruptcy processes used by individuals and business entities. Constitutional constraints imposed by the balance between federal and state power enshrined in the Tenth Amendment dictate much of the structure of chapter 9. As a result, chapter 9 lacks some of the governance controls that exist in the other bankruptcy chapters.
Another significant difference between municipal bankruptcy and other types of bankruptcy is the role of bankruptcy in distributing the debtor’s property. A liquidation bankruptcy under chapter 7 distributes all of a debtor’s property to its creditors, which is the floor for distributions in a reorganization bankruptcy. According to the public trust doctrine, a municipality has no property that can be forcibly distributed to its creditors. Municipal property belongs to all of the municipality’s residents and is thus held in trust by the municipality, immune from seizure by creditors.
So why talk about bankruptcy in a symposium about dispossessing Detroit? One of the most contentious issues in municipal bankruptcy is the treatment of pensions, and indeed bankruptcy can result in reduced pension payouts. But all residents stand to lose something in bankruptcy that is not property and is not always entitled to constitutional protection: voice.
Some criticize the municipal bankruptcy process because it leaves control of the bankruptcy in the hands of the municipality and therefore effects no change in the conditions that led to the bankruptcy in the first place. If a dysfunctional city government played a role in the distress that led to bankruptcy, there is nothing in the Bankruptcy Code to dislodge that government. While true, that’s only one half of the story. Chapter 9 of the Bankruptcy Code was designed to work with state financial intervention schemes. We saw that in Detroit, where the Emergency Manager had the primary role of guiding the city through the bankruptcy.
Back to dispossession and the public trust. There are several types of intervention – in Michigan, the Emergency Manager displaces city government as a bankruptcy decisionmaker. In Pennsylvania, a municipal receiver does not displace city government. The receiver takes the lead in making the decisions necessary to resolve municipal financial distress but must work with the elected officials to implement a recovery plan. Any municipal recovery plan can involve the sale of municipal property because the public trust doctrine means only that such property is immune from a forced sale, not a voluntary sale. Outside of the property context, public trust can mean trust in the process, and if the state insolvency scheme is viewed as a takeover, the citizens will feel dispossessed of their voice. In fashioning an intervention process, states should consider the impact of that process on the voice of the residents who are so critical to a city’s ongoing recovery.