Each state offers a property tax exemption to qualifying charitable organizations. Municipalities both administer these charitable exemptions and bear their economic cost. This creates an incentive for municipalities to adopt an interpretation of their state’s exemption framework that limits the exemption’s scope and preserves tax revenue. This Note focuses on community economic development (CED) organizations to explore how overly narrowed...
Note
In its landmark Cracker Barrel no-action letter, the SEC staff announced a bright-line rule permitting exclusion of any shareholder proposal pertaining to a company’s management of its general workforce, even if focused on a significant social policy issue such as employment discrimination, under the “ordinary business operations” exclusion. The SEC reversed Cracker Barrel in 1998, returning to a case-specific approach...
In 1987, the Supreme Court held that the Constitution requires federal and state courts to retroactively apply all new federal-constitutional rules of criminal procedure to direct appeals of convictions. Since then, the Court has not addressed whether the U.S. Constitution also requires state courts to retroactively apply new criminal procedure rules derived from state law on direct review. This issue is particularly significant because state jurisdictions...
Introduction In March of 2012, in Martinez v. Ryan, the Supreme Court announced a new type of cause under the cause-and-prejudice exception to procedural default in federal habeas cases. This new type of cause allowed federal courts to review a subset of claims that had been procedurally defaulted in state habeas proceedings due to the […]
In Reed v. Town of Gilbert the Supreme Court rearticulated the standard for when regulation of speech is content based. This determination has already had a large impact on cases involving panhandling regulations and is likely to result in the invalidation of the majority of this nation’s panhandling laws.
This Note will begin with a discussion of First Amendment doctrine and how panhandling is protected speech. This Note will...
The Supreme Court’s 2014 decision in Hobby Lobby v. Burwell sent shockwaves through the legal community. While many praised its broad interpretation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) as a milestone in protecting religious liberty, others expressed concern that it would essentially turn RFRA and similar legislation on the state level into a “license to discriminate” against LGBT individuals in areas such as...
In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, Congress significantly broadened the reach of various regulatory entities through the Dodd-Frank Act. One particular power, found in section 113 of the Act, gives the newly formed Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) the authority to designate nonbank financial institutions (NBFIs) as systemically important financial institutions...
This Note examines the impact of Stern v. Marshall—the Supreme Court’s recent decision on the authority of bankruptcy judges—on United States magistrate judges, with a particular focus on two exercises of magistrate judge authority that have been called into question by circuit courts post-Stern. The Note argues that institutional differences between magistrate judges and bankruptcy judges should lead circuit courts to be...
In 1996, the Supreme Court handed down Whren v. United States, which prohibits inquiry into police officers’ subjective motivations in conducting a search or seizure when there is reasonable suspicion or probable cause on which to base the search. The Whren doctrine has largely restricted the availability of the exclusionary rule and 42 U.S.C. §...
In a copyright infringement dispute, when assessing whether a defendant’s work is substantially similar to, and therefore infringing, a plaintiff’s, a court must first determine which works to compare. A unique issue arises when a defendant has appropriated material from multiple works in a series or collection by a plaintiff. A court must decide whether to examine...