Note

Tax fraud costs the federal government billions of dollars annually. Qui tam litigation, which features individuals bringing lawsuits on behalf of the government, is a powerful tool for the government in its fight against many types of fraud. The False Claims Act, the federal government’s most potent qui tam mechanism, however, expressly excludes tax fraud from its scope. Recognizing this gap in coverage, the Internal Revenue Service has...

The Mandatory Victims Restitution Act requires restitution for federal crimes involving property. In particular, the defendant is required to return any property taken, or, if return is impossible, to pay for the victim’s loss, which may be offset by a partial return of the property. In mortgage fraud cases, this usually entails calculating the lender’s loss—an unpaid loan—and offsetting that loss by the value of the collateral for...

Lower courts disagree about whether and when the Fifth Amendment permits prosecutors to raise an adverse inference of guilt from a criminal suspect’s silence. In Salinas v. Texas, the Supreme Court introduced a new wrinkle into the constitutional analysis: Suspects must first expressly invoke their right to remain silent during police questioning in order to later claim protection for that silence at trial. Significantly, silence...

Much attention has recently been given to the current Securities and Exchange Commission reporting requirements for Schedule 13D, the beneficial ownership form many investors must file to report their equity holdings. However, relatively less focus has been given to the Schedule 13G, the short-form filing option, which requires less infor­mation and tends to attract less attention. The choice between the 13G or the 13D filing can come down...

American labor law classifies strikes according to both purpose and form. In terms of purpose, a strike over terms and conditions of employ­ment is an economic strike while one over an employer’s violations of federal labor law is an unfair labor practice strike. With respect to form, the subcategories are less clear, but the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB or Board) and the courts have distinguished...

While peremptory challenges upon the basis of race, ethnicity, and gender have been held unconstitutional, and peremptory strikes upon the basis of sexual orientation have been regarded as increasingly suspect after United States v. Windsor, attorneys remain free to use peremptory challenges to remove potential jurors from the venire upon the basis of their gender identity or expression. The current state of affairs renders transgender...

With Congress divided over comprehensive immigration reform, federal and subfederal actors have stepped into the breach. In 2012 and 2014, in an effort to counter congressional paralysis, President Barack Obama extended deferred action to millions of undocumented noncitizen children and their parents. In doing so, he reignited debates about the constitutional boundaries of executive power. Among other things, these debates have highlighted the...

In 1970, Congress enacted the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) to address concerns that inadequate safeguards existed to protect consumers in their interactions with credit reporting agencies. Government regulation of credit reporting is critical because the structure of the credit reporting industry does not adequately incentivize credit reporting agencies to maintain accuracy in consumers’ credit reports. Since the enactment of the FCRA, the...