May 2011

This article has been written by guest author Stacy Hickox, Assistant Professor in the School of Human Resources & Labor Relations at Michigan State University. Wal-Mart employee Joseph Casias was discharged after testing positive for marijuana.  As a registered medical marijuana user for his sinus cancer & brain tumor, Mr. Casias thought that he was protected under Michigan’s Medical Marijuana Act (“MMMA”).[i]  Wal-Mart believes he is not, and the federal district court has agreed with them.[ii]  The MMMA, which came into effect in December 2008, provides that a qualifying patient “shall not be subject to arrest, prosecution, or penalty in any manner, or denied any right or privilege, including but not limited to civil penalty or disciplinary action by a business or occupational or professional licensing board or bureau.”  Although…

This article was written by guest author John Wood, J.D. Candidate, May 2011 at New York University School of Law. Studies of human nature in the context of legal policy tend to contrast the rational choice view against the more recent behavioral model of decision-making.[i]  This framework is misleading in that many of the latter school’s insights find expression in literature that predates it by centuries.  To illustrate this, I draw the following concepts from The Federalist Papers’ remarkably insightful discussion of human nature:  bounded rationality; bounded will-power; bounded self-interest; bounded ethicality; reactive devaluation; escalation of commitment; availability bias; self-serving bias; confirmation bias; optimism bias; myopia; endowment effect; loss aversion; prospect theory; collective action problems; rent seeking; free riding; groupthink and holdout situations.  I propose an etiological rather than binary approach…

by J. Mason Kjar* I.  The Conflict Between Free Speech and Obscenity Law The First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech protects a lot of material from censorship and criminalization, including erotic material.  Thus, it is completely legal to both possess and distribute pornography publicly, so long as certain basic guidelines of age, location, or time are met.[i]  Laws against obscenity, however, have circumscribed the guarantee of free speech.[ii]  Thus, when pornography is deemed legally obscene, any distribution to the public faces stiff criminal penalties, regardless of whether it is legal to own in the privacy of one’s own home.  For the sake of clarity, the common forms of pornography showing nudity and fornication are not categorized as obscene.  Instead, obscene pornography typically refers to pornography that uses violence, rape, murder,…

This article was written by guest author Rona Kaufman Kitchen, Assistant Professor of Law at Duquesne University School of Law. With May’s commemoration of Mothers upon us, this is an opportune time to contemplate whether our laws and policies honor and protect mothers and the care they provide. Is Mother’s Day a celebration of the value of mothers in our society and an affirmation of our national appreciation for their work, or is Mother’s Day just the momentary pause to applaud mothers by an otherwise ungrateful nation? On May 3, 2011, Save the Children published its 12th annual Mothers Index which found Norway to be the best place in the world to be a mother and Afghanistan to be the worst place in the world to be a mother.[i] The…

Guest author Douglas K. Rush, J.D., Ph.D., wrote this article. He is an Assistant Professor in the College of Education and Public Service at Saint Louis University where he teaches graduate research methods and statistics courses. He was formerly an assistant dean and member of the admission committee at Saint Louis University School of Law. His research interests include law school pedagogy, curriculum, admission, and factors which affect bar examination passage. On April 2, 2011, the Standards Review Committee of the American Bar Association’s Section of Legal Education and Admission to the Bar presented its controversial recommendation that ABA Standard 503[1] be eliminated.[2] The American Bar Association [ABA] has been designated by the U. S. Department of Education as the accrediting agency for American law schools.[3] The revision to the Standards…