September 2011

This article was written by guest author, Susan Morse. Ms. Morse is an Associate Professor at UC Hastings College of the Law. Ever heard of Dr. Love, also known as Paul Zak?  I have met him, and he deserves his reputation, although he did not hug me.  My loss.  Zak’s new book, The Moral Molecule, is due out in 2012.   He is a neuroeconomist who studies the hormone and neurotransmitter oxytocin — the love molecule.  Oxytocin is the molecular reason why people thrive on hugging, Twitter and other people in general.  Oxytocin production facilitates pair bonding and mother-infant attachment by making sex, as well as breastfeeding, feel good. Oxytocin is relevant to tax policy because it affects people’s decisions to contribute to the funding of public goods, a basic goal of taxation.  For…

This article was written by guest author SpearIt.  SpearIt is an Associate Professor of Law at St. Louis University School of Law.   This article was also published by the Society of American Law Teachers here. States which have legalized medical marijuana are at a critical juncture and may be forced to make some important decisions. In places such as Arizona and Colorado, doctors, dispensaries, and medical commissioners all face peril for performing their duties—duties which keep with state law, but may breach federal law. The future of this debate largely hinges on how hard states are willing to fight the federal government, or alternately, whether Congress can effectively intervene. This issue took an important turn in June when the Justice Department issued a memo to clarify an earlier memo issued…

This article was written by guest author Michael Rosman.  Mr. Rosman serves as General Counsel for the Center for Individual Rights. It is common among academics to deride the coherence of the Supreme Court’s various opinions explaining the doctrine of “standing” under Article III of the Constitution. Most of the criticism is quite well deserved. Indeed, I thought it difficult for the Court to do anything that would actually make standing doctrine more incoherent. But I underestimated the Court. For, in the recent decision of Camreta v. Greene, the Court managed to take the jumbled mess of doctrine that applies to standing for district courts, and duplicated it for appellate courts. Let’s start with what had been relatively clear about standing prior to Camreta. First, the version of standing that…