By McKenzie Paulsen. The New Wave: Proposed Changes for Inheriting a Decedent’s Estate A new wave of laws is on the horizon for estate planning. What are these new waves? The most prominent changes are the proposed sunset of the increased federal estate tax exemption and the removal, or partial removal, of the basis reset. These changes may affect today’s generation and could have a ripple effect on future generations. For estate planners, this means there is an increasing need for flexible estate planning that can ride the wave of new laws. Today, individual estates are subject to various taxes, such as the federal estate tax and the federal gift tax. The most prominent tax is the federal estate tax, which is a tax on your right to transfer property at your death.…
By Helen Hitz. Opinion: Arizona needs to enact an exception to the felony-murder rule in cases where the individual killed was an accomplice of the individual charged with murder. The addition of just six words to Arizona’s first-degree murder statute would mean justice for many Arizonans. “We ain’t kill Jacob, we watched Jacob die before our eyes, that was our friend.” Fourteen-year-old Johnny Reed was a caretaker for his grandmother who suffered from kidney failure. He was a recent middle school graduate. He loved to bake cookies and cakes for his family with second hand utensils he had thrifted from Goodwill. Fourteen-year-old Johnny Reed was sentenced to serve fifteen years in prison, more years than he had been alive, for the murder of his friend Jacob Harris. Except Johnny did not kill Jacob; Johnny…
By Clayton M. Kinsey. “It has been said that to be a Hopi is to be a steward of the earth, a caretaker of the land and the water . . . . It has also been said that in Hopi culture, everything is about water. Water is life. Water is the beginning and end of the cycle of life. Our connection to water is very sacred and intimate.” But, despite this sanctity, and despite the Hopi Tribe’s efforts, there has historically been great uncertainty regarding the Hopi Tribe’s legal water rights. Full Article.
By Shirley Lin. Theorizing work and its regulation has held enduring appeal for legal theorists. Yet intellectual movements that wish to theorize worker coercion within a broader critique of law often sidestep race. Since Lochner, landmark opinions involving race, labor, or both, have served as showpieces for the legal liberal tenets underpinning work law’s doctrines and institutions. Each iteration of the public/private divide instantiates an ideological—but avowedly race-neutral—structure for how we study, teach, and propose to reshape work law. Scholars, judges, and lawmakers typically cede this ground, perhaps because law itself is under right-wing attack. Full Article.
By Emma Marek. The popularity of short-term rental housing has grown exponentially in recent years, especially in Arizona. Short-term rentals (“STRs”), also referred to as vacation rentals or transient lodging, are homes, condominiums, apartments, or other residential units that are rented to paying guests for short periods of time, usually fewer than thirty days. The property owner, or the “host,” typically lists their property on an online accommodation platform to advertise and offer their rental to guests. One such platform, Airbnb, reported over 59,000 active listings in Arizona in 2021, with 5,404 of those listings located within Scottsdale alone. In fact, the New York Times recently recognized Scottsdale as the “bachelorette-party capital of the West,” in part because of the huge availability and popularity of large, luxury short-term rental homes. Full…
By Shefali Milczarek-Desai & Tara Sklar. “One of my sisters told me to have some dignity and leave [my abusive workplace]. I told her that I can’t feed my kids with dignity, and that was my reality.” –Immigrant Woman Long-Term Care Aide The COVID-19 pandemic exposed a long-term care crisis that has been brewing for decades. It also offered lessons for much-needed reform to the long-term care industry. One such lesson is that both older Americans and their caregivers experience unnecessary suffering and death due to entrenched industry practices that marginalize long-term care aides, a worker population that is increasingly made up of immigrant and migrant (“im/migrant”) women. Even though im/migrant women constitute at least one-third of the long-term care workforce, their perspectives are largely absent from the legal and…
By Ashley Oddo, Shannon Johanni & Jana Hrdinová. Marijuana-related initiatives in Arizona (and nationwide) demonstrate a progression from informal social acceptance to formal legalization after decades of prohibition. In Arizona, medical marijuana use was legalized in 2010 followed by the legalization of adult recreational marijuana use in 2020. Prior to Arizona’s legalization proponents argued that public safety would improve and resources would be freed, allowing those resources to be re-allocated to focus on addressing serious and violent crime. On the other hand, opponents claimed, in part, that legalization would result in a direct correlation with a rise in crime. What few considered was the need for carefully crafted legislation that allowed criminal justice actors to effectively and efficiently implement it. Full Article.
By Jonathan Skinner-Thompson. Prevailing approaches to addressing environmental justice in Indian Country are inadequate. The dual pursuits of distributive and procedural justice do not fully account for the unique factors that make Indigenous environmental justice distinct—namely, the sovereign status of tribal nations and the ongoing impacts of colonization.This Article synthetizes interdisciplinary approaches to theorizing Indigenous environmental justice and proposes a framework to aid environmental law scholars and advocates. Specifically, by centering Indigenous environmental justice in terms of coloniality and self-determination, this framework can better critique and improve environmental governance regimes when it comes to pollution in Indian Country. Full Article.
By Jordan Blair Woods, Ashley Oddo, Devyn Arredondo & Yan Idrissov. Policing data is vital to improving police accountability and transparency. In 2021, Arizona enacted a law requiring law enforcement agencies in the state to collect and report data on officer use of force. Although a step in the right direction, the law does not require Arizona law enforcement agencies to collect and report data on other vital aspects of policing, such as traffic and pedestrian stops or complaints of officer misconduct. This Article underscores a need for Arizona to adopt a comprehensive police data collection and transparency law. Full Article.
By Sam Curry. In late September 2023, the Supreme Court granted review in a criminal case originating in Yuma, AZ. The case implicates the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment, which gives criminal defendants the right to cross-examine witnesses who make “testimonial” statements against them. This area of law has often been riddled with uncertainty, but particularly so in the last decade after the Supreme Court’s 2012 decision in Williams v. Illinois. The Confrontation Clause—Where We AreIn 1980, the Supreme Court gave a relatively relaxed interpretation of the Sixth Amendment in Ohio v. Roberts, holding that hearsay statements satisfied the Confrontation Clause so long as they had sufficient indicia of reliability. Twenty-four years later in Crawford v. Washington, the Court gave a much stricter reading: A criminal defendant’s “right to be confronted…
