Notes

The most intractable questions in takings law involve determinations as to when compensation must be paid for government regulation of private property. Scholars and judges have looked to the history of takings law in the search for guiding principles that can inform, if not resolve, such questions. The 1851 opinion of Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in Commonwealth v. Alger has figured prominently in these investigations.

This Note argues that such efforts have overlooked other relevant cases Shaw decided, and therefore do not fully appreciate the extent to which Shaw’s jurisprudence was informed by a flexible and instrumental view of how certain principles in takings law should be applied to decide cases. Accordingly, this new perspective on Shaw raises doubts about the extent to which a resort to history can provide effective guidance in resolving the current takings muddle.

In recent years, several states have used initiatives to enact statewide mandates requiring children to learn English by being taught only in English, without instruction in their native language. Using Massachusetts as a case study, this Note argues that this way of deciding the issue—a voter initiative that mandates a uniform method of instruction—is not an appropriate way to make language education policy. Language education is not the type of issue that should be decided via direct democracy because (1) direct democracy does not give adequate protection to minorities, (2) it exacerbates the tendency to make decisions about sensitive immigration issues on the basis of rhetoric, emotional reactions, and campaign politics, and (3) it gives uninformed drafters and voters the power to make complex policy decisions implementing particular educational methods about which they know very little. Further, mandating a uniform method of instruction is undesirable because the empirical literature on which methods of language education are most effective is so divided and confused that it is illogical to mandate the use of only one method. Local education administrators should instead be left free to experiment within the spectrum of language education programs. Also, by mandating a uniform method of instruction for all children in all communities, the initiative does not have the flexibility to recognize and accommodate the many legitimate interests at stake, including individual children and their families, minority groups, local communities, and the democratic interest of the general public. Finally, the Note examines a better way to decide this question, with a system that gives schools freedom to experiment and respond to the needs of particular communities, and that gives parents more input and choice.

In Wirzburger v. Galvin, Massachusetts citizens challenged the Massachusetts Constitution’s Excluded Matters provision, which is a type of subject matter restriction that prohibits popularly initiated amendment of enumerated portions of the state constitution. Because plaintiffs could not show a suspect class, discriminatory intent, or a direct impact on speech, the First Circuit applied deferential forms of First Amendment and Equal Protection Clause review and the challenge failed.

This Note argues that the current framework used to evaluate subject matter restrictions, exemplified by Wirzburger, provides insufficient protection against the serious harms such restrictions create. Subject matter restrictions create differential amendability, which makes it harder for citizens to change some aspects of a constitution than to change others. Differential amendability is a serious harm that distorts the design of well-functioning constitutional amendment procedures and threatens longstanding principles of popular sovereignty. Furthermore, this distortion creates a significant risk that barriers to amendment are being employed, intentionally or otherwise, to entrench temporary political supermajorities against future constitutional change.

This Note explores these risks and the possibility of controlling them through a federal constitutional analysis that draws on history, functional considerations, and existing voting rights case law. All three factors weigh in favor of engaging in a fundamental rights inquiry into subject matter restrictions. That inquiry might invalidate most subject matter restrictions, but its most significant contribution would be the cultivation of an interinstitutional dialogue over the possibilities and dangers of substantive restrictions on constitutional change at the state level.

In late 2006, the Department of Justice (DOJ) overhauled its internal policy regarding the prosecution of corporate entities. The new policy—expressed in the “McNulty Memo”—was issued as a direct response to charges that the DOJ had abused its leverage over the companies it targeted for criminal prosecution, specifically with regard to compelled cooperation. The McNulty Memo addressed these charges, in part, by restricting the discretion of individual prosecutors and requiring approval by the Deputy Attorney General on significant prosecutorial decisions.

While the changes ushered in by the McNulty Memo are a promising first step, they will not remedy all of the potentially abusive practices that mar the prosecution of corporate entities—particularly in regard to the use of deferred and non-prosecution agreements. At first blush, deferred and non-prosecution agreements appear to present a win-win situation: They offer the benefits of criminal punishment without the negative collateral consequences that flow from criminal charges. Their increased use, however, has revealed a different picture. By removing the threat of collateral consequences, deferred and non-prosecution agreements allow individual prosecutors to take full advantage of the unique weaknesses of corporations in the criminal justice system. These weaknesses provide prosecutors with a dangerous amount of leverage over the corporations they target, creating a bargaining imbalance and a new threat of abuse.

The potential for abuse that flows from the use of deferred and non-prosecution agreements should be addressed by restricting the discretion of individual prosecutors. This Note argues that the DOJ should look to the solution offered in the McNulty Memo and require that individual prosecutors receive permission from the Deputy Attorney General before entering into any deferred or non-prosecution agreement.

This Note explores whether “constitutional default rules,” or judicially crafted constitutional rules designed to spur legislative action, can generate interbranch cooperation in the area of criminal procedure. The Note looks at two types of constitutional default rules—the “model” default rule and the “penalty” default rule—in theory and in practice, examining how the Court has employed such rules to generate a dialogue with Congress in order to implement constitutional rights. The Note argues that while there have been notable failures by the Court in using the default rule to elicit a rights-protective legislative reaction (namely, in the case of Miranda v. Arizona) under the right conditions, the constitutional default rule may still be a viable tool for spurring progressive legislative policy and reform of the criminal justice system.

The valuation of a pharmaceutical company often depends on its ability to bring a drug to market, making information about the likelihood of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval critical to investors and a highly sensitive issue for the company. Since the FDA drug approval process is not public, investors must rely on company disclosures to evaluate the likelihood of FDA approval. Currently, the FDA will not disclose the content of action letters sent to sponsor companies, giving company executives dangerous discretion over whether to disclose the information and how to present it. This discretion, coupled with a lack of oversight over the content of the disclosures, has resulted in several recent cases of fraud among pharmaceutical companies. As a way to curb such company discretion and prevent future fraud, this Note proposes mandatory public disclosure of action letters sent by the FDA to sponsor companies.

Since the presidential election of 2000, a host of new claims has arisen alleging unlawful denial of the right to vote. Litigants have challenged the use of error-prone voting machines, misleading registration forms, and the highly controversial photo identification requirements for in-person voting. The law protecting the right to vote, however, is in disarray, leaving courts confused and unsure of how to proceed with these challenges. In particular, courts have disagreed sharply over the content of the relevant constitutional standard and how to apply it. Some courts have adopted the standard articulated by the Supreme Court in its 1992 decision, Burdick v. Takushi, while others have applied strict scrutiny. This Note criticizes the Burdick standard for being incapable of producing consistent results and advocates for a modified version of strict scrutiny motivated by structural concerns inherent in the democratic process.

Under the Supreme Court’s current protective sweep doctrine, it is constitutional for law enforcement officers to conduct a cursory sweep of a home incident to arrest where they have reasonable suspicion to believe the home may harbor a dangerous third party. The Supreme Court, however, has not clarified whether the protective sweep doctrine applies where there is no arrest. While at least one federal circuit court currently holds the view that protective sweeps are invalid absent an arrest, most circuits have indicated that protective sweeps may be valid even when they are not incident to an arrest. This Note argues that neither side of this circuit split has struck the right balance. By focusing too much attention on the “incident to arrest” language in Maryland v. Buie and not enough attention on the Court’s express concern for officer safety, the decisions refusing to extend the protective sweep doctrine to any non-arrest situations prohibit protective sweeps in cases where they would be reasonable and, thus, constitutional. In contrast, by failing to respect the Court’s repeated affirmations that exceptions to the warrant and probable cause requirements should be limited, and by brushing aside the importance of the arrest in Buie, the decisions extending the protective sweep doctrine to non-arrest situations either sanction unconstitutional searches or provide insufficient guidance to lower courts and the police, leaving Fourth Amendment privacy rights vulnerable. This Note argues that, to strike the right balance between protecting government interests and Fourth Amendment privacy rights, courts must incorporate a proper inquiry into the “need to search” into their reasonableness analysis. Specifically, they should require a compelling need for officers’ initial lawful entry into a home for protective sweeps to be valid. In applying this standard, courts should draw a bright line according to the type of entry involved, extending the protective sweep doctrine to situations where officers have entered a home pursuant to exigent circumstances or a court order, but not where officers have entered a home pursuant to consent. Such an approach will maintain the limited nature of this exception to the warrant and probable cause requirements while allowing officers to protect themselves when the public interest so requires. It will also provide lower courts and officers with clear guidelines on how to apply the law. As an ancillary benefit, this approach will also minimize the risk of pretextual searches.

Sarbanes-Oxley and the accompanying era of heightened corporate governance dramatically changed the composition, role, and responsibilities of corporate boards. As a result of these changes, many of the justifications for traditional director compensation plans no longer apply. As directors struggle with their new responsibilities as independent corporate monitors, the manner in which they are compensated must reflect these changes. A director compensation plan in which directors receive compensation primarily in the form of cash, coupled with finely tailored equityholding requirements, strikes the right balance of director independence and director accountability. It also facilitates the creation of corporate boards drawn from a more diverse pool of talent.

New technologies such as the VCR and Google Book Search can change the way copyrighted works are used, thereby making their innovators rich. Copyright owners are aware of these riches and often strategically sue the technology companies with the aim of gaining a share of the money. This dynamic—an innovator investing to create a new technology and a creator of a copyrighted work then suing for her share of the profits—creates an investment incentive problem. The dual goal of promoting the efficient creation of both new copyrighted works and new technologies that augment those works requires us to choose a legal rule that divides the gains from these new technologies between authors and innovators. The fair use doctrine—the statutory rule that allows some types of copyright infringement—is the legal rule that is used to do this dividing. However, economic theories of copyright law do not contain an analysis of investment incentives. This Note analyzes the effects fair use has on the incentives to create copyrighted works and to invest in technologies that affect those works.