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Is a Constitutional Crisis Brewing in Japan?

7/29/2014

By Sebastian Bates

Sebastian Bates is a rising first-year law student at Keble College, Oxford University.

Nearly seventy years ago, at the home of Crown Prince Wilhelm, the deposed heir to the Imperial German throne, President Truman of the United States, Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister, and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, the President of the National Government of the Republic of China, issued a proclamation that has since become known as the Potsdam Declaration. The agreement, which called for the “unconditional surrender of all the Japanese armed forces,” laid out the seven principles by which the Allies intended to end the war in the Pacific and administer a defeated Japan. [1]

From the perspective of a student of constitutional law, the most important article of the Declaration is perhaps the tenth, which states that, under Allied occupation, “[t]he Japanese Government shall remove all obstacles to the revival and strengthening of democratic tendencies among the Japanese people. Freedom of speech, of religion, and of thought, as well as respect for the fundamental human rights shall be established.” [2]

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While Written with Good Intentions, the Volcker Rule is All Bad

7/26/2014

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By Steven Jacobson

Steven Jacobson is a rising freshman at University of Pennsylvania.

What started as a simple idea outlined in a three-page letter to President Obama mutated into over nine hundred pages of regulations. This, of course, was the Volcker Rule, a key component of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 named after the former chairman of the Federal Reserve. The idea behind ‘Volcker’ was simple—to place heavy sanctions on proprietary trading, which is when a bank trades using its own funds for its own gain. More specifically, it tries to define the role of a bank as a middleman and not a trader for its own benefit.

In theory, this is a great idea. Since the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, trades by banks have become more exotic, more harmful, and more dangerous. It wasn’t proprietary trading that directly caused the financial crisis of 2008, but because it could have a role in future meltdowns, steps to curtail excessive proprietary trading are prudent.

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Medication & Mentally Ill - What is an Important Government Interest?

7/21/2014

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By Tanner Bowen

Tanner Bowen is a rising freshman at University of Pennsylvania.

The issue of mental health in the legal system is one that has recently been brought back into the spotlight. While the overarching question of how to deal with the mentally impaired still looms over us, courts have recently begun to rule on a smaller aspect of the issue: whether the government can involuntarily administer medication to defendants declared incompetent.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit recently heard the case United States v Breedlove, where a man named Norman Breedlove was indicted for heroin trafficking and felony firearm possession. After a plea deal was negotiated, Breedlove filed a “Notice of Ineffective Counsel”, believing that his counsel was trying to conspire against him. This led to a psychological evaluation where Breedlove was found to suffer from paranoid schizophrenia, his delusions preventing him from standing trial. This is when the U.S. Government requested Breedlove be involuntarily put on antipsychotics. [1]

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Redlining: The DOJ’s Initiative on Fair Lending

7/18/2014

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By Iris Zhang

Iris Zhang is a rising junior at University of Pennsylvania

The Fair Housing Act of 1968 guarantees “equal opportunity” for all citizens of the United States in accessing housing and prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, gender, disability, and other factors. [1] One of the ways in which access to housing is curtailed occurs when services relevant to acquiring housing, such as mortgages and loans, are made unavailable.

In a landmark case in 1994, the Department of Justice (DOJ) settled with Chevy Chase Bank in the District of Columbia for redlining—a practice of denying banking services to residents in predominantly minority and low-income areas. [2] In line with the stipulations of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), the DOJ argued that Chevy Chase engaged in unfair lending practices by deliberately avoiding majority African American neighborhoods in designating its service area. This discrepancy occurred mainly by refusal to open branches and the lack of advertisements of Chevy Chase’s services in majority African American neighborhoods.

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Privacy in the Digital Age – Does Cellphone Information Need a Warrant?

7/14/2014

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By Natasha Kang

Natasha Kang is a rising senior at University of California, Davis.

The Fourth Amendment and the issue of privacy have once again come into question at the Supreme Court; however, this time around, the question has different facets in an era of information-filled smartphones. On June 25, 2014, the Supreme Court set the tone for privacy in this digital age by holding that police cannot search the information on a cellphone seized from an individual who has been arrested. How this tone might proceed will certainly be a point of interest in the ongoing legal challenges to the National Security Agency’s spying operations started by Edward J. Snowden.

In Riley v. California, which the Court recently decided in late June, David Riley was charged with firing at an occupied vehicle, assault with a firearm, and attempted murder with the evidence obtained from his phone. [1] After initially stopping Riley for driving with expired registration tags, the officer searched Riley and a detective specializing in gangs uncovering incriminating photographs and videos. These photographs and videos revealed Riley’s involvement with the activity of the Bloods street gang, specifically a shooting that occurred a few weeks earlier.

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In and of the Land: Indigenous Sovereignty and Property Rights in America, Australia, and New Zealand

7/11/2014

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By Sebastian Bates

Sebastian Bates is a rising first-year law student at Keble College, Oxford University.

On July 5, President Barack Obama – a member, by virtue of his 2008 adoption, of the Crow Nation – announced in an opinion piece published in Indian Country Today that he would be visiting the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s reservation in North Dakota. President Obama’s visit, which was his first to Indian Country since taking office, was only the fourth presidential tour of a reservation in history and therefore attracted a great deal of media attention. His article, however, deserves some reflection as well. Or at least, one particular concept President Obama refers to does. Twice in his article, the President refers to tribal sovereignty, a fascinating concept in American law. [1]

This principle of federal law has its roots in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, which states that “Congress shall have the power…To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.” These words, known as the Commerce Clause (the final five are generally referred to, in turn, as the Indian Commerce Clause), establish that Native Americans tribes represent some kind of “third entity” – they are not states or foreign nations.

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Overturning SEC v. Citigroup: Why the Original Decision Still Matters

7/8/2014

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By Steven Jacobson

Steven Jacobson is a rising freshman at University of Pennsylvania.

"[It] was the shot heard ’round the world,” said Cornelius Hurley, director of Boston University’s Center for Finance, Law & Policy [1]. And, on June 4th, 2014, that shot was struck down as the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit overturned the November 2011 decision handed down by Southern District of New York Judge Jed S. Rakoff in the case US Securities and Exchange Commission v. Citigroup Global Markets, Inc. It was the rare case in which both sides were satisfied with the outcome; Citigroup escaped with only a minimal fine, and the SEC received more freedom to settle cases on its own terms. Yet, despite its reversal, Rakoff's decision has significantly impacted the manner in which the SEC settles cases with large corporations.

The case came about when the SEC filed a lawsuit against Citigroup in October 2011. The suit alleged that in 2007, just before the height of the financial crisis, the bank had bundled negatively-projected assets into a $1 billion financial product called a collateralized debt obligation (CDO) and sold it to investors, representing it as a highly attractive investment predicted to perform well by a third-party adviser. However, the bank secretly short sold the mortgage-backed securities in the CDO. In other words, Citigroup sold something that it had actively betted against to investors. As the bank predicted, the CDO's value plummeted, its investors lost $600 million, and Citigroup's short sale made it $160 million.

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The Roundtable

Is a Constitutional Crisis Brewing in Japan?

While Written with Good Intentions, the Volcker Rule is All Bad

Medication & Mentally Ill - What is an Important Government Interest?

Redlining: The DOJ’s Initiative on Fair Lending

Privacy in the Digital Age – Does Cellphone Information Need a Warrant?

In and of the Land: Indigenous Sovereignty and Property Rights in America, Australia, and New Zealand

Overturning SEC v. Citigroup: Why the Original Decision Still Matters

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