The Roundtable
Welcome to the Roundtable, a forum for incisive commentary and analysis
on cases and developments in law and the legal system.
on cases and developments in law and the legal system.
 By Owen Voutsinas-Klose
Owen Voutsinas-Klose is a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania studying Politics, Philosophy and Economics and minoring in Legal Studies and History in the College of Arts and Sciences. State courts play a vital role in serving as a check on legislatures and administering justice against companies and individuals accused of wrongdoing. Unlike at the federal level, many states elect most or all of their highest court justices. Seven states, including North Carolina and Pennsylvania, elect justices to their highest courts. Twenty states hold partisan judicial elections at all trial court levels. [1]
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 By Saxon Bryant
Saxon Bryant is a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania and associate editor of the Penn Undergraduate Law Journal April 15th is national tax day, the deadline to submit all federal income tax forms. In the midst of hours of paperwork and tabulating assets and losses, many citizens are left to wonder during the process, “Do I have to pay my taxes?” What standing does the government have to mandate that everyone pay income taxes? Several people have made their grievances about federal taxes known over the centuries, but did any of them have merit?  By James Freirich
James Freirich is a guest writer for The Roundtable and a sophomore majoring in Finance at Boston College’s Carroll School of Management. Since the 1990s, World Trade Organization (WTO) members have seriously questioned the legality of various types of subsidies utilized within the aviation industry [1]. This can be seen by General Agreement on Tariff and Trade (GATT) violating German export subsidies in 1992, Canadian-Brazilian trade disputes regarding “export-financing programs for regional aircraft” from 1996-2001, and United States (US)-European Union (EU) trade disputes regarding state and investment bank funded launch aid, state tax breaks, and preferential government contracts since 2004. While the use of certain adverse subsidies that distort market competition should undoubtedly be avoided, the aviation industry, since its inception, appears to have been dependent upon subsidy utilization for its survival. Moreover, as seen in the early stages of US aviation industry development, it “lived and died by [government] airmail contracts” (Thomas, Geoffrey) [2]. Accordingly, as “the U.S. Postal Service began selling its airmail routes to private carriers [3]” (Boeing, Lombardi) by virtue of the Contract Air Mail Act of 1925 [4] and the Air Mail Act of 1934 [5], companies like Boeing Air Transport [6] would transform these mail routes to eventual passenger routes-giving way to the domestic airline network. Furthermore, in World War II (WWII), government programs such as the Air Transport Command (ATC) [7] furthered the domestic airline industry by way of awarding contracts and funding.  By Kirsten Mullin
Kirsten Mullin is a senior majoring in Political Science and minoring in Economics at Haverford College. On June 23rd, 2018, thousands of Saudi women took to the roads to legally drive for the first time [1]. Previously, women were banned from driving in the Kingdom, the last country in the world where such limitation on female mobility still existed. Banned from driving themselves, women had to rely on a male guardian or a chauffeur to get to and from grocery shopping, visits friends and commute to work [2].  By Adam Lake
Adam Lake is a senior at York University specializing in Sociology and completing a certificate in Anti-Racist Research and Practice. The criminalization of minority youth in the Canadian justice system is often ignored (Ming Kwok et al., 2017, p.15). There are a wide range of effects related to race, which demonstrate that even though Canadians live in a racially diverse nation, certain communities are marginalized. There is a different type of treatment that person of colour face when dealing with the entire range of Canada’s juvenile justice system. Racial imbalance within the juvenile justice system is existent when the percentage of individuals from a specific racial group is greater than the amount of other racial groups, in the general population. This can lead to disparity. Disparity within the justice system can refer to a situation where individuals from different ethnic groups have different perspectives on certain outcomes, which can turn into overrepresentation of the justice system.  By Nikhil Mahadeva
Nikhil Mahadeva is a fourth year B.A./LL.B. (Hons.) student at the National University of Advanced Legal Studies, Kochi. Sovereignty, in its simplest understanding, implies an ultimate authority over something, usually some form of polity. Nowadays, it is a term used to describe the independence and autonomy of states, i.e. the right of each state to decide its own affairs. This ultimate authority is said to derive from the people that form that state. In this regard, international law forbids nations from interfering with the sovereign matters of other nations [1]. This concept is complemented by the principle of self-determination, which is the right of people to choose who or what governs them. However, this element of choice does not always lend itself to the recognition of sovereignty. So how does one determine its sovereignty? Sovereignty can be legitimately acquired by accretion, cession, conquest, effective occupation and prescription. This list excludes less legitimate methods, such as outright annexation. When considering ‘occupation’ as a prerequisite, two of these methods come to mind.  By Natalie Behrends
Natalie Behrends is a rising senior majoring in History at New York University. In a news cycle that seems to be characterized by the unthinkable and the unexpected, it comes as a surprise how consistently immigration comes up as a topic for debate and legislation. Recent months have seen immigration and immigration law crop up in debates over DACA, the DREAM Act, refugee bans, border walls, the isolation and detention of migrant children, and countless discussions over American identity in an age of uncertainty. Often, these stories throw into stark relief the vulnerable positions of those outside the US’s definition of citizenship. In his 1958 dissent from Perez v. Brownell, former Chief Justice Earl Warren famously summed up citizenship as “man’s basic right, for it is nothing less than the right to have rights [1].” Warren was, perhaps unintentionally, borrowing a phrase from philosopher Hannah Arendt, who coined the term “right to have rights” in relation to citizenship in her 1949 article, “The Rights of Man: What Are They?” Arendt and others would go on to explore this idea of citizenship as the “right to have rights” in more depth throughout the next half-century, expanding our understanding of what citizenship is, and how it operates [2].  By Kirsten Mullin
Kirsten Mullin is a senior majoring in Political Science and minoring in Economics at Haverford College. In a landslide victory for women’s reproductive rights, the Republic of Ireland voted in a country-wide referendum on May 26th, 2018 to overturn the country’s restrictive abortion ban. Before the vote, Irish abortion law - legislated in the 8th amendment to the constitution and the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act - was among the most restrictive in the world. The law allowed for abortion only in cases where there was a clear threat to the life of the mother and barred even cases of incest or rape [1]. The Irish electorate’s decision to repeal country’s the abortion ban leaves Malta as the only country in Europe where women are unable to access safe and legal abortions within the country’s borders [2]. Throughout its history, the Republic of Ireland has been viewed as a conservative state rooted in the values of the Catholic Church. However, the influence of the church has been waning in recent years largely as a result of a string of highly publicized sex scandals. Accompanying the decline in influence of the Catholic Church in Ireland has been a string of legislative reforms reflecting an increasingly liberal society; contraception, divorce, same-sex marriage and now abortion have all been legalized in the past 30 years [3]. Is Breastfeeding Indecent? Reflections on the Indecent Representation of Women Act in India7/7/2018  By Sheerene Mohamed
Sheerene Mohamed is a B.A./LL.B. (Hons.) student at the National University of Advanced Legal Studies (NUALS) in Kochi, India. An Indian regional magazine, Grihalakshmi, published their March 2018 issue, featuring an actress suckling a baby with her breast uncovered and nipple concealed by the baby’s mouth [1]. The headline reads “Mothers tell Kerala [the Indian state where the magazine circulated], ‘please don’t stare, we need to breastfeed’”.  By James Freirich
James Freirich is a guest writer for The Roundtable and a sophomore majoring in Finance at Boston College’s Carroll School of Management. In recent weeks, the World Trade Organization (WTO) delivered a critical ruling on the Boeing-Airbus trade dispute - a dispute which bore its inception in 2004 [1]. Since the 1970 establishment of Airbus, the 2nd largest aircraft manufacturer in the world, Boeing, the world’s leading aircraft manufacturer, has faced steep competition and a challenge to its market share of the “Large Civil Aircraft” (LCA) industry [2] [3] [4]. Moreover, as the competition between these two aircraft manufacturing titans have intensified throughout the past few decades, so have their bilateral utilization of subsidies within the LCA market. Subsequently, as the United States (US) became increasingly concerned with the level of subsidies granted to Airbus by the European Communities (EC) over the decades following 1970, a bilateral Agreement on Trade in Large Civil Aircraft (TLCA) was created in July of 1992 to ensure fair trade by implementing quantitative restrictions on subsidies utilized within the LCA market [5] [6]. On October 6th, 2004 on behalf of Boeing, the US filed a trade complaint against the EC “alleging that the EC violated international trade agreements, primarily by giving launch aid to Airbus” [7]. During that same day, and on behalf of Airbus, the EC filed a trade complaint of their own against the US “alleging that Boeing received prohibited government subsidies in the form of tax breaks and preferential government contracts” [8]. (Kienstra, 571) By filing trade disputes against one another, the US and EC in turn withdrew from the TLCA. |
