Plagiarism has been described as an epidemic plaguing the nation, but it is not a novel concept.  Despite plagiarism’s historical presence, it is a real problem in academic institutions that threatens, not only the original work of those who are victimized by this type of intellectual thievery, but also jeopardizes the continued intellectual growth of society.  Teachers have begun to describe plagiarism as a form of “intellectual rape,”  and some journalists have even opined that the standards of education universally have been “dumb[ed] down” because of this pestilence.

In order to combat the rise of plagiarism in academic institutions, software companies have created novel and effective programs designed to detect and deter plagiarism.  An estimated fifty-five percent of colleges and universities use some type of anti-plagiarism software.  With the increased use of these advanced software programs, which can identify portions of a student’s work that are similar to other works in the programs’ massive and ever-growing document databases,  Zack Morris tactics  can no longer go on undetected.
As could be expected, the burgeoning market for plagiarism detection software has been accompanied by litigation challenging the use of such programs.

In the recent case, A.V. ex rel. Vanderhye v. iParadigms,  the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held that iParadigms, LLC (“iParadigms”), a company specializing in plagiarism detection software, was not liable for infringing on the copyrights of four students when its software, Turnitin Plagiarism Detection Service (“Turnitin”), archived digital copies of the students’ works in its database.  The court held that iParadigms’ use of the student works qualified as fair use.

This Recent Development explores the Fourth Circuit’s fair use analysis and argues that its decision was, not only the correct application of the law, but also aligns with both the legislative purpose of fair use and the underlying constitutional purpose of copyright law. In Part I, this Recent Development examines the fair use exception within the historical and constitutional context of copyright law. Part II briefly describes how Turnitin detects and deters plagiarism and provides a summary of the facts of A.V. ex rel. Vanderhye. Part III argues that the Fourth Circuit properly affirmed the district court’s decision by performing a valid fair use statutory analysis but that the panel missed an opportunity to strengthen its argument by failing to interpret the factors in light of the purpose of copyright. Part III further contends that a finding of fair use comported with the constitutional purpose of copyright law because iParadigms’ use contributes to the “Progress of Science and useful Arts.”

There are two different paradigms that can be used in analyzing private criminal settlements. The first paradigm, used by scholars who have previously considered this issue, is to treat these settlements as a form of blackmail. Legislatures in every state have used this paradigm to criminalize private criminal settlements. But as the article points out, the justifications for criminalizing these agreements under a blackmail paradigm turn out to be particularly weak.

The article goes on to analyze private criminal settlements under a different paradigm, by treating them as the private analogue to public plea bargains. Using this analysis, the true cost of these agreements becomes apparent. Public plea bargains have long been criticized as providing a sort of second-class justice, but many scholars have also concluded that the process of plea bargaining brings certain benefits to the criminal justice system. The article applies the critiques of plea bargaining to private criminal settlements, and concludes that private settlements share all the drawbacks and costs of public plea bargains, while providing almost none of the benefits.

The article ends by discussing the implications of this analysis for current laws regarding private criminal settlements. It concludes that private criminal settlements should remain criminalized, but with one significant exception: settlements made between individuals who had a pre-existing relationship should be permitted.

Legally speaking, the determination of whether a religious organization qualifies as a church is most implicated by the tax code.  Beyond the benefits of tax exemption granted to all qualified religious organizations,  churches are granted special privileges, including limitations on their notification requirements to the IRS  and greater protection against government investigation.  Given the government’s interest in facilitating church growth,  its ability to encourage the creation of churches through tax incentives, and the potential for growth among Internet churches,  legal analysis regarding the qualifications of Internet churches under tax law is a window into the evolving debate over the most traditional of institutions.

This Recent Development focuses on Foundation of Human Understanding v. United States (“Foundation III”),  which offers two issues for analysis. The first is the question of which test to use in distinguishing churches from mere religious organizations under the federal tax code. In brief, prior to Foundation III, the associational test was carved out of fourteen criteria used by the IRS  (the “fourteen criteria test”)  for making its own determinations of church status. The associational test emphasizes certain criteria of those fourteen, such as regular assemblies, which, taken together, test the “associational role” of churches.  Although the associational test is credited to American Guidance v. United States,  that court used it merely as a threshold test, which it held the appellant did not satisfy.   However, the American Guidance court’s reliance on the associational test did not foreclose subsequent reference to the remaining criteria if an organization has satisfied the associational test  Among the many other criteria included in the fourteen criteria test are “a formal code of doctrine,” “a membership not associated with any other church or denomination,” and “established places of worship.”  The Claims Court’s holding in Foundation II voiced constitutional discomfort with the fourteen criteria test, suggesting that it might favor traditional churches, yet applied the test nonetheless.  Ultimately, however, the court based its holding on the associational test.  Despite echoing these same constitutional concerns with the fourteen criteria test,  the Foundation III court failed to issue a ruling on the test’s constitutionality, instead determining that the Associational test was, for the first time, exclusively satisfactory for determining church status.  In limiting the review of church status to what had previously been a threshold test, Foundation III unnecessarily restricted itself from considering broader considerations offered by the fourteen criteria test, for which sufficient barriers were already in place to mitigate constitutional concerns.

In their 2008 article, Bar-Gill and Warren argued that a new consumer financial protection agency was needed because, among other reasons, existing federal financial regulators were insufficiently motivated to focus on consumer protection.  Bar-Gill and Warren also alleged that the aggressive preemption of state consumer financial protection laws by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (“OCC”)  in the 2000s weakened consumer financial protection at the state level.  Throughout the past decade, consumer advocates, attorneys general, and academics have agreed, criticizing the OCC and the Office of Thrift Supervision (“OTS”)  for their use of preemption to prevent states from cracking down on predatory lending.  For their part, the OCC and other federal regulators have defended their use of preemption, arguing that the U.S. Constitution requires preemption where state law conflicts with federal law, and that preemption is an important tool for promoting the efficient operation of credit markets.  As developed more fully below, both sides of the debate make a compelling argument, creating a preemption dilemma: preemption of state consumer financial protection laws could both harm and benefit consumers.

This Recent Development examines how Dodd-Frank changes the relationship between state and federal consumer financial protection authority and helps resolve the preemption dilemma. It argues that Dodd-Frank promotes “dynamic federalism,” an arrangement of governance whereby overlapping authority and competition between state and federal regulators in the area of consumer financial protection has the potential to make the preemption dilemma much less problematic.  By creating a powerful new agency in the CFPB while simultaneously weakening the ability of federal regulators to preempt state consumer protection laws, Dodd-Frank creates a new framework for state and federal consumer protection authorities. This innovation in consumer financial protection should satisfy both those arguing for greater state powers to protect their citizens and those emphasizing the need for consistent, nationwide regulations in order to promote efficient credit markets.

This Recent Development will argue that collecting an arrestee’s DNA under the DNA Database Act of 2010 without a search warrant violates the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches. In Part I, this Recent Development will discuss the passage of the DNA Database Act and the statute itself. Part II will establish that a cheek swab of an arrested individual is a search. Since “[s]earches conducted outside the judicial process, without prior approval by judge or magistrate, are per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment—subject only to a few specifically established and well-delineated exceptions,” Part III will demonstrate that none of the “well-delineated exceptions,”—including search incident to lawful arrest, inventory search, or plain view—justify the warrantless search. Furthermore, as discussed in Part IV, at least two state courts differ in their treatment of this issue, and the Minnesota Court of Appeals’ invalidation of a statute analogous to North Carolina’s is instructive on the Fourth Amendment unreasonableness of cheek swabs under such statutes. Finally, Part V will show that the policy reasons advanced by supporters of DNA database laws are not persuasive, and there is a less constitutionally questionable method to achieve many of the same goals.

Beyond the caricature lies a rich history of policing, both public and private, which has been extensively explored within the literature addressing private policing. For the purposes of this Recent Development, this history provides one fundamental takeaway: the policing function has never been controlled exclusively by the government, nor have its functional components been rigidly defined. The responsibilities of private police have, as a result, been driven in part by “perceived gaps in the policing services provided by government.” If a government does not provide adequate preventive, protective, or investigatory services, then the general public will frequently demand a private alternative.

This expressed reluctance to come to specific terms with general claims about the value of director diversity inspired our title phrase: dangerous categories. That is, while “diversity” evokes universal acclaim in the abstract, our respondents’ narratives demonstrate that it is an elusive and even dangerous subject to talk about concretely. So we are left with narratives that simultaneously extol difference and express embarrassment with it.

Unfortunately, the value added by board diversity is hard to prove with any rigor, as the indeterminate findings in the extensive empirical literature on the subject—including some of the contributions to this symposium—amply demonstrates. To be sure, the intuitions seem persuasive enough. If one treats the board as a work group, under the right circumstances having differing perspectives and differing backgrounds should prompt more creative problem-solving and blunt the tendencies toward “groupthink.” And as stakeholder groups (employees, customers, suppliers, etc.) become more diverse, having board members who are especially attuned to their interests and values should be productive, and also send a positive signal of firm sensitivity.

So why is it so hard to find tangible evidence of added value? My commentary will focus on two of the symposium contributions: the wonderfully interesting field study by Broome, Conley, and Krawiec (“BCK”), who asked board members to talk about their own observations of value added by having more diversity on corporate boards, and the intriguing empirical study by Dobbin and Jung (“DJ”), who try to explain troubling evidence that both share value and non-blockholding institutional ownership appear to drop when women are added to boards, even though there is no evidence that firm financial or accounting performance declines as a result. Before turning specifically to these, however, I want to explore a bit what may be a cause of the muddle—the fact that we have no coherent, consistent explanation for how boards themselves add value to the firm. Without knowing what boards really do in terms of economic value, it is hard to develop and test any useful hypothesis about their diversity.

For a considerable period of time, the primary argument in favor of increasing the diversity of corporate boards was that it would result in more successful companies. As noted above, this is referred to as the business case. In her most recent article, Professor Lisa Fairfax aptly points out that the business case for diversity on corporate boards of directors has had limited success. As Professor Fairfax explains, the success of the business case in demonstrating a positive correlation between board diversity and corporate performance is limited in at least two respects. First, the existing studies are at best equivocal. Second, notwithstanding the studies tending to show a correlation, the business case has not been successful in increasing board diversity in recent years. Professor Fairfax concludes that the business case should not crowd out the moral rationale. Professor Fairfax undoubtedly is correct that the business case has not been as robust a foundation of increased board diversity as proponents of an increase would prefer. There are a number of rationales to support board diversity and rather than simply question the strength of the business case rationale, the question that should be asked and is whether these other rationales, when combined with the business case, support legal rules and regulations that encourage increased board diversity.

In a similar fashion, Professor Sung Hui Kim has converted the important but benign amicus support that General Motors and sixty-five other major American corporations gave to the University of Michigan in Grutter v. Bollinger into a hypocritical “diversity double standard,” because they allegedly embraced a diversity standard in Grutter that they would not accept for themselves. According to Kim, the corporate amici argued “that universities should promote diversity because it’s good for business,” but did not “make even a passing reference to the economic self-interest of universities or, for that matter, any of the significant costs that affirmative action programs generate for universities.” Kim argues, however, that the very factors the corporate amici ignored in Grutter are central to their assessment of the appropriateness of diversity for themselves.

While investment bankers, registered as broker-dealers under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, are often used by larger corporations seeking to coordinate a business combination, smaller businesses often “fly below the radar.” Smaller corporations planning to purchase a business typically use informal channels to find companies interested in selling. These avenues often include meetings between senior management, attorneys, financial advisers, and third party consultants, or “finders.”

A particular subset of these “finders” is made up of “business brokers,” who “attempt to initiate or arrange transactions between potential buyers and sellers of a business.” The SEC has implicitly recognized that some business broker activities fall outside of the intent and purpose of the ’34 Act, and thus a de facto exemption currently exists. Given a niche, these business brokers could provide critical merger assistance to those small businesses that lack the resources necessary to attract and retain an investment bank.

This piece begins with an analysis of the SEC no-action letters addressing business brokers in the context of mergers and acquisitions. Drawing upon the acknowledged differences between finders and broker-dealers, it then puts forth a proposal for a formal exemption to broker-dealer registration under the ’34 Act.

The legal and empirical claims are unobjectionable, and for purposes of this paper, I will assume that they are right. However, the mismatch critique warrants careful unpacking. The strength of this critique turns on whether diversity advocates had or have better options realistically available to them. The authors make modest attempts to suggest a few, but none is systematically defended. In the end, their alternative suggestions are implausible or underspecified, which undermines the force of their mismatch critique.

Here’s the problem: Under current North Carolina law, if Micah asks for his older brother to be present, the detective can refuse the request and continue to talk to Micah one-on-one. Indeed, the detective must refuse to allow Bill’s presence during the questioning lest it result in Micah’s statements being suppressed in court. This confusing set of interrogation rules results from the North Carolina Court of Appeals’ odd ruling in In re M.L.T.H., which held that a juvenile could not have anyone present during interrogation except for a parent, guardian, custodian, or attorney.

This Recent Development argues that In re M.L.T.H. was wrongly decided. Part I lays out the facts of In re M.L.T.H. Part II discusses the North Carolina Court of Appeals’ interpretation of the state’s juvenile Miranda statute. Part III argues that In re M.L.T.H. was not based upon a proper interpretation of the juvenile Miranda statute nor upon state supreme court precedent. Part IV contends that In re M.L.T.H. could have far-reaching negative repercussions because it risks putting future investigators and juveniles at a disadvantage during questioning.

The attacks of September 11th represented one of the costliest insurance events in American history. In the days that followed, insurers sought exclusions and limited coverage, making it difficult for commercial policyholders to purchase even basic terrorism coverage. Congress reacted by passing three successive pieces of legislation to make coverage available and affordable to property and casualty commercial policyholders and to stabilize insurance markets. Yet, current legislation is set to expire in 2014. What is next? Will the federal government withdraw from this market altogether? Should it?

This Article argues for continued—though modified—regulation. The threat of terrorism is real. The ten years since September 11th have been the most active period in terrorism history. Federal regulation has helped to decrease prices and widen coverage, but imperfections in the market for terrorism risk insurance necessitate continued federal assistance. Federal regulators must intervene carefully, however, because a regulation that interferes with pricing inevitably affects policyholder incentives to take precautions to avoid or limit loss—the familiar problem of moral hazard.

This Article presents a roadmap for continued regulation that solves the moral hazard dilemma and delineates the proper boundaries of federal regulation. The enormous challenges presented by the risk of terrorism can be addressed only through a coordinated, comprehensive system that melds ex ante preventative and mitigation measures, insurance mechanisms, and ex post compensation mechanisms into a national policy. In its innovative approach, this Article contributes to both the national security literature, which has paid scant attention to terrorism insurance, and to the insurance literature, which has paid insufficient attention to the problem of moral hazard in terrorism risk insurance.

First, notwithstanding the limited application of the exclusionary rule in immigration proceedings, immigration courts follow an exception articulated by the Supreme Court in INS v. Lopez-Mendoza, allowing suppression of evidence obtained through “egregious violations of the Fourth Amendment.” Given that the protection of the home is central to the history and purpose of the Fourth Amendment, and given the heavy-handed and violent tactics ICE uses in home raids, immigrants should argue that such raids amount to egregious violations. Second, courts have a basis to broaden the reach of the exclusionary rule in light of the Supreme Court’s suggestion in Lopez-Mendoza that widespread constitutional violations by immigration authorities might justify such a step. Third, immigrants may call for suppression for ICE violations of agency regulations, which mirror Fourth Amendment and other protections. These litigation strategies could help re-establish a credible deterrent to ICE’s abusive conduct, and could provide immigration attorneys with a valuable tool for defending undocumented victims of home raids.

This Comment proposes that North Carolina pass legislation to authorize the creation of land banks. The establishment of local land banks will help North Carolina’s cities stabilize neighborhoods stricken with vacant properties and alleviate the state’s affordable housing problem. While the state’s abandoned and foreclosed property problem is not as severe when compared to the nation’s Rust Belt, this Comment argues that adopting enabling legislation which allows for broad local flexibility will encourage cities large and small to adapt land banks to fit their needs.

To inform the proposal for land bank legislation in North Carolina, this Comment will include a comparative analysis of existing land bank legislation. While the land bank legislation in many states is similar, a number of states have adopted novel provisions that could help land banks function more effectively. This examination is important to ensure North Carolina’s legislation adopts best practices and avoids pitfalls that exist in other states with land bank statutes.

In December 2009, the Supreme Court of North Carolina took up this question and provided an alarming answer. In In re J.D.B., the court held that a juvenile’s age was irrelevant to the inquiry into whether an interrogation was “custodial” under title 7B, section 2101 of the General Statutes of North Carolina, which provides for an enhanced Miranda warning for North Carolina juveniles. Perhaps more troubling, the court created out of whole cloth a higher bar for finding police interrogations custodial when conducted inside a school, as opposed to outside of school. Together these findings will allow the police to elide the Fifth Amendment and the added protections of section 2101 by conducting in-school interrogations of juveniles about out of school crimes. If it stands uncorrected, In re J.D.B. will incentivize the targeting of children in our schools to obtain coerced confessions.

This Recent Development contends that in the In re J.D.B. majority’s search for simple rules—for police and for courts—simple justice for North Carolina’s children was lost.

As the law faculty at UNC grew and diversified, Bob Byrd was one of only a handful of native North Carolinians and graduates of the institution on the faculty. He brought to the school all that is good about the best people of this state. He was innovative, yet careful; tolerant of others, yet proud of his own heritage; friendly, yet willing to challenge when challenge was needed; and, above all, patient and loyal to things he held in high regard.

The first part of the Article describes the branch-office role, tracing its development back to the 1970s, and shows how it has come to be routine for public corporations to assist prosecutors in their investigations. The second part of the Article discusses the implications of this shift in institutional role. The Article first argues that the public corporation’s branch-office role is likely to be a durable one because it benefits both corporations and prosecutors, effectively exploiting the misalignment of interests between the corporation and its employees and providing substantial efficiency gains to prosecutors. The Article then examines the effect of this new role on legal rules, arguing that in carrying out its branch-office role, the protections of the corporate attorney-client privilege should not be increased and constitutional constraints should not be imposed. The Article then examines the potential effect of the new role on prosecutors’ willingness to bring criminal charges against corporations and, ultimately, on deterrence in business crime cases. The Article argues that the danger of this new role lies primarily in these areas. The new branch-office role, with its tools of amnesty, agreements not to prosecute, and agreements to defer prosecution, provides a middle way for prosecutors between declination and prosecution. This middle way may prove overly attractive to prosecutors, increasing their ability to prosecute corporate executives but cutting down on first-offense prosecutions against corporations, likely the most critical for deterring corporations from committing business crimes. Although pursuing criminal charges against executives and employees can certainly be an effective deterrent to business crime, it is not a sufficient one. A credible threat of corporate criminal liability is necessary to assure overall deterrence, as well as to assure that corporations continue to have an incentive to play this important branch-office role in investigating complex business crime cases.

When a consumer is unable to finance her tender obligation, non-bankruptcy judges’ overwhelming response has been to protect the lender and deny rescission to the borrower. This Article argues that these courts, to fulfill TILA’s consumer-protective function, must take a different approach. Courts should use their equitable authority under TILA to modify borrowers’ repayment obligations by allowing borrowers to tender in installments, over a period of years, and at reasonable interest rates. This approach both averts foreclosures that harm borrowers, lenders, and neighborhoods and ensures that TILA’s consumer-protective mandate will remain viable even in a depressed housing market.

This Article also considers an important aspect of TILA’s rescission remedy that, while tacitly acknowledged by courts and commentators, has been insufficiently explored in the academic literature. There exists an uneasy tension between the goal of TILA—informing consumers of the financial consequences of their mortgage loan transactions—and borrowers’ frequent use of TILA rescission: defending their homes from foreclosure actions that the lender’s disclosure violation may or may not have precipitated. The Article concludes that TILA rescission actions, albeit a blunt instrument in the consumer protection setting, must be preserved, particularly during periods of economic calamity, since it remains a singular source of borrower leverage in a legal and economic climate that remains generally inhospitable to homeowners.

Against such passive virtues, however, must be balanced the traditional precept that litigants are “masters of their complaints,” wielding a great deal of autonomy and control over which issues to bring before the court. The question thus arises: to what extent should federal courts permit aggressive litigants to deliberately manipulate the issues on appeal and thereby control whether a federal court decides a constitutional question?

In Snyder v. Phelps, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reviewed a five million dollar plaintiff’s verdict in an action brought by the father of a soldier killed in Iraq against Fred Phelps and his fundamentalist Westboro Baptist Church (“WBC”) alleging intentional infliction of emotional distress, intrusion upon seclusion, and conspiracy after the church picketed the soldier’s funeral with signs stating “Fag Troops,” “Thank God for Dead Soldiers,” and “You’re Going to Hell.” The court reversed the judgment, concluding that imposing tort liability contravened the defendants’ constitutionally protected speech under the First Amendment. In reaching its decision, however, the court specifically refused to address whether reversal was warranted on the non-constitutional grounds of insufficiency of the evidence. Although insufficiency was raised by amicus, the court reasoned that because the Phelpses only pressed the constitutional question in their appellate briefs, the sufficiency issue had been waived and it was therefore “absolutely necessary” to resolve the First Amendment question to dispose of the appeal. Thus, the Phelpses’ aggressive litigation strategy, rather than the court’s own prudential obligations, ultimately determined whether the federal court would reach a difficult and controversial constitutional question.

This Recent Development argues that the court’s refusal to consider non-constitutional grounds for disposing of this case was unjustified and constituted an abdication of the court’s self-imposed jurisprudential obligation to avoid unnecessary constitutional adjudication.

However, the principal antifraud statute, section 10(b), has become anything but straightforward, enduring a tortured existence as courts struggled to force different behaviors to fit into its mold. Most notably, section 10(b) has been used to combat insider trading–traditionally defined as “[t]he use of material, nonpublic information in trading the shares of a company by a corporate insider or other person who owes a fiduciary duty.” The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit therefore struck a progressive and potentially expansive victory for section 10(b)’s fundamental antifraud purpose in SEC v. Dorozhko. The court held that liability under section 10(b) could be found upon a showing of an affirmative misrepresentation, regardless of whether a fiduciary duty existed. The appellate court’s decision directly overturned the lower court’s determination that section 10(b) could not be violated without a breach of fiduciary duty. Indeed, the significance of the Second Circuit’s holding in Dorozhko is most aptly underscored by the district court’s declaration that “[t]o eliminate the fiduciary requirement now would be to undo decades of Supreme Court precedent, and rewrite the law as it has developed.” Specifically, the Second Circuit’s decision was contrary to Regents of the University of California v. Credit Suisse First Boston (USA), Inc., an earlier decision by the Fifth Circuit holding that “[a]n act cannot be deceptive within the meaning of § 10(b) where the actor has no duty to disclose.” By eliminating the need to show the existence of a fiduciary duty, the SEC is free to focus on all fraudulent behavior, regardless of the actor’s particular relationships, thereby simplifying its burden and potentially broadening the scope of prohibited behavior.

This article examines the RJA and North Carolina’s long struggle with race and the death penalty. The first part traces the history of race and the death penalty in the state, showing that racial prejudice exerted a consistent, strong, and pernicious influence on the imposition and disposition of death sentences. From colonial times into the 1960s, the overwhelming majority of those executed were African American, and despite most victims and perpetrators being of the same race, the overwhelming majority of victims were white. Hundreds of African Americans have been executed for a variety of crimes against white victims, including scores of African American men executed for rape. However, only three whites have been executed for murdering African American victims, and no white man was ever executed for the rape of an African American.

The most contentious laws regulating craft brewers are those which form the “three-tier system,” a regulatory scheme that mandates that there be a middleman—also known as a wholesaler or distributor—between the brewer and the retailer. The three-tier system achieves this objective through licensing requirements, and additionally mandates that there be certain contractual provisions in the agreements between the brewer and the wholesaler. While some brewers are excepted from the licensing requirements, all brewers are subject to the mandatory contractual provisions, also known as the “beer franchise laws.” Some craft brewers and others in the beer industry believe that the three-tier system is antiquated, and that it should be modified—most notably by removing all limits to self-distribution and by excepting small brewers from the franchise laws—if not scrapped altogether.

This Article focuses on the anti-gang statute enacted by the North Carolina legislature that summer in the wake of the Eve Carson murder. After briefly reviewing the legal status of the two individuals arrested for the Carson murder, and the current anti-gang efforts in North Carolina, the Article interposes the circumstances of the Carson murder with the provisions of the statute, to predict whether or not the statute would have been effective in that particular situation if previously enacted. The Article suggests that the North Carolina Street Gang Prevention Act would not have been an effective deterrent or effective from a punitive standpoint after the fact in that particular case. As a result of that conclusion, the Article looks to statutory enactments in other jurisdictions to provide some suggestions for improving the current anti-gang legislation, concluding that the North Carolina law needs additional revision in order to be an effective piece of legislation.

This Essay argues that the United States’ failure to help families negotiate work-family issues is not only poor policy, it is a dereliction of the state’s most basic responsibilities. The liberal democratic commitment to human dignity that is foundational to the United States’ understanding of itself, this Essay contends, requires it to support caretaking in order to meet the dependency needs that are inevitable in human lives. Because of the large role that the condition of dependency plays in human lives, supporting caretaking is every bit as important to maintaining human dignity as protecting citizens’ security or defending their individual rights.

This Essay examines some of the underlying reasons for this mistreatment and neglect. After describing the scope and framework of the global domestic work market, it explains why the domestic work sector remains highly resistant to formal recognition as a form of labor entitled to worker protections under international and national laws. It explores the roots of resistance to accountability for migrant domestic worker abuse, drawing from sociological studies that have examined the social construction of demand for trafficked migrant domestic workers’ labor. Building upon these findings, this Essay turns to a case study of the trafficking of migrant domestic workers into the United States by foreign diplomats. The study underscores the challenges to achieving accountability for this devalued worker population.

This Article argues that the existing literature on remittances almost universally underestimates the overall costs and negative effects of remittances and remittance-driven migration by failing to include various costs and harms borne by migrating workers and their families. If these costs were included in efforts to measure the overall impact of remittance flows, it is at least possible that remittances and remittance-driven migration would represent a net loss for some states and their citizens. If the overall impact of remittances is not positive for any particular state, then policy makers in that state may want to consider adopting policies to reduce or limit remittance-driven migration. They might, for example, avoid or scale back managed labor-migration programs. Depending on the particular circumstances of their state, they might also consider policies that reduce workers’ incentives to migrate for the purpose of earning money to remit home, including taxation of remittance flows, currency exchange controls, or liberalization of exchange rate policies. At the very least, if states’ current policies affecting capital inflows are based on a comfortable assumption that remittance inflows are broadly beneficial, this assumption should be reexamined to explicitly account for the costs and harms borne by workers and their families.

This Article develops a more practical and easily administrable distinction between debt and equity based on two easy-to-observe and difficult-to-manipulate characteristics—voting power and duration. This new distinction should be used to classify the holdings of domestic investors in public corporations. Further, the analysis of the debt–equity distinction triggers a broader theoretical inquiry over the principles that should guide tax policymakers in line-drawing problems. As a theoretical matter, these problems arise where there is a need to distinguish between two transactions which result in dramatically different tax consequences even though they could be economically very similar.

This Article responds to this recent willingness to look beyond the law by illuminating the unaccounted costs of unauthorized humanitarian intervention and by proposing a more rigorous framework for assessing these uses of force. Specifically, this Article advocates a new emphasis on the systemic consequences of unauthorized intervention, focusing on the impact of unauthorized humanitarian intervention on two elements of the international system that preserve the primacy of law over power: first, the principle of sovereign equality of states, and second, the principle that military force should be used only in the common interest. This Article urges that the impact of unauthorized uses of nondefensive force on these principles, and therefore on the vitality of law in the international system, should be an essential consideration in any evaluation of unauthorized humanitarian intervention. By considering the deeper implications of looking the other way when states resort to war to protect human rights, this Article challenges the conventional account of unauthorized humanitarian intervention as raising a choice between protecting human rights and protecting sovereignty, and it contends that the roots and benefits of the prohibition against unauthorized military force should compel policymakers to consider alternatives to military force when responding to grave human rights abuses.

This Recent Development analyzes the recent New York County Civil Supreme Court decision, Amazon.com v. New York State Department of Taxation & Finance, which upholds the constitutionality of the tax. The focus is on Amazon’s Dormant Commerce Clause argument and the trial court’s application of the Supreme Court’s decision in Quill. This Recent Development argues that the New York trial court failed to apply Quill’s “substantial nexus” test properly and exaggerated the role of Amazon’s associates. As a result, the trial court incorrectly held that the tax on Amazon did not violate the Commerce Clause. When applied correctly, the Quill decision should invalidate New York’s tax on Amazon and similar out-of-state Internet retailers.

The FSIA gives foreign states and their agencies and instrumentalities immunity in the United States subject to certain exceptions.  Ambiguities as to the meaning of the phrase “agencies and instrumentalities” and its further definition in the statute as “any entity which is a separate legal person, corporate or otherwise” have given rise to the different interpretations among the circuits.  This Recent Development argues that based on the congressional intent implied by both the language of the statute and its legislative history, the FSIA was not meant to cover individuals, and that the current circuit split should be resolved in the Fourth Circuit’s favor.  Further, this Recent Development argues that even assuming that the FSIA applies to individuals, the TVPA on its own was sufficient to bring a cause of action against the defendants.  The potential for this narrower holding not only bolsters the argument that the FSIA must not apply to individuals, but also keeps open an important avenue of litigation for torture victims who hope to bring their tormenters to justice.  This Recent Development recognizes that the exclusion of individuals from immunity under the FSIA will likely result in an increase in litigation, but concludes that the Fourth Circuit’s holding is preferable and worth the cost, as it gives victims of heinous crimes a way of holding their tormenters accountable while preserving a means of seeking immunity for those who are truly entitled to it.

This Article takes a look back at the role that the federal government has played with regard to issues of school integration and school desegregation to see how history can inform what a new administration in Washington could do to reinvigorate the cause and advance the goal of racially integrated education. After briefly reviewing the role of the federal legislative and executive branches—in initially facilitating school desegregation and then, for most of the past four decades, withdrawing from the gains made—this Article offers recommendations the Obama administration for future actions. Beyond presidential leadership, the Article focuses primarily on the promise and potential of three federal entities: the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, the Office for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education, and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. It suggests both an intentional, tailored effort to develop integration-maximizing strategies to deal with the government’s existing school desegregation docket, as well as an affirmative, multi-pronged effort to advance voluntary school integration initiatives, broadly defined.

This Article presents an empirical study that identifies school districts in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, and South Carolina that have attained unitary status since 2004. Part I then goes on to identify the important commonalities with respect to these cases, including examining the role of the United States Department of Justice in assisting school districts in unitary status proceedings.

This Article builds on these initial findings by providing a study of the post-unitary status student assignment plans adopted by the Southern school districts. This Article then analyzes the trends in post-unitary status student assignment plans: the prevalence of small districts with only one school at each grade level, the continued use of race conscious student assignment plans by a few districts, the emergence of socioeconomic status as a factor in student assignment, and the strategic drawing of attendance zones.

This Article also presents an overview of strategies to encourage voluntary racial integration in Southern school districts. These strategies are examined from several different viewpoints: strategies that may be employed by school districts that seek to adopt voluntary integration plans, the need for additional desegregation litigation under state constitutions, and the role of the federal government in promoting the goal of racial integration in public schools.

This Article clarifies the social science record about school composition effects on mathematics outcomes in K–12 schools by presenting a comprehensive synthesis of the educational, behavioral, and social science literatures on the topic. It combines narrative and vote-counting approaches to synthesize fifty-nine articles that met inclusion criteria that included: research disseminated in 1990 or later; reported effects of school racial and/or socioeconomic composition on mathematics outcomes; utilized a quantitative measure of any type of mathematics outcomes as a dependent variable; and employed appropriate statistical techniques given the structure of the data. Together, the fifty-nine articles demonstrate the relevance of school racial and socioeconomic diversity for enhancing mathematics outcomes for elementary, middle, and high school students. Mathematics outcomes are likely to be higher for students from all grade levels, racial, and SES backgrounds who attend racially and socioeconomically integrated schools. Given these findings, parents, educators, policy makers, and jurists should address the role of school racial segregation and concentrated poverty in the persistence of achievement gaps in mathematics outcomes.

This Article models grade reconfiguration in several Virginia school districts to show the reduction in segregation that would be possible through grade reconfiguration. The models show that grade reconfiguration can eliminate segregation in small school districts and reduce it considerably in larger districts. The Article also illustrates that the technique could also be used as part of an interdistrict desegregation plan.

Next, the discussion turns to practical applications. Use of the consumer investment model would keep trademark doctrine on a principled path that preserves the public interest in using marks as information tools. The model offers a new way of examining difficult issues involving the unauthorized use of brands on the Internet. Specifically, in keyword advertising disputes, the model would prompt courts or Congress to weigh public informational interests when considering how much control mark owners should exert over their brands on the Internet. However, as technology advances and new uses for marks evolve, the model would not block trademark expansion. It simply would provide a constant reminder to consider public interests. For example, the model generally supports dilution protection for famous marks. However, this Article introduces “cultural dilution” as a type of lost distinctiveness that should be exempted from trademark protection. Cultural dilution occurs when consumers invest a famous mark with new meaning through viral means that brand owners cannot stop. Finally, this Article recommends creation of a safe harbor for reference materials to reflect actual consumer understandings of terms that also serve as brands. Application of the consumer investments model in these contexts and others would assure that actual consumer interests are weighed in trademark disputes that affect public access to information.