The Social Security Administration’s Disability Insurance program encompasses a mammoth adjudicatory and appellate process, rivaling in size the entire federal judiciary. The SSDI is principally governed by validly promulgated regulations, but the SSA also uses an internal manual—“HALLEX”—to provide more detailed rules and guidance to its adjudicators and...
Vouching, which developed out of the Supreme Court’s desire to protect the jury’s right to evaluate credibility, traditionally forbids prosecutorial statements designed to enhance or attest to the credibility of a government witness. This Note examines a flavor of vouching unique to cases involving cooperating witnesses. Prior to testifying, cooperating witnesses...
Reliance plays a central role in contract law and scholarship. One party relies on the other’s promised performance, its statements, or its anticipated entry into a formal agreement. Saying that reliance is important, however, says nothing about what we should do about it. The focus of this Essay is on the many ways that parties choose to protect reliance. The relationship...
What obligations does a state have after it forcibly overthrows the regime of another state or territory? The Hague Regulations and the Fourth Geneva Convention provide some answers, but their prohibition on interfering with the governing structure of the targeted territory is outmoded. Based on a careful examination of subsequent practice of the parties to the conventions,...
The Public Health Service Act (PHSA), codified at 42 U.S.C. §§ 201–300, confers federal authority to institute medical quarantine and isolation measures in response to outbreaks of specific infectious diseases. Congress’s authority to pass the PHSA is derived from the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Until recently, the constitutionality of the PHSA’s...
Since its enactment, the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1996 (PLRA) has obstructed prisoners from bringing suit in federal court. In the relatively uncommon cases where prison lawsuits do succeed under the PLRA, the statute authorizes courts to implement and enforce relief to curb the constitutional violation found in that case. In authorizing such judicial authority,...
One of the great ironies about information privacy law is that the primary regulation of privacy in the United States has barely been studied in a scholarly way. Since the late 1990s, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has been enforcing companies’ privacy policies through its authority to police unfair and deceptive trade practices. Despite over fifteen years of...
All theories of statutory interpretation rely on an idea of how Congress operates. A commonly held supposition among scholars is that the procedures used in the creation of legislation are unsophisticated and almost anarchic. This supposition exists because scholars generally give little consideration to the underlying actors and their evolving roles in the drafting...
The Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC is widely considered a major roadblock for campaign finance reform, and particularly for limiting third party spending in federal elections. In response to the decision, commentators, scholars, and activists have outlined a wide range of legislative and regulatory proposals to limit the influence of third...