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Item More Than Just an Academic Exercise: Conjoining Critical Policy Analysis and Community-Engaged Research as Embodiment of Political Action(IUI Office of Community Engagement, 2021) Welton, Anajale; Cumings Mansfield, Katherine; Robert H. McKinney School of LawCritical policy analysis (CPA) is a means by which to critique policy and promote agency, equity, and justice. However, most CPA scholars examine political discourse from a distance rather than actively participate in political processes. Meanwhile, there's a growing interest in community-engaged research whereby academics partner with community members in their research endeavors. In this article, we consider the value of conjoining the philosophies and processes behind both CPA and community-engaged research to create more powerful and meaningful research endeavors that potentially can lead to political action and policy change. For this article, we present a subset of data from a larger study that asked education policy scholars how critical policy analysis informs their work and what they consider to be key objectives of this approach. We focus on a subsection of participants who demonstrated how and what ways they consider community-engaged scholarship to be an essential component of CPA.Item Water is Life: Clean Water for Native American Tribes(IUI Office of Community Engagement, 2021) Tanana, Heather; Robert H. McKinney School of LawWater is life. Every household in America needs and is entitled to clean and safe water access. Yet, the magnitude of lack of clean water access in Indian country is significant and startling. Our report uncovers the four main factors that have exacerbated gaps in tribal drinking water access, and in turn hurt public health and economic growth.Item Five-Four: Dissecting Supreme Court Tightly Split Decisions(2024) Sullivan, Jr., Frank; Georgakopoulos, Nicholas L.Item The Shifting Regulation and Competition Interface(2024) Huffman, MaxAntitrust and market regulation, rather than being “flip sides of the same coin,” populate a spectrum that ranges from a truly laissez faire economic system at one end to a command economy at the other. Competition policy and regulation have different strengths and will thus be preferred in different settings, as well as at different times in the chronology of industry growth. While competition policy might be favoured early in the growth of an industry, when the efficient outcomes are unknown and unknowable, regulation is a preferred approach when the industry is mature, innovation has slowed, and gains come from operational efficiencies rather than techno- logical changes. Their different strengths may also emerge independent of chronology: competition policy is a preferred market oversight mechanism when efficient outcomes are consistent with larger social, political, environmental – etc. – goals. Where efficient outcomes deviate from those, however, market regulation is the better alternative. The reality of the regulation-competition interface belies the binary of these as alter- native approaches to market oversight. Competition policy may be more or less regulatory in nature and enforcers take on regulation-like approaches when their goals diverge from competitive equilibria. Competitive equilibria in labour markets are unlikely to produce worker protections that serve broader social goals. This is because labour markets reflect durable monopsony power, with workers locked into employment relationships and unable to bargain effectively. The resulting equilibrium will see firms that are both employers and producers favouring efficiencies in consumer markets, where they are more likely to encounter competition, over labour markets, to the detriment of workers. Competition policy gives way to regulation as prohibitions on no-compete covenants and exemptions for labour organization intrude on marketplace competition1. In a market of gig economy platforms, characterized by diffuse buyers, diffuse sellers, and a consolidated intermediary – the platform – which is protected by entry barriers including network effects and capital intensiveness, the competitive equilibrium will see surplus wealth gained by the platform. This outcome does not prevent substantial social benefits, including those realized by workers and consumers on the platform. For example, evidence suggests that the US-based gig platform Uber brought eco- nomic opportunity to developing world locations as underemployed workers became independent businesspersons and consumers had cheaper and safer means of trans- port. Regulating to protect consumers (safety regulation) and workers (minimum earnings regulation) can protect non-competition social goals including safety and equity of wealth distribution2. The market for artificial intelligence technologies is nascent, fast developing, and far from fully understood. This is also a market in which innovation is crucial, and comprehensive regulation would undermine the experimental process by which technologies are developed. But the unrestricted growth of this market presents risks that demand interventions. Regulation can establish parameters within which competition might flourish, through forbidding edge-case applications, encouraging standardization of technologies, and monitoring markets to identify enduring inequities early. Regulation and competition policy populate a spectrum of market oversight options, at the extremes operating individually and, in the heartland, playing a complementary role. As policymakers and enforcers continue to emphasize goals that competitive equilibria cannot achieve, regulation will play an increasingly important role.Item Background as Foreground: Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment and January 6th(2024) Magliocca, Gerard N.Item The Long Arm of the SEC in the Regulation of Digital Currencies(2023) Emmert, FrankItem Disaster! Tax Legislation in Crises(2024-02) Hoffer, StephanieCongress cuts and pastes in times of crisis. This Article, a study of tax legislation passed in response to natural disasters and national crises during the years 2000–2020, documents and examines Congress’s use of recurring provisions from one disaster relief bill to the next. Of 272 individual statutes included in the study, Congress drew 200 from prior legislation. Far from being cabined, as they appeared when passed, these recurring tax relief statutes affected taxpayers over a broad geography throughout the entire twenty-year study period. Data also shows that recurring provisions tended to expand in scope over time. Many required taxpayers who claimed them either to hold assets or to expend resources in socially favored ways, affording relief to those who already had means. In addition, recurring tax provisions often designated a federal declaration of disaster as their on-switch, leaving taxpayers who suffered equivalent economic harm outside of disaster areas without relief despite being similarly situated for tax purposes. With these and other findings, the study documents the likelihood that recurring crisis-motivated tax relief provisions are potential contributors to both the racial wealth gap and the overall wealth gap and that they also may work against the interests of newly established or very small businesses. Recurrence in the crisis-motivated tax context is of genuine immediate concern. The study shows that recurring provisions tended to ossify over time, with Congress permanently codifying some and repeatedly incorporating others into recurring tax disaster relief packages. At the same time, destabilization of environmental and geopolitical conditions may necessitate Congress’s more frequent use of cut-and-paste. Recurrence does not have to be a bad guy, though. With its tendency to extend and broaden relief measures over time and place, recurrence done without politicization and with proper advance consideration of its likely long-term distributional effects could be a constructive means of balancing interests of timeliness, efficiency, and the equitable distribution of resources.Item Cryptocurrencies: The Impossible Domestic Law Regime?(2022-10) Frank, EmmertItem “Not a Lawyer’s Contract:” Reflections on FDR’s Constitution Day Address(2023-02-15) Magliocca, Gerard N.Franklin Roosevelt’s oration marking the sesquicentennial of the Constitution’s proposal is the most profound discussion of our founding document by a modern president. Delivered in the immediate aftermath of the Court-packing crisis and against the backdrop of the global rise in fascism and communism, the Constitution Day Address is a time capsule from a pivotal moment and a source of insights into timeless questions. The Address is also the most thoughtful defense of the New Deal ever offered up by its leader, as there is no equivalent of The Federalist for the 1930s. Nevertheless, there is little scholarly or judicial commentary on FDR’s remarks, perhaps because he attacked the legal profession in the speech; a sentiment captured best by his line that the Constitution is “a layman’s document, not a lawyer’s contract.” This Article provides the first comprehensive account of President Roosevelt’s Constitution Day Address and explains that his remarks speak to the modern problem of “democratic backsliding.”Item The California SHIMBY Movement: Social Housing in my Backyard(2023) Gilgoff, JulieThe social housing movement represents a powerful coordinated effort to create publicly owned and permanently affordable housing. Social housing provides the most democratic, cost-effective, and sustainable solution to the housing crisis by permanently recycling public subsidies through resale restrictions on newly constructed and rehabilitated homes, while avoiding racially segregated patterns often associated with traditional public housing. Part of a larger international movement, California Senate Bill 555 (SB 555): Stable Affordable Housing Act of 2023 aims to address California’s housing shortfall through a resale-restricted, rather than market-based model. With documented success internationally in Vienna, Austria, and Singapore, as well as domestically with policies like the 1937 Housing Act, SB 555 marks a divergence from decades of government housing strategy to stimulate private sector production of low- and moderate-income units rather than creating publicly owned housing removed from the speculative market. As a complement to Yes in My Backyard (“YIMBY”) development, Americans should familiarize themselves with the newest and yet-to-emerge acronym, Social Housing in My Backyard (“SHIMBY”), that embraces both new construction and rehabilitation strategies, and holds the potential to transform the U.S. housing system.