Three Loyola professors on SSRN top 25 list

Loyola Law School Professors Ted Seto, Katie Pratt and Jen Kowal are among the top 25 U.S. tax professors as ranked by downloads on the Social Science Research Network.

Should we limit how often we can vote on ballot initiatives?

By Associate Clinical Professor Jessica Levinson

This op-ed was originally published by KCET.

As the legislative sessions came to a close on Friday, our lawmakers passed a flurry of new bills. Among the proposed laws is SB 202, which removes ballot initiatives and referendum from next year's June ballot, and provides those measures will only appear on November ballots.

The question for the day is whether this initiative consolidation is a good idea. I'm all for less initiatives, but this just means we will vote on initiatives less often, not that there will be fewer of them.

Read the complete post at KCET.org.

Prof. David Horton asks and answers "Does the Federal Arbitration Act apply to wills and trusts" on SCOTUSblog

Associate Professor of Law, David Horton, wrote a post for SCOTUSblog entitled, "Does the Federal Arbitration Act apply to wills and trusts?" The post was part of an Arbitration Symposium organized by the Supreme Court blog.

Here's an excerpt:

"Over the last two decades, arbitration has transformed the way that consumer and employment disputes are resolved. Recently, arbitration clauses have become increasingly common in a different context: wills and trusts. The roots of this movement are easy to understand. Even with the economic downturn, Americans bequeath hundreds of billions of dollars each year. This massive intergenerational wealth transfer - the largest in history - is expected to make probate litigation more common. Incapacity and undue influence claims are notorious not just for depleting estates, but for exposing a testator or settlor's intimate life in open court. Arbitration's purported benefits - its low cost, speed, and privacy - make it attractive to estate planners and their clients."

Read the full post here.

Faculty Workshop Series Presented Deborah L. Rhode

Deborah L. Rhode, Ernest W. McFarland Professor of Law, and Founding Director, Center on Ethics at Stanford University Law School, presented her paper, "Lawyers as Leaders," today, Thursday, September 8, from 11:45 to 1:00pm, in the Courtroom of the '90s, on the 2nd floor of the Girardi Advocacy Center.

Professor Justin Levitt Testifies Before Senate Judiciary Committee on New State Voting Laws

Justin Levitt, Associate Professor of Law, testified in Washington, D.C. before the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights.

The hearing examined new state voting laws that threaten to suppress turnout nationwide.

Professor Levitt is an expert on election law, and author of A Citizen's Guide to Redistricting. He also launched the website, All About Redistricting.

Prof. Yxta Murray on Anglo-American Radical Feminism's Constitutionalism in the Streets

By Professor Yxta Maya Murray

From "You're Creating New Categories:" Anglo-American Radical Feminism's Constitutionalism in the Streets, to be published Spring 2012 by the Hastings Race and Poverty Law Journal

On September 7, 1968, a battalion of the feminist group New York Radical Women bombed up the Garden State Parkway in their VW buses to make a ruckus at the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City, New Jersey. At a "consciousness raising" session (essentially a rap group session) several weeks previous, they had discovered that patriarchal beauty standards -- and their expressions in the meat markets that were beauty contests -- had damaged their own self-images and liberations. Thus enraged, they leapt off the buses, crowding around the boardwalk in front of the Atlantic City Convention Center, hoisting picket signs and papier mache puppets. They crowned a sheep -- a proxy, of course, for Miss America herself - and sang out bawdy songs that poked fun at the pageant organizers and the contestants. A dark ops group within N.Y.R.W., having "dressed up" to look like "normal women," purchased tickets to the Center. Once inside, these rebels unfurled a banner that read Women's Liberation, and some of them set off stink bombs. They were promptly nabbed by the police and shoved outside. The radical feminists did not resist arrest -- but, as they mostly hadn't seemed to really break any laws, only one stink-bomb thrower would be charged with "releasing a noxious substance." Jubilant at the success of their action, the rest of the feminists jumped back in their love buses and went back home.

It was pretty heady stuff, and seen by many as ushering in the new era of second wave feminism - but as it turned out, it was nothing compared to the riot that occurred two years later in London.

On November 20, 1970, an assorted group of radical British feminists arrived at the Royal Albert Hall in London with plans to sabotage the Miss World pageant. Though a radical anti-capitalist group called The Situationists had set off a bomb outside of the Hall earlier that morning, the feminists were not deterred from executing their raid on this fleshly fiasco. Having come armed with flour bombs (small sacks of flour that would detonate in a fluffy cloud upon impact), ink bombs, plastic mice, rotten produce, whistles, and rattles, the London rads' first acts of anti-beauty-pageant resistance was to camp outside the Hall, crown a stuffed cow, hoist placards, and scream "You poor cows!" and "They're exploiting you!" when the contestants arrived to London by bus and skittered inside the amphitheater. Once the Miss World pageant began, the Londoners (taking a cue from their U.S. sisters) snuck inside using the same transgender tactic of dressing like middle class, feminine women. Now in the Hall, they let it rip. The host for Miss World was Bob Hope, the famous comic of the "Road" movies fame, and the feminists rushed up to the stage, flinging flour and ink at him and shrieking. Old Bob ran away. The feminists turned to the audience, throwing the plastic mice, squirting tuxes, and bapping gents with grotty tomatoes. One protester, Sally Alexander (now a history professor at the University of London), stubbed out a cigarette on a policeman. There might have also been some biting. The women hollered profanities with glee. Five of them were arrested, while the others escaped. The jailbirds wound up doing star turns at their media-frenzied trials several months later. Ultimately, the charges against them were dropped.

The battle between our lawmakers and Amazon rages on

By Associate Clinical Professor Jessica Levinson

This op-ed was originally published in the Los Angeles Daily Journal.

One hundred years ago California voters approved a sweeping set of governmental reforms, which included the introduction of the initiative, referendum and recall. Those reforms were aimed, at least in large part, at giving power to citizens. The initiative, referendum and recall were instituted to allow citizens to check government power, particularly in the case of legislators too cozy with special interest groups.

So one has to ask, when progressives pushed their reform package through the Legislature, could they have predicted that those reforms would be high jacked by special interests groups that were seen to pose a threat to the integrity of the electoral and political processes? While the names of those attempting to influence the government have changed - the 1911 reform package was enacted in large part as a response to the growing power of the Southern Pacific Railroad over the state government - the concerns about their power remain the same. Instead of worrying about the power of a railroad company over our elected officials, we can now ponder the influence of brick-and-mortar and online retailers, like Wal-Mart, Barnes & Noble, eBay and Amazon.

The process meant to empower citizens to check the power of their public servants also allows any group with the ability to raise $2 million to counter legislative decisions, both good and bad (rare as they may be, it is still possible that our lawmakers make good public policy decisions every now and again) by threatening to overturn those decisions at the ballot box.

One of the latest ballot box battles centers on the so-called "Amazon Tax." When California lawmakers enacted a budget for the current fiscal year back in June, that budget included a tax on online retail sales. The tax would raise an estimated $200 million in revenue. Quite understandably, Amazon is none too happy.

Amazon immediately promised to endeavor to qualify a ballot measure, a referendum, which would overturn that tax. Amazon has laid the groundwork for a measure appearing on the June 2012 ballot.