Harvard Law & Policy Review

Marshall Thompson A federal judge held last week that a civil suit against military contractors who allegedly shot 14 Iraqi civilians in 2007 can move forward in a North Carolina state court. The move came because Judge Terrence Boyle ruled that the non-resident plaintiffs, the relatives of the killed Iraqis, would not be able to sue in U.S. federal court for wrongs occurring outside of the U.S. This civil action in state court is the last chance for the Iraqi families to find closure for a …

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Jay Willis This week, the Harvard Law & Policy Review published Aaron Tang’s excellent article on the landscape of litigation over public school funding.  Tang briefly provides a snapshot of the history of such litigation, before highlighting some of its challenges.  As the author notes, the major problem with recent suits challenging the adequacy of state educational funding is that a court, if it finds in favor of the plaintiffs, must then necessarily define what level of school funding is …

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Anthony Kammer Earlier this week, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) issued a report of its inquiry into the causes of the recent financial crisis. Modeled after the bipartisan 9/11 Commission created to examine the background of the 9/11 attacks, the FCIC was established by Congress in 2009 as a bipartisan panel designed to investigate the causes of the country’s recent financial crisis. According to the Commission’s report, critical to avoiding a repeat of the crisis is rejecting …

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HLPR blog editorial staff  Few topics have received greater recent national attention than education, evidenced by the prominent role the theme played in President Obama’s State of the Union Address.   It’s not surprising, then, that education has also been a popular topic amongst HLPR bloggers: …

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Marshall Thompson Recent court challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) have raised questions about the rational basis for the law. To combat the “threat” of legalized gay marriage in Hawaii, Congress passed DOMA in 1996. Among other things, DOMA forbids the federal government from recognizing state-sanctioned same-sex marriages. At the time, the House Record listed four governmental interests: …

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Zach Luck Imagine you are in charge of an enterprise that has to process over 140 million forms each year.  Each form, on paper, costs about $2.87 to process.  Wait, you say, it is the 21st century and computers might not be a passing fad — shouldn’t there be a way to process the form electronically at some lower cost?  Very astute.  It turns out that there is, and it will cost you about 35 cents to process each electronic version. Obviously, you would decide that it should be entirely free to …

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