Dru Stevenson, Professor of Law

New from the website In the Public Interest:  Arizona’s Corporate-Run Agency Gives Taxpayer Subsidies to Other Corporations but Little Information to the Public . Arizona replaced its Dept of Commerce last year with a public-private partnership called the Arizona Commerce Authority (ACA). The ACA's board includes mostly private businessmen, not government employees. Its funding comes partly from taxpayer dollars, and partly from private donations given by local corporations.  Here's an excerpt: But this isn't just any agency. Its task is to try boosting the state economy by handing out taxpayer-financed subsidies to individual companies of its choosing. A new report by Arizona Public Interest Research Group Education Fund tallies up over $41 million in subsidies so far dispensed by 13 subsidy programs at the ACA. The annual amount could reach over $150 million next year, plus other publicly-financed loans and technical assistance. Arizona residents foot the bill for ...

Detroit Free Press has a new op-ed piece:  More people die from guns than car accidents in Michigan . Excerpt: “The idea that gun deaths exceed motor vehicle deaths in 10 states is stunning when one considers that 90% of American households own a car, while fewer than a third own firearms,” VPC Legislative Director Kristen Rand said. “It is time to end firearms’ status as the last unregulated consumer product.”  Rand said her group’s state-by-state analysis compared gun and car deaths in 2009, the most recent year for which state-level data for both causes of death is available. Michigan reported 1,095 gun deaths that year — 10.98 per 100,000 residents — while recording only 977 deaths, or 9.8 per 100,000 residents, involving motor vehicles, including pedestrian accidents.  I found this unsurprising, and a fairly typical advocacy piece from the gun-control side.  Eugene Volokh at the Volokh Conspiracy reports on this and adds these statistics: But ...

Here is the link to my new post on the Circuit Splits blog about the new article from my colleague Scott Rempell - New Article on Appellate Review of Immigration Decisions - Circuit Splits This article was our last assignment in our Abstract Club at my school - something else I need to write about soon.

Quod scripsi, scripsi * -  Should Law Schools Focus on Lawyering Skills? - Circuit Splits .  I've been wanting to write this for a long time. *  "What I have written, I have written."

A new essay in the California Law Review  by the Dean there (Christopher Edley, Jr.)discusses the history of American law schools - in terms of their mission - and predicts the direction things are heading.  VERY refreshing after reading so many posts on law professor blogs about how we need to revert  to being more like a trade school (teaching skills rather than theory).  I really liked the abstract: This Essay describes the changing role of American law schools throughout the twentieth century and proposes a vision for the future’s Great American Law School. Since the founding of Berkeley Law, the definition of the legal profession has progressed from an interior orientation, which focused predominately on trial courts and appellate advocacy, to an exterior orientation with wide consideration of other forms of lawyering. Along a second axis, legal pedagogy has progressed from a careerist orientation, which focused on case analysis and advocacy skills, ...

My latest article - forthcoming in Boston College Law Review - Standing as Channeling in the Administrative Age by Drury Stevenson, Sonny Eckhart :: SSRN We're looking for input and feedback, so download it and send us comments!

I have a new article coming out this summer in the North Carolina Law Review  entitled Judicial Deference To State Legislatures in Constitutional Analysis . It started as a paper about Bustamonte- type consent searches and North Carolina's unique statute defining consent in these cases - but it turned into an article about the relationship between the judiciary and legislatures in Fourth and Fifth Amendment cases.  Here is the abstract:  North Carolina is one of the only states to have a statutory definition of voluntary consent for police searches; it essentially codified the Supreme Court’s “ Bustamonte ” rule. In theory, this statute could eventually face a constitutional challenge if the Supreme Court adopted a requirement of informed consent – police warnings of the right to refuse a search – as many have urged. Considering this possibility as a hypothetical, it seems strange that conventional Fourth Amendment analysis has largely ignored whether challenged state ...