President Obama’s budget proposals have contemplated reducing the top rate for charitable deductions (and all itemized deductions) to 28%.  Because America’s largest donors are those in the highest marginal tax brackets, efforts to limit deductibility of charitable donations could have a chilling effect on charitable giving.

In this Article, the author looks at motivations for charitable donations and specifically at the impact of tax deductibility as a motivating factor.  He takes a historical look at philanthropic surveys and econometric models and examines empirical data concerning impacts of significant changes to the tax code in the 1980s that could be used as indicators of what effect the proposed limitations on deductibility could have on donations.  The author also considers impacts of the recent recession on the nonprofit sector, which has already been burdened by historically high numbers of unemployed individuals and children in poverty.

Because the economic downturn has already stifled charitable giving at a time when the nonprofit sector faces high demands, any further erosion may be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.  If tax changes dampen enthusiasm for charitable giving even further, struggling charities may go under, and prospective new charities may not be able to get off the ground to pick up the slack.  At the end of the day, government welfare programs, which are more costly than a tax subsidy for charitable donations, would be needed to meet the needs of citizens slipping through a crumbling safety net. . .

Read the full Article here.

The post Compromising the Safety Net: How Limiting Tax Deductions for High-Income Donors Could Undermine Charitable Organizations appeared first on Suffolk University Law Review.

This Article examines the role political leaders played in judicializing campaign finance policy.  In a survey of nearly a century of law, and in a close analysis of the legislative record, I make a number of surprising findings.  I discover that there has been great variation in judicial review over this history and that it correlates directly with the choices activists and political leaders have made to mobilize legal institutions in the making of campaign finance policy.  Moreover, I find that political leaders have maintained the upper hand in this:  Where the efforts of independent policy activists ran counter to their interests—as they did for a brief period prior to Watergate—legislators quickly changed jurisdictional rules to foreclose activists’ access to federal courts.  But, even as they restricted public interest litigation in the field, legislators actually moved to judicialize the policy still more, and continued to do so even after the Supreme Court substantially altered the law with its Buckley v. Valeo ruling.  In fact, from 1974 onward, Congress deliberately delegated to the judiciary the power to interpret, enforce, and ultimately remake policy.  This history reveals that campaign finance reform has long been a process of making law with lawsuits, where courts enjoy significant discretion to revise policy not primarily because of their own activism, but because political leaders have given them the job. . .

The post Making Law with Lawsuits: Understanding Judicial Review in Campaign Finance Policy appeared first on Suffolk University Law Review.

Read the full Article here.

The post “When Numbers Get Serious”*: A Study of Plain English Usage in Briefs Filed Before the New York Court of Appeals appeared first on Suffolk University Law Review.

The United States Supreme Court decided Meyer v. Nebraska in 1923 and established the fundamental rights to marry, to establish a home, and to raise children.  By 1944, the Supreme Court limited these rights for minors in Prince v. Massachusetts.  Since the Prince decision, a patchwork of federal and state laws has impacted a minor’s right to determine his or her living situation.  The time has come to make sense of the patchwork and provide consistent results for minors in the family-law system. . .

Read the full Note here.

The post Choosing a Home: When Should Children Make Autonomous Choices About Their Home Life? appeared first on Suffolk University Law Review.

Efforts to ensure disabled students receive the same opportunities as their nondisabled peers are reflected in both federal and state laws.  The first congressional breakthrough occurred with the passage of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 (EHA).  Over time, amendments improving the EHA were made, and it is now better known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). . .

Read the full Note here.

The post Not a Bad Idea: The Increasing Need to Clarify Free Appropriate Public Education Provisions Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act appeared first on Suffolk University Law Review.

While drafting both Acts, Congress consciously refrained from defining the term “control” because it believed that courts could effectively apply the term depending on the given facts of a case.  Therefore, varying standards of controlling person liability have evolved throughout the judicial system, including within federal circuit and district courts.  Recently, in continuing efforts to protect investors, Congress has enacted a substantial piece of legislation that may help shed light on the inconsistent application of controlling person liability:  the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank). . .

Read the full Note here.

The post Let’s Be Frank: The Future Direction of Controlling Person Liability Remains Uncertain appeared first on Suffolk University Law Review.

The United States does not have any centralized regulatory, statutory, or administrative authority designed specifically to address wind energy.  Potential wind projects—often-called wind farms—must traipse through a mire of local, state, and federal regulations, few of which provide regularity or guidance from project to project.  On the federal level, an amalgamation of statutes governs various facets of a wind project’s evolution:  permitting, development, decommission, taxation, and rights to opposition are all governed by many different laws.  In addition, states generally have their own radically different approaches to handling wind power.  Many states even allow cities and towns to pass their own ordinances for handling wind power, which often result in moratoriums or competition between neighbors for lucrative turbine leases.  Without any national voice or approach to the development of wind technology, the United States is at a dramatic disadvantage to countries that have taken a proactive approach to wind technology’s introduction. . .

Read the full Note here.

The post What’s the Holdup? How Bureaucratic Obstacles Are Undercutting the True Potential of American Wind Power appeared first on Suffolk University Law Review.

To have standing to oppose an act of a local zoning board, Massachusetts law requires a person to be “aggrieved”; however, courts’ attempts to define aggrievement have yielded inconsistent results.  Recently, in Kenner v. Zoning Board of Appeals, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) attempted to clarify the standard, but only managed to further shroud standing laws in confusion and ambiguity.  In essence, the SJC raised the bar for threshold standing determinations, and in doing so, utilized vague and imprecise language in defining aggrievement.  In addition, the SJC created potential disruption in the well-settled area of the law of particularized harm. . .

Read the full Note here.

The post Massachusetts Standing Laws and Zoning Appeals: Standing on Shaky Ground After Kenner v. Zoning Board of Appeals appeared first on Suffolk University Law Review.

Massachusetts officials sprang quickly into action after the media onslaught following Phoebe’s death.  Northwestern County District Attorney Elizabeth Scheibel charged five of Phoebe’s classmates with a multitude of crimes stemming from their reported bullying of her, including civil-rights violations with bodily injury, criminal harassment, and stalking.  The Massachusetts General Court also acted swiftly, passing what many experts deem the most sweeping and powerful antibullying statute in the nation.  The statute creates a broad scope of illegal activities for which students can face punishment, including incidents of cyberbullying that occur outside school walls.  Because the statute grants school administrators unique authority, Massachusetts now stands as a model testing ground for the national movement to curb bullying incidents in public schools. . .

Read the full Note here.

The post Where Good Intentions Go Bad: Redrafting the Massachusetts Cyberbullying Statute to Protect Student Speech appeared first on Suffolk University Law Review.

Although seemingly unfair, this difference in price between the local brick-and-mortar store and the pure-play online retailer is consistent with the 1992 Supreme Court holding in Quill Corp. v. North Dakota.  In Quill Corp., the Court held that a state has taxing authority over an out-of-state retailer only when that retailer has a “physical presence” within the taxing state.  Despite the immense expansion of both the Internet and electronic commerce (e-commerce), the 1992 case continues to control today.  Consequently, cash-strapped states have become more invested in seeking alternatives that would require out-of-state retailers to charge their in-state consumers a sales tax at the time of purchase. . .

The post Online Retailers Battle with Sales Tax: A Physical Rule Living in a Digital World appeared first on Suffolk University Law Review.