*Sumbul Alam

Heightened surveillance of noncitizens in the United States has been increasing since the 1980s.  See Anil Kalhan, Immigration Surveillance, 74 Md. L. Rev. 1, 11–16 (2014).  Throughout the decades, citizens and noncitizens at the border have been subjected to more intrusive questioning, as well as searches and seizures of computer hard drives and other electronic storage media with limited, if any, judicial oversight.  Id. at 16–17.  This may promulgate extreme bias of the enforcement agent.  See id. at 20–25.  For example, soon after the 2001 terrorist attacks, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) initiated a program of voluntary interviews for thousands of nonimmigrant Arab and Muslim men; subsequently, in 2002, the Attorney General required noncitizens from specific countries which were predominately Arab or Muslim to register in a national database.  Id. at 20. Continue reading “The Insidious Slippery Slope of Our Freedom of Speech and Expression”

*Brenton Conrad

I.  Introduction

On August 14, 2018, the United States Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) Annual Filing Season Program, which was enacted to serve as a means of combatting the growing concerns involving fraudulent tax returns.  AICPA v. IRS, No. 16-5256, 2018 U.S. App. LEXIS 22583 (D.C. Cir. Aug. 14, 2018).  This program seeks to incentivize unenrolled tax preparers (preparers not subject to any licensing requirement with the IRS) to voluntarily obtain a “Record of Completion.”   Id. at 3.  A Record of Completion grants these preparers a “limited practice right” in representing a taxpayer in the audit and tax return process and places their names on the IRS’s online directory of tax preparers.  Id. at 3, 4.  While on its face the IRS’s program may benefit taxpayers, the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) disagrees.  Then-AICPA President Barry C. Melancon made this clear when he stated, on behalf of the association and its constituents, “[w]e believe a voluntary program would create confusion regarding the relative proficiencies of the various types of preparers.”  Isaac M. O’Bannon, AICPA Says IRS Voluntary Preparer Regulation System Doesn’t Protect Taxpayers, CPA Practice Advisor (May 21, 2014), https://www.cpapracticeadvisor.com/news/11474865/aicpa-says-irs-voluntary-preparer-regulation-system-doesnt-protect-taxpayers.  Then-chair of the AICPA Tax Executive Committee Jeffery A. Porter said that “any voluntary regime constructed would still not address the problems with unethical and fraudulent tax return prepares.”  Id. Continue reading “The Annual Filing Season Program: A Brief Examination of AICPA v. IRS and the Resulting Regulations on Tax Return Preparers”

*Ryan W. Fish

The Supreme Court of Washington recently ruled in State v. Gregory that the state’s death penalty was unconstitutional because it was imposed in “an arbitrary and racially biased manner.”  State v. Gregory, 427 P.3d 621, 621 (Wash. 2018).   This marks the fourth time that Washington has done so.  Id. at 626.  Washington is now one of twenty states which have abolished the death penalty.  Mark Berman, Washington Supreme Court Strikes Down State’s Death Penalty, Saying It Is ‘Arbitrary and Racially Biased,’ Wash. Post (Oct. 11, 2018), https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2018/10/11/washington-supreme-court-strikes-down-states-death-penalty-saying-it-is-arbitrary-and-racially-biased/.Continue reading “Study Showing Racial Bias in Death Penalty Sentencing Leads Washington State’s Highest Court to Rule Washington’s Death Penalty Statute Violated State’s Constitution”

“The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.” – Donald Trump*

** Joseph Rossi

In 2015, a group of twenty-one children filed an official complaint against the United States government, then-President Barack Obama, and several governmental agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).  Juliana v. United States, 217 F.Supp.3d 1224, 1233 (D. Or. 2016).  In the complaint, these children alleged that the government had infringed on their rights by failing to ensure a habitable climate for their future, despite decades of knowledge of the risks posed by man-made climate change.  Complaint at 3-6, Juliana v. United States, 217 F.Supp.3d 1224 (D. Or. Aug. 12, 2015) (No. 6:15-cv-01517-TC).  In the history of the United States court system, the government has been sued for climate change close to 900 times, but these claims have been dismissed due to various reasons related to the plaintiffs’ standing or claim of injury.  See Katy Scott, Can ‘Climate Kids’ Take on Governments and Win?, Cable News Network (July 24, 2018, 10:51 PM), https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/24/health/youth-climate-march/index.html.  In 2016, however, Juliana v. United States became the first such case of private citizens suing the government to survive the government’s motion for dismissal.  See Juliana, 217 F.Supp.3d at 1262.  Juliana, which is currently being argued in front of the Ninth Circuit, has the potential to drastically change not only the course of environmental law, but the entire environmental policy of the United States regarding climate change.  Id.Continue reading “How Future Generations are Suing the Federal Government for a Habitable Planet”

* Alana Glover

Establishing “Right to Try” legislation throughout the country has been a concept that proponents of the law have been working toward for years.  What Is Right To Try?, Right To Try, http://righttotry.org/about-right-to-try/, (last visited Nov. 8, 2018).  Many proponents of this legislation support the concept of creating alternative options for terminally ill patients who have exhausted government approved treatment options and cannot secure a position in a clinical trial.  See id.  As of today, forty-one states, and recently Congress, have passed Right to Try laws, which allow terminally ill patients to try an experimental drug or treatment that has only completed a Phase 1 trial of the Federal Drug Administration’s (FDA) multi-phased process.  Id.  Although, on its face, providing terminally ill patients with access to use an experimental drug at their choice seems ideal, there may also be many complications.Continue reading “Patients Can Try Experimental Treatments Before They Are Approved by the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) . . . What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: Maryland’s Right to Try Law and the Potential for Federal Preemption.”