Fiscal Citizenship and Taxpayer Privacy

Should individual tax data be public or confidential? Within the United States, secrecy has been the rule since the Tax Reform Act of 1976. But at three critical junctures—the Civil War, the 1920s, and the 1930s—Congress made individual tax records open for public inspection, and newspapers published the incomes of the billionaires of the time. Today, Finland, Norway, and Sweden all mandate significant transparency for individual tax information. This Essay intervenes in the tax-confidentiality debate by building a new analytical framework of fiscal citizenship. Until now, scholars have focused on compliance—whether disclosure incentivizes honest reporting of income, and if it does, whether compliance gains outweigh the intrusion into a generalized notion of taxpayer privacy. But the choice between confidentiality and transparency implicates more than compliance. It rests on the taxpayers’ dynamic interactions with the fiscal apparatus of a state that aspires to democracy and egalitarianism. This Essay posits that fiscal citizens play the roles of reporters, funders, stakeholders, and policymakers in the tax system. Within these roles, transparency and privacy have distinct valences. Further, the degree to which any taxpayer partakes in each role depends on both their own income and the income inequality within the community structured by federal taxation. Under this taxonomy, the propriety of disclosure falls onto a spectrum, and transparency is more appropriate for ultrawealthy taxpayers in times of high economic inequality. The Essay thus provides insights to help policymakers design public-disclosure regimes that cohere with the norms implicit in our fiscal social contract with the state

Environmental War, Climate Security, and the Russia-Ukraine Crisis

This Article addresses the Russia-Ukraine conflict’s broad implications for energy security, climate security, and environment protections during wartime. I assert that in the short-term the Russian-Ukraine war is poised to hinder much-needed international climate progress. It will stymie international decarbonization efforts and cause greater uncertainty in other climate-destabilized parts of the world, such as the Arctic. While Russia has become a pariah in the eyes of the United States and other Western nations, it has forged new partnerships and capitalized on new, lucrative energy markets outside the West and Global South. But in the long term, the global renewable energy transition will accelerate as nations realize the economic and national security risk when relying upon Russia and similarly unreliable petrostates. National security is energy security. In Part II, I describe and analyze Russia’s brazen attacks on the Ukraine environment and built infrastructure, applying these actions to environmental protections embedded within international humanitarian law (IHL) and the law of armed conflict. My analysis focuses on Russia’s wholesale disregard of IHL, as evidenced by its callous and indiscriminate attacks on Ukrainian civilians, energy infrastructure, dams, and Europe’s largest nuclear power plant. In Part III, I analyze the Russia-Ukraine conflict through the lens of energy security and environmental security. In Part IV, I address the war’s broader implications for long-term climate progress and climate security. This includes a discussion of the normative implications for Arctic security, a part of the world warming two to three times the pace of the rest of the world. The Arctic is also home to Russian militarization efforts, acting as a litmus test for Russia’s geopolitical ambitions. Throughout the Article, I look ahead to the post-conflict geopolitical order. While there is no current end in sight to hostilities, I offer recommendations for the U.S. and the rest of the world to make post-conflict climate progress and help guide long-term decarbonization efforts. I conclude on a cautiously optimistic note, arguing that the Russia-Ukraine crisis provides a generational opportunity to accelerate international decarbonization and climate efforts

Protecting Title IX’s Promise: The Injustice of Indifference in Title IX Peer Sexual Harassment Cases

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 promised dramatic measures to address sex-based discrimination in education. In the context of civil suits against schools involving peer sexual harassment, these measures have yet to live up to their promise. Under the existing standard, student victims of peer sexual harassment must demonstrate that their educational institutions responded to their reports of harassment with “deliberate indifference.” This standard favors institutions over students as it imposes liability only in the most egregious cases. A deepening conflict between the circuit courts regarding what deliberate indifference actually requires compounds concerns over the standard’s ineffectiveness. Courts like the Sixth Circuit, who adopt a narrow interpretation of deliberate indifference, require that students show they were subjected to subsequent actionable harassment, a rule that further harms students. In contrast, courts like the Tenth Circuit utilize a broader interpretation and find that a demonstration of vulnerability to further harassment is sufficient to establish deliberate indifference. After reviewing the policy motivations behind Title IX and tracing the development of the deliberate indifference standard to its recent split, this Comment argues for the codification of the Tenth Circuit’s standard, which permits plaintiffs to show deliberate indifference through either further actionable harassment or vulnerability to further harassment. The amendment should also evaluate institutional responses under a standard of unreasonableness rather than clear unreasonableness. This approach would solidify Title IX’s application to peer sexual harassment, encourage proactive and meaningful institutional responses, and allow plaintiffs a greater chance of obtaining relief

Operationalizing Power in Health Law: The Hospital Abolition Hypothesis

This symposium Article describes how prison abolitionist arguments also support the hypothesis that a defining goal of health law should be the abolition of hospitals. Like prison abolitionism, the hospital abolition hypothesis can provide a constructive way to shift the focus of legal analysis from substantive dimensions (in health law — cost, quality, access, and equity) to the dimension of power

The Legal Crisis Within the Climate Crisis

Climate change creates a difficult choice for property owners and governmental officials alike: Should they invest in costly climate adaptation measures or retreat from climate-exposed areas? Either decision is fraught with legal uncertainty, running headfirst into antiquated legal doctrines designed for a more stable world. Climate impacts to the coastline are forcing policymakers to consider four adaptation tools: (1) resisting climate impacts by building sea walls and armoring the shoreline; (2) accommodating those impacts by elevating existing structures; (3) managed retreat such as systematically and preemptively moving people out of harm’s way; and (4) reactively moving people to new locations following natural disasters. This final tool of unmanaged retreat has emerged as the default “strategy.” However, longstanding property and tort law doctrines—developed when there was a more stable physical environment—are poised to thwart these tools. In this Article, I argue that just as climate change destabilizes the physical environment, legal doctrine is also ripe for destabilization. Using coastal zone adaptation challenges as a touchpoint, I show how legal doctrines designed for a more stable physical environment constrain climate adaptation efforts. For example, if governments invest in armoring measures, they will confront physical takings jurisprudence that mandates just compensation. The duty to repair and maintain—a mixed question of property and tort law—complicates disinvestment by states and localities from coastal roads and their retreat from coastal areas. Legal doctrine needs to adapt to meet the climate moment. Absent a doctrinal change, climate adaptation will default to unmanaged retreat—an ad hoc, reactive, and disjointed “strategy” that exacerbates existing inequalities

“Green” is the New Black: Enforcing Consumer Protection Laws Against Greenwashing in the Fashion Industry

As climate change continues to relentlessly change landscapes, threaten harvests, and increase the frequency of natural disasters, legislators and regulators globally must expand upon their efforts to protect the environment and citizens from the harmful practices of corporations, some of the greatest contributors to climate change. One of the greatest perpetrators of harm to the environment is the fashion industry. The harm is further compounded by the rise of fast fashion companies. These companies utilize methods of rapid production and encourage overconsumption, resulting in a rampant storefront to landfill cycle. However, legal activists, politicians, the public, and some industry leaders have increasingly taken action to curtail the harmful effects of these fast fashion companies. To compete for consumer attention and to protect their images in the face of increased environmental activism, fast fashion companies have begun greenwashing their products and supply chain. Through greenwashing, companies misrepresent the sustainability of their products or services, allowing the consumer to believe they are making a more environmentally friendly purchase than they really are. This Comment outlines the current major approaches of the United States, United Kingdom, and France toward preventing greenwashing by fashion companies. This Comment looks at the successes of consumer protection laws and actions against companies accused of greenwashing to provide guidance for fashion companies and other countries that have yet to implement similar regulatory schemes. Additionally, while the United States, the United Kingdom, and France are regarded as three leaders in anti-greenwashing legislation, they each will benefit from more comprehensive and intelligible laws guiding enforcement efforts