Volume 4 Issue 2 (Complete Spring 2017)

A complete version of LMU Law Review Volume Issue 2 for Spring 2017

The U.S. Constitution, the U.S. Department of Justice, and State Efforts to Legalize Marijuana

This Article explains why the Department of Justice’s marijuana policy over the past eight years violates the Constitution. Part II tells the story of how we ended up where we are today. It discusses the history of federal marijuana regulation, including the CSA’s treatment of marijuana as a Schedule I drug. Part III provides an overview of recent state marijuana legalization measures. It also discusses the federal government’s response to those measures. Part IV discusses the Supremacy Clause, and Part V discusses the Take Care Clause. Part VI consists of a brief conclusion

The Hearsay and Confrontation Clause Problems Caused by Admitting What a Non-Testifying Interpreter Said the Criminal Defendant Said

This Article proceeds in four parts. Part I provides an in-depth discussion of the hearsay problem raised by admitting statements made by a non-testifying interpreter. It explores the historical treatment of the problem and discusses the development of the agency and language conduit theories. Additionally, Part I highlights the flaws with both theories—the language conduit theory is based on a false premise regarding the task of interpreting, and the agency theory contradicts well settled principles of agency law. Part II discusses the Confrontation Clause issue by describing the current state of the law and arguing that the Sixth Amendment is violated when the government admits statements that a non-testifying interpreter made to a police officer outside of court. Specifically, when an interpreter tells a police officer what the defendant said, the interpreter has made a “testimonial” statement under Crawford and its progeny—particularly Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts and Bullcoming v. New Mexico. Part III provides practical advice on how prosecutors and police officers can obtain and admit such statements without violating the hearsay rules and the Confrontation Clause. A brief conclusion follows in Part IV

Specifically Authorized by Binding Precedent Does Not Mean Suggested by Persuasive Precedent: Applying the Good Faith Exception after Davis v. United States

A number of federal circuit courts have refused to apply the Fourth Amendment’s exclusionary rule to evidence obtained from GPS vehicle trackers that were installed and monitored without a warrant before United States v. Jones. Those courts have largely reached that result by invoking Davis v. United States’ holding that the exclusionary rule does not apply where an officer reasonably relied on binding appellate precedent that was later overruled. More specifically, the circuit courts have viewed the Supreme Court’s 1983 decision in United States v. Knotts (addressing “beeper” tracking devices) as binding precedent that specifically authorized the warrantless installation and monitoring of GPS vehicle trackers prior to Jones. The Fourth Circuit’s decision in United States v. Stephens is representative of the “Knotts is binding precedent under Davis approach” that most of the circuit courts have used to resolve the exclusionary rule question. This Article, therefore, uses Stephens as a vehicle for analyzing that approach. This Article argues that decisions like Stephens have stretched the holding of Davis and interpreted Knotts in a way that contradicts Supreme Court precedent. And, the circuit courts have done so for no good reason because they could have reached the same result—refusing to exclude the GPS vehicle tracker evidence—by working through the general good-faith analysis. Instead, most of the circuit courts have chosen to resolve the exclusionary rule issue by defining the terms “specifically authorized” and “binding precedent” to mean “suggested” and “persuasive precedent.” In the process, the courts have converted the intentionally narrow holding of Davis into a broad decision with unknown boundaries

Bridging the Nature/Culture Divide: Interpreting the Environmental History of the War

This roundtable explored the role that environmental history, more specifically the branch that overlaps the interdisciplinary field of cultural landscape studies, in providing context for expanding interpretation