Master Gardeners

In legal education, we tend to focus first and foremost on producing graduates who can effectively serve and thrive in the private for-profit, non-profit, and federal government economies. There are pressing reasons to maintain these priorities. And yet, assuming legal educators come to believe -- as Schragger has (and I have) -- that cities belong at the center of economic and constitutional thinking, it stands to reason that law schools should find a way to place cities among the subjects at the center of legal educational thinking. Now is the time to consider how law schools can help raise up the Master Gardeners city inhabitants need and so richly deserve

Through the Looking Glass: Recent Developments in Affirmative Action

The year 1995 saw three major developments that threaten the future of voluntary affirmative action programs in California and nationwide. On June 12, the U.S. Supreme Court in Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Pena, held that voluntary federal affirmative action programs should be subject to the same strict scrutiny reserved for all other racial classifications. The following month, the Regents of the University of California voted to abolish the use of race and gender as factors in admissions and hiring in the University of California system. Finally, last year the so-called California Civil Rights Initiative ( CCRI ) was presented to the citizens of California as a possible ballot measure for the November 1996 statewide elections. The CCRI would outlaw the use of racial preferences in any organization receiving state funds. This piece will briefly discuss these developments, highlighting the oddly distorted mix of fact and fantasy that has surrounded the affirmative action debates

Richmond Medical Center for Women v. Herring: Prohibiting Partial Birth Abortion but Keeping Constitutional Rights Intact

In Richmond Medical Center for Women v. Herring (Richmond Medical Center V), the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held that Virginia\u27s ban on partial birth abortion did not impose an undue burden on a woman\u27s right to obtain an abortion and was thus constitutional. The Virginia Partial Birth Infanticide Act specifically prohibits only the intact dilation and evacuation procedure. It further includes intent requirements and a life exception, which allow a physician to avoid liability in rare cases where an intended standard dilation and evacuation procedure inadvertently results in an intact partial delivery of the fetus. The facial challenge of the Virginia Act was based on a speculative set of circumstances, insufficient to render the statute invalid. Accordingly, the Fourth Circuit properly upheld the Virginia Act

The Case for Local Constitutional Enforcement

This Article calls for the overruling of the central rule in Hunter v. City of Pittsburgh (1907) on Erie grounds. Hunter announced as a matter of federal law that local governments are powerless instrumentalities of state governments. Legal scholars have criticized Hunter for exacerbating the doctrinal and practical problems that plague local government law. This Article goes further by challenging Hunter directly. It argues first that Erie v. Tompkins (1938), properly read, effectively overruled the central rule in Hunter. Second, it argues that we should not mourn the loss of that rule because its analytic support structures are historically, doctrinally, and logically defective. The Article then narrows its focus to a doctrine derived from Hunter, the federal rule barring localities from invoking the Constitution against their own states (the Hunter doctrine ). It argues that after Erie, the Hunter doctrine is best understood as a doctrine addressing capacity to sue; that federal courts should defer to state law in deciding whether a particular locality has the capacity to bring a constitutional challenge against its own state rather than superimposing a national rule; and that courts and scholars should welcome localities into constitutional debates because their full participation is pro-local and pro-democratic, and would raise the overall competence of constitutional debate and local public advocacy. Finally, looking to the future, the Article calls for scholars to address which of the Constitution\u27s provisions should apply to localities qua localities; to consider the circumstances under which the Court should permit localities to pursue representative constitutional claims on behalf of their constituents; and to develop an alternative, post-Hunter theoretical framework for local government law

The Case for Local Constitutional Enforcement

This Article calls for the overruling of the central rule in Hunter v. City of Pittsburgh (1907) on Erie grounds. Hunter announced as a matter of federal law that local governments are powerless instrumentalities of state governments. Legal scholars have criticized Hunter for exacerbating the doctrinal and practical problems that plague local government law. This Article goes further by challenging Hunter directly. It argues first that Erie v. Tompkins (1938), properly read, effectively overruled the central rule in Hunter. Second, it argues that we should not mourn the loss of that rule because its analytic support structures are historically, doctrinally, and logically defective. The Article then narrows its focus to a doctrine derived from Hunter, the federal rule barring localities from invoking the Constitution against their own states (the Hunter doctrine ). It argues that after Erie, the Hunter doctrine is best understood as a doctrine addressing capacity to sue; that federal courts should defer to state law in deciding whether a particular locality has the capacity to bring a constitutional challenge against its own state rather than superimposing a national rule; and that courts and scholars should welcome localities into constitutional debates because their full participation is pro-local and pro-democratic, and would raise the overall competence of constitutional debate and local public advocacy. Finally, looking to the future, the Article calls for scholars to address which of the Constitution\u27s provisions should apply to localities qua localities; to consider the circumstances under which the Court should permit localities to pursue representative constitutional claims on behalf of their constituents; and to develop an alternative, post-Hunter theoretical framework for local government law

Master Gardeners

In legal education, we tend to focus first and foremost on producing graduates who can effectively serve and thrive in the private for-profit, non-profit, and federal government economies. There are pressing reasons to maintain these priorities. And yet, assuming legal educators come to believe -- as Schragger has (and I have) -- that cities belong at the center of economic and constitutional thinking, it stands to reason that law schools should find a way to place cities among the subjects at the center of legal educational thinking. Now is the time to consider how law schools can help raise up the Master Gardeners city inhabitants need and so richly deserve

Nigrostriatal Dopmaine Function and Insulin Resistance

Clinical studies have linked Type 2 Diabetes (T2D) with neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease (PD). Although the link between T2D and AD is relatively well established, the potential link between T2D and PD is less understood. The mechanism by which such a link is mediated is unknown. It is also unclear whether the comorbidity between these diseases is bidirectional: whether T2D predisposes individuals to develop PD, or whether it is actually PD that increases T2D risk. The purpose of this work was to investigate this potential link using preclinical models. We used a high fat feeding regimen to model early stage T2D and analyzed the effects of this model on the basal ganglia, which is affected in Parkinson's disease. We used the 6-hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA) lesion model of PD to analyze glucose tolerance and peripheral insulin resistance following dopamine (DA) depletion. Finally, we combined a high fat diet and low dose 6-OHDA model to determine whether a high fat diet can exacerbate DA depletion. We found that high fat diet-induced insulin resistance elicits profound functional effects in the striatum. DA release was severely blunted in high fat-fed animals, and DA uptake was markedly slower. Interestingly, magnetic resonance imaging revealed increased iron content in the substantia nigra of these same animals, and expression of several proteins involved in iron transport was altered. The effects of 6-OHDA mediated dopamine depletion on peripheral glucose tolerance were less impressive. Although severe unilateral DA depletion induced insulin resistance in the striatum in both young and middle aged rats, glucose tolerance and peripheral insulin signaling were not affected. Finally, we observed that a high fat diet significantly increased DA depletion in response to the same dose of 6-OHDA, indicating that high fat feeding may increase the vulnerability of nigrostriatal neurons to toxins. While our studies do not support a role for DA depletion in mediating peripheral glucose tolerance, they do provide evidence that high fat diet-induced insulin resistance may contribute to impaired dopaminergic function and potentially neurodegeneration