Huntington, New York\u27s Sex Offender Policy and the Intrastate Right to Travel

Sex offenders are among the most loathed and detested members of our society. Over the past fifteen years, communities have zealously passed laws restricting the rights of sex offenders. These laws mandate that sex offenders register with authorities and severely limit where sex offenders may reside. This legislation is designed to foster an important goal: to protect the health and safety of children from possible recidivism from sex offenders. In 2007, the Town Board of Huntington, New York, passed a law barring sex offenders from renting or leasing accessory apartments within the Town. The health and safety of the town\u27s children is a compelling governmental interest. However, the Huntington statute is unconstitutional because it is violative of the constitutional right to intrastate travel, as recognized by the Second Circuit. Deprivation of the right to travel outweighs the town\u27s interest in protecting its children because the statute is not narrowly tailored to meet its public safety interest. Huntington\u27s accessory apartment statute is also poor public policy because it will lead to the inverse of its stated intentions. The statute is detrimental to the safety of children and will increase sex offender recidivism by pushing sex offenders underground and away from potential support systems. By enacting this statute, Huntington has done more harm than good for not only the citizens of the Town but for Suffolk County itself. Part II of this Comment provides a brief overview of the Town of Huntington. Part III discusses the development of the right to intrastate travel by first examining the fundamental right to interstate travel. Part IV analyzes the Second Circuit\u27s recognition of a fundamental right to intrastate travel and whether this right exists in Suffolk County. Part V studies the development of sex offender policy, including the development and constitutionality of residency restriction statutes. Part VI looks closely at New York\u27s sex offender policy, including the policy implemented in the Town of Huntington. Part VII deciphers why the Town of Huntington targeted accessory apartments, and whether the reasons for passing this statute contained in their legislative intent are valid. Finally, this Comment will examine the constitutionality of Huntington\u27s accessory apartment statute, regarding the right to intrastate travel, and whether Huntington\u27s sex offender policy, itself, is good for the general public welfare

Huntington, New York\u27s Sex Offender Policy and the Intrastate Right to Travel

Sex offenders are among the most loathed and detested members of our society. Over the past fifteen years, communities have zealously passed laws restricting the rights of sex offenders. These laws mandate that sex offenders register with authorities and severely limit where sex offenders may reside. This legislation is designed to foster an important goal: to protect the health and safety of children from possible recidivism from sex offenders. In 2007, the Town Board of Huntington, New York, passed a law barring sex offenders from renting or leasing accessory apartments within the Town. The health and safety of the town\u27s children is a compelling governmental interest. However, the Huntington statute is unconstitutional because it is violative of the constitutional right to intrastate travel, as recognized by the Second Circuit. Deprivation of the right to travel outweighs the town\u27s interest in protecting its children because the statute is not narrowly tailored to meet its public safety interest. Huntington\u27s accessory apartment statute is also poor public policy because it will lead to the inverse of its stated intentions. The statute is detrimental to the safety of children and will increase sex offender recidivism by pushing sex offenders underground and away from potential support systems. By enacting this statute, Huntington has done more harm than good for not only the citizens of the Town but for Suffolk County itself. Part II of this Comment provides a brief overview of the Town of Huntington. Part III discusses the development of the right to intrastate travel by first examining the fundamental right to interstate travel. Part IV analyzes the Second Circuit\u27s recognition of a fundamental right to intrastate travel and whether this right exists in Suffolk County. Part V studies the development of sex offender policy, including the development and constitutionality of residency restriction statutes. Part VI looks closely at New York\u27s sex offender policy, including the policy implemented in the Town of Huntington. Part VII deciphers why the Town of Huntington targeted accessory apartments, and whether the reasons for passing this statute contained in their legislative intent are valid. Finally, this Comment will examine the constitutionality of Huntington\u27s accessory apartment statute, regarding the right to intrastate travel, and whether Huntington\u27s sex offender policy, itself, is good for the general public welfare

Investment Games

Popular zero-commission stock trading apps like Robinhood innovate in user-experience design, featuring “gamification” practices—flashy graphics, leaderboards, and the like—that make it attractive, easy, and fun to trade stocks. Regulators are increasingly scrutinizing gamification and other digital engagement practices, with efforts underway at the SEC to adopt rules in broker-dealer and investment-advisor regulation. This attention reflects considerable skepticism about gamification in securities markets. At best, these practices encourage motivation and engagement, and democratize access to financial markets. But at worst, these practices encourage people to trade habitually and unreflectively, and more than they might want. This can lead to undesirable market-wide effects, like distorting the process by which markets allocate investment capital to firms and projects that will grow the real economy, as well as socially wasteful (and individually harmful) excessive trading. And given that interventions in retail investor choice have significant implications for market quality and wealth inequality, regulatory responses here are a high stakes matter for society broadly. Calls to regulate gamification highlight a tension at the core of securities markets. Securities law has largely ceded the field of market structure to the interests of sophisticated financial intermediaries in producing liquidity and price discovery. By permitting gamification practices that encourage active trading for the primary benefit of financial intermediaries, securities law subordinates its investor protection function to encourage wasteful investment in achieving eversmaller improvements in liquidity and price discovery. Regulatory intervention would be socially desirable, I argue, not just given what we know about retail trader behavior and its effects on personal finance and markets—but because it is an opportunity for securities law to recalibrate away from an all-out arms race in arbitrage. This Article takes up the problem of gamification and related digital engagement practices. It considers how gamification is the nearly inevitable consequence of the rise of retail investors who trade without superior information about a stock’s fundamental value, competition on brokerage commissions, and a fragmented market structure. Yet calls for regulatory interventions often elide important distinctions between how securities law should treat active traders who prefer risk, and those with preferences distorted by gamification. This Article explains how we got here; examines the social-welfare case for regulating gamification and related digital engagement practices; offers a typology of techniques that securities regulators can adopt in response; and assesses these interventions against existing securities law doctrine and policy. This Article also considers how the securities laws’ tenuous relationship with innovative stock-market technology shapes how retail investors engage with financial markets

Contract Design in the Shadow of Regulation

Does the threat of legal reform encourage companies to adopt high-quality contract terms that consumers ignore so that companies can use them in lobbying efforts to avoid reform? That may be an overlooked answer to a puzzle about consumer contracts. Consumers ignore most contract terms at the time of acceptance, so scholars usually expect companies to pick ignored terms of the lowest possible quality that courts will let them get away with. But some companies pick terms that are surprisingly high-quality. Courts do not require these terms that consumers ignore, so firms that pick them incur costs for seemingly little gain. This Article identifies a novel function of these terms: their audience is not courts or consumers but policymakers deciding whether to reform status quo legal rules from which companies profit. Drawing on behavioral law and economics, and illustrating with a case study of lobbying surrounding the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s bank account overdraft rule, this Article shows how companies use the high-quality terms they adopt in anticipation of regulation to “frame” the status quo rule. High-quality terms help show how the status quo rule might benefit consumers, letting companies appeal to policymakers’ cognitive biases so they are more likely to support the status quo rule. This Article addresses several practical and theoretical implications of anticipatory self-regulation to frame reform. On one hand, even the threat of legal reform might influence the kinds of contract terms businesses adopt. On the other, a small minority of contract terms can take on outsized role in policy debates about legal reform, potentially distorting policymaking. As a theoretical matter, moreover, the Article complements information revelation models of sequential policymaking by showing how actors at one stage can frame information so policymakers at a later stage resort to decision-simplifying heuristics that favor the status quo. I. Introduction II. Unexpectedly High-Quality Nonsalient Terms ... A. The Expected Race to the Bottom ... B. Puzzling Examples of High-Quality Nonsalient Terms ... 1. Overdraft Protection ... 2. Website Privacy Policies ... 3. Pro-Consumer Clauses in Relational Contracts of Adhesion ... 4. Do We See Anticipatory Self-Regulation Elsewhere? III. Anticipatory Self-Regulation and Framing Effects ... A. Framing the Status Quo in Policy Discourse with Contract Terms ... 1. Framing Effects ... 2. Contract Terms’ Salience to Policymakers ... B. Case Study: Using Anticipatory Self-Regulation to Frame Policy Choice ... 1. Status Quo Bias ... 2. Loss Aversion ... 3. Availability ... C. A General Account of Anticipatory Self-Regulation to Frame Policy ... D. Objections and Alternative Explanations ... 1. Assessing Objections … 2. Alternative Explanations to Anticipatory Self-Regulation IV. Implications ... A. Theoretical, Empirical, and Normative Implications ... B. Practical Implications for Policymakers and Reformers V. Conclusio

THE EFFECT OF PERSONAL AND FARM CHARACTERISTICS UPON GRAIN MARKETING PRACTICES

A survey of Kansas, Texas, and Iowa agricultural producers was taken to examine the factors affecting their grain marketing practices. Sales indices models and models of qualitative choice are used to determine whether marketers' choices of cash market, forward contract, or futures and options oriented marketing practices are significantly affected by their personal farm business characteristics. Results indicate that geographic location, farm size, grain enterprise specialization, farming experience, use of grain storage, and use of crop insurance have significant effects upon the respondents' choice of grain marketing practices.agricultural options, cash marketing, futures, grain marketing practices, multinomial logit, Tobit, Marketing,

High concentrations of flavor chemicals are present in electronic cigarette refill fluids.

We characterized the flavor chemicals in a broad sample of commercially available electronic cigarette (EC) refill fluids that were purchased in four different countries. Flavor chemicals in 277 refill fluids were identified and quantified by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, and two commonly used flavor chemicals were tested for cytotoxicity with the MTT assay using human lung fibroblasts and epithelial cells. About 85% of the refill fluids had total flavor concentrations >1 mg/ml, and 37% were >10 mg/ml (1% by weight). Of the 155 flavor chemicals identified in the 277 refill fluids, 50 were present at ≥1 mg/ml in at least one sample and 11 were ≥10 mg/ml in 54 of the refill fluids. Sixty-one% (170 out of 277) of the samples contained nicotine, and of these, 56% had a total flavor chemical/nicotine ratio >2. Four chemicals were present in 50% (menthol, triacetin, and cinnamaldehyde) to 80% (ethyl maltol) of the samples. Some products had concentrations of menthol ("Menthol Arctic") and ethyl maltol ("No. 64") that were 30 times (menthol) and 100 times (ethyl maltol) their cytotoxic concentration. One refill fluid contained cinnamaldehyde at ~34% (343 mg/ml), more than 100,000 times its cytotoxic level. High concentrations of some flavor chemicals in EC refill fluids are potentially harmful to users, and continued absence of any regulations regarding flavor chemicals in EC fluids will likely be detrimental to human health