During the summer of 2018, I had occasion to write a book review of How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. The book has its flaws, including practicing the kind of partisanship that it highlights and claims to deplore. But, whatever the book’s flaws, Levitsky and Ziblatt clearly demonstrate that it can happen here — our democracy can actually die — by contrasting the decline of democratic norms in America over the past forty-five years with countries in which similar experiences led to dictatorial rule. According to the authors, the fundamental change that explains the end of democratic systems is the decline of tolerance for rule by the other side and the resulting end of forbearance against using all legal means to prevent that outcome. When political competition becomes unremitting warfare, democracy may come to an end. Who can doubt that this describes America today? Levitsky and Ziblatt demonstrate the various ways that American politicians do everything in their power to stymie effective government when the other side is in power and to entrench their rule when they are in office. The flaw in the book is the authors’ tendency to associate all or most such actions with Republicans in the beginning of America’s democratic decline and to ascribe to Democrats mere reaction. This partisanship in outlook is surely irrelevant today. The Democrats retook the House of Representatives in the 2018 congressional elections, and they will probably eventually impeach President Donald Trump, however much or little actual evidence there is of his wrongdoing. If Democrats retake the Senate, they will block any Trump Administration, or other Republican Administration, Supreme Court nominees from confirmation. These actions would be clear violations of the norms of tolerance and forbearance. Whoever started it, this is where we are now.
The purpose of this paper is to increase awareness of a free, proven method for improving addiction recovery outcomes that courts and treatment professionals can access with minimal implementation costs. The method is grounded in the Helper Therapy Principle (“HTP”), and we hope that wider dissemination of the ideas contained herein will spur courts, legislatures, regulatory agencies, law enforcement officers, community activists, healthcare professionals, and any others concerned to incorporate HTP more broadly. More specifically, effective application of HTP could positively impact all of the following: addiction treatment facility practice, health insurance coverage and access to care, community-based solutions and social institutions, problem-solving courts, and addiction treatment in prison.
When Henry “Seth” Hubbard renounced his formally drawn wills and created a new holographic will on the day of his suicide, one that excluded his children, grandchildren, and ex-wives, and gave the bulk of his estate to his housekeeper and caretaker, a will contest was imminent. That Seth Hubbard was a white man living in rural Mississippi and his housekeeper, a Black woman, made the will contest illustrative of our ongoing national discomfort with slavery, the Confederacy, and the respective obligations of and responsibilities to the descendants of both. This is John Grisham’s Sycamore Row, a novel in which the reader journeys to discover the mysteries behind Seth Hubbard’s will, his intentions, his burden as a witness to a lynching over his ancestor’s land, and the fate of the descendants of the formerly enslaved who worked and settled that land known as Sycamore Row only to see its destruction when they asserted their right to it. Seth’s act of bequeathing the bulk of his estate to a stranger made family through blood spilled over stolen land and stolen, broken Black bodies is an important start to an important discussion: Who bears responsibility to the survivors of domestic terrorism, white supremacy, and for the benefits that white privilege bestows? The will contest encapsulates the rhetoric of race and redemption; in Sycamore Row Hubbard’s estate acts as reparations. This Article explores the rhetoric of race, redemption, and reparations in Sycamore Row and as it plays out in American jurisprudence in three parts. Part II explores how the will contest in Sycamore Row illustrates arguments for and against reparations. Specifically, it evaluates how Aristotle’s Persuasive Appeals logos (using evidence and epistemology to persuade), pathos (using emotions to persuade), and ethos (using character to persuade) become racialized in the nomos (the normative universe where they function), both in Seth Hubbard’s will and the will contest that follows, and as used as appeals in reparations litigation. Part III uses interdisciplinary narrative theory to interrogate the language of Seth Hubbard’s will as his cultural narrative of race, racism, and redemption. It also considers how Seth’s story is a story of American racism that ends differently from our current American story. Seth’s story is a doorway to hope and a different way of viewing obligations and responsibilities to redress racial wrongs. In the final section, Part IV, the Article turns to the concept and practice of reconciliation, specifically how Seth Hubbard’s actions through his will, the backlash from his family, and the reverberations throughout Clanton, Mississippi provide a glimpse of racial reconciliation in practice. Hubbard’s will and the context for its creation demonstrate that racial reconciliation begins with acknowledgment of harm done, presents a plan to address the harm, and contains an action or action(s) to implement the plan. While Hubbard’s is one will, his will is a roadmap for the nation, as comprised of individual actors, to acknowledge and address racial harms and for racial reconciliation. The Article concludes with a call to disrupt the dangerous racial rhetoric that renders our country brittle and prone to shattering, threatening America with irreparable brokenness.
Each year, countless scholars publish articles in law reviews across the country hoping to have some impact on the way courts interpret and apply the law. To have one’s labors approvingly cited or discussed by a court is one of the highest compliments a legal scholar can receive. Thus, it is the height of irony that judges have discussed or alluded to the works of novelist John Grisham — an attorney who has never authored a law review article — in over two dozen opinions. This study of those opinions begins with an explanation of methodology and an annotated bibliography of the results. Next, the author discusses the various ways that courts have used Grisham’s works, categorizing each case according to its function. The author concludes with further speculation about why judges are drawn to Grisham’s novels.
By January, 1956, the Montgomery Bus boycott was in full-swing. Black citizens in Montgomery, Alabama were refusing to ride the city’s private buses to protest racially segregated seating. On the afternoon of January 26, 1956, twenty-seven-year-old Martin Luther King, Jr. had finished his day of work at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery. On his drive home, King stopped his vehicle to offer a ride to a group of bus boycotters standing at a downtown car-pool location. After the boycotters entered King’s car, two motorcycle policemen pulled-in behind King’s vehicle. While everyone in King’s car tried to remain calm, the police continued to follow King’s car. At the next car-pool location, when some of King’s passengers began to exit, one of the policemen pulled next to King’s window, stating: “‘Get out, King. You’re under arrest for speeding thirty miles an hour in a twenty-five-mile zone.’” While stunned by the police action, King did not protest. He was arrested and taken to the Montgomery City Jail, where he was processed, fingerprinted and jailed with other black prisoners. It has been nearly sixty years since Martin Luther King, Jr. was subjected to this arbitrary and discriminatory police practice. Surely, things have changed in America. After the demise of the Jim Crow system, the enactment of federal and civil rights legislation protecting blacks from discriminatory application of state and local laws, and several decades of Supreme Court rulings enforcing the rights of black citizens, it would seem that law enforcement officials can no longer perform this type of arbitrary and bigoted policing. Although much has changed in America, investigatory or pretext stops unfortunately remain ubiquitous. As in King’s case, these stops are not aimed at enforcing the traffic code. Rather, police who conduct investigatory stops are a fishing expedition to look for evidence of criminal conduct. Various types of law enforcement agencies utilize pretext stops; and high-ranking police officials endorse pretext stops as a crime control measure. Indeed, two decades ago, investigatory stops were given a major boost when the federal government actively encouraged state and local police departments to use traffic laws as a basis for stopping cars suspected of drug smuggling. From one perspective, the use of pretext stops in the War on Drugs specifically, and to fight crime generally, raises no legal alarm. For most white Americans, modern application of this practice may seem annoying, but it is worth the cost in the fight against crime. A motorist is stopped by the police. The officer then questions the motorist about his or her travel plans (and if there are passengers, they are also questioned). Finally, a traffic summons or ticket may be issued. While bothersome, this practice, viewed in the aggregate, does not amount to a constitutional crisis. Moreover, on a rare occasion, criminality is exposed as a result of the stop. Black Americans, however, have a distinctly different perception of the situation. For King, the pretext stop was much more than a “stop.” The upshot was a frightening ride to jail; at one point during the ride, King believed the police were going to lynch him. Today, the modern pretext stop is on display when a black motorist is seen standing on the side of a highway or city street while police (typically white officers) search his vehicle. Study after study has demonstrated that African-Americans are targeted for pretext stops at a rate greater than white Americans. For blacks, particularly black men, a pretext stop is unequivocal notice of their inferior status in America. As Don Jackson, a former police officer, put it not too long ago: “The black American finds that the most prominent reminder of his second-class citizenship are the police.” The authors in this symposium were asked to consider how far America has come in the fifty years after the tragic assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Of course, America has made substantial progress on several fronts that would have pleased Dr. King had he lived to see them. Many aspects of our criminal justice system, however, would have deeply disappointed King. We are confident that the continued and widespread use of pretext stops and their attended consequences would have offended King. Looking forward, America can honor Dr. King by ending pretext stops. This article was presented at “MLK 50: Where Do We Go From Here?,” a symposium co-sponsored by the University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law and the National Civil Rights Museum, on April 2-4, 2018. It will be published in the forthcoming Volume 49 of the University Memphis Law Review.
This paper tackles fair remuneration to amateur athletes competing at, and for, America’s postsecondary schools. The easy (therefore popular) analysis of present conditions proceeds that since the NCAA makes hundreds of millions of dollars from athletics, as do its member institutions, partial college athletics’ income redistribution to players harms the institutions little while giving these hard-working athletes some compensation. Litigation in the federal courts, especially the Ninth Circuit district and those appellate courts parsing Sherman Act Rule of Reason mechanics, grinds toward tentative solutions but no “global” resolution. Judicial “legislation” breaking the logjam between opposing doctrines of amateurism and just financial rewards promises further chaos. Meanwhile, pundits weigh in on college athlete compensation thinking through few among the myriad ramifications of creating a “free labor market” in elite male athletes’ services, through which postsecondary institutions bid for their services without compensation limits. Universities decry an open marketplace for such players as unsustainable, guarantying the bankruptcy of their college sports enterprise and perhaps the insolvency of entire post-secondary institutions. No position seems entirely authentic, and seldom is any position evidence-based.I address the implications of paying college athletes in this paper, rescuing from potential college athlete marketplace confusion (and looming insolvency) a compensation system I believe both fairly “pays” athletes and maintains calm and predictability in athletics’ administrations that budget and fundraise to remunerate athletes. I acknowledge that athletes are not receiving as much as they might earn outside the academy, in view of their personal sacrifices to the success of their sports programs. Yet I hold the perspective that college players are not firmly established as the main force behind university successes, athletically or otherwise. Finally, I address the pervasive reach of Title IX of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a bastion pundits believe readily will be breached if universities and the NCAA will just open their wallets. Not so fast, the paper explains – since Title IX prohibits discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance, this federal law is an “inconvenient truth” not to be swept away by enthusiasts of paying college athletes in “revenue” sports. Readers aligned with “laissez faire” or “hold fast to amateurism” camps in this athlete compensation debate will find my proposed solutions irritating – perhaps food for thoughtful conversations about future stewarding of college athletics and their participants.
To rectify the advent of rampant false claims levied against the government in the wake of the Civil War, Congress borrowed from the English practice of deputizing private attorneys general when it enacted the False Claims Act (“FCA”). Under the FCA, a private individual, known as a relator, assumes the role of prosecuting the presumably under-policed sovereign interest of vindicating fraud on the government. The relator benefits through compensation from meritorious claims, and the government benefits through compensation for latent, undetected sovereign injuries. Everyone wins (except those liable). But what happens when the government, over the opposition of the relator, wishes to discontinue a case? Whose interests matter? And whose interests should control? Although State Farm Fire & Cas. Co. v. United States ex rel. Rigsby, a case from October Term 2016, circumscribed a defendant’s ability to dismiss an FCA case on the basis of certain statutory violations, the Court has yet to address what level of authority the government has in controlling a lawsuit filed in its stead, and how courts should review governmental motions to dismiss. Amid those unresolved questions, advocates seeking to dismiss FCA lawsuits should review not just their clients’ procedural vehicles, but also the government’s statutory grants of authority. Even if a violation of a statutory requirement does not compel dismissal per se, Rigsby suggests that statutory violations still have valence when persuading the government to move to dismiss cases. Among the grounds that the government could articulate in seeking to dismiss a case, a statutory violation presents a crisp argument in support of dismissal. This Article proposes that advocates seeking to dismiss FCA lawsuits should explore all options, including persuading the government to exercise its statutory right to dismiss the case. In three parts, the Article introduces the FCA, reviews Rigsby, and explains how statutory violations can assist in convincing the government to dismiss these lawsuits. Although a circuit split has formed on the legal standard for determining when a court can enter a judgment dismissing an FCA case on motion by the government, under all standards, advocates should apprise the government with haste of statutory violations and explain how those violations impinge otherwise countervailing interests in seeking sovereign relief. And in those limited instances when the government moves to dismiss, courts should give special solitude to the government’s determination that its interests are best served by dismissing the case.
Richard Weaver was correct. Property jurisprudence in the last two decades has vindicated Weaver’s claim that property is the last metaphysical right. But Weaver was correct insofar as he had in mind a common-law property right. The lesson of the last three decades is that property is the last metaphysical right because and insofar as property dominion is the last pre-political source of obligation. The priority of property rights is rooted in the common law of wrongs. Because we have pre-political duties, we have pre-political liberties. Liberty grows out of a million discrete legal duties, each of those duties correlating exactly with the right of a human being, a moral agent, a possessor of practical reason. Remarks delivered at the Spring 2017 meeting of the Philadelphia Society in Dallas, Texas.
I. INTRODUCTION 928II. WHAT IS LAND BANKING? 928III. EVOLUTION OF TENNESSEE LOCAL LAND BANK ACT 931A. Brief History Behind Tennessee Land Banking 931B. Passage of the Tennessee Local Land Bank Pilot Program 933C. Amending Land Banking Legislation in Tennessee 934D. Foreclosure and Delinquency in Tennessee 937IV. COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF TENNESSEE LOCAL LAND BANKING ACT 939A. Legislative Findings 940B. Definitions 940C. Creation 942D. Board of Directors 9441. Different Provisions 9442. Identical Provisions 947E. Applicability of State Law and Conflicts 949F. Staffing 950G. Powers 9501. Identical Provisions 9512. Different Provisions 9523. Exclusive Provisions 955H. Acquisition of Property 956I. Disposition of Property 958J. Open Meetings and Records 960K. Dissolution 961L. Conflicts of Interest 961M. Construction of Legislation 962N. Property Taxes 962O. Action to Quiet Title 963P. Appeals 964Q. Comptroller Authority 965R. Other Sections 965V. Existing Land Banks in Tennessee 966A. Oak Ridge 966B. Chattanooga 968C. Memphis and Shelby County 969VI. Conclusion 971I. IntroductionVacant, abandoned, tax-delinquent, and foreclosed properties present one of the greatest impediments to growth and security for our cities and communities. Properties with any of these characteristics not only create a cycle of land waste and poverty but also contribute to declining investment and interest in the areas in which they are located. Governments all over the country, from the federal government, state governments, and local governments, have tried repeatedly to devise solutions to solve the problems posed by vacant, abandoned, tax-delinquent, and foreclosed properties, but for the most part the strategies they have used have been limited or temporary in their success. Land banks present a novel and assertive approach to solving this problem by efficiently changing the legal status of these properties and converting them into productive and attractive pieces of land. …
I. WHAT IS THE LEGAL AND POLICY CONTEXT OF NEIGHBORHOOD BLIGHT? 806A The Legal Roots of Blight in Public Nuisance Doctrine 807B. Definition and History of Blight 810C. A Culture that Perpetuates Blight, Property Abandonment, and Neighborhood Decline 812D. Blighted Houses and the Mortgage Crisis 815II. LEGAL AND POLICY CHALLENGES IN ADDRESSING NEIGHBORHOOD BLIGHT-THE FORMATION OF NATIONAL AND LOCAL NETWORKS 818A. Code Enforcement's Evolution and Prominence 819B. Formation of the National Vacant Properties Campaign 822C. Expanding the Network in Response to National Crisis of Vacant Properties 827D. Developing a Systematic, Data-Driven Policy Framework for Strategic Code Enforcement 833III. REFLECTIONS ON HOW FAR WE HAVE COME AND HOW FAR WE NEED TO GO 839A. Clarifying the Legal Principles of Blight and Nuisance in State and Local Laws and Policies 841B. Developing New Systems and Capacities for Strategic Code Enforcement 844C. Developing Local Teams or Councils for Supporting Cross Sector Coordination and Collaboration 849D. Developing New Collaborative Models-Insights from the Memphis/Shelby County Neighborhood Blight Elimination Charter 851Blight is a term with multiple meanings and a complex legal and policy history in the United States.* 1 Currently, blight and its community costs are frequently associated with vacant and often foreclosed homes, defective and abandoned buildings, litter, vacant lots, and graffiti. As a legal and policy term, blight has roots in the common law definitions of public nuisance.2 Researchers and scholars in other disciplines have cited blighted neighborhoods as both a cause and symptom of larger socioeconomic problems such as poverty, crime, poor public health, educational deficits, and other personal or systemic distress.Traditionally neighborhood blight has long been considered a city problem, especially in Rust Belt such as Detroit, Cleveland, Flint, and Youngstown. These older, industrial legacy cities have become property abandonment's poster children as the result of global waves of socio-economic calamity: first, the deindustrialization of the 1970s and 1980s, and more recently, the mortgage meltdown and Great Recession. Today, blight's geography knows no boundaries as its impacts can be felt in first tier suburban cities, rural towns, and even in the fast growing Sun Belt regions from Phoenix and Las Vegas in the West to Atlanta, New Orleans, and Memphis in the South.For the past twenty-five years, local government officials and community-based organizations have launched numerous initiatives to combat blighted properties. Cities such as New Orleans, Detroit, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Cleveland have been at the forefront of innovation, adapting traditional legal tools and experimenting with new policy and planning strategies to address neighborhood blight. Several of these formed local coalitions of lawyers, local officials, community developers, and university professors to fix out-of-date and ineffective policies and programs to reclaim vacant properties. Emerging from these local collabora- tions and experiments is a national network of practitioners, policymakers, and researchers-often supported by national and regional foundations-who have developed a common language, shared strategies, and stretched legal and policy boundaries. …
I. INTRODUCTION 859II. BLIGHT IN MEMPHIS: THE EXTENT OF THE CHALLENGE 863III. DIFFERENT TYPES OF BLIGHT 864A. Non-Regulatory Blight 8641. Hardship Cases 8642. Walk-away Cases 8643. Economic Cases 866B. Regulatory Created Blight 866IV. REGULATORY BARRIERS 868A. Memphis and Shelby County Land Use Codes:A Historical Overview 8701. History of the Board of Adjustment 8732. Office of Planning and Development 877B. The Unified Development Code 8801. Suburban Sprawl 8822. Form-Based Code 8833. Nonconformities 8844. Vested Rights 888V. Latest Trends in Land-Use Regulation 889A. Rehab Codes and Pink Zones 893B. Making Small Possible 895V. CONCLUSION 900DisclosureThe authors wish to clarify from the beginning that we are not land use, community development, or building code scholars. We all count lawyer among our titles, but we find that most of our days as practitioners are filled with urban planning and development, community revitalization, real estate, code enforcement, policy, and other related decisions. As we discussed the drafting of this article, we worked on but failed to settle upon joke that opens a planning director, community developer, and litigator walked into bar .... We are serious about the work that we do to bring about the revitalization of declining Memphis neighborhoods, but want the reader to understand that this piece is not scholarly piece but more like notes from the field and description of the challenges and opportunities that we have observed in our years of observing, and engaging in, efforts to bring about improvement in some of Memphis' most distressed communities.I. INTRODUCTIONHistorically, few cities and their suburbs have placed high enough priority on planning or growth management, preferring instead, intentionally or not, the proliferation of unplanned new development around the edges. In Memphis, Tennessee, this has certainly been the case for decades. The Memphis story includes decades of infrastructure investments in far outlying areas that were annexed as older neighborhoods received little or no infrastructure maintenance or improvements. Illustrative of this challenge is the fact that between 1970 and 2010 the population of the City of Memphis increased by 4% while the geographic area of the city increased by 55%.The decades-long combination of policies encouraging low-cost greenfield development, public investments in new infrastructure at the edge of the city, and an expanding urban level of services provided by county government triggered aggressive annexation by the city. This massive shift in population from the city's historic neighborhoods to the new suburban options masked shrinking city population helped maintain short-term financial solvency. This trend continued largely unquestioned by policy makers from the 1960's until the great recession of 2008. …
I. Introduction 360II. The Link Between Animal Abuse and Domestic Violence 361A. Animal Abuse and Children 3621. Childhood Exposure to Violence Leads to Childhood Animal Abuse 3632. A Childhood History of Animal Abuse Leads to Violence Towards Humans 364B. Animal Abuse and Intimate Partner Abuse Victims.........366III. Legislative Response to The Link 371A. Cross-reporting Statutes 372B. Psychological Treatment Provisions in Animal Cruelty Laws 373IV. Closing the Legislative Gap in Protection 379A. Current Status of Animal Cruelty' Laws in Tennessee......380B. The Duty to Cross-Report Needs to Be a Two-Way Street 382C. The Need for Mandatory Psychological Evaluation and Treatment 385V. Conclusion 389I. INTRODUCTIONIn 2015, Tennessee lawmakers enacted the Tennessee Animal Abuser Registration Act, creating the nation's first statewide animal abuse registry.1 The registry, which was released on January 1, 2016, is a publicly accessible, online database of convicted animal offenders.2 Upon a person's first conviction for an animal abuse offense, the person's photo, name, and any other identifying information deemed necessary by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) will be listed on the state's public registry for two years.3 A subsequent conviction will earn the offender five years on the registry.4 The bill was initially proposed in order to a stand against animal cruelty by deterring acts of animal abuse, but some Tennessee lawmakers feel that the registry will prove to be an effective tool for protecting human victims as well.5Over the last few decades, research studies and statistics have revealed the connection between animal abuse and interpersonal violence, especially highlighting the relationship between animal abuse and domestic violence.6 Against this backdrop, many states have enacted laws aimed at detecting, preventing, and treating these often-interrelated forms of familial abuse.7 Tennessee's innovative registry has thrust the state into the spotlight, making it a trendsetter in the animal-law world.8 Tennessee is now in position to serve as a working model for other states hoping to bolster the strength and scope of protection of their animal laws.This Note argues that Tennessee lawmakers should take this opportunity to improve the state's existing laws and increase protection for both animals and humans. Part II of this Note highlights the statistically proven link between animal abuse and domestic violence. Part III will discuss the nationwide, legislative response to this cyclical pattern of violence, focusing primarily on cross-reporting statutes and psychological evaluation and treatment provisions in animal laws. Part IV will examine the current status of Tennessee animal laws. Part IV will also propose two statutory measures that, if enacted, would increase protection of both animals and humans in Tennessee. First, Tennessee lawmakers should enact an inverse of the state's current crossreporting statute, which requires health and human services agencies to report signs of animal abuse observed during the course of their employment, by imposing a reciprocal duty to report on animal welfare agents who encounter signs of domestic violence while acting in the scope of their employment. …
I. INTRODUCTION 761II. BACKGROUND AND ISSUES 764A. Vagueness 764B. Establishment Clause 766C. Elision 769D. Spiritual Treatment Exemptions 7721. Early Cases 7722. ST Exemptions 11A3. Oklahoma 7764. Ohio Ill5. California 7786. Minnesota 7797. Tennessee 780III. STATE V. CRANK 781A. Background and History 781B. The Tennessee Supreme Court's Decision 783IV. ANALYSIS OF DECISION 786V. CONCLUSION 791I. INTRODUCTIONIs justice served when a state statutorily protects parents who choose to treat their child's illness through prayer, rather than medical treatment, but then prosecutes the parents for child neglect-or worse-when their child suffers harm or dies as a result? Regardless of one's views of religion and medical science, the issue is a difficult one. Two foundational societal imperatives-the constitutionally enshrined freedom of religion and the duty of parents to protect their children from harm-can clash when parents assert a faith-based right to choose spiritual means over medical care for their sick child.1 In Tennessee, the child abuse and neglect statute exempts from liability parents whose faith leads them to choose by spiritual means through prayer alone for their child, in lieu of medical care.2 Similarly, nearly all states have a spiritual-treatment (ST) exemption, though jurisdictions vary as to where the ST exemption fits in the overall statutory scheme, the scope of the exemption, and how courts have interpreted and applied the exemption-leading to confusion and controversy.3In State v. Crank, the Tennessee Supreme Court* * * 4 held, first, that because the ST exemption applies only to members of the Christian Science and like churches, the statute gives fair notice of prohibited conduct and is not void for vagueness; and, second, that even if the ST exemption were held unconstitutional under the Establishment Clause, the exemption would be subject to elision and stricken from the statute-whose enforcement minus the exemption would leave the conviction standing and afford Defendant no relief. State v. Crank, 468 S.W.3d 15 (Tenn. 2015). The court in Crank was incorrect because the ST exemption leaves parents without fair warning of whether their decision to use spiritual treatment will be criminally prosecuted. Therefore, the court should have held the statute unconstitutionally vague, which would have been dispositive and led the court to vacate the conviction.5 While the court was right (if too tentative) in voicing concerns about the statute's constitutionality under the Establishment Clause, its application of the doctrine of elision so as to strike the entire ST exemption is a closer question; the case for more selective elision of that part of the exemption favoring certain religious faiths is at least tenable. …
