An editorial is presented which addresses America's Dickey Amendment which deals with funding for gun violence research, and it mentions the U.S. Congress' passage of an omnibus spending bill in March 2018, as well as information about the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The National Rifle Association of America (NRA) and CDC grant guidelines are examined, along with the use of federal funding to support research on gun violence in the U.S.

When the Supreme Court hears arguments this fall about the constitutionality of affirmative action policies at the University of Texas, attention will be focused once again on Justice Anthony Kennedy. With the rest of the Court split between a bloc of four reliably liberal jurists and an equally solid cadre of four conservatives, the spotlight regularly falls on Kennedy, the swing voter that each side in every closely divided and ideologically charged case desperately hopes to attract. Critics condemn Kennedy for having an unprincipled, capricious, and self-aggrandizing style of decision-making. Though he is often decisive in the sense of casting the crucial vote that determines a case’s outcome, his opinions can be maddeningly indecisive in the sense of failing to establish clear rules of law. Yet in Fisher v. University of Texas, Kennedy’s irresolute nature may prove to be a blessing. By taking a middle-ground position that significantly sharpens judicial scrutiny of affirmative action programs but does not absolutely bar them, Kennedy can finesse the issue in a way that accommodates the American public’s conflicted feelings about racial preferences, but simultaneously forces everyone to start thinking more seriously about how racial components of affirmative action can be phased out in a manner that will minimize disruption and bitterness.

"Law and Order" became a political rallying cry in the 1960s, as conservative candidates like Barry Goldwater, George Wallace, and Richard Nixon criticized courts for putting the constitutional rights of criminals ahead of the need for effective police work and public safety. As the nation’s president after his victory in the 1968 presidential race, Nixon continued to emphasize the law and order theme. Meanwhile, a series of Westerns and cop movies, such as John Wayne’s "True Grit" and Clint Eastwood’s "Dirty Harry," began to echo Nixon’s claims about criminals, courts, and law. Concerns about crime and the impotency of the legal system soon produced a set of remarkably popular movies about vigilante justice, including "Walking Tall" and "Death Wish". Even when law and order faded as a national political issue, Hollywood continued to dwell on the idea that courts are too lax, turning the idea that criminals routinely escape justice because of legal technicalities into one of television’s and movies’ most familiar clichés. Crime rates have been plummeting for two decades now, and a series of re-makes of significant films from the Nixon era suggests that law and order’s grip on popular entertainment and the public imagination may finally be breaking.

In its 2008 ruling in Conte v. Wyeth Inc., the California Court of Appeal broke new ground by finding that the manufacturer of a brand-name prescription drug could be held liable for negligence that caused harm to people taking other manufacturers’ generic versions of the drug. So far, most other courts have rejected this theory of liability. But the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions in Wyeth v. Levine and PLIVA Inc. v. Mensing may make it more likely that courts will begin to embrace the Conte theory. The Wyeth and PLIVA decisions mean that federal law preempts claims against generic drug makers for failing to give adequate warnings, but permits such claims to be brought against brand-name drug manufacturers. Courts may turn to the Conte liability theory as a way to permit some recovery for injuries that were caused by the negligence of the brand-name manufacturer as well as the generic producer.

In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decisions in District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. City of Chicago, lower court judges have produced many decisions about the meaning of the right to keep and bear arms. One of those opinions, a Seventh Circuit ruling in Ezell v. City of Chicago, contains a brief passage raising an intriguing question, about the interaction between originalism and the incorporation doctrine, that has largely escaped notice. The Ezell opinion asserts that Heller requires an originalist approach to the Second Amendment, meaning that judges should give it the meaning it had in 1791 when the Bill of Rights was ratified. But Ezell suggests that when considering whether a state or local government action violates the right to keep and bear arms, as incorporated into the Fourteenth Amendment, the analysis must be “carried forward in time” to the period around 1868 when that Amendment was added to the Constitution. That approach disregards the Supreme Court’s declaration in McDonald that every incorporated right, including the right to keep and bear arms, must mean exactly the same thing as applied to state and local governments through the Fourteenth Amendment as it means when applied to the federal government through the Bill of Rights. The Seventh Circuit cannot be correct in advising that judges should look to 1791 when considering a Second Amendment challenge to a federal law but should focus on 1868 in cases concerning state or local laws. The Supreme Court’s decision in McDonald clearly ruled out such a two-track approach.

Each year law students collectively write a large number of papers that could become law review articles but that are never published. Most law schools require students at some point during their time in law school to research and write an academic paper of publishable quality or seminar paper. Some of these are law review notes and comments that are not selected for publication. Others of these are papers written for specific substantive classes or to fulfill research and writing requirements. Most of these student papers - even very worthy ones - will never be published or posted online. The publishing route for law students who want to publish in a venue other than their home law journal is not clearly marked. And many law reviews simply will not accept submissions from students outside their own school. Often, the publishing opportunities for non-law review members in their home school’s law review are also not well known. The purposes of this essay are twofold. First, it offers a number of suggestions for law students (and implicitly for students in other graduate programs) who want to publish their research papers. Second, this essay presents a chart of the policies of 194 law reviews with respect to whether they will publish comments submitted by non-law review members who are students at their home school or notes, comments or articles submitted by law students from other schools.

The following are two charts useful for the law review/journal article submission process. The first chart contains information gathered from the journals' websites about the following topics: • Methods for submitting an article (such as by e-mail, Scholastica, or regular mail); • Any special formatting requirements; • How to request an expedited review; and • How to withdraw an article after it has been accepted for publication elsewhere. Where it is announced, the chart includes whether a journal accepts submissions by students from other law schools. Good luck with your submissions.

Too often, professors offer exemplar edits of student papers providing a single edit or identifying one or two instances of a problem. The expectation is that the students will respond to the general principle and use it themselves in editing the remainder of their own pieces. Independent learning theory suggests that students learn best if they learn the tools of self-assessment. Editing checklists abound. Grammar dos and don'ts are not difficult to obtain; indeed, virtually every legal writing text has some variation. Students who take the time to review these lists find them quite helpful. Independent learners only need access to the information. Not all students, however, are independent learners. Many need more than a nudge to use information that is provided to them. Requiring self-editing certification enables the student to develop editing skills by focusing on discrete tasks rather than the often overwhelming instruction to proofread carefully. Although this same information is available in a myriad of sources, the certification directs the student to manageable tasks.

Near the end of the First World War, the German army introduced powerful new anti-tank rifles, and the U.S. military realized that it needed a similar weapon. Legendary American firearm designer John Browning answered the call by developing a heavy-duty machine gun and a new type of .50 caliber ammunition for it. Although rapid improvement in armor plating soon made it obsolete as an anti-tank weapon, Browning's machine gun proved to be enormously successful when deployed against personnel and less heavily armored vehicles. Military forces throughout the world continue to use it today. The ammunition for this gun became known as .50 Browning Machine Gun or .50 BMG. In the early 1980s, a handful of gun enthusiasts, tinkering in their garages and workshops, began making rifles chambered to fire the mighty .50 BMG ammunition cartridges. Rather than delivering a rapid barrage of fire like a machine gun, these rifles were designed for methodical shooting with exceptional accuracy and power at long distances. The U.S. military soon realized the value of these new rifles and purchased some of them for Marines to use in the first Iraq war. Since then, .50 BMG rifles have proliferated rapidly, moving into military and law enforcement arsenals throughout the world as well as into the hands of thousands of American civilian shooters. The rifles' success has been followed by controversy. In recent years, they have become one of the hottest points of contention in America's perpetual debate over guns and the laws controlling them. On September 13, 2004, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed legislation that made California the first state in the nation to ban these rifles. Similar bills have been introduced in several other state legislatures and in Congress. This Article analyzes the issues surrounding these rifles and how they should be regulated. Striving to focus on facts and steer clear of hyperbole, it concludes that the truth lies somewhere between the lines drawn by the warring factions aligned on either side of the debate. While many of the arguments against tighter legal controls on these rifles are not compelling, many of the proposals made to establish such controls are flawed as well. Drawing on a British proposal, the Article explains how regulations could be crafted that would squarely address the real issue - the power of the firearm - rather than focusing exclusively on caliber. The debate over these weapons provides an illuminating means of looking at the larger conflict over guns and violence in this country and how progress could be made toward real solutions.

Twenty-five years have passed since courts first adopted market share liability, a theory under which a plaintiff unable to identify the manufacturer of the product that caused his injury can recover on a proportional basis from each manufacturer that might have made the product. Courts have severely restricted the reach of this potentially powerful theory by insisting that it can apply only to products that are perfectly fungible. Most products vary from manufacturer to manufacturer, posing different levels of risk, and therefore do not satisfy the fungibility requirement. As a result, courts have applied market share liability to a very small number of products. This Article argues that courts should eliminate the fungibility requirement by recognizing that market share liability is just one variant of a broader concept that the author calls proportional share liability. Rather than deny recovery in cases involving products that pose varying degrees of danger, courts should consider whether proportional share liability can be imposed by using information other than market share data to make a reasonable and fair allocation of liability among the defendants. This Article examines the potential application of proportional share liability in a wide variety of contexts, including vaccines or lead paint causing brain damage, violence fueled by negligent distribution and sales of firearms, disease resulting from exposure to asbestos or tobacco, and damage to spacecraft from collisions with orbital debris.

Marketing films about European fascism and war to American audiences posed a dilemma for studios during the period 1937 to 1941. Fearful of offending foreign markets or being accused of propagandizing for American intervention, the studios delivered mixed signals ans contradictory messages through their films and the marketing campaigns developed to promote them.

Jimmy Carter's presidency began like Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), as the tale of an idealistic and innocent outsider making his way from a huble small town to the nation's capital. Following that promising beginning, disappointment and frustration followed. story of Carter's undoing found reflection in several films of that era, particularly ...And Justice for All (1979), The Seduction of Joe Tynan (1979), and Brubaker (1980). Each concerns an idealistic hero whose uncompromised good intentions cannot prosper. These films capture a unique period when events tested America's enduring belief in the efficacy of virtue.