The recently published article, Immigration’s Family Values by Professor Kerry Abrams and R. Kent Piacenti, and the forthcoming Removing Citizens: Parenthood, Citizenship, and Immigration Courts by Kari Hong examine how, when, and why immigration law uses a different definition of family than the one used in state courts. Despite their differences, in conversation, these two pieces highlight how the Department of Homeland Security likely is either following misguided policies or pursuing improper objectives when creating a federal family law. Crimmigration (Crim Imm) scholarship successfully identified the ways in which the (purported) civil proceedings of immigration law needed the extra constitutional protections found in criminal law. In analogous ways, Famigration (Fam Imm) calls on scholars to engage in the similar project of scrutinizing existing immigration practices through the lens of family law. In doing so, a more systematized approach may introduce constitutional protections, resolve federal and state law conflicts, and formulate more universal, idealized concepts into the technocratic scheme of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
Volume 100
Noel Canning and Remedial Obligation Under the Constitution
There is a pervasive assumption that the Supreme Court’s ruling in NLRB v. Noel Canning has rendered void the decisions of the Board during the period when it lacked a quorum because a majority of its members held their posts through unconstitutional recess appointments. The assumption is unfounded. The question of remedy for the wrong identified in Noel Canning should not be decided in the air; it should be decided contextually, as one involving whether and how to provide relief to parties affected by a wholly concluded constitutional violation, in a manner that is akin to harmless- and plain-error review.
Contracting for Good: How Benefit Corporations Empower Investors and Redefine Shareholder Value
A new business form known as a benefit corporation is now available in twenty-six states and the District of Columbia. The statues creating the new corporate form require directors to balance shareholders’ pecuniary interests with the needs of the community, the environment, and non-shareholder constituents, such as employees and consumers. These statutes appear to reject the notion that corporations exist to maximize shareholder value. This Note, however, proposes an alternative interpretation: Rather than creating duties towards the community at large, benefit corporations give voice to a class of shareholders who would prefer (at least in part) to fund corporate social initiatives with the very resources that would have been used to increase shareholder value. By serving both as the shareholders’ investment vehicle and preferred philanthropic organization, benefit corporations empower shareholders with greater control over the ends, and to a limited extent the means, of corporate governance. The result is an entity that embraces shareholder primacy more than the traditional corporate form itself.