Articles

Ninety Years of the Iowa Law Review: The Personalities, Policies, and Events that Shaped an Enduring Tradition in Iowa Legal Education

I. The Iowa Law Review: Origins And Models II. The Iowa Law Or More III. Faculty Advisors And Student Editorial Responsibility IV. Learning By Writing V. Conclusion Appendix: An Annotated Chronology Of The Iowa Law Review

Criminal Liability for Loss of a Chance

In a number of recent cases, appellate courts have upheld the homicide convictions of criminal defendants whose conduct merely reduced the victim's chances of surviving another injury or illness that likely would have killed the victim anyway. Cases of this kind, which are known among tort scholars as "lost chance" or "loss of chance" cases, do not satisfy the criminal law's traditional requirement of "but for" causation: because the other injury or illness likely would have killed the victi...

The Hydraulics and Politics of Party Regulation

Swept up in the growing "constitutionalization" of the law of democracy, political parties today are centerpieces of American law and politics. However, even sophisticated courts and legal commentators adhere to a formalistic view of political parties as discrete, legally defined entities. The Article topples this conventional view of political parties. Drawing from recent research in political science, the Article presents a more realistic deconstruction of political parties and how they ope...

Making a Federal Case of It: Removing Civil Cases to Federal Court Based on Fraudulent Joinder

As defendants increasingly prefer to litigate in federal rather than state court, a new doctrine has emerged authorizing removal of civil cases to federal court based on diversity jurisdiction-fraudulent procedural misjoinder. Although the doctrine was first recognized by the Eleventh Circuit almost a decade ago, appellate courts have provided little guidance concerning the doctrine's application. As a result, district courts have failed to establish a cohesive framework for evaluating allega...

Toward a Theory of Interactive Federalism

Dual federalism is dead, but its spirit continues to haunt contemporary discussions of federalism. Neither courts nor scholars embrace dual federalism's goal of creating exclusive and non-overlapping spheres of state and national authority. Nevertheless, the dualist conception of federalism as a line-drawing exercise persists. This Article offers an alternative conception that understands the interaction of national and state governments, rather than their separation, as the primary means of ...

Preachers, Politicians, and Same-Sex Couples: Challenging Same-Sex Civil Unions and Implications on Interstate Recognition

Vermont's passage of a civil union statute in 2000 set the stage for ensuing controversy surrounding the ability of sister states to legally recognize and/or dissolve the unions under their own laws and the ability of third-parties to challenge the validity of the unions beyond the borders of Vermont. As a result, some states have either granted or are preparing to grant legal recognition to same-sex couples, while other states have denied or are preparing to deny such recognition. Central to...

Protection for Defendants in the Pipeline: Due Process Limits on the Retroactive Application of the Booker Rule

In United States v. Booker, the Supreme Court held that the mandatory Federal Sentencing Guidelines violated defendants' Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial. To remedy the violation, the Supreme Court struck down the parts of the Sentencing Reform Act that made the Guidelines mandatory. To comply with the ex post facto limitations inherent in the Due Process Clause, judges cannot sentence defendants to terms higher than were possible under the mandatory Guidelines if the defendants' crimin...

After Rants v. Vilsack: An Update on Item-Veto Law in Iowa and Elsewhere

Iowa gave its Governor limited item-veto power via a constitutional amendment in 1968. Since then, a half-dozen Iowa Supreme Court cases have clarified the meaning and scope of the amendment, which allows the Iowa Governor to item veto only "items" within "appropriation bills." In Rants v. Vilsack, decided in June 2004, defining "appropriation bill" again proved to be a complex task. This Note discusses the Rants case and analyzes its outcome. First, this Note argues that the decision compo...

"Special" Delivery: New Interpretations of the "Postal Matter" Exception to the Federal Tort Claims Act

This Note examines a recent circuit split on the question of postal liability for slip-and-fall cases under the "postal matter" exception to the Federal Tort Claims Act. The United States Postal Service, a federal agency, traditionally enjoyed sovereign immunity to suit. Although the 1946 Federal Tort Claims Act waived much of the government's broad immunity, it retained some shields under 28 U.S.C. § 2680(a) through (n). One of these provisions, the "postal matter" exception, protects the g...