Law School

Alimony (also called aliment (Scotland), maintenance (England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Wales, Canada, New Zealand), spousal support (U.S., Canada) and spouse maintenance (Australia)) is a legal obligation on a person to provide financial support to their spouse before or after marital separation or divorce. The obligation arises from the divorce law or family law of each country. Child support. Alimony is not child support, where, after divorce, one parent is required to contribute to the support of their children by paying money to the child's other parent or guardian. United States. Child support is considered a payment that a parent is making for the support of their offspring, and the parent who pays it pays the taxes. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 has changed the federal tax treatment of alimony for divorces and separation agreements signed on or after January 1, 2019, making it identical to that for child support—non-deductible for the payer, and non-taxable for the recipient.

Lange v California, (2021), was a United States Supreme Court case involving the exigent circumstances requirement related to the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Court ruled unanimously that the warrantless entry into a home by police in pursuit of a misdemeanant is not unequivocally justified. Background. In October 2016, a California highway patrol officer witnessed Arthur Lange driving while playing loud music and honking his horn. Believing Lange to be in violation of California traffic law, the officer attempted to perform a traffic stop. Lange drove to his garage and then closed the garage but the officer, who had followed him to his home, entered the garage and began to question Lange. After smelling alcohol on his breath and conducting a field sobriety test, the officer arrested Lange and charged him with driving under the influence and a noise infraction. Lange attempted to argue at trial that the officer's entry into his garage without a warrant had violated his Fourth Amendment rights and therefore evidence related to the case had to be suppressed. The prosecution argued that under the "hot pursuit doctrine" the officer had probable cause to enter the garage because Lange had committed a misdemeanor when he failed to stop for the officer. The court subsequently denied Lange's motion to suppress the evidence. As a result, Lange's driver's license was suspended for a period of one year. Initial appeals. Lange filed a suit to overturn the suspension of his license in civil court which was accepted after the court determined his arrest to be unlawful. However, the Sonoma County Superior Court affirmed the decision of the trial court to deny Lange's motion to suppress. The California Court of Appeal also upheld the conviction. In July 2020, Lange applied for a writ of certiorari from the Supreme Court which was granted in October 2020.

Corporations are invariably classified as "legal persons" by all modern systems of law, meaning that like natural persons, they may acquire rights and duties. A corporation may be chartered in any of the 50 states (or the District of Columbia) and may become authorized to do business in each jurisdiction it does business within, except that when a corporation sues or is sued over a contract, the court, regardless of where the corporation's headquarters office is located, or where the transaction occurred, will use the law of the jurisdiction where the corporation was chartered (unless the contract says otherwise). So, for example, consider a corporation which sets up a concert in Hawaii, where its headquarters are in Minnesota, and it is chartered in Colorado, if it is sued over its actions involving the concert, whether it was sued in Hawaii (where the concert is located), or Minnesota (where its headquarters are located), the court in that state will still use Colorado law to determine how its corporate dealings are to be performed. All major public corporations are also characterized by holding limited liability and having a centralized management. When a group of people go through the procedures to incorporate, they will acquire rights to make contracts, to possess property, to sue, and they will also be responsible for torts, or other wrongs, and be sued. The federal government does not charter corporations (except National Banks, Federal Savings Banks, and Federal Credit Unions) although it does regulate them. Each of the 50 states plus DC has its own corporation law. Most large corporations have historically chosen to incorporate in Delaware, even though they operate nationally, and may have little or no business in Delaware itself. The extent to which corporations should have the same rights as real people is controversial, particularly when it comes to the fundamental rights found in the United States Bill of Rights. As a matter of law, a corporation acts through real people that form its board of directors, and then through the officers and employees who are appointed on its behalf. Shareholders can in some cases make decisions on the corporation's behalf, though in larger companies they tend to be passive. Otherwise, most corporations adopt limited liability so that generally shareholders cannot be sued for a corporation's commercial debts. If a corporation goes bankrupt and is unable to pay debts to commercial creditors as they fall due, then in some circumstances state courts allow the so-called "veil of incorporation" to be pierced, and so to hold the people behind the corporation liable. This is usually rare and in almost all cases involves non-payment of trust fund taxes or willful misconduct, essentially amounting to fraud.

A pardon is a government decision to allow a person to be relieved of some or all of the legal consequences resulting from a criminal conviction. A pardon may be granted before or after conviction for the crime, depending on the laws of the jurisdiction. Pardons can be granted in many countries when individuals are deemed to have demonstrated that they have "paid their debt to society” or are otherwise considered to be deserving of them. Pardons are sometimes offered to persons who were either wrongfully convicted or who claim that they were wrongfully convicted. In some jurisdictions of some nations, accepting a pardon may implicitly constitute an admission of guilt; the offer is refused in some cases. Cases of wrongful conviction are in recent times more often dealt with by appeal rather than by pardon; however, a pardon is sometimes offered when innocence is undisputed in order to avoid the costs that are associated with a retrial. Clemency plays a critical role when capital punishment exists in a jurisdiction. Pardons are sometimes seen as a mechanism for combating corruption, allowing a particular authority to circumvent a flawed judicial process to free someone that is seen as wrongly convicted. Pardons can also be a source of controversy. In extreme cases, some pardons may be seen as acts of corruption by officials in the form of granting effective immunity as political favors.

The United States of America has separate federal, state, and local governments with taxes imposed at each of these levels. Taxes are levied on income, payroll, property, sales, capital gains, dividends, imports, estates and gifts, as well as various fees. In 2010, taxes collected by federal, state, and municipal governments amounted to 24.8% of GDP. In the OECD, only Chile and Mexico are taxed less as a share of their GDP. Taxes fall much more heavily on labor income than on capital income. Divergent taxes and subsidies for different forms of income and spending can also constitute a form of indirect taxation of some activities over others. For example, individual spending on higher education can be said to be "taxed" at a high rate, compared to other forms of personal expenditure which are formally recognized as investments. Taxes are imposed on net income of individuals and corporations by the federal, most state, and some local governments. Citizens and residents are taxed on worldwide income and allowed a credit for foreign taxes. Income subject to tax is determined under tax accounting rules, not financial accounting principles, and includes almost all income from whatever source. Most business expenses reduce taxable income, though limits apply to a few expenses. Individuals are permitted to reduce taxable income by personal allowances and certain non-business expenses, including home mortgage interest, state and local taxes, charitable contributions, and medical and certain other expenses incurred above certain percentages of income. State rules for determining taxable income often differ from federal rules. Federal marginal tax rates vary from 10% to 37% of taxable income. State and local tax rates vary widely by jurisdiction, from 0% to 13.30% of income,[2] and many are graduated. State taxes are generally treated as a deductible expense for federal tax computation, although the 2017 tax law imposed a $10,000 limit on the state and local tax ("SALT") deduction, which raised the effective tax rate on medium and high earners in high tax states. Prior to the SALT deduction limit, the average deduction exceeded $10,000 in most of the Midwest, and exceeded $11,000 in most of the Northeastern United States, as well as California and Oregon. The states impacted the most by the limit were the tri-state area (NY, NJ, and CT) and California; the average SALT deduction in those states was greater than $17,000 in 2014. The United States is one of two countries in the world that taxes its non-resident citizens on worldwide income, in the same manner and rates as residents; the other is Eritrea. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of imposition of such a tax in the case of Cook v Tait.

A parenting plan is a child custody plan that is negotiated by parents, and which may be included in a marital separation agreement or final decree of divorce. Especially when a separation is acrimonious to begin with, specific agreements about who will discharge these responsibilities and when and how they are to be discharged can reduce the need for litigation. Avoiding litigation spares parties not only the financial and emotional costs of litigation but the uncertainty of how favorable or unfavorable a court's after-the-fact decision will be. Moreover, the agreement itself can authorize the employment of dispute-resolution methods, such as arbitration and mediation, that may be less costly than litigation. Legal separation (sometimes judicial separation, separate maintenance, divorce a mensa et thoro, or divorce from bed-and-board) is a legal process by which a married couple may formalize a de facto separation while remaining legally married. A legal separation is granted in the form of a court order. In cases where children are involved, a court order of legal separation often makes child custody arrangements, specifying sole custody or shared parenting, as well as child support. Some couples obtain a legal separation as an alternative to a divorce, based on moral or religious objections to divorce. Legal separation does not automatically lead to divorce. The couple might reconcile, in which case they do not have to do anything in order to continue their marriage.

Yellen v Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation, (2021), was a United States Supreme Court case dealing with the classification of Alaska Native corporations (ANCs) for purposes of receiving funds set-aside for tribal governments under the CARES Act. In a 6–3 decision issued in June 2021, the Court ruled that ANCs were considered to be "Indian tribes" and were eligible to receive the set-aside funds.  Background. Twelve Alaska Native corporations (ANCs) were established in the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act as for-profit corporations to operate businesses and services, often in the areas of oil and gas industry, to generate revenue that provides benefits to the Alaska Natives in the territories that they serve. This arrangement is unique to Alaska compared to native American tribes in the lower 48 states, where they operating their own tribal governments in recognized Indian reservations within federal law. Later, the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975 (ISDA) assured that both native American tribal governments and ANCs were given the self-autonomy to operate as governments for their respective peoples. With the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. government passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security, or CARES Act in March 2020. The bill provided $2.2 trillion in relief funding to businesses, of which $8 billion was earmarked for "tribal governments". The Treasury Department, in interpreting the law, opted to set aside about $500 million of the $8 billion earmarked for ANCs. The Treasury's decision was challenged separately by three Native tribes: the Navajo Nation, the Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation and the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. They asserted that the ANCs were not officially recognized as tribal governments under the language of ISDA, and thus were ineligible to receive any of the CARES funds. The Native tribes expressed concern that the amount of funds available to them would be diluted if the ANC set-aside were allowed to stand. The three suits were consolidated at the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. The district court ruled in favor of the Treasury Department, in that the ANCs could be considered tribal governments and eligible to receive CARES Act funds. The tribes appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which reversed the District Court's ruling. The Circuit Court ruled that as no ANC is federally recognized, compared to the tribal governments, they fail to qualify for the CARES Act funding.

United States corporate law regulates the governance, finance and power of corporations in U S law. Every state and territory has its own basic corporate code, while federal law creates minimum standards for trade in company shares and governance rights, found mostly in the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, as amended by laws like the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 and the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The U S Constitution was interpreted by the U S Supreme Court to allow corporations to incorporate in the state of their choice, regardless of where their headquarters are. Over the 20th century, most major corporations incorporated under the Delaware General Corporation Law, which offered lower corporate taxes, fewer shareholder rights against directors, and developed a specialized court and legal profession. Nevada has done the same. Twenty-four states follow the Model Business Corporation Act, while New York and California are important due to their size.

A miscarriage of justice, also known as a wrongful conviction, occurs when a person is convicted and punished for a crime that he or she did not actually commit. It can occur in both criminal and civil proceedings, which includes removal proceedings. The main contributing factors are eyewitness misidentification, faulty forensic analysis, false confessions by vulnerable suspects, perjury and lies told by witnesses, misconduct by police, prosecutors or judges and inadequate defense strategies put forward by the defendant's legal team. The Innocence Project keeps statistics on cases where convicted defendants have subsequently been exonerated, usually by advances in the science of DNA. In many instances, wrongful convictions have not been overturned for several decades - sometimes after the innocent person has been executed, released from custody, or has died. The true prevalence of miscarriages of justice is hard to measure because many wrongful convictions are never overturned. The term is not to be confused with "errors of impunity" which applies to cases where a guilty person goes free.

In the United States, strict constructionism is a particular legal philosophy of judicial interpretation that limits or restricts such interpretation only to the exact wording of the law (namely the Constitution).  Strict sense of the term. Strict construction requires a judge to apply the text only as it is written. Once the court has a clear meaning of the text, no further investigation is required. Judges—in this view—should avoid drawing inferences from a statute or constitution and focus only on the text itself. Jurist Hugo Black (1886–1971) argued that the First Amendment's injunction, that Congress shall make no law (against certain civil liberties), should be construed strictly: no law, though Black, admits no exceptions. However, "strict construction" is not a synonym for textualism or originalism. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a major proponent of textualism, said that "no one ought to be" a strict constructionist, although to be a strict constructionist was preferred to being a "non-textualist". The term often contrasts with the phrase "judicial activism", used to describe judges who seek to enact legislation through court rulings. Common use. "Strict constructionism" is also used in American political discourse as an umbrella term for conservative legal philosophies such as originalism and textualism, which emphasize judicial restraint and fidelity to the original meaning of constitutions and laws. It is frequently used even more loosely to describe any conservative judge or legal analyst. This usage is pervasive, but in some tension with the legal meaning of the term. For example, on the campaign trail in 2000, when speaking on his choices for new Supreme Court Justices, George W Bush promised to appoint "strict constructionists in the mold of Justices Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas", though Thomas considers himself an originalist, and Scalia outright rejected strict construction, calling it "a degraded form of textualism."