Beginning in 1981 and continuing into the mid-1990s, The Alledger was the student newspaper of the Boston College Law School. The Alledger published both serious and satirical articles on topics related to student life at the law school. Frequent topics include the arrival and departure of faculty members, profiles of candidates for leadership positions in student government, and previews of lectures given by noteworthy speakers.

The publication consistently poked fun at the law student experience, making professors and classmates alike the targets of good-natured parody. The Alledger featured an annual April Fool’s Day issue which consisted entirely of satirical articles.

The Alledger is a record of the school’s history, offering evidence of an increasingly competitive environment for law schools in the form of extensive coverage of a 1995 dispute related to the U.S. News and World Report law school rankings. The newspaper also recorded changes in the demographics of the student body, as well as frequent discussion of tuition increases and the financial relationship of the law school to the university. Moreover, the humorous and frank tone of The Alledger provides real insight into the lives of law students in the 1980s and 1990s.

The Alledger was digitized from the collection of the Boston College Law School Library. Issues missing from this collection are not owned by the law library; due to frequent inconsistencies in the numbering of issues, the law library is not sure how many issues are missing from this collection.

The Alledger

Boston College Law Review is Boston College Law School's flagship scholarly publication.

The Review, ranked in the top 25 law journals by Washington & Lee, publishes eight issues each year featuring articles and essays by prominent authors addressing legal issues of national interest.

In addition to articles written by outside academics, the Review prints the work of its student staff, many of whom publish notes during their third year. The Review’s second-year staff members also prepare short comments on recent federal circuit court decisions, which may be published in the Review's Electronic Supplement.

Visit the Boston College Law Review website at <a href="http://bclawreview.bc.edu">bclawreview.bc.edu</a>.

Boston College Law Review

Boston College Law Library collects the publications of Law School faculty, and, when possible, makes them available through this collection. Organized by year and tagged with authors and subject areas, this resource reflects the school and the library’s commitment to open access while at the same time serving as a valuable institutional record.

Boston College Law School Faculty Papers

Boston College Law School Lectures and Presentations

On March 3, 2022, in United States v. Dubin, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit interpreted 18 U.S.C. § 1028A(a)(1) of the aggravated identity theft statute broadly to apply to a defendant who employed a patient’s accurate identifying information to overcharge Medicaid for services provided. In doing so, the court exacerbated the circuit split over the meaning of “use” in § 1028A(a)(1), siding with the Fourth, Eighth, Eleventh, and D.C. Circuits that have interpreted use to mean any involvement of another person’s identifying information in committing certain federal offenses. By contrast, the First, Sixth, Seventh, and Ninth Circuits have confined the statutory meaning of use to describe only cases of identity falsification in the commission of federal offenses. This Comment argues that the Dubin court erred in failing to consider the statutory ambiguity and, consequently, legislative history of § 1028A(a)(1), which indicates a more limited application of the sentencing enhancement. Unless Congress clarifies that the aggravated identity theft statute applies to cases in which no identity has been falsified, the Supreme Court should construe § 1028A(a)(1) narrowly, balancing the plain meaning of use with Congress’s intent to target acts of identity misrepresentation, and avoiding the over-penalization of criminal defendants for want of clarity.

BCLR Electronic Supplement

What Kind of Liar Are You? The Fifth Circuit's Broad Interpretation of Aggravated Identity Theft

On July 14, 2021, in United States v. Tuggle, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held that the warrantless use of pole cameras to continuously surveil a suspect for eighteen months did not constitute a Fourth Amendment search. In doing so, the Seventh Circuit contributed to a growing body of judicial disagreement about the proper approach to technology-enabled searches, mosaic theory, and the scope of the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Carpenter v. United States. This Comment argues that the approach in Tuggle is incorrect because it unnecessarily narrows Carpenter and relies on assumptions no longer relevant to technology-enabled searches.

Form Over Function? Pole Cameras, Tuggle, and the Fourth Amendment

Co-Cities by Sheila Foster and Christian Iaione (MIT Press, 2022) is a tour de force. They provide a rigorous empirical analysis of more than 200 global cities, and over 500 case studies within those metropolises, to reconceptualize “the city” for the contemporary age. (p. 24) While many scholars theorize or hypothesize “the city,” Foster and Iaione use surveys, qualitative interviews, detailed case studies, fieldwork, and geo mapping to derive a new and informed urban governance theory. Co-Cities evidences the value of a law and society approach to urban studies.

I highlight three unique contributions Co-Cities makes to our conception of the city, the commons, and new governance theory. I conclude by identifying a few areas that may serve as the basis for future research.

Co-Cities: Reconceiving the City, the Commons, and New Governance Theory 

The evolving role of community in property law remains undertheorized. While legal scholars have analyzed the commons, common interest communities, and aspects of the sharing economy, the recent rise of intentional co-housing communities re-mains relatively understudied. This Article analyzes tiny homes villages for unhoused people in the United States, as examples of co-housing communities that create a new housing tenure—stewardship—and demonstrate the growing importance of community, co-management, sustainability, and flexibility in con-temporary property law. These villages’ property relationships challenge the predominance of individualized, exclusionary, long-term, fee simple ownership in contemporary property law and exemplify property theories such as progressive property theory, property as personhood theory, access versus ownership theories, and urban commons theories. These villages mitigate homelessness but also illustrate how communal relationships can provide more stability than traditional ownership during times of uncertainty. Due to increasing natural disasters and other increasingly unpredictable phenomena, municipalities may find these property forms adaptable and useful in minimizing housing insecurity and instability. This Article posits how localities can legalize stewardship and tiny homes villages for unhoused people. These insights reveal a new role for steward-ship and community building in American property law and theory.

Community in Property: Lessons from Tiny Homes Villages

The efficacy of the public-private partnership as a tool for social reform is the subject of continued scholarly and public debate. New governance theory, an increasingly popular form of jurisprudence, constructs an optimistic vision of stakeholder collaboration in public - private partnerships that justifies the use of the public-private partnership in regulatory reform. New governance scholars contend that recent governance trends such as devolution, deregulation, decentralization, and privatization create opportunities for previously marginalized stakeholders to more fully participate in public problem-solving. New governance scholars expect that both public and private stakeholders, with differing interests, skills and objectives, will effectively collaborate to solve public problems in the absence of traditional formal legal protections. New governance’s implicit promise is that traditionally marginalized stakeholders, such as poor public housing residents, will be empowered as a result of their participation in social reform. This Article examines stakeholder participation in Chicago’s landmark ten year HOPE VI public housing reform experiment as a test of these claims. Chicago’s reform process is a national example as other cities replicate Chicago’s model. Specifically, this Article examines the effect of social fissures along race, class and gender lines on the participation of public housing residents in Chicago’s urban reform plan. This micro-study of Chicago’s process reveals that empowered stakeholder participation is difficult to achieve under conditions of social conflict in the absence of traditional rights-based protections. This Article proposes a balance between 'hard-law' and 'soft-law' measures to provide a public law framework for future national HOPE VI reform. These recommendations may guide future new governance reform efforts that include traditionally marginalized stakeholders in public - private collaborations.

Stakeholder Participation in New Governance: Lessons From Chicago's Public Housing Reform Experiment

“There’s no place like home,” said Dorothy. Yet, millions of people in the United States may face eviction, foreclosure, or homelessness in 2021 and beyond. America is on the brink of an unprecedented housing crisis in the wake of Covid-19. The federal government, and various states and localities, have taken actions to avert a housing crisis in the aftermath of Covid 19. While these actions have undeniably helped mitigate widespread foreclosure and eviction crises, they do not fully address the more fundamental American housing challenge—an inadequate supply of affordable housing at all income levels, a longstanding problem that Covid-19 has only intensified.

This Article argues that tiny homes—homes that are less than 400 square feet—are an understudied and potentially big solution to the problem of housing insecurity, particularly during times of crisis, such as the Covid-19 pandemic. Now, increasing numbers of localities and nonprofits work in public and private partnerships to develop tiny homes villages as emergency housing or affordable housing in addition to housing for homeless people. The villages often consist of more than one tiny home and some villages can accommodate 350 tiny homes per site as well as families. Tiny homes villages, if designed properly, are an affordable and efficient way to add to the housing supply, providing residents with a community in which to advance their human flourishing as well as obtain shelter. Tiny homes will not work for every homeless person or in every community. Tiny homes villages should not replace all other forms of shelter for homeless people or all other forms of affordable housing. Localities, however, should develop the necessary building codes, zoning designations, land use categories, and approval processes to make living tiny legal and to permit tiny homes villages to mitigate housing insecurity.

Welcome to LIRA@BC Law!

Featured Collections

The Alledger

Boston College Law Review

Boston College Law School Faculty Papers

Boston College Law School Lectures and Presentations

Recent Additions

What Kind of Liar Are You? The Fifth Circuit's Broad Interpretation of Aggravated Identity Theft

Form Over Function? Pole Cameras, Tuggle, and the Fourth Amendment

Co-Cities: Reconceiving the City, the Commons, and New Governance Theory

Community in Property: Lessons from Tiny Homes Villages

Stakeholder Participation in New Governance: Lessons From Chicago's Public Housing Reform Experiment

Tiny Homes: A Big Solution to American Housing Insecurity

Welcome to LIRA@BC Law!

Featured Collections

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Recent Additions

The Alledger