Arizona Law Research Articles

Know meeting types and purposes for better board governance

For new executive directors and nonprofit board members, the various requirements pertaining to meetings where boards conduct their business can be a little confusing. According to Ellis Carter of Caritas Law Group, an Arizona law firm with a specialized nonprofit practice, EDs, board members and staff might be unfamiliar with how state laws and even their own organizational bylaws relate to the different types of meetings that nonprofit boards hold from time to time.

Guns, Knives, and Swords: Policing a Heavily Armed Arizona

Arizona is widely recognized as the most permissive state in the country for public weapons possession. In 2010, then-Governor Jan Brewer famously removed all permitting requirements for public concealed carry of firearms, making Arizona only the third “constitutional carry” state in the nation. Also in 2010, and to much less fanfare, Arizona became the first state to prohibit local governments from enacting any regulations restricting the sale or possession of knives of any kind, including swords, maces, and other exotic blades. Today, Arizona remains the only state in the country with virtually no restrictions on the public concealed carry of any type of bladed weapon. In part owing to this deregulatory environment, as many as twelve percent of all Arizonans report publicly carrying a concealed deadly weapon on their person or in their vehicle. But these laws have also created confusion for Arizona police officers charged with protecting the public. For over a century, Arizona officers could justifiably initiate an investigatory stop of a publicly armed individual based on little more than a reasonable suspicion that such possession was unlawful. But in a state where a significant percentage of the population lawfully possesses weapons in public, Arizona police must now discern which lethal weapons carriers are law abiding citizens and which ones pose true criminal threats to the public. Increasing the confusion for Arizona law enforcement, the Ninth Circuit and Arizona Supreme Court have recently authored conflicting opinions regarding whether a lawfully stopped individual can be frisked solely because he is armed or whether he must also give the officer reasonable suspicion that he is “presently dangerous.” This Article examines three distinct aspects of Arizona law and policy as it relates to this growing confusion. First, it challenges the efficacy and constitutionality of Arizona’s “duty to inform” law, which seeks to clarify this reasonable suspicion quandary by requiring concealed weapons possessors to affirmatively disclose the presence of weapons to police officers when asked. As a matter of federal constitutional law, officers can only require citizens to cooperate with inquiries if reasonable suspicion already existed to justify the stop. In contrast, by requiring citizens to voluntarily disclose information to officers, “duty to inform” laws arguably place these encounters with law enforcement outside the traditional Terry v. Ohio stop context, thus rendering the encounter consensual and failing to solve the reasonable suspicion issue. Second, the Article considers the competing case law in Arizona regarding the “armed and dangerous” prong of stop and frisk for lawful gun carriers. The Arizona Supreme Court in State v. Serna held that lawful weapons carriers cannot automatically be considered dangerous for purposes of a protective frisk. The Ninth Circuit, in United States v. Orman, held otherwise, and focused on characteristics of gun ownership not explicitly considered by the Arizona Supreme Court. But both cases involved consensual encounters and not involuntary investigative stops. The Article surveys case law from other jurisdictions to offer a balanced approach to frisks of lawfully stopped, lawfully armed Arizonans. Third, the Article highlights policy considerations relevant to resolving these competing perspectives, as well as the competing interests of Arizonans in exercising their statutory possession rights and of officers in protecting themselves and others when faced with a public weapon carrier. In doing so, the Article explores for the first time in scholarly literature what, if any, parallels can be drawn from the experience of officers stopping and frisking lawful gun carriers and officers stopping and frisking lawful knife carriers.

Measuring Geographic Migration Patterns Using Matrículas Consulares.

In this article, we show how to use administrative data from the Matrícula Consular de Alta Seguridad (MCAS) identification card program to measure the joint distribution of sending and receiving locations for migrants from Mexico to the United States. Whereas other data sources cover only a small fraction of source or destination locations or include only very coarse geographic information, the MCAS data provide complete geographic coverage of both countries, detailed information on migrants' sources and destinations, and a very large sample size. We first confirm the quality and representativeness of the MCAS data by comparing them with well-known household surveys in Mexico and the United States, finding strong agreement on the migrant location distributions available across data sets. We then document substantial differences in the mix of destinations for migrants from different places within the same source state, demonstrating the importance of detailed substate geographical information. We conclude with an example of how these detailed data can be used to study the effects of destination-specific conditions on migration patterns. We find that an Arizona law reducing employment opportunities for unauthorized migrants decreased emigration from and increased return migration to Mexican source regions with strong initial ties to Arizona.

New Water for Water Dispute Resolution

Water scarcity often leads to water disputes. New water supplies—such as bulk water imports, desalination, cloud seeding, or increased stream flows from improved forest management—can mitigate water scarcity and thus help avoid water disputes. However, new water supplies can also aggravate water disputes if not developed in concert with legal reforms. This Article evaluates the role of new water in two cases of water disputes in arid regions and proposes legal reforms to promote new water as a means of water dispute resolution. The first case is the adjudication of water rights in the Gila River basin in Arizona. Improved forestry management could increase water supplies and help resolve this decades-old dispute, but Arizona law should reconsider how property rights are assigned to such increased supplies and what legal mechanisms could encourage investment in forestry management. The second case involved disputes over water resources in refugee host communities in Lebanon and Jordan. The influx of Syrian refugees into cities in Lebanon and Jordan can give rise to water disputes. Laws in the countries can be reformed to facilitate water augmentation and thereby provide increased supplies to refugee host communities.

Macroproposiciones y legitimación: el debate sobre la ley SB 1070 en la prensa anglosajona e hispana de los Estados Unidos

El tema de la inmigración y el discurso de la prensa es un tema recurrente en la investigación del ACD. En este trabajo estudiamos el discurso de cuatro periódicos estadounidenses sobre el debate que suscita la ley SB 1070 de Arizona. Ley que criminaliza a los indocumentados. Estudiamos los textos periodísiticos (noticias y editoriales. Aplicamos la teoría de los actantes junto con el análisis macroproposicional semántico. Examinamos 100 textos. El corte sincrónico fue dese el 23 de abril 2010 fecha de la aprobación hasta julio 29 fecha en que se puso en vigencia. Encontramos que el debate entre los participantes se centra en la constitucionalidad o no de la medida y que deja fuera de la discusión a los implicados, los inmigrantes indocumentados.

Indoctrination and Common Sense Interpretation of Texts: The Tucson Unified School District Book Banning

Throughout January of 2012, national news reports described the ongoing saga of “banning” books used in the Tucson Unified school District’s (TUSD) Mexican American Studies (MAS) Program. According to MAS students and teachers, on Friday, January 13, school officials attended class sessions and told teachers to box and remove books that were out of compliance with a recently passed Arizona law banning ethnic studies in public education institutions. TUSD administrators had decided that, in order to comply with the law, not only would the MAS program have to end but any books used in the curriculum would need to be removed from classrooms. Books on the removal list included Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paolo Freire, Critical Race Theory by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, and, famously, Shakespeare’s The Tempest. The TUSD maintained that it has not banned the books since they are still available in the libraries throughout the school system. This article, which focuses on the reasons for removing the books from the MAS program classrooms, is grounded in a social constructionist metatheoretical framework as well as the study of reading practices and previous research on book challengers. It is intended to demonstrate that those who argued for the dismantling of the program and the removal of the books employed what might be called a common sense or monosemic interpretive strategy with regard to texts and were particularly focused on the idea of indoctrination in public schools.

The Many Saliences of Justice Michael D. Ryan: A Comparative Empirical Analysis of Concepts of Salience as Applied in State Appellate Courts

This Essay began as an effort to honor the work of the late Arizona Supreme Court Justice Michael D. Ryan by examining the impact of his work on Arizona law through the lens of his “most important” opinions. As with all things touched by Justice Ryan it has become something greater than its initial purpose. The Author began this project by surveying three hundred seven Arizona judges about Justice Ryan’s published opinions. The results of this survey were quite surprising. Rather than identifying a common core of important opinions, the survey identified two mutually exclusive sets of important opinions: one for the appellate court and the other for the trial court. In an effort to understand this result, the Author reviewed the salience literature (which identifies measures of case or issue importance) and identified fourteen measures of salience. The application of those measures to Justice Ryan’s published opinions only confirmed the results of the survey because no two measures identified the same set (or even similar sets) of opinions as important. This empirical analysis and review of Justice Ryan’s published opinions demonstrated three things. First, Justice Ryan’s opinions matter to a wide range of people including grandparents, illegal aliens, homeowners, schoolchildren, employees, and convicted felons on death row. Second, the salience literature does not identify a single unitary concept of importance, but rather many different concepts of importance. Finally, the empirical analysis discussed herein unequivocally demonstrates that whether an opinion is important depends upon who you ask.

Policy popularity: The Arizona immigration law

As a maker of policy, a president or a governor invites public approval or disapproval for policy decisions. Public reaction is likely to occur for issues of great salience and clear candidate positions. We focus on immigration policy. Illegal immigration has become a hot issue in recent years, especially in Arizona. The state's governor took a clear stance in 2010 by signing a law that gives police sweeping powers to deal with illegal immigration (Arizona SB 1070). Using an aggregate time-series model, we find that this action affected gubernatorial approval ratings. Indeed the gain in approval proved enduring enough to turn a losing race for re-election into a victory for Governor Brewer. Using individual-level survey data, we find that presidential approval also was affected by reactions to the Arizona Law among residents of the state. When elected officials take clear stances on a salient issue - Governor Brewer for, President Obama against the law-policy moves approval.

Making the Dream Real: Montana's Indian Education for All Initiative Thrives in a National Climate of Anti-Ethnic Studies

The espoused foundation of U.S. society, E pluribus unum (out of many, one), is based on the belief that this nation should simultaneously support pluralism and promote unity. The road to making this ideal a reality, however, has not always been smooth. The ever-widening achievement gap highlights how this discordance plays out in our education system. Ethnic studies came about to counterbalance the predominance of Euro-American perspectives in our textbooks and curricula and address the inaccuracies, myths, and misconceptions surrounding other groups. Efforts to create a better and more just America were recently tested, however, when an Arizona law prohibiting school districts from offering courses taught from a specific racial/ethnic perspective targeted the Mexican-American Studies Program in Tucson schools. In contrast, Montana's educators who embrace the Indian Education for All initiative and teach all students about Montana's first inhabitants is thriving. In this article, we summarize the research on ethnic studies; track the inception, opposition, and abolition of the ethnic studies program in Tucson; and describe how Montana legislators, state education agencies, tribal members, and classroom teachers have collaborated and successfully promoted the unprecedented reform effort known as Indian Education for All in this anti-ethnic studies national climate.

Arizona Is Everywhere

Arizona Is Everywhere Tamara Underiner (bio) When I first learned that ATHE would be here in Arizona I felt my heart rise, then plummet, then rise again. Rising: My favorite people in the world, coming to be here with us, after so many years of political struggle! Plummeting: Oh, Lord, what they must think of us, given how all our dirty laundry has been hung on the clotheslines of media and social networks. Rising: I know we are more, much more than what you may have heard, and this is a chance to share some of that. You are here, and that is the important thing. You are the smartest, most creative people I know. We are so grateful you have joined the smart and creative people who live here to dream together these next few days. I know that it perhaps was not the easiest choice for many of you to make, and I want to start by thanking you for making it. And I hope that when you leave us, your time here in this complicated place will enrich your work at home in ways that only Arizona could have given you. What does it mean for ATHE to dream together in this place, at this time? Here, in Scottsdale, originally home to the Hohokam people, who lived here from more than 2,000 years ago up until about 1450. It is likely that they traveled here to southern Arizona from what is now Mexico, and maintained ties to their original homeland. Many contemporary Pima, Tohon Chul, and Tohono Oodam peoples, three of some twenty Arizona tribes, consider the Hohokam to be their ancestors. So when we hold an event in this space that was theirs, it is appropriate to acknowledge their contributions to our future. To give just one example: without their irrigation canals, which are the basis of the ones we still use, it is unlikely that Tempe or Phoenix or Scottsdale or Mesa would ever have been settled by anyone else. And it is useful to recall that, when this land was first occupied, the notion of geopolitical borders as we understand them today simply did not exist. Thus, Native communities to the south are divided by what to them is an artificial border; some are activist in denying its existence or calling for its transcendence; others defend it against crossers for a variety of reasons—some ecological, some territorial, some idiosyncratic. There is no unified Indigenous front here, but there is, as Patricia Ybarra will point out later in this issue, a chance to learn from perspectives that do not often receive national media attention. We also acknowledge the ongoing and deep ties to Mexico that this growing urban area continues to have. After the big land-grab that resulted in this area becoming US territory, about half of the residents of this area were Hispanic families. During the Mexican Revolution, they identified themselves as Latin or Spanish Americans, to distinguish themselves from the new immigrants, because even though they had been here for generations, by now they faced significant discrimination from the Anglo settlers seeking their fortunes on Hohokam land. And yet, the Latino presence remains strong here: when, during the second half of the last decade, law after law after law was passed restricting access to higher education, Latina/o youth—documented and undocumented alike—were at the forefront of the public critique against it, putting their bodies on the line in street protests and theatre performances on the lawn of the capitol—in one case, literally chaining themselves to the steps of that capitol in support of the DREAM Act. We have one such DREAM activist with us today, Dulce Juarez. More recently, with the passage of Arizona law HB 2281, we have been made newly aware of the importance of public schools in creating an “imagined community” of Americans. A hundred [End Page 3] years ago in Tempe, where I work, half of its young people could not attend public school with the other half. Today in Tucson, history seems to be repeating itself, as many young people are prohibited from learning their own history in their own public schools...

A call for further research on the impact of state-level immigration policies on public health.

Arizona's Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act, signed into law in April 2010, is already adversely affecting public health in the state. Our findings from a study on childhood obesity in Flagstaff suggest that the law changed health-seeking behaviors of residents of a predominantly Latino neighborhood by increasing fear, limiting residents' mobility, and diminishing trust of officials. These changes could exacerbate barriers to healthy living, limit access to care, and affect the overall safety of the neighborhood. Documentation of the on-the-ground impact of Arizona's law and similar state-level immigration policies is urgently needed. To inform effective policymaking, such research must be community engaged and include safety measures beyond the usual protocols.

Protecting Adolescents' Right to Seek Treatment for Sexually Transmitted Diseases without Parental Consent: The Arizona Experience with Senate Bill 1309

In 2010, Senate Bill 1309 included language to repeal an existing Arizona law that enables minors younger than 18 years of age to seek diagnosis and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) without parental consent. Numerous implications were identified that would have stemmed from parental consent provisions originally proffered in Senate Bill 1309. These implications included diminished access to essential health services among minors, exacerbated existing health disparities, increased health-care spending costs, and thwarted efforts to curb the spread of STDs. Lastly, minors would have been deprived of existing privacy protections concerning their STD-related medical information. This case study describes how collaborative advocacy efforts resulted in the successful amendment of Senate Bill 1309 to avert the negative sexual and reproductive health outcomes among adolescents stemming from the potential repeal of their existing legal right to seek STD treatment without parental consent.

The Democratic Inclusion of the Other and the Case of Arizona Immigration Law: Habermas, Derrida, and a Christian Ethical Response

The controversial anti-immigration law (S.B. 1070) was passed by the Arizona legislature on April 19, 2010, and Governor Jan Brewer signed it into law on April 23. According to this law, law enforcement officials and law enforcement agencies must make a reasonable attempt to determine the immigration status of a person with whom they come in contact if they have reasonable suspicion that the suspected individual(s) lack lawful status, with an exception allowed if the determination of lawful status could hinder or obstruct an investigation. All arrested individuals must have their immigration status determined before they are released from legal custody. According to this law, state officials and agencies are not limited or restricted by the enforcement of federal immigration laws. Arizona law enforcement agencies also have the authority to securely transport a person who does not have legal status to a federal facility. The enforcement agencies are not prohibited from sending, receiving, or maintaining information relating to the immigration status of any individual. They are also not restricted from exchanging information about the lawful status of an individual with any other federal, state, or local government entity for such purposes as the determination of eligibility for any public benefits, service, or license.

The Burden of Proving Insanity in the Medieval Ius commune

The Burden of Proving Insanity in the Medieval Ius commune Brandon T. Parlopiano (bio) In 2006 the U.S. Supreme Court announced its ruling in the case of Clark v. Arizona.1 Michael Clark was charged with having knowingly committed the murder of a police officer, an offense that carries more severe punishment than simple murder under Arizona law. Clark was also diagnosed as schizophrenic, a condition witnesses testified was worsening in the weeks before the slaying. At trial, his legal counsel made a plea of insanity, a defense that Clark had the burden of proving under Arizona law. When the plea failed, the defense sought to introduce testimony that the state could not prove the requisite mens rea for the charge due to Clark's state of mental health. The presiding judge denied the admission of such testimony and subsequently found Clark guilty. The appeal eventually reached the Supreme Court, where the conviction was upheld. Among the myriad issues raised in Clark v. Arizona, one of the more salient was that of who bears the burden of proof in insanity defense cases. Is proof incumbent on the one alleging insanity, since it exists in most jurisdictions as an affirmative defense? Or is it incumbent on the prosecution, who has the obligation to prove all points of the charge, including a mens rea where applicable? The answers may vary from state to state, but most have enacted legislation laying the burden on those alleging insanity as a defense. The burden of proof became a contentious topic in American jurisprudence [End Page 515] as public outcry against the insanity defense grew stronger, particularly after the controversial 1982 acquittal of John Hinckley. The more recent case of Clark v. Arizona and the largely negative reaction it received show the issue to be just as problematic as ever.2 Our current legal trouble with mental illness is nothing new. As I will show, the jurists of the medieval ius commune, the system built on the foundations of Roman and canon law, sought answers to many of the same questions we are asking today. Such issues are now coming under increasing scrutiny by historians of the Middle Ages, especially those working in the emerging field of disability studies.3 In 2003, Catherine Kudlick succinctly provided a history of the advances made by disability studies and made a plea for historians to take it up as a category of analysis on par with gender, race, etc.4 Medieval legal studies, particularly of England, have benefitted from the pioneering work of Wendy Turner, among others.5 Still, the jurisprudence of the ius commune has received less attention. Given the emphasis of disability studies on uncovering the processes through which the identity of disability was negotiated, as well as the relevance to concerns in modern American law, I propose to chart the history of jurisprudential thought on the burden of proving insanity in the Middle Ages. Despite the extensive treatment of insanity's effects in Roman law, little evidence of how [End Page 516] the determination was made found its way into Justinian's codification.6 Medieval jurists, both canonists and civilians, constructed an original approach to the problem, incorporating both the principles taken from the libri legales as well as the demands of practice. Before moving into the juristic treatment of the burden of proof, I need to clarify two points basic to what follows. First, we need to ask where the proof for insanity fits within general conceptions of proof in the ius commune. The various forms proof could take came to be distinguished and graded by the jurists according to their relative strength in compelling the judge to pass sentence in one's favor.7 At the peak stood notoriety, that is, knowledge of a fact so certain that it precluded any contrary evidence; already in Gratian's analysis of due process, a notorium factum was sufficient to allow an abbreviated procedure.8 Included among notoria would be res iudicata, licit confessions, and even certain presumptions, such as the presumption of a valid marriage if sexual intercourse takes place on the condition of marriage.9 At a lower level, though still strong enough to...

Unauthorized Migrants and the (Il)Logic of “Crime Control”: A Human Rights Perspective on US Federal and Local State Immigration Policies

AbstractImmigration control, widely regarded the sovereign right of nation states, has often been pursued at the expense of civil and human rights. More than a century ago, nativists legitimated a punitive approach to immigration control that treated migrants’ rights as secondary by branding millions of newcomers to the United States as a “dangerous class”. In many ways, recent policies similarly criminalize immigrants and deploy crime control strategies in response. This article reviews the most significant of these policies at the federal and local state level, including: border security measures, detention and deportation, the 287(g) program, anti‐immigrant city ordinances, and the Arizona law (SB1070). Each initiative has been framed as necessary to protect American citizens from serious crime. We focus on four ways in which these policies violate human rights: first, border security measures that result in migrant deaths violate the right to life; second, detention and deportation violate the right to liberty; third, detention and deportation punish unlawful residents as though they were guilty of criminal rather than civil violations of the law, imposing penalties that are arbitrary and disproportionately harsh; and fourth, local state policies to counter illegal immigration encourage racial profiling, a practice that violates the right to freedom from discrimination.

Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America, 2011: Report of the Executive Director

The year 2010, which is the main focus of this report, must surely appear in the Academy annals as beyond imagination. The passage of the Arizona immigration law (SB 1070), and also an Arizona law on ethnic studies, created consternation and confusion as the Academy looked ahead to the scheduling of this meeting. The question was whether or not the Academy should hold the meeting as planned or seek other arrangements, if not cancellation. As tension was building throughout the country, the Academy began to receive advice and more from a variety of sources, including individuals who were not members of the Academy but sought to speak as medievalists through the Academy. For the first time ever the officers and Council held a telephone conference, on June 18, which led to a decision to conduct a poll soliciting from the membership its views on the main issue of holding the meeting in Arizona. The new Academy distribution list registered 1,025 opinions out of a total possible of 3,881. The solicitation of members' views in this direct way was also a first. By about a 4.5 percent margin the poll favored a decision to stay in Arizona.

Toward a Contemporary Social Justice Agenda in Family Therapy Research and Practice

Toward a Contemporary Social Justice Agenda in Family Therapy Research and Practice

Noticiero Univision: Coverage of the Arizona Law as a Case Study about the Construction of Diasporic Public Spheres

This article looks at the coverage US broadcaster Univision provided about the Arizona law, a measure criminalizing undocumented immigrants. Content analysis of Noticiero Univision’s reports on the subject reveals the presence of diasporic public spheres, a notion that is regularly deployed in reference to media from the homeland of transnational communities, but which has rarely been explored at the empirical level in host‐land contexts. This contribution suggests that while the paradigm of cultural assimilation could be adequate to describe the role Univision takes on in synthesizing the Latin American‐origin community as part of a national ethnic minority, an account of Hispanics as a ‘diaspora of diasporas’ productively focuses on the diverse nature of the community in question, and on the national and transnational dynamics that shape contemporary experiences of human displacement.

Can Racial Profiling Be Avoided Under Arizona Immigration Law? Lessons Learned From Subtle Bias Research and Anti‐Discrimination Law

Arizona Senate Bill 1070 requires law‐enforcement officers to verify the citizenship of individuals they stop when they have a “reasonable suspicion” that someone may be unlawfully present in the United States. Critics of the law fear it will encourage racial profiling. Defenders of the law point out that the statute explicitly forbids most forms of racial profiling. By drawing on the lessons learned in the domain of antidiscrimination law, we discuss how social psychological research can inform this debate and illuminate challenges associated with fair enforcement of the statute. We conclude that the Arizona law, paired with a lack of comprehensive training and ineffective testing procedures for detecting discrimination, will likely result in many Latinos being illegally targeted on the basis of their race. While certain actions, such as effective training and oversight, may help mitigate discrimination, these safeguards are not likely to completely eliminate biased outcomes.

A Model of Authoritarianism, Social Norms, and Personal Values: Implications for Arizona Law Enforcement and Immigration Policy

The enforcement of Arizona's new immigration law (Senate Bill 1070) requires police officers to make countless everyday judgments about whether individuals they encounter might be illegal immigrants. Understanding officers’ attitudes about immigrants, therefore, as well as the social and personal factors that influence these attitudes, will be important to predicting the consequences of enforcing this new law. Our program of research examines the role of authoritarianism, personal values, and descriptive social norms in determining attitudes about immigrants. Given the current social and political climate, as reflected in recent Arizona and national-level polls, coupled with research on psychological predispositions, our model suggests that Arizona police officers are likely to hold negative attitudes about immigrants, and that these negative attitudes may in turn influence how officers choose to enforce Senate Bill 1070 (SB 1070). To reduce improper enforcement of SB 1070, our model suggests that police training interventions would be better informed by taking into consideration (1) the general ambiguity surrounding Americans' attitudes toward immigrants, and (2) the American tradition of egalitarianism.