Washburn Law Journal
Editor's Note
Volume 49, No. 2 (Winter 2010)
For the second time, the Washburn Law Journal has the opportunity to publish a symposium issue concerning the current state of oil and gas law with the help of Professor David E. Pierce. Considering the recognition garnered by the last oil and gas symposium issue in 1994, Volume Forty-Nine's Board of Editors was understandably excited when Professor Pierce presented this opportunity to us. The Journal co-hosted the symposium with the Business and Transactional Law Center, and each of the symposium's presenters also published an article in this issue. Professor Pierce's introductory note (following) discusses those articles in further detail.
In addition to the symposium articles, Issue Two also contains several student pieces. In his Note, The Feasibility of Applying Strict-Liability Principles to Carbon Capture and Storage, Nathan R. Hoffman argues in favor of the application of strict liability to carbon capture and storage activities. Monique M. Chartier McElwee criticizes the United States Supreme Court's recent ruling that school officials can conduct warrantless strip searches based merely upon reasonable suspicion in her Comment, Strip Searches in Public Schools: They're Not Child's Play. She argues, instead, that such searches should always require a warrant supported by probable cause. Examining another recent U.S. Supreme Court case, Stacey Lynn Sheon uses her Comment, Opening the Doors to a Quality Public Education for Children with Disabilities or Slamming Them Shut: A Critique of the Supreme Court's Treatment of Private Tuition Reimbursement under the IDEA, to challenge the Court's decision that the Individuals with Disabilities Act authorizes public schools to reimburse private-school tuition to families of children who did not receive special-education services from the public-school system. And finally, Eric Turner, in his Comment, You Say Remedial, I Say Coercive, Let's Call the Whole Thing Off: Why the Remedial/Coercive Distinction Is Not Critical in Younger Abstention, evaluates federal courts' use of the remedial/coercive distinction in the Younger abstention analysis and concludes that this distinction should not be determinative, but rather federal courts should respect state court proceedings in accordance with the principles of comity and "Our Federalism."
J.D.S.
