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55 Stetson L. Rev. i (2025-2026)

handle is hein.journals/stet55 and id is 1 raw text is: STETSON LAW REVIEW VOLUME 55 FALL 2025 NUMBER 1 Open Issue ARTICLES A Tale of Two Falsities: Objective Falsity and Common Law Falsity Regarding the False Claims Act Bryce T. Daniels 1 The absence of a definition for falsity under the False Claims Act (FCA) has spurred disagreement between courts on whether medical opinions are falsifiable. The jurisprudential dichotomy is split between objective falsity, which holds that only hard indicia, like empirical data, are falsifiable, and legal (or common-law) falsity, which holds that compliance with legal requirements, in addition to empirical data, is falsifiable. The Supreme Court endorses the position that the common law fills the gaps when statutory meaning is ill-defined, and this Article explains how the common law clearly stipulates the appropriate FCA standard as legal falsity. Additionally, it relies upon First Amendment and defamation jurisprudence to show that medical opinions are statements of fact not opinions as many courts incorrectly presume. This is not revolutionary, as medical litigation in deliberate-indifference and Social Security contexts routinely invites factfinders to consider the falsifiability of medical opinions. In the aggregate, these findings rebut advocates' claims that increased liability under legal falsity will subject would-be defendants to nonstop bet-the-business litigation. Given that only about a fifth of FCA cases even get to the summary-judgment stage, unification of law under the legal-falsity standard sets clear expectations for parties as to what the rule of law requires. As such, the Supreme Court should grant certiorari and clarify the appropriate standard of falsity under the FCA as being legal falsity. Indicting a Ham Sandwich and Other Deficiencies: How the Military Justice System Can Help the Civilian Criminal Justice System Shape Up Jen Jenkins 51 The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) is often viewed as a harsh system of justice for accused service members. A closer look at the UCMJ, however, shows that it arguably treats accused persons more favorably in pretrial hearings, plea colloquies, trials, and sentencing than its civilian counterparts-in ways that the civilian criminal justice system may want to consider emulating. Historic provisions of the Fiscal Year 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (FY 2022 NDAA) went into effect at the end of December 2023, overhauling key aspects of the prosecution of crime under the UCMJ. This Article argues that by eliminating jury sentencing, the FY 2022 NDAA was a step in the wrong direction. Abortion, Originalism, and the Privacy Clause: What the Supreme Court of Florida Got Wrong in Planned Parenthood v. State Adam Richardson 89 The Supreme Court of Florida recently decided Planned Parenthood of Southwest and Central Florida v. State of Florida, where it upheld the state law banning abortion after fifteen weeks. To get there, the court had to recede from decades of precedent like In re T.W. (1980), which held that the Florida Constitution's explicit and broadly worded right of privacy included the right to an abortion. The core of the court's decision is an application of originalism, specifically public meaning originalism. Under this method of constitutional interpretation, a court seeks the original meaning the text most likely would have had to a reasonably well-informed speaker of the English language at the time it was adopted. Public meaning originalism does not seek the subjective intent of the drafters. According to the court, when Florida's voters adopted the Privacy Clause in 1980, they would not have understood the Privacy Clause to encompass abortion. This is not a defensible application of originalism. Starting with the text, the court imposed an unjustifiably i