Digital Commons Network^™

Voter, Jefferson S. Arak

Capstones

Ron Pierce, on parole in New Jersey, fights for a state bill that would re-enfranchise himself and 100,000 other New Jerseyans with criminal convictions.

Taught at a young age that voting is a duty to one's community, Ron works tirelessly to make sure that the fundamental right to vote does not leave New Jersey's neediest without a voice.

Meanwhile, state lawmakers may need to compromise their efforts to restore the right to vote in the face of political opposition.

Finding Justice, Hannah Miller

Capstones

Finding Justice tackles the devastation caused by wrongful conviction through the journey of Jeffrey Deskovic. After serving 16 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit, Deskovic has strived to rebuild his life. The film follows him as he finishes law school and runs a foundation that frees the wrongfully convicted, all while dealing with lingering trauma.

Who Ya Gonna Call? An Analysis Of Paradigm Shifts And Social Harms As A Result Of Hyper-Viral Police Violence, Ariana H. Aboulafia

University of Miami Race & Social Justice Law Review

No abstract provided.

Let Locked-Up People Vote: Prisoners Are Still Citizens And Should Be Able To Exert Their Civic Rights, Rachel Landy

Faculty Online Publications

The Constitution does not guarantee all citizens the right to vote. Rather, the right to vote is implied through a patchwork of amendments that restrict how voting rights may be limited. For example, the 15th Amendment reads “[t]he right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged...on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Subsequent amendments added gender, failure to pay poll taxes, literacy, and age over 18 to the list of characteristics for which denying the right to vote may not be based.

Racial Prejudice In The Criminal Justice System, Tori Cooper

Jessie O'Kelly Freshman Essay Award

Racial prejudice against African Americans has been the leading cause of high incarceration rates amongst the African American community. Within the United States, the census reported that African Americans make up about 17.9 percent of the population, with one-third of the people making up the incarcerated population in America. The disparity in those numbers highlights the current situation that is plaguing the nation. Blatant cases of racial profiling that have received media attention are a true testament of the broken law enforcement system from coast to coast. Racial prejudice cases have affected the black American community since the beginning of …

“Disturbing Schools” Laws: Disturbing Due Process With Unconstitutionally Vague Limits On Student Behavior, Rachel Smith

Journal of Law and Policy

For over a century, the United States Supreme Court has held, in sum and substance, that students do not “shed their constitutional rights . . . at the schoolhouse gate.” In practice, however, while not shed entirely, many of those rights have been increasingly limited. “Disturbing Schools” Laws subject students to criminal charges for behaving in a distracting or obnoxious manner on campus—behavior which can easily be conceptualized as typical adolescent behavior. Challenges to Disturbing Schools Laws have resulted in opposing outcomes across Circuit Courts. This Note discusses how students may use the Fourth Circuit case Kenny v. Wilson to …

Sexual Assault By Federal Actors, #Metoo, And Civil Rights, Julie Goldscheid

Washington Law Review

Calls for accountability for gender violence have permeated public discourse in the aftermath of the #MeToo movement. While much attention has focused on high profile individuals accused of harassment, less attention has been paid to sexual assaults of more vulnerable and marginalized people, including low wage workers, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and gender non-conforming people, and immigrants. In addition, at the same time that calls for accountability have targeted Hollywood, employers, universities, and even the Catholic church, relatively little outcry has focused on the longstanding and under-recognized problem of sexual assaults by government actors. This Article focuses on sexual assault …

The Failings Of Title Ix For Survivors Of Sexual Violence: Utilizing Restorative Justice On College Campuses, Katie Vail

Washington Law Review

Universities should adopt restorative justice practices to serve the legal and personal needs of student survivors of sexual violence. Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in education programs and activities operated by recipients of federal financial assistance. Since 1997, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has issued “Dear Colleague Letters” to federally funded institutions to assist with Title IX compliance and implement procedures for complaints of sexual violence. In 2011, Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Russlyn Ali under the Obama administration issued a Dear Colleague Letter, which expanded protections for survivors. However, it prohibited the …

A Modest Proposal: The Federal Government Should Use Firing Squads To Execute Federal Death Row Inmates, Stephanie Moran

University of Miami Law Review

The Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment in the criminal justice system. As the federal government looks to reinstate the death penalty, this Note argues that it should include firing squad as an option for carrying out executions. While firing squads may shock the senses, this Note argues that they are in fact the only way to comport with the requirements of the Eighth Amendment.

Evidence’S #Metoo Moment, Aníbal Rosario-Lebrón

University of Miami Law Review

The #MeToo movement has drawn attention to the prevalence of sexual and gender-based violence. But more importantly, it has exposed how society discounts the testimony of women. This Article unfolds how this credibility discounting is reinforced in our evidentiary system through the use of character for untruthfulness evidence to impeach victims. Specifically, through defense attorneys’ practice of impeaching sexual and gender-based violence victims’ character for truthfulness as a way to introduce functional evidence of credibility biases regarding the trustworthiness of sexual and gender-based violence victims and the plausibility of their testimonies. The Article further shows a correlation between the poor …

Law Symposium: Adjudicating Sexual Misconduct On Campus: Title Ix And Due Process In Uncertain Times, Roger Williams University School Of Law, Michael M. Bowden

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle The Master's House: Kavanaugh's Confirmation Hearing And The Perils Of Progressive Punitivism, Hadar Aviram

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

This essay proceeds in four parts. In Part I, I problematize the idea of the accused’s demeanor as evidence of guilt, remorse, or entitlement, arguing that we tend to overestimate our ability to deduce internal states of mind from people’s behavior and expressions. Part II assesses the potential (or lack thereof) of public performances of reckoning to produce a valuable expression of remorse, discussing the value of contingent apologies. Part III expands the framework to examine the way our politically fractured field responds to partisan efforts to excoriate culprits, arguing that “starting a national conversation” on the basis of …

Children Of A Lesser God: Reconceptualizing Race In Immigration Law, Sarah L. Hamilton-Jiang

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

The increased public exposure to the experiences of Latinx unaccompanied children seeking entry at the United States southern border has revealed the lived reality of the nation’s pernicious immigration laws. The harrowing experiences of unaccompanied children are amplified by their interaction with a legal system plagued by a legacy of systemic racism and sustained racial caste. While immigration law currently affords minimal legal protections for these children, in application, the law continues to fall egregiously short of providing for the safety of unaccompanied children. Though critics have long attested to the legal system’s neglect of unaccompanied children, subsequent legal analysis …

Gender Disparities In Plea Bargaining, Carlos Berdejo

Indiana Law Journal

Across wide-ranging contexts, academic literature and the popular press have identified pervasive gender disparities favoring men over women in society. One area in which gender disparities have conversely favored women is the criminal justice system. Most of the empirical research examining gender disparities in criminal case outcomes has focused on judges’ sentencing decisions. Few studies have assessed disparities in the steps leading up to a defendant’s conviction, where various actors make choices that constrain judges’ ultimate sentencing discretion. This Article addresses this gap by examining gender disparities in the plea-bargaining process. The results presented in this Article reveal significant gender …

Talking About Black Lives Matter And #Metoo, Bridget J. Crawford, Linda S. Greene, Lolita Buckner Inniss, Mehrsa Baradaran, Noa Ben-Asher, I. Bennett Capers, Osamudia R. James, Keisha Lindsay

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This essay explores the apparent differences and similarities between the Black Lives Matter and the #MeToo movements. In April 2019, the Wisconsin Journal of Gender, Law and Society hosted a symposium entitled “Race-Ing Justice, En-Gendering Power: Black Lives Matter and the Role of Intersectional Legal Analysis in the Twenty-First Century.” That program facilitated examination of the historical antecedents, cultural contexts, methods, and goals of these linked equality movements. Conversations continued among the symposium participants long after the end of the official program. In this essay, the symposium’s speakers memorialize their robust conversations and also dive more deeply into the phenomena, …

New Textualism And The Thirteenth Amendment, Leah Litman

Articles

Michele Goodwin’s piece raises important questions about whether troubling modern-day labor practices in jails and prisons are consistent with the Thirteenth Amendment. In Goodwin’s telling, the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment formally ended the institution of slavery, but the Amendment allowed practices resembling slavery to continue, perhaps reflecting the extant stereotypes and racism that formally amending the Constitution cannot root out. Indeed, Goodwin excavates historical materials that suggest the people who drafted and ratified the Amendment understood and expected that it would allow the perpetuation of slavery in another form. As Goodwin explains, most historians have argued that the Thirteenth …

Restoring Fairness To Campus Sex Tribunals, Cynthia Ward

Cynthia V. Ward

No abstract provided.

Q: Will The Supreme Court Intervention In Florida Fail The Test Of Time?, Ira Glasser, Alan J. Meese

Alan J. Meese

No abstract provided.

Why The United States Supreme Court Got Some [But Not A Lot] Of The Sixth Amendment Right To Counsel Analysis Right, Paul Marcus

Paul Marcus

No abstract provided.

The Right To Counsel In Criminal Cases, A National Crisis, Mary Sue Backus, Paul Marcus

Paul Marcus

No abstract provided.

Widening Batson's Net To Ensnare More Than The Unapologetically Bigoted Or Painfully Unimaginative Attorney, Jeffrey Bellin, Junichi P. Semitsu

Jeffrey Bellin

In Snyder v. Louisiana, the Supreme Court reaffirmed its commitment to rooting out racially discriminatory jury selection and its belief that the three-step framework established in Batson v. Kentucky is capable of unearthing racially discriminatory peremptory strikes. Yet the Court left in place the talismanic protection available to those who might misuse the peremptory challenge—the unbounded collection of justifications that courts, including the Supreme Court, accept as “race neutral.”

To evaluate the Court’s continuing faith in Batson, we conducted a survey of all federal published and unpublished judicial decisions issued in this first decade of the new millennium (2000–2009) that …

Brief Of Amici Curiae Professors Of Law In Support Of Petitioner, Barbara Allen Babcock, Jeffrey Bellin, Darryl K. Brown, Robert P. Burns, James E. Coleman Jr., Lisa Kern Griffin, Robert P. Mosteller, Deborah Tuerkheimer, Neil Vidmar, Jessica L. West

Jeffrey Bellin

No abstract provided.

Brief For Amici Curiae Professors Of Law In Support Of Petitioner, Barbara Allen Babcock, Jeffrey Bellin, Robert P. Burns, Sherman J. Clark, James E. Coleman Jr., Lisa Kern Griffin, Robert P. Mosteller, Deborah Tuerkheimer, Neil Vidmar

Jeffrey Bellin

No abstract provided.

Justifying Racial Reform, Davison M. Douglas

Davison M. Douglas

No abstract provided.

Book Review Of Race, Law, And American History, 1700-1990, Davison M. Douglas

Davison M. Douglas

No abstract provided.

Law And Society: The Criminalization Of Latinx In The United States, Gabriela Groenke

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The United States leads the world in incarceration with just over 2.2 million people in state or federal prisons or local jails in 2014 (Bureau of Justice Statistics 2016). Although the number of incarcerated individuals has declined by about .5 percent since its peak in 2008 (Bureau of Justice Statistics 2016), the fact remains that mass incarceration is an epidemic in the United States. Over the last decade much has been written about the effects of mass incarceration on people of color, with many analysts pointing to the fear of crime as contributing to the formulation of current policies, which …

Recent Developments: The Right To A Fair Cross-Section Of The Community And The Black Box Of Jury Pool Selection In Arkansas, Raelynn J. Hillhouse

Arkansas Law Review

A Washington County, Arkansas court conducted a hearing on October 15, 2018 on a criminal defendant’s motion to compel discovery to assure a fair and accurate cross-section of the community for the jury as guaranteed by the United States and Arkansas Constitutions. At the hearing, the jury coordinator for the Circuit Clerk’s office testified that counties may elect to use a state-sponsored jury selection computer program, or they may use proprietary programs. Washington County uses a proprietary computer program to select the jury pool from a list of registered voters. The clerk described how her office takes an extra step …

What Can Brown Do For You?: Addressing Mccleskey V. Kemp As A Flawed Standard For Measuring The Constitutionally Significant Risk Of Race Bias

Erwin Chemerinsky

This Essay asserts that in McCleskey v. Kemp, the Supreme Court created a problematic standard for the evidence of race bias necessary to uphold an equal protection claim under the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. First, the Court’s opinion reinforced the cramped understanding that constitutional claims require evidence of not only disparate impact but also discriminatory purpose, producing significant negative consequences for the operation of the U.S. criminal justice system. Second, the Court rejected the Baldus study’s findings of statistically significant correlations between the races of the perpetrators and victims and the imposition of the death …

Acting Black: An Analysis Of Blackness And Criminality In Film, Blake Edwards

Master's Theses

This thesis will attempt to answer how films deal with blackness and crime, specifically when intersecting with the concepts of exploitation, appropriation, whiteness and the criminality of the black body. While not entirely the root of the negative perceptions of African-Americans in the United States, the manner in which African-Americans are portrayed in motion picture media influences how their presence is seen in society. This thesis will examine specific films that include elements dealing with the listed factors and what effects they may or may not have.

An Instrument At The Forefront Of Social Change: The Legacy Of Joaquin G. Ávila, Steven W. Bender

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.