Digital Commons Network^™

Conflict Preemption: A Remedy For The Disparate Impact Of Crime-Free Nuisance Ordinances, Meredith Joseph

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Thousands of municipalities across the country have adopted crime-free nuisance ordinances—laws that sanction landlords for their tenants’ behaviors, coercing them to evict tenants for actions as innocuous as calling 9-1-1 in an emergency. These facially neutral ordinances give wide discretion to municipal officials, leading to discriminatory enforcement of evictions. As a result, these ordinances have a devastating impact on victims of domestic violence and are used as a tool to inhibit integration in majority-white municipalities. Many plaintiffs have brought lawsuits alleging violations of the U.S. Constitution and the Fair Housing Act. However, bringing lawsuits under various anti-discrimination protections presents many …

The Municipal Pardon Power, Hayato Watanabe

Michigan Law Review

At the state and federal levels, the pardon power can be used to restore the dignity and legal rights lost by a criminal conviction. Unfortunately, those facing similar consequences from municipal convictions may not have access to a pardon. Although clemency is exceedingly rare at any level of government, municipal defendants face a unique structural problem that deprives them of the possibility of a pardon. Specifically, many cities have simply failed to create a local clemency power. This Note argues that the authority to grant pardons for municipal offenses is part of the toolbox of powers provided to cities through …

Dispossessing Detroit: How The Law Takes Property, Mary Kathlin Sickel

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Introduction for the University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform's Symposium “Dispossessing Detroit: How the Law Takes Property,” hosted on November 9 and 10, 2019.

Urban Decolonization, Norrinda Brown Hayat

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

National fair housing legislation opened up higher opportunity neighborhoods to multitudes of middle-class African Americans. In actuality, the FHA offered much less to the millions of poor, Black residents in inner cities than it did to the Black middle class. Partly in response to the FHA’s inability to provide quality housing for low-income blacks, Congress has pursued various mobility strategies designed to facilitate the integration of low-income Blacks into high-opportunity neighborhoods as a resolution to the persistent dilemma of the ghetto. These efforts, too, have had limited success. Now, just over fifty years after the passage of the Fair Housing …

Criminal Justice And The Mattering Of Lives, Deborah Tuerkheimer

Michigan Law Review

A review of James Forman Jr., Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America.

The Unconstitutionality, Ineffectiveness, And Alternatives Of Gang Injunctions, Thomas A. Myers

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Gang violence across America puts in jeopardy the peace and tranquility of neighborhoods. Cities are challenged to keep their communities safe from gang violence. One common way in which cities attempt to combat violent gang activity is by using gang injunctions. Gang injunctions are court orders that prohibit gang members from conducting already-illegal activities such as vandalism, loitering, and use or possession of illegal drugs or weapons within a defined area. These injunctions, however, also prohibit otherwise legal activity such as associating with others within the restricted area of the injunction, using words or hand gestures, and wearing certain clothing. …

Do Defendants Have An Attorney When They Have A Public Defender, James Eisenstein

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Counsel for the Poor: Criminal Defense in Urban America by Robert Hermann, Eric Single, and John Boston

Urban Politics And The Criminal Courts, Milton Heumann

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Urban Politics and the Criminal Courts by Martin A. Levin

Survey Of Metropolitan Courts: Detroit Area, Maxine Boord Virtue

Michigan Legal Studies Series

It has long been recognized that the social problems of the city are something more than a mere multiple of the social problems of the rural community. The bigness of the metropolitan area breeds its own difficulties, which find no counterpart outside its borders. Only recently, however, have experts begun to suggest that this same uniqueness inheres in the problems of the organization of metropolitan courts.

Should the organization of the metropolitan court system differ from court organization elsewhere? How should it differ? Before these questions can be answered, we must know something of existing court organizations in metropolitan areas …