Digital Commons Network^™

Humanity For Asylum Seekers: How Migrant Protection Protocols And The March 20th Cdc Order Violate The Constitutional Rights Of Asylum Seekers During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Madison Beck

Center for Health Law Policy and Bioethics

In late 2018, the Trump Administration introduced Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), also known as the Remain in Mexico Policy, to curb illegal immigration. The protocols allow the U.S. to remove immigrants, including asylum seekers, to Mexico while their claims are processed. This is problematic on its own, but even more so during the COVID-19 pandemic; makeshift asylum tent-camps are home to thousands of vulnerable individuals where viral spread would be devastating. Additionally, in March 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued an “order suspending introduction of certain persons from countries where a communicable disease exists” further worsening …

Confessions, Convictions And Controversy: An Examination Of False Confessions Leading To Wrongful Convictions In The United States Throughout History, Kirandeep Kaur

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

Police Brutality And State-Sanctioned Violence In 21st Century America, Itohen Ihaza

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

The Inconvenience Of Justice: How Unmitigated Official Misconduct Almost Destroyed The Lives Of Five Young Boys From Harlem, Stefania Bordone, David Wright

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

Constitutionally Unaccountable: Privatized Immigration Detention, Danielle C. Jefferis

Indiana Law Journal

For-profit, civil immigration detention is one of this nation’s fastest growing industries. About two-thirds of the more than 50,000 people in the civil custody of federal immigration authorities find themselves at one point or another in a private, corporate-run prison that contracts with the federal government. Conditions of confinement in many of these facilities are dismal. Detainees have suffered from untreated medical conditions and endured months, in some cases years, of detention in environments that are unsafe and, at times, violent. Some have died. Yet, the spaces are largely unregulated. This Article exposes and examines the absence of a constitutional …

Law Library Blog (January 2020): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Symbolism And The Thirteenth Amendment: The Injury Of Exposure To Governmentally Endorsed Symbols Of Racial Superiority, Edward H. Kyle

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

One of the debates often encountered by native southerners centers around our historical symbols. There are heated opinions on both sides of the issue as to what these symbols mean and whether they should be allowed to be displayed. The latter question has begun making its way into the courts, with many southern symbols and memorials being accused of promoting the philosophy of racial supremacy. Despite the growing public concern, modern courts refuse to rule on the question. They claim they are forestalled by Article III’s standing requirement that plaintiffs must have suffered a concrete injury in fact. They state …

New York City Property Taxes And Appeals: A Systemic Subversion Of Constitutional Rights, Phoenix Marino

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Secret Conviction Programs, Meghan J. Ryan

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Judges and juries across the country are convicting criminal defendants based on secret evidence. Although defendants have sought access to the details of this evidence—the results of computer programs and their underlying algorithms and source codes—judges have generally denied their requests. Instead, judges have prioritized the business interests of the for-profit companies that developed these “conviction programs” and which could lose market share if the secret algorithms and source codes on which the programs are based were exposed. This decision has jeopardized criminal defendants’ constitutional rights.

Rucho Is Right – But For The Wrong Reasons, Louis Michael Seidman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In Rucho v. Common Cause, the Supreme Court ended its long struggle to formulate constitutional standards to regulate political gerrymandering by declaring that it was not up to the job. The Court held that it could come up with no manageable standards governing the controversy and that it therefore posed a nonjusticiable political question.

In this brief comment, I attempt defend this outcome. The task is not easy, and I hope that the reader will at least give me some points for degree of difficulty. There is no denying that partisan gerrymandering is a very serious evil and there …

Precedent, Non-Universal Injunctions, And Judicial Departmentalism: A Model Of Constitutional Adjudication, Howard Wasserman

Faculty Publications

This Article proposes a model of constitutional adjudication that offers a deeper, richer, and more accurate vision than the simple “courts strike down unconstitutional laws” narrative that pervades legal, popular, and political discourse around constitutional litigation. The model rests on five principles:

1) an actionable constitutional violation arises from the actual or threatened enforcement of an invalid law, not the existence of the law itself;

2) the remedy when a law is constitutionally invalid is for the court to halt enforcement;

3) remedies must be particularized to the parties to a case and courts should not issue “universal” or “nationwide” …

Eighty Years Of Federalism Forbearance: Rationing, Resignation, And The Rule Of Law, Gil Seinfeld

Reviews

Andrew Coan’s book, Rationing the Constitution, offers a novel account of the forces that drive Supreme Court decisions across a wide array of highly controversial, vitally important areas of law. The project is ambitious. It endeavors to improve our understanding of forces that constrain the form and, ultimately, the substance of our constitutional law along each of its major axes: federalism, the separation of powers, and individual rights. I think it succeeds. The book’s central claim—that familiar (but underexplored) institutional constraints and background norms sharply limit the range of choices available to the Court when it is called upon to …

Diploma Privilege And The Constitution, Patricia E. Salkin, Claudia Angelos, Sara J. Berman, Mary Lu Bilek, Carol L. Chomsky, Marsha Griggs, Joan W. Howarth, Eileen Kaufman, Deborah Jones Meritt, Judith Wegner, Andrea Curcio

Scholarly Works

The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting shutdowns are affecting every aspect of society. The legal profession and the justice system have been profoundly disrupted at precisely the time when there is an unprecedented need for legal services to deal with a host of legal issues generated by the pandemic, including disaster relief, health law, insurance, labor law, criminal justice, domestic violence, and civil rights. The need for lawyers to address these issues is great but the prospect of licensing new lawyers is challenging due to the serious health consequences of administering the bar examination during the pandemic.

State Supreme Courts are …

The Ratchet Wreck: Equality’S Leveling Down Problem, Louis Michael Seidman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Constitutional equality law has a two-way ratchet problem. When someone demonstrates that a government policy treats her unequally, the injury can be remedied by improving things for the claimant, but it can also be remedied by leaving the claimant’s status unchanged while making things worse for the people advantaged by the policy. If a court chooses the latter option, it diminishes the welfare of some people while arguably not improving welfare of anyone else. Why is that a good idea?

Courts have often attempted to avoid hard questions like these by leveling up – that is by allowing advantaged persons …

Essentially Elective: The Law And Ideology Of Restricting Abortion During The Covid-19 Pandemic, B. Jessie Hill

Faculty Publications

During the COVID-19 pandemic, several states adopted orders temporarily suspending elective surgeries and procedures. A subset of those states moved to limit abortions under those orders, provoking emergency litigation to keep abortion clinics open and functioning. No similar lawsuits have been necessary to protect access to other time-sensitive medical procedures. So why was abortion singled out for disparate treatment?

This Essay provides an overview of the litigation that ensued in the wake of some states’ attempts to limit abortion access under the authority of executive orders banning non-essential or elective procedures. It argues that abortion was singled out in two …

The Constitutionality Of The Self-Pardon And Its Compatibility With Lockean Prerogative, Michael Kelley

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Citizen Soldiers And The Foundation Fusion Of Masculinity, Citizenship, And Military Service, Jamie Abrams, Nickole Durbin

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Sarah Livingston Jay famously toasted revelers in 1783: "May all our citizens be soldiers, and all our soldiers citizens." This toast conveyed "a foundational fusion" within our republican government tradition-coupling military service, citizenship, and masculinities.' The Akron Law School's conference on the 100th anniversary of the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment offered the chance to fight the eulogization of the Nineteenth Amendment and explore its modern relevance. This paper concludes that the Nineteenth Amendment cannot be understood without connecting it to broader conceptions of citizenship, masculinities, and military service, thus revealing its ongoing relevance to military inclusion and integration.

In …

Liberalism And The Distinctiveness Of Religious Belief, Abner S. Greene

Faculty Scholarship

Finding the appropriate sweet spot for religion’s role in the state and how state action may affect the lives of religious people continues to be elusive. Cécile Laborde’s ambitious book Liberalism’s Religion comes down firmly on the side of seeing religion as not distinctive, even in a liberal democracy. To the extent that nonestablishment and free exercise norms should prevail, they should prevail insofar as we can disaggregate religion into components that it shares with nonreligious belief and practice. In this review essay, I advance a position on which Laborde spends little time in her book — religion is distinctive …

A Class Action Lawsuit For The Right To A Minimum Education In Detroit, Carter G. Phillips

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.

The “Foul” Protection For A Photographer’S Original And Creative Choices In A Photograph: Exploring The Implications Of Rentmeester V. Nike, Inc. On Creativity In Photography, Olivia Lattanza

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Equity In American And Jewish Law, Itzchak E. Kornfeld , Ph.D.

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Keeping Faith With Nomos, Steven L. Winter

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Reflections Of The People: Representation In The Constitutions Of The United States (1789) And Chile (1833), Zoe E. Nelson

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

This paper is a comparative analysis of the American Constitution of 1789 and the Chilean Constitution of 1833, as well as the political writings of major political theorists prior to the making of each constitution. In comparing the historical development and making of Constitutions in post-war, newly independent American nations, this paper seeks to understand the similarities between American and Chilean Constitutional institutions and underlying political theory from a historical perspective. Bearing this purpose in mind, this paper asks, “In what ways were the Constitution making measures of Chile and the United States in 1833 and 1789, respectively, a reflection …

Presidents Must Be Elected Popularly: Examining Proposals And Identifying The Natural Endpoint Of Electoral College Reform, Gianni Mascioli, Caroline Kane, Meira Nagel, Michael Mcgarry, Ezra Medina, Jenny Brejt, Siobhan D'Angelo

Faculty Scholarship

The Electoral College effectively disenfranchises voters who live outside the few states that decide presidential elections. This report endorses a change in the way electoral votes are allocated to ensure that Americans’ votes receive the same weight. States should sign on to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, an agreement among states to allocate their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. Ranked choice voting should also be employed to ensure that candidates receive majority support.

This report was researched and written during the 2018-2019 academic year by students in Fordham Law School’s Democracy and the Constitution …

Motives And Fiduciary Loyalty, Stephen R. Galoob, Ethan J. Leib

Faculty Scholarship

How, if at all, do motives matter to loyalty? We have argued that loyalty (and the duty of loyalty in fiduciary law) has a cognitive dimension. This kind of “cognitivist” account invites the counterargument that, because most commercial fiduciary relationships involve financial considerations, purity of motive cannot be central to loyalty in the fiduciary context. We contend that this counterargument depends on a flawed understanding of the significance of motive to loyalty. We defend a view of the importance of motivation to loyalty that we call the compatibility account. On this view, A acts loyally toward B only if …

Healthy And Unhealthy Responses To American Democratic Institutional Failure, Thomas D'Anieri

CMC Senior Theses

I have set out on the hunch that politics in America “feels different,” that we are frustrated both with our institutions as well as with one another. First, I will seek to empirically verify this claim beyond mere “feelings.” If it can be shown that these kinds of discontent genuinely exist to the extent that I believe they do, I will then explain why people feel this way and why things are different this time from the economic, political, and social points of view. Next, I will examine two potential responses, what I will call the populist and the institutional …

Introduction To Charles A. Reich’S Keeping Up: Walking With Justice Douglas, Rodger D. Citron

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Urge To Reform Life Without Parole So Nonviolent Addict Offenders Never Serve Lifetime Behind Bars, Johanna Poremba

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Arms Dealer Who Cries, :“First Amendment”, Gustave Passanante

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Necessary And Convenient: The Effect Of Commerce And Necessary And Proper Clause Jurisprudence, Janis Olkowicz

Honors Undergraduate Theses

While reading a news article about the upcoming presidential election one day, I noticed a trend. The vast majority of political articles discuss what the federal government should do, but almost never cover what it could do. In elementary school, American children are taught that the Constitution, a 4,543-word document, is the place from which all federal power is derived; but the Constitution says nothing about the regulation of travel, narcotics, or the vast majority of other areas that affect the way we live our daily lives, so where does that power come from? After some preliminary research, I discovered …