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Breaking Barriers: Examining The Impact Of Special Education Services On Juvenile Justice Involvement, Madison Neale

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

The following article is an exploration of the intersection between special education—namely, the long-repudiated practice of removing children with moderate disabilities from general education classrooms and placing them into “self-contained” classrooms away from their peers—and the involvement of those children in the criminal legal system. The article analyzes the parallels between the “othering” effect of segregating children with disabilities in schools, and the eventual segregation from their communities that they face in juvenile detention facilities. In a juvenile justice system where a disproportionate number of its children have been diagnosed with some form of intellectual or behavioral disability, this article …

The Challenges Of Meeting The Needs Of Virginia Students With Disabilities Through Individualized Education Programs, Hank Bostwick, Courtney Pugh, Latonya Slade, Sara Platenberg, Melissa Waugh

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

The authors were honored to participate in a panel on “Understanding the IEP” at the Richmond Public Interest Law Review’s Symposium on October 27, 2023. The recommendations and strategies in this article are rooted in decades of combined experience and anecdotal observations from two special education attorneys and three special education advocates who serve Virginia’s children and families and help to develop appropriate Individualized Education Programs (“IEPs”) pursuant to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (“IDEA”). Recent criticism of Virginia’s system of special education and related services by state and federal agencies has laid bare deep-seated inconsistencies in how schools …

From Suspension To Mass Incarceration: Punishment Of Students With Special Needs And The School-To-Prison Pipeline, Bailey Ellicott

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

Since their inception in the late 1980s, zero-tolerance policies have been a cornerstone of American school discipline. Passed by legislators with the intent of protecting school children, these policies have disparately upended the education of marginalized students. School discipline of vulnerable students often paves the way to juvenile incarceration, which in turn exponentially increases the likelihood of adult incarceration. Moreover, students with disabilities, especially students of color with learning disabilities, are often physically pushed out of their classrooms through suspensions and other harsh disciplinary policies. This is only made worse by the presence of law enforcement in schools, who treat …

Family Time: A Selection Of Bills From The Virginia 2023 Legislative Session Relating To Family, Intimate Partner Violence, And Child Welfare, Valerie L'Herrou

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

In 2023, the Commonwealth of Virginia was forced to operate without a

finalized state budget following the adjournment of the regular session of its

legislative body. The Commonwealth waited (luckily without bated breath)

for its “caboose” budget for the 2023–2024 budget cycle for nearly six

months after the General Assembly adjourned sine die, which it did on its

normal date for a “short” (odd-numbered) year on February 25, 2023.

However, most other actions taken by the Virginia General Assembly during

its 2023 session did go into effect on July 1, 2023, as usual. These include a

number of bills that …

Building A Recovery Ecosystem For The Catawba Region, Mary Beth Dunkenberger, David Moore, Lara Nagle, Sam Rasoul

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

The opioid and addiction crisis has become a defining characteristic of

21st century America, profoundly affecting the Commonwealth of Virginia in

terms of lives lost, families devastated, communities compromised, and

economic and opportunity costs at multiple levels. This scenario originated

with a rapid increase in opioid prescriptions issued to patients by health care

providers for various pain diagnoses during the 1990s and into the early

2000s. Despite early warnings that the new opioid formulations were far

more addictive than indicated by faulty research trials and marketing claims,

treating pain as the “fifth vital sign” became a widespread practice as a …

The Way Forward: A Review Of Virginia’S 2023 Regular General Assembly Session, Benjamin Raab, Mariam Rasooli

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

The 2023 General Assembly Session can best be defined by the success of

bipartisanship. In an era of heightened polarization, Virginia legislators

were able to meet across the aisle on a number of relevant issues. This article

will provide a summary of key bills that were passed during the 2023 Regular

and Special Sessions. The other articles within this issue touch upon the

following topics: the Virginia Commission on School Construction and

Modernization, family law, and the opioid and addiction crises. This article

summarizes legislation passed with bipartisan support in the areas of: drugs,

mental healthcare, labor and commerce, public …

Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda: How Virginia’S Everchanging Politics Creates (Missed) Opportunities For Major Policy Decisions, Carlos Hopkins, Abigail Thompson

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

Benjamin Franklin may have been discussing the new United States

Constitution when he penned this note to his friend, French scientist Jean-

Baptiste Le Roy, but he could easily have been referring to politics in

Virginia. Virginia House of Delegates members and members of the

Congressional House of Representatives serve two-year terms. Members of

the Virginia Senate serve four-year terms. United States Senators serve sixyear

terms. And the Governor, Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General

all serve four-year terms with only the Governor constitutionally limited to a

single four-year term. With all of these terms being staggered across the

various offices, …

Foreword, The Honorable L. A. Harris Jr.

University of Richmond Law Review

“Your writing is so bad you will not be considered for Law Review and there is some question about your admittance to Law School.”

Life is strange and ironic. In 1974 as a second year law student at the T. C. Williams School of Law at the University of Richmond, I was invited to submit an article to determine if I would be permitted to serve on the Law Review. A member of the Law Review evaluated my article and met with me. In summation he said my writing was so bad that I would not be considered for Law …

Prison Housing Policies For Transgender, Non-Binary, Gender-Non-Conforming, And Intersex People: Restorative Ways To Address The Gender Binary In The United States Prison System, John G. Sims

University of Richmond Law Review

“[I]t was the end of the last quarter of 2019 where I was able to drop the lawsuit against the correctional officer who had sexually harmed me when I knew . . . that the carceral state is not the way for me to find healing . . . . I was not going to seek my transformation and restoration through this system.”

Each year, rhetoric and legislation attacking transgender, non-binary, gender non-conforming and intersex individuals seemingly grows louder. Many political institutions in the United States perpetuate and enable the oppression of these individuals, one of which is the United …

Disinformation And The Defamation Renaissance: A Misleading Promise Of “Truth”, Lili Levi

University of Richmond Law Review

Today, defamation litigation is experiencing a renaissance, with progressives and conservatives, public officials and celebrities, corporations and high school students all heading to the courthouse to use libel lawsuits as a social and political fix. Many of these suits reflect a powerful new rhetoric—reframing the goal of defamation law as fighting disinformation. Appeals to the need to combat falsity in public discourse have fueled efforts to reverse the Supreme Court’s press–protective constitutional limits on defamation law under the New York Times v. Sullivan framework. The anti–disinformation frame could tip the scales and generate a majority on the Court to dismantle …

A Call For Change: Doing More To Protect Black And Brown Victims Of Domestic Violence, Kiana Gilcrist

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

Domestic violence (“DV”) disproportionately affects Black and Brown
women. This article examines the tense history of law enforcement
engagement with minority groups, which has caused a strain on that
relationship, leaving minority groups more likely to choose to stay in their
DV situations than seek out law enforcement help. The divide still impacts
these groups today. Additionally, the article highlights several organizations
that have formed to address the needs of minority individuals. Other
organizations have been around, but their ties to law enforcement create an
added barrier for Black and Brown women seeking protection. The article
concludes by briefly examining …

Symposium Transcript

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

No abstract provided.

Those Who Need The Most, Get The Least: The Challenge Of, And Opportunity For Helping Rural Virginia, Andrew Block, Antonella Nicholas

University of Richmond Law Review

Rural America, as has been well documented, faces many challenges. Businesses and people are migrating to more urban and suburban regions. The extraction and agricultural economies that once helped them thrive—mining, tobacco, textiles—are dying. And, as we discuss below, residents of rural communities tend to be older, poorer, less credentialed in terms of their education, less healthy, and declining in population.

On a regular basis, political leaders on both sides of the aisle, and on national and state levels, make commitments to rural areas to help improve the quality of life for residents, to listen, and to help. Even with …

Duped By Dope: The Sackler Family’S Attempt To Escape Opioid Liability And The Need To Close The Non-Debtor Release Loophole, Bryson T. Strachan

University of Richmond Law Review

The opioid epidemic continues to rage on in the United States, ravaging its rural populations. One of its main causes? OxyContin. Purdue Pharma (“Purdue”), the maker of OxyContin, aggressively marketed opioids to the American public while racking up a fortune of over $13 billion dollars for its owners,3 the Sackler family. As a result, roughly 3,000 lawsuits were filed against Purdue and members of the Sackler family. Generally, the lawsuits alleged that Purdue and members of the Sackler family knew OxyContin was highly addictive yet aggressively marketed high dosages of the drug and misrepresented the drug as nonaddictive and without …

Redefining Youth: The Case For Applying The Principles Of Miller V. Alabama To Criminal Cases Involving Adults In Late Adolescence, Salua Kamerow

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

In 2012, in Miller v. Alabama, the United States Supreme Court held it unconstitutional to impose a mandatory sentence of life without parole on children because such a sentence fails to adequately account for a child’s developmental stage or ability to weigh long-term consequences. Children are fundamentally different from adults, making them more susceptible to lack of self-regulation, poor decision making, and peer pressure. In Miller, the Court found that these aspects of children’s behavior made children less culpable than adults.

Psychological studies have demonstrated that adolescence is more protracted than previously recognized. Profound malleability of the brain characterizes the …

State-Sanctioned Displacement: An Interstate Examination Of Felon Disenfranchisement, Claudia Leonor

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

In his dissent of New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann, Justice Louis Brandeis referred to the constituent states of the country as “laboratories for democracy.” He noted that, as sovereign entities within the United States, states are empowered to “try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.” In postbellum American society, states have grappled with Reconstruction and the concomitant dismantlement of a caste system hinging on racism. In convening constitutional assemblies, the states experimented with racism and succeeded. In Southern jurisdictions, racial animus enabled the creation of constitutional frameworks and legislation that would have …

How California's Racial Justice Act Of 2020 Protects Criminal Defendants From Racial Discrimination And Why The Equal Protection Clause Is Not Enough, Hannah Laub

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

The Equal Protection Clause should prevent racial discrimination in the criminal legal system, yet Black people and people of color are disproportionately arrested, prosecuted, and incarcerated in the United States. This is partially due to the heavy evidentiary burden required to demonstrate an Equal Protection violation and the failure of the Supreme Court to ease that burden in McCleskey v. Kemp. With federal law largely ineffective, states such as California have passed legislation to provide more robust civil rights protections. This article explores how the Equal Protection Clause fails to provide a remedy for criminal defendants who experience racial discrimination …

Eviction Crisis Not Averted: Challenging Disparate Impact In The Search For Housing Stability During The Virginia Rent Relief Program's Epilogue, Olivia Seksinsky, Madelyn Bellew

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

Historically, the Commonwealth of Virginia has experienced some of the highest eviction rates in the county, containing five of the top ten U.S. cities with the highest eviction rates. After experiencing scrutiny in the national news due to these rates, the Commonwealth enacted legislation which provided increased tenant protections and distributed the highest percentage of rental assistance funds in the country. It was once thought that the Virginia Rent Relief Program (“RRP”) could be the solution to the eviction crisis, but now that the Program has ended, Virginia is once again experiencing an eviction crisis. Though thousands of households received …

The Legal Ethics Of Family Separation, Milan Markovic

University of Richmond Law Review

On April 6, 2018, the Trump administration announced a “zero tolerance” policy for individuals who crossed the U.S. border illegally. As part of this policy, the administration prosecuted parents with minor children for unlawful entry; previous administrations generally placed families in civil removal proceedings. Since U.S. law does not allow children to be held in immigration detention facilities pending their parents’ prosecution, the new policy caused thousands of children to be separated from their parents. Hundreds of families have yet to be reunited.

Despite a consensus that the family separation policy was cruel and ineffective, there has been minimal focus …

Grandma Got Arrested: Police, Excessive Force, And People With Dementia, Rashmi Goel

University of Richmond Law Review

Recent events have shone a light on the particular vulnerability of people with dementia to police violence. Police are arresting people with dementia and using excessive force to do it—drawing their firearms, deploying tasers, and breaking bones.

To date, little attention has been paid to the burgeoning number of people with dementia, one of society’s most vulnerable populations, and their experiences with the criminal justice system. This Article examines how dementia leads people to engage in activity that appears criminal (shoplifting (forgetting to pay), and trespass (wandering), for instance) and the disproportionate response of police. In several cases where people …

“Fundamental Fairness”: Finding A Civil Right To Counsel In International Human Rights Law, Meredith Elliott Hollman

University of Richmond Law Review

Every other Western democracy now recognizes a right to counsel in at least some kinds of civil cases, typically those involving basic human rights. The World Justice Project’s 2021 Rule of Law Index ranked the United States 126th of 139 countries for “People Can Access and Afford Civil Justice.” Within its regional and income categories, the United States was dead last. The United Nations and other international treaty bodies have urged the United States to improve access to justice by providing civil legal aid. How did we fall behind, and what can we learn from the rest of the world? …

Firearm Deaths Of American Minors: Perceptions Vs. Facts, Andrew L. Goddard

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

Firearm violence is now the leading cause of death for Americans under the age of eighteen. This article demonstrates that widely held misconceptions about the true nature and extent of this violence have led to legislative proposals narrowly tailored toward firearm violence in schools, despite facts and data showing school firearm violence to be a small fraction of the problem. These misconceptions are caused by both the narrow focus of national media attention and the deceptive propaganda of the gun industry. The article concludes by examining several bills proposed during the Virginia General Assembly session of 2022 to show how …

Ending Race-Based Pretextual Stops: Strategies For Eliminating America's Most Egregious Police Practice, Bradley R. Haywood

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

Pretextual policing is the practice of stopping motorists or pedestrians for minor offenses like traffic infractions in hopes of learning that the person stopped has committed a more serious crime. Pretextual policing is also the main reason Black Americans are so much more likely than white Americans to be subjected to encounters with law enforcement. Shockingly, even in its most explicitly racist form, pretextual policing does not violate the Fourth Amendment’s proscription against unreasonable searches and seizures. In fact, police can pull a driver over merely because he is Black without violating the Fourth Amendment, so long as the officer …

The Legislative Graveyard: A Review Of Virginia's 2022 Regular General Assembly Session, Kaylin Cecchini, Haley Edmonds

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

In 2019, Democrats won a majority in the House of Delegates and the Senate, and the Commonwealth was led by a Democratic Governor. The Democrats’ majority trifecta, which they had obtained for the first time since 1992, was once again lost on November 2, 2021, when Virginians voted to renew the Republican leadership in the Office of the Governor and in the House of Delegates. Under this once again bifurcated, yet unusually polarized, assembly, legislators on either side of the political aisle faced an uphill battle getting legislation passed, with the majority of bills ending in a stalemate. As a …

Cannabis Law, Lisa Moran Mcmurdo, Steven D. Forbes, Stewart R. Pollock, Christian F. Tucker

University of Richmond Law Review

On July 1, 2021, Virginia became the sixteenth state to permit recreational use of cannabis. As of 2022, thirty-nine states have legalized the medical use of cannabis, and nineteen states and the District of Columbia have legalized the adult use of cannabis for recreational purposes. “A CBS News/YouGov poll released in April 2022 found that two-thirds of Americans want recreational [cannabis] use to be legalized under federal law and in their own state.” This Article summarizes the history of cannabis regulation and examines the current legal landscape in Virginia governing the possession, cultivation, manufacturing, and sale of cannabis.

Covid-19 And Energy Justice: Utility Bill Relief In Virginia, Joel B. Eisen

University of Richmond Law Review

Energy justice has captured national attention as scholars have spotlighted inequities in energy production and distribution activities, energy and utility regulation, and the clean energy transition. Within this broader context, this Article reflects on the successes and setbacks for the movement toward energy justice through a case study focusing on legislative, executive, and regulatory attempts between 2020 and 2022 to provide relief for Virginia utility customers harmed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Article begins by defining the problem of energy insecurity and demonstrating that the pandemic exacerbated existing energy insecurity for vulnerable citizens of Virginia. It then traces the efforts …

Completing Expungement, Brian M. Murray

University of Richmond Law Review

The limits of expungement are where the hope for real reentry meet the desire for criminal justice transparency. That a criminal record, ordered expunged by a judge after a long and arduous process, continues to exist in the world of private actors is a cold, harsh reality for those attempting to reenter civil society. It is also reassurance for parents hiring a babysitter, school districts seeking new employees, and employers concerned about workplace liability. Not to mention, the thought that all records of criminal justice adjudication could be purged forever intuitively sounds Orwellian, even in an age where surveillance, whether …

Humanize, Don't Paternalize: Victim-Offender Mediation After Intimate Partner Violence, Ren Warden

University of Richmond Law Review

Retributive legal systems fail survivors of intimate partner violence. In criminal cases, when the government and the offender are the parties to the matter, the legal status of a survivor is reduced to that of a mere witness. Survivors then must surrender their agency in the fight against their own trauma. Survivors of intimate partner violence (“IPV”) who turn to civil litigation to recover after their experiences may experience further trauma as a result of time-consuming, extensive, and often invasive contact with the legal system. Even restitution, a largely restorative remedy, lacks the agency, finality, and emotive opportunities that IPV …

How President Biden Can Fill The Central District Of California Bench, Carl Tobias

University of Richmond Law Review

President Joseph Biden confronts an enormous opportunity to seat highly qualified, mainstream federal judges in plenty of appeals court and district court openings which former President Donald Trump neglected to fill in his four-year term. The remarkable California trial level vacant emergency slots, particularly in the United States District Court for the Central District of California, are the United States’ worst-case scenario and consummate promise. The Central District of California tribunal had experienced as many as ten lengthy open court slots among twenty-eight posts during the Trump administration, but it encounters six vacancies today.

Disrupting The School-To-Prison Pipeline: Reforming The Role Of The School Resource Officer, Olivia Seksinsky

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

A School Resource Officer (“SRO”) is a law enforcement officer employed

by local law enforcement agencies to provide security to public schools. As

a result of fatal and highly publicized school shootings such as Columbine

and Parkland, SROs have become a fixed aspect of many school communities.

There are tens of thousands of SROs patrolling the halls of Virginia’s

public elementary and secondary schools every year. Despite their intended

purpose to keep students safe and prevent crime, SROs too often contribute

to the school-to-prison pipeline. When SROs are brought into the classroom

to address “disruptive” behaviors, students are at an …