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Litigation Strategies For Dealing With The Indigent Defense Crisis, Eve Brensike Primus

Articles

The indigent defense delivery system in the United States is in a state of crisis. Public defenders routinely handle well over 1,000 cases a year, more than three times the number of cases that the American Bar Association says one attorney can handle effectively. As a result, many defendants sit in jail for months before even speaking to their court-appointed lawyers. And when defendants do meet their attorneys, they are often disappointed to learn that these lawyers are too overwhelmed to provide adequate representation. With public defenders or assigned counsel representing more than 80% of criminal defendants nationwide, the indigent …

Why Children Still Need A Lawyer, Marcia Robinson Lowry, Sara Bartosz

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Every day approximately 500,000 children across the United States wake up in foster care, most in foster family homes, though many others in group homes and institutions. These children entered the state foster care system as innocent victims of abuse or neglect occurring in their birth homes. As wards of the state, they depend completely on the government to provide for their essential safety and wellbeing and to reconnect them with a permanent family, hopefully their own.

Though state child welfare agencies possess fundamental legal obligations under the United States Constitution and federal and state statutes to provide adequate care …

Purchasing While Black: How Courts Condone Discrimination In The Marketplace, Matt Graves

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Given the sweeping language of § 1981 and 1982, it cannot be that sellers of goods can engage in intentional discrimination, so long as they make relatively minor attempts to cover it up. By exploring the interaction between substantive law, procedural law, legal culture, and real-world context, Graves seeks to demonstrate that judges cannot offer any legal or practical justification for heightened pleading requirements in § 1981 and 1982 actions. Through this argument, a conclusion is reached that § 1981 and 1982 plaintiffs must be given the same opportunity to litigate their claims that virtually all other plaintiffs are given. …

Is The Section 1983 Civil Rights Statute Overworked? Expanded Use Of Magistrates--An Alternative To Exhaustion, Brian P. Owensby

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Part I of this Note discusses the history and purpose of section 1983 and identifies the danger unmanaged growth of 1983 suits poses to civil rights. Part II examines several judicial responses to the 1983 caseload problem and concludes that congressional action is more appropriate. Parts III and IV explore two areas of possible legislative action. Part III questions the efficacy of a legislatively imposed requirement that the claimant exhaust state administrative remedies as a prerequisite to a 1983 suit in federal court. Part IV proposes an alternative congressional response to the 1983 caseload problem: a carefully tailored use of …