Law Commons^™

Exploiting Latin American Microfinance Deregulation: One Borrower At A Time, Karlamaria Cabral

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

Microfinance seeks to eradicate poverty through the economic growth and development that results when seed capital is given to microenterprises. In 2015, Latin America’s microfinance loan portfolio totaled $40 billion USD and included more than twenty-two million borrowers. Due to the current state of microfinance in the region—abusive lending practices and betraying the original goal and purpose of eradicating poverty—this Note advocates for a regional regulatory body, such as the Latin American Microfinance Association, that would develop and assist Latin American countries to implement model legal frameworks that increase client protection, create licensing requirements, establish interest rate caps, and recognize …

Mental Health Crisis In Maryland: A Lack Of Hospital Beds For The Mentally Ill Presents Maryland Legislature With Concerns About The Legality And Practicality Of Detainment, Ryan D. Konstanzer

Journal of Legislation

No abstract provided.

“Making Bail”: Limiting The Use Of Bail Schedules And Defining The Elusive Meaning Of “Excessive Bail”, James A. Allen

Journal of Law and Policy

Every day in the United States, thousands of people are waiting in jail postarrest prior to any trial or conviction. Once arrested, these individuals frequently face harsh conditions while they are held for their first appearance to be assigned bail. Thousands of individuals wait more than forty-eight hours to first appear in front of a judicial officer who determines their bail conditions. Innocent people––people who have committed no offense except that of being underprivileged––are pressured into accepting plea bargains because they cannot pay bail. Thousands remain in jail unwilling to accept plea bargains or admit guilt but are detained nevertheless …

Welfare And Federalism's Peril, Andrew Hammond

Washington Law Review

Recent scholarship on American federalism lacks case studies to inform that scholarship’s trans-substantive insights and claims. This Article examines the last two decades of devolution brought about by the 1996 Welfare Reform Act (PRWORA). It details the history of PRWORA and how the funding mechanism built into Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)—the TANF block grant—guaranteed the program’s deterioration. The Article documents the program’s failure to respond to increased need among poor families after Hurricane Katrina and in the Great Recession, showing how the federal government’s use of TANF in both crises teach us the limits of fiscally devolved programs. …

The Public Pension Crisis Through The Lens Of State Constitutions And Statutory Law, Kristen Barnes

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

Defend The Rights Of The Poor, Gordon J. Beggs

The Catholic Lawyer

No abstract provided.

Some Issues Of The Development Of The Science Of Social Welfare Law, M. Usmanova

Review of law sciences

This article analysis the issues of social security law as an important social-economic right of person, as well as proposals and recommendations concerning the relevance of the development of science of social security law.

Looking At Justice Through A Lens Of Healing And Reconnection, Annalise Buth, Lynn Cohn

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.

“I Am Undocumented And A New Yorker”: Affirmative City Citizenship And New York City’S Idnyc Program, Amy C. Torres

Fordham Law Review

The power to confer legal citizenship status is possessed solely by the federal government. Yet the courts and legal theorists have demonstrated that citizenship encompasses factors beyond legal status, including rights, inclusion, and political participation. As a result, even legal citizens can face barriers to citizenship, broadly understood, due to factors including their race, class, gender, or disability. Given this multidimensionality, the city, as the place where residents carry out the tasks of their daily lives, is a critical space for promoting elements of citizenship. This Note argues that recent city municipal identification-card programs have created a new form of …

Recognizing Challenges And Opportunities In The Quest To End Hunger, Jennifer Williams Zwagerman

Texas A&M Law Review

As an attorney and professor that does not focus on intellectual property law, I was a bit apprehensive about providing a keynote address for a Symposium focusing on “Agriculture, Intellectual Property, and Feeding the World in the 21st Century.” As I thought about this topic, knowing that there were other speakers who would focus more on the IP issues and technical aspects of various topics, I kept coming back to the importance of technology as we worktowards the goal of feeding the world, and the many ways in which innovation plays a role in meeting that goal. It also brought …

The Untold Story Of The Justice Gap: Integrating Poverty Law Into The Law School Curriculum, Vanita S. Snow

Pace Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Bystander In The Bible, The Reverend Doctor John C. Lenz Jr.

Utah Law Review

In this study I have set out to investigate the stories that Jews and Christians have told for over two thousand years. Surveying the Biblical literature, I have looked for verses, passages and stories related to the issue of the bystander’s duty to act on behalf of the victim. The issue of a person’s duty to help someone in need and to be proactively engaged on behalf of the most vulnerable is everywhere present in both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. The Biblical proscriptions are not just suggestions to “do the right thing” but divine ethical demands to action on …

The Changing View Of The “Bystander” In Holocaust Scholarship: Historical, Ethical, And Political Implications, Victoria J. Barnett

Utah Law Review

The role of “bystanders” has been a central theme in discussions about the ethical legacy of the Holocaust. In early Holocaust historiography, “bystander” was often used as a generalized catchall term designating passivity toward Nazi crimes. “Bystander behavior” became synonymous with passivity to the plight of others, including the failure to speak out against injustice and/or assist its victims. More recent scholarship has documented the extent to which local populations and institutions were actively complicit in Nazi crimes, participating in and benefitting from the persecution of Jewish citizens, not only in Germany but across Europe. This newer research has sparked …

A Cautionary Tale, David Schwendiman

Utah Law Review

It is imperative when talking about accountability and the enforcement of internationally recognized and accepted criminal norms governing conflict, when talking about investigating and prosecuting atrocity crime, not to raise expectations that have little or no chance of being met. Expanding the modes of liability to reach bystanders has the potential to raise such expectations, pushing the range of subjects that victims, survivors and others with an interest in the outcome of atrocity crime investigations and prosecutions expect will be prosecuted out beyond those as to whom there is likely to be political will to prosecute and certainly beyond the …

The Bystander During The Holocaust, Robert A. Goldberg

Utah Law Review

The German people today have embraced their sense of collective responsibility. They have accepted the seamless case of genocide and its implications are part of the national soul. They have come to full reckoning, determined to remember a difficult past and not repeat it. The Austrians, the Dutch, and the Poles have yet to reach the point of confession or even an awareness of responsibility. Perhaps the most remarkable symbol of national responsibility is the grassroots Stolperstein or Stumble Stone project, which began in Germany in 1992 with the goal to remember the victims of the Holocaust individually. Cobblestone-size concrete …

Reforming The Processes For Challenging Voluntary Acknowledgments Of Paternity, Jeffrey A. Parness, David A. Saxe

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Voluntary acknowledgements of paternity (VAPs) significantly determine male legal parentage at birth for many children born of sex to unwed mothers in the United States. VAP processes are chiefly dictated by the federal Social Security Act, which places certain mandates on states participating in federally-subsidized welfare programs. These processes include norms on effective VAP establishments and on VAP disestablishments, either via early rescissions (within sixty days) by signatories or via later contests (after sixty days) by challengers, including signatories. The norms are driven by the Act’s desire to increase reimbursements of state child welfare payments from unwed fathers regardless of …

Unbefriended And Unrepresented: Better Medical Decision Making For Incapacitated Patients Without Healthcare Surrogates, Thaddeus Mason Pope

Georgia State University Law Review

The purpose of this Article is to help improve the quality of healthcare decision making for the unbefriended. I hope that this comprehensive and systematic explanation of both the problem and the available solutions will empower both public and clinical policymakers to develop more informed and more circumspect policies and procedures

The Government’S Role In Unleashing Impact Investing’S Full Potential, Chelsea Mcgrath

Pepperdine Law Review

Impact investing refers to investments made in organizations, companies, or funds with the intent to generate measurable social or environmental impact along with a financial return. Since its start in 2008, this industry has become a vibrant tool to address a wide variety of local and global issues, resulting in higher standards of living, lower rates of prison recidivism, clean technology and more. Impact investing is no longer a novel concept. Rather, it has successfully pushed the boundaries from the separate methods of conventional investing and philanthropy, blending them together to create sustainable solutions to social and environmental problems. By …

Criminalizing Pregnancy, Cortney Lollar

Indiana Law Journal

The state of Tennessee arrested a woman two days after she gave birth and charged her with assault of her newborn child based on her use of narcotics during her preg-nancy. Tennessee’s 2014 assault statute was the first to explicitly criminalize the use of drugs by a pregnant woman. But this law, along with others like it being considered by legislatures across the country, is only the most recent manifestation of a long history of using criminal law to punish poor mothers and mothers of color for their behavior while pregnant. The purported motivation for such laws is the harm …

Self-Help, Reimagined, J. David Griener, Dalie Jimenez, Lois Lupica

Indiana Law Journal

We will never have enough lawyers to serve the civil legal needs of all low- and moderate-income (LMI) individuals who must navigate civil legal problems. A significant part of the access-to-justice toolkit must include self-help materials. That much is not new; indeed, the legal aid community has been actively developing pro se guides and forms for decades. But the community has hamstrung its creations in two major ways: first, by focusing these materials almost exclusively on educating LMI individuals about formal law, and second, by considering the task complete once the materials have been made available to self-represented individuals. In …

Networked Medical Devices: Finding A Legislative Solution To Guide Healthcare Into The Future, Louiza Dudin

Seattle University Law Review

This article discusses: (I) the current legal approaches to addressing cybersecurity in general, (II) the shortcomings of current legal approaches, (III) a proposal for legislation to narrow the scope of the Medical Device Amendments (MDA) preemption clause, and (IV) the benefits and shortcomings of the proposed legislation.

Inconsistencies In Combatting The Sex Trafficking Of Minors: Backpage’S Deceptive Business Practices Should Not Be Immune From State Law Claims, Jacqueline Hackler

Seattle University Law Review

Under federal law, the CDA has created a loophole for pimps and johns to exploit minors through the Internet. This Note uses Backpage as an example of how interactive computer services consistently evade liability under the current language of the CDA, and examines the need for an amendment to the language of the CDA. This Note argues that an interactive computer service should be held responsible under state law if it helps create the content, thus becoming an “information content provider” under the CDA. Part I provides the groundwork for what sex trafficking is and its relationship to prostitution. Additionally, …

It Takes A Village: Designating "Tiny House" Villages As Transitional Housing Campgrounds, Ciara Turner

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

A relatively new proposal to reduce homelessness in the United States involves extraordinarily small dwellings. While the “tiny house” movement is intuitively appealing and has found sporadic success, strict housing codes, building codes, and zoning laws often destroy the movement before it can get off the ground. One possibility for getting around these zoning and building code challenges, without drastic overhauls to health and safety codes, is to create a new state-level zoning classification of “transitional campgrounds.” A new zoning classification would alleviate the issue because campgrounds are consistently subject to less strict building codes, which could permit tiny houses …

Workin’ 9:00–5:00 For Nine Months: Assessing Pregnancy Discrimination Laws In Georgia, Kaitlyn Pettet

Georgia State University Law Review

As demonstrated in this Note, there is still a considerable way to go before women are no longer forced to choose between pregnancy and keeping their career. Allegations of pregnancy discrimination in the workplace are also on the rise.

In 1997, 4,000 plaintiffs filed complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). By 2011, that number rose to 5,800. The EEOC won significant damages in pregnancy discrimination cases, demonstrating a greater tendency towards discrimination in the workplace. Additionally, this rise in claims and awards caught the attention of the nation’s media, placing new emphasis on the treatment of pregnant women …

Injustice Under Law: Perpetuating And Criminalizing Poverty Through The Courts, Judge Lisa Foster

Georgia State University Law Review

Money matters in the justice system. If you can afford to purchase your freedom pretrial, if you can afford to immediately pay fines and fees for minor traffic offenses and municipal code violations, if you can afford to hire an attorney, your experience of the justice system both procedurally and substantively will be qualitatively different than the experience of someone who is poor. More disturbingly, through a variety of policies and practices—some of them blatantly unconstitutional—our courts are perpetuating and criminalizing poverty. And when we talk about poverty in the United States, we are still talking about race, ethnicity, and …

An Empirical Assessment Of Georgia’S Beyond A Reasonable Doubt Standard To Determine Intellectual Disability In Capital Cases, Lauren Sudeall Lucas

Georgia State University Law Review

In Atkins v. Virginia, the Supreme Court held that execution of people with intellectual disabilities violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. In doing so, the Court explicitly left to the states the question of which procedures would be used to identify such defendants as exempt from the death penalty. More than a decade before Atkins, Georgia was the first state to bar execution of people with intellectual disability. Yet, of the states that continue to impose the death penalty as a punishment for capital murder, Georgia is the only state that requires capital defendants …

Revisiting Popular Action, Raúl Sánchez Gómez

DePaul Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Toiling In Trump's Vineyard Of Alternative Facts Lining Its Random Walk, David J. Cook

DePaul Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

The Erosion Of Civil Rights Remedies: How Ashcroft V. Al-Kidd Altered Qualified Immunity, Madeleine Sharp

DePaul Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Measuring “Progress” And “Regress” In Human Rights: Why We Need A Set Of Social Contract Measures To Replace Indices Of Violations And Slogans, David Lempert

DePaul Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.