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Full-Text Articles in Law
Battering The Poor: How Georgia’S Mandatory Family Violence Classes Deny Indigent Defendants Equal Protection Of The Law, Whitney Scherck
Battering The Poor: How Georgia’S Mandatory Family Violence Classes Deny Indigent Defendants Equal Protection Of The Law, Whitney Scherck
Whitney Scherck
Thirty years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court in Bearden v. Georgia held that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prevents a court from incarcerating an individual for failure to pay a fine unless it first inquires into their reasons for failing to do so and determines that the defendant willfully failed to make bona fide efforts to pay. However, recently, a new kind of legal debt has emerged. As states’ budgets tighten, so-called user fees are becoming an increasingly common way for legislatures to toughen the criminal justice system without having to come up with funding for it. …
Defining American: The Dream Act, Immigration Reform, And Citizenship, Elizabeth Keyes
Defining American: The Dream Act, Immigration Reform, And Citizenship, Elizabeth Keyes
Elizabeth Keyes
The DREAM Act and the grassroots movement propelling the legislation forward reveal how the definition of citizenship is undergoing a dramatic transformation, in ways both inspiring and troubling. The DREAM movement depends upon the compelling but exceptional stories of passionate, high-achieving, law-abiding youth who already define themselves as being American, and worthy of legal status. Situating this narrative in the rich literature of citizenship, the article shows how the DREAM movement effectively exposes the disjuncture between the DREAMers' identity as Americans and their lack of legal immigration status. The article celebrates how this narrative succeeds as a contrast to the …
Dreyfus, Laicite' And The Burqa, Catherine M.A. Mc Cauliff
Dreyfus, Laicite' And The Burqa, Catherine M.A. Mc Cauliff
Catherine M.A. Mc Cauliff
This Article explores the roots of the laws in France prohibiting Muslim school girls from wearing head scarves and prohibiting Muslim women from wearing religious dress in public. The Article suggests that religious pluralism rather than discrimination against free expression of religion would be a strong constitutional approach to the clash of French and Islamic cultures. Pluralism is the paradigm of the American Constitution in its approach to religious freedom, recognizing through the first amendment a strong right to conscience and religious expression, especially for minority viewpoints. Europe's tradition is not so accommodating to minority religious positions, favoring either a …