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Full-Text Articles in Law and Society
Freedmen And Day Laborers: Why Enforcement Matters, Raja Raghunath
Freedmen And Day Laborers: Why Enforcement Matters, Raja Raghunath
Raja Raghunath
As the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Emancipation approaches, there is a cautionary lesson for modern workers from the period that followed the abolition of chattel slavery. Reconstruction, after the Civil War, was the moment when the promise of universal liberty to work first became part of the American state’s covenant with its people. But this promise was quickly lost, as the rights that the federal government extended to the freed slaves – the freedmen – were contested and eventually nullified by vehement opposition in the working fields and cities of the South. In this sense, workers’ rights were …
Denying Freedom Rather Than Securing The Country: National Security Is Undermined By Laws Governing Battered Immigrants, Eve Tilley-Coulson
Denying Freedom Rather Than Securing The Country: National Security Is Undermined By Laws Governing Battered Immigrants, Eve Tilley-Coulson
Eve Tilley-Coulson
Relief for battered immigrants is not an obvious national security matter per se, yet remedies are enacted in conjunction with stringent interpretations of immigration law, as though victims pose a security threat. Discrepancies exist between the immigration laws themselves—which attempt to secure the United States from disease, violence, and illegal activity—and the loopholes within remedies under these laws, unnecessarily removing victims and perpetuating a cycle of fear and abuse. By displacing the victim, rather than the abuser, the government allows the cycle of violence to continue, while simultaneously breaking up families and creating disorder and instability. The economic and societal …
Foreign In A Domestic Sense: American Samoa And The Last U.S. Nationals, Sean Morrison
Foreign In A Domestic Sense: American Samoa And The Last U.S. Nationals, Sean Morrison
Sean Morrison
Citizenship is part of the foundation of being American. Yet the United States treats some of its own as second class citizens. Deep in the South Pacific, forgotten amidst the vast ocean and coconuts, is a small series of islands that represent the only U.S. jurisdiction below the Equator. American Samoa remains the last American territory that does not recognize its inhabitants as citizens. For more than a century, American Samoans have fought American wars, pledged allegiance to the American flag, and played a significant amount of American football, yet are categorized as U.S. nationals rather than citizens.
Recently, some …
"Health Care For All:" The Gap Between Rhetoric And Reality In The Affordable Care Act, Vinita Andrapalliyal
"Health Care For All:" The Gap Between Rhetoric And Reality In The Affordable Care Act, Vinita Andrapalliyal
Vinita Andrapalliyal
The rhetoric of “universal health care” and “health care for all” that pervaded the health care debate which culminated in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA)’s passage. However, the ACA offers reduced to no protections for certain noncitizen groups, specifically: 1) recently-arrived legal permanent residents, 2) nonimmigrants, and 3) the undocumented. This Article explores how the Act fails to ensure “health care for all,” demonstrates the gap between rhetoric and reality by parsing the ACA’s legislative history, and posits reasons for the gap. The ACA’s legislative history suggests that legislators’ biases towards these noncitizen groups, particularly with respect …