The Ideology Of Press Freedom, 2024 Texas A&M University School of Law
The Ideology Of Press Freedom, Hannah Bloch-Wehba
Faculty Scholarship
This Article offers a critical account of the law of press freedom. American law and political culture laud the press as an institution that plays a vital role in democracy: guarding against corruption, facilitating self-governance, and advocating for free expression. These democratic functions provide justification for the law of press freedom, which defends the media’s autonomy and shields the press from outside interference.
But the dominant accounts of the press’s democratic role are only partly accurate. The law of press freedom is grounded in large part in journalism’s professional commitments to objectivity, public service, and autonomy. These idealized characterizations, flawed …
Cover, 2024 University of California, Irvine School of Law
Masthead, 2024 University of California, Irvine School of Law
Mission Statement, 2024 University of California, Irvine School of Law
Table Of Contents, 2024 University of California, Irvine School of Law
The Ideology Of Press Freedom, 2024 University of California, Irvine School of Law
The Ideology Of Press Freedom, Hannah Bloch-Wehba
UC Irvine Law Review
This Article offers a critical account of the law of press freedom. American law and political culture laud the press as an institution that plays a vital role in democracy: guarding against corruption, facilitating self-governance, and advocating for free expression. These democratic functions provide justification for the law of press freedom, which defends the media’s autonomy and shields the press from outside interference.
But the dominant accounts of the press’s democratic role are only partly accurate. The law of press freedom is grounded in large part in journalism’s professional commitments to objectivity, public service, and autonomy. These idealized characterizations, flawed …
A Critical Race Theory Analysis Of Critical Race Theory Bans, 2024 University of California, Irvine School of Law
A Critical Race Theory Analysis Of Critical Race Theory Bans, Caroline M. Corbin
UC Irvine Law Review
A majority of state legislatures have introduced bills prohibiting public schools from teaching certain “divisive concepts” attributed to critical race theory (CRT), with at least fifteen states successfully enacting them. This Article applies a critical race theory analysis to these critical race theory bans, finding that the bans embody white privilege and especially its companion, white fragility.
After providing a primer on critical race theory, Part I explains how the state bans profoundly misunderstand critical race theory, which focuses on how systems and institutions reproduce racial inequality. These bans, however, assume that racism is individual, intentional, and rare, and that …
The Administrative State And Artificial Intelligence: Toward An Internal Law Of Administrative Algorithms, 2024 University of California, Irvine School of Law
The Administrative State And Artificial Intelligence: Toward An Internal Law Of Administrative Algorithms, Amit Haim
UC Irvine Law Review
The administrative state is gradually embracing artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms. The advent of the so-called automated state has raised concerns over accountability, transparency, and fairness and engendered proposals for legal regulation. Yet the notion that algorithms are not merely technical instruments but encode social behavior embedded in a bureaucratic context has largely been missing from the discourse. This Article identifies algorithms as sociotechnical systems embedded in an organizational context, which can function as bureaucratic governance instruments. It argues that external legal institutions, whether legislative endeavors or judicial review, lack the capacity, insight, and perspective to achieve meaningful accountability in reviewing …
Mass Surrender In Immigration Court, 2024 University of California, Irvine School of Law
Mass Surrender In Immigration Court, Michael Kagan
UC Irvine Law Review
In theory, the Department of Homeland Security bears the burden of proof when it seeks to deport a person from the United States. But the government rarely has to meet it. This Article presents original data from live observation in Immigration Court, documenting that almost all respondents in deportation proceedings admit and concede the charges against them, even when they have attorneys, without getting anything in return from the government. Focusing especially on the role of immigrant defense lawyers, the Article explores why this is happening. It critiques the legal standards of proof used in Immigration Court, while also exploring …
How Crime Dramas Undermine Miranda, 2024 University of California, Irvine School of Law
How Crime Dramas Undermine Miranda, Nancy Leong, Ian Farrell
UC Irvine Law Review
In the half century since the Supreme Court decided Miranda v. Arizona, custodial interrogations have become a mainstay of popular culture. Even casual viewers of police procedurals will be exposed to hundreds of depicted arrests, interrogations, and other law enforcement conduct. It has become commonplace for courts, commentators, and the general public to assert that people learn about their rights from television.
Yet if people do, in fact, learn about their criminal procedure rights from television, what they are learning is dangerously inaccurate. In a comprehensive content analysis of ten seasons, totaling 229 episodes, drawn from two of the …
Best Interests Of The Child And Expanding Family, 2024 University of California, Irvine School of Law
Best Interests Of The Child And Expanding Family, Stephanie L. Tang
UC Irvine Law Review
“Out of choice, necessity, or a sense of family responsibility, it has been common for close relatives to draw together and participate in the duties and the satisfactions of a common home.”
—Moore v. City of East Cleveland1
All fifty states have adopted the “best interests of the child” standard governing initial child custody determinations. However, the wide judicial discretion accompanying this broad standard has resulted in disparate application across custody cases nationwide. These disparities are particularly prevalent in cases where children have a significant connection with extended family members or nonparent caregivers.
As of 2017, a third of …
“Police Yelp”, 2024 University of California, Irvine School of Law
“Police Yelp”, Natalie Gould
UC Irvine Law Review
This Note discusses failed police accountability measures and suggests a new intervention, “Police Yelp,” that focuses on community control over police officers. The Note discusses the current institutional measures that have attempted to control police but have failed, largely due to their reactive and institutional nature. To better control police and ensure they are policing as communities want to be policed, this Note argues for community control over police through a democratic process, similar to the way that users interact with businesses on Yelp. The Note draws on power shifting as articulated by Jocelyn Simonson, among others, which advocates for …
The Political Economy Of Laughter And Outrage, 2024 Concordia University
The Political Economy Of Laughter And Outrage, Genevieve Renard Painter
Dalhousie Law Journal
A bit uncomfortable. That is how it feels to be among dear friends but labelled professionally as an outsider. I have a law degree, a bar membership, and a PhD in Jurisprudence and Social Policy. I am a professor in a women’s studies department at Concordia University. At conference receptions, people respond breathlessly, “But they don’t have a law school at Concordia!?,” as though I am hearing confession in a gas station, or something as heretical. I teach legal history, international law, feminist legal theory, and constitutional law to undergraduates who are not in law school and mostly don’t want …
Pick Your Poison: Opioids Following The Trends Set By Alcohol And Tobacco Litigation, 2024 Mercer University School of Law
Pick Your Poison: Opioids Following The Trends Set By Alcohol And Tobacco Litigation, Luckshume Ketheeswaran
Mercer Law Review
Parents, children, and siblings of opioid abusers argued that three large-scale, drug distributors improperly supplied opioids to pharmacies, leading to “abuse of the drugs and the fallout that abuse brought with it.”3 Further, they argued that profit-driven distributors willingly and recklessly “flooded” the city of Brunswick and Glynn County with opioids. Even so, the jury found against the plaintiffs; though potentially sympathetic to the lives ruined by opioids, the jury remained unconvinced that all liability fell on the distributors.
On March 1, 2023, the jury found for the three, large‑scale drug distributors, finding the defendants neither liable under Georgia’s Drug …
“When Did African Americans Get The Right To Vote In Georgia?”, 2024 Mercer University School of Law
“When Did African Americans Get The Right To Vote In Georgia?”, Marc T. Treadwell
Mercer Law Review
Most know that the post‑Civil War Fifteenth Amendment guaranteed citizens of all races, or at least male citizens of all races, the right to vote. But notwithstanding the keen interest today in voting rights and alleged voter suppression and that well-known Fifteenth Amendment, few know that for decades African Americans were banned outright from voting in primary elections that determined state and local leaders in many Southern states. In the post‑Reconstruction South, the Democratic Party controlled every facet of state politics and government. The Party’s whites‑only primary elections ineluctably determined the outcome of general elections. The party did not allow …
To Heck And Back: The Eleventh Circuit Clarifies How Pro Se Litigants Can Avoid Incognizable Excessive Force Claims In Hall V. Merola, 2024 Mercer University School of Law
To Heck And Back: The Eleventh Circuit Clarifies How Pro Se Litigants Can Avoid Incognizable Excessive Force Claims In Hall V. Merola, Cameron Obioha
Mercer Law Review
At the very beginning of the opinion, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit expressed that this was “one Heck of an appeal.” Patrick Valencia, Wendall Hall’s appointed lawyer on appeal, seemed to think so, too. Hall represented himself pro sefor years while incarcerated in Florida’s state prison system, and knew his case “backwards, forwards, sideways, upwards, downwards, in the dark.” Nonetheless, after he filed the initial briefs for his own appeal, the Eleventh Circuit determined it best for Hall to take second chair. When asked about his appointment to represent Hall, Valencia stated that “[he] …
School Pronouns And The Compelled-Speech Objection, 2024 Mercer University School of Law
School Pronouns And The Compelled-Speech Objection, Phillip Seaver-Hall
Mercer Law Review
America’s transgender youth are entrenched in a nationwide mental health crisis. A majority of transgender teenage boys have attempted suicide at least once, and roughly a third of transgender teenage girls have done the same. To mitigate this national emergency, many public school districts have begun requiring their teachers to use transgender students’ preferred names and pronouns. Many conservatives, however, insist that such rules violate the First Amendment’s prohibition of compelled speech.
This article thoroughly dissects that argument and exposes its flaws. It examines the compelled‑speech objection through the lens of the government speech doctrine, weighs countervailing academic‑freedom concerns, proposes …
Accountability Courts In Georgia: Judges In The State Of Georgia Explain How They Have Been Empowered By Visionary Political And Judicial Leaders To Tackle Crime, Prison Population, Mental Illness, And Drug Dependency Through Service In Accountability Courts, 2024 Mercer University School of Law
Accountability Courts In Georgia: Judges In The State Of Georgia Explain How They Have Been Empowered By Visionary Political And Judicial Leaders To Tackle Crime, Prison Population, Mental Illness, And Drug Dependency Through Service In Accountability Courts, W. James Sizemore Jr.
Mercer Law Review
Georgia leads the way nationally when it comes to promoting and funding the expansion of accountability courts (commonly called drug courts or mental health courts). The fact that the effort to expand such courts in Georgia was spearheaded by Republican Governor Nathan Deal is surprising to some. This article provides a peek behind the curtain at the massive judicial and political effort to make accountability courts an essential part of criminal justice reform in the State of Georgia.
The article begins with a brief look at the history of accountability courts in Georgia, specifically focusing on several Superior Court Judges …
Mercer Law School’S Legacy Of Service To The Profession, 2024 Mercer University School of Law
Mercer Law School’S Legacy Of Service To The Profession, Franklin T. Gaddy, Siena Berrios Gaddy, Thomas Alec Chappell, E. Tate Crymes
Mercer Law Review
Hon. William Augustus Bootle, a 1925 graduate of Mercer Law School and 1924 graduate of Mercer University, penned of his alma mater, “[the] school was conceived in professionalism and dedicated to excellence.” Similarly, “Altruism, not the promotion of selfish aims, has been the inspiration of the [Georgia Bar] Association throughout its entire history.” As noted by Judge Bootle, Mercer Law School’s legacy of service to the profession began long before the establishment of the State Bar of Georgia as we know it today.
Today, Mercer Law School remains dedicated to serving the legal profession. This commitment to serve and devote …
Experiential And Public Service Learning At Mercer Law School At The 150th Anniversary And Beyond, 2024 Mercer University School of Law
Experiential And Public Service Learning At Mercer Law School At The 150th Anniversary And Beyond, Sarah Gerwig
Mercer Law Review
In this, the 150th year since Mercer University opened the doors of its fledgling law school, it is good to reflect. We reflect on who we are, where we came from, where we want to be in 2173, if law school and the law and humankind still exist 150 years from now.
Law school faculty and administration often describe our students’ ethic of public service; 1Ls (as we call them with affection) often arrive eager for opportunities to help others—and help they do. Almost every student-led organization spearheads generous annual volunteer projects, including coordinating backpack donation drives, providing holiday presents …