Digital Commons Network^™

"A Perfect Storm": Minnesota's Sex Offender Program—More Than Twenty Years Without Successful Reintegration, Lucy Massopust, Raina Borrelli

William Mitchell Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Maryland Access To Justice Story: Indigent Defendants’ Right To Counsel At First Appearance, Douglas L. Colbert

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

The “Social Magic” Of Merit: Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion In The English And Welsh Legal Profession, Hilary Sommerlad

Fordham Law Review

The discourse of merit is central to the “boundary” practices deployed by the white male elite of the English legal profession to exclude outsiders. The official discourse of government and regulatory body reports presents merit as an objectively verifiable and quantifiable property, synonymous with “excellence,” the salience of which in the recruitment process is indicative of the modernization of the profession. In this form it is mobilized to deflect criticism of the slow progress toward diversity. Critical interrogation of the discourse of merit reveals that it operates rather differently as a key structuring principle of the profession. The alternative meaning …

Naming Men As Men In Corporate Legal Practice: Gender And The Idea Of “Virtually 24/7 Commitment” In Law, Richard Collier

Fordham Law Review

This Article seeks to reframe and turn the conversation about gender equity in the legal profession on its head, taking up Hannah Brenner’s recent call to reconceptualize problems and rethink solutions around gender equity in the profession. It does so by moving beyond the frame of the retention of women and exploring selected aspects of the gendered practices of men in relation to this notion of the ideal legal professional in large transnational “city” law firms. The Article traces how particular ideas about men and gender are, on closer examination, implicated in a broader recasting of lawyer professionalism within the …

Table Of Contents, Public Interest Law Reporter

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

State Budget Cuts Cause Disproportional Impact On Minorities, Women, And Immigrants, Ji Hwang

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Remembering The Freedom Riders: An Interview With The Honorable Ernst H. Rosenberger, Ernst H. Rosenberger

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Resistance Songs: Mobilizing The Law And Politics Of Community, Anthony V. Alfieri

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Repeat Player Effect In Child Protection Mediation: Dangers Of And Protections Against Second-Class Justice For Marginalized Parties, Donna Erez-Navot

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

This Article will be structured as follows: Part I of this Article will introduce some of the basic and problematic phenomenon including the repeat player effect, cooptation and others that arise in the legal system. In Part II, there will be specific attention to these phenomenon applied in various well-researched dispute resolution areas including criminal, child protection, employment and arbitration contexts. Part III of this Article gives a broad introduction into court annexed mediation and child protection mediation in general. Part IV of this Article will focus on the specific effects of repeat player, cooptation, and others in Family Court …

For Men Only: A Gap In The Rules Allows Sex Discrimination To Avoid Ethical Challenge, Michelle N. Struffolino

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

The billboard states: “Divorce: Men Only.” The reaction is one of confusion. Something just does not seem right. Isn’t this discrimination? Is the system willing to allow this message because the need to protect men’s rights in divorce outweighs the systemic and societal harms associated with the message?

Although this article focuses on the ethical issues associated with firms that exclude women from the pool of potential divorce clients, the existence of women only law firms is acknowledged. The analysis of the ethical issues raised by these gender specific firms is somewhat the same regardless of what gender is excluded. …

Memorandum Of Amici Curiae Fred T. Korematsu Center For Law And Equality And Columbia Legal Services In Support Of Petition For Review, Fred T. Korematsu Center For Law And Equality, Lisa Brodoff

Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality

Semenenko v. Dep't of Social and Health Services

Closing The Doors To Justice: A Critique Of Pimentel V. Dreyfus And The Application Of Legal Formalism To The Elimination Of Food Assistance Benefits For Legal Immigrants, Hannah Zommick

Seattle University Law Review

This Comment contends that the Ninth Circuit’s opinion in Pimentel v. Dreyfus employed a legal formalist approach and that by applying this framework, the court prevented legal immigrants, who were caught between the strict eligibility restrictions of welfare reform, from asserting their rights through the justice system. The legal formalist approach “treats the law as a set of scientific formulae or principles that are derived from the study of case law. These principles create an internal analytical framework which, when applied to a set of facts, leads the decision maker, through logical deduction, to the correct outcome in a case.” …

Unlawful Discrimination In Employment--An Outline Of The European Community Rules And Case-Law, Julian Currall

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Coercing Justice? Exploring The "Aspirations And Practice" Of Law As A Tool In Struggles Against Social Inequalities, Karen Schucher

PhD Dissertations

This dissertation examines the role of law as a tool in struggles against social inequalities, by tracing the history of Ontario’s human rights legislation and enforcement from the enactment of fair practices statutes in the 1950s through the restructuring of the enforcement regime in 2006. Ontario was the first Canadian province to pass anti-discrimination legislation and to establish a human rights commission enforcement process. This legislation and the commission enforcement process were the models for all other Canadian jurisdictions.

The dissertation approaches the role of law through the framework of tensions between the “aspirations” and the “practices” of law. On …

Joint Submission To The U.N. Committee Against Torture Concerning The United States’ Mistreatment Of Immigrant Detainees In Violation Of The Convention Against Torture And Other Cruel, Inhuman Or Degrading Treatment Or Punishment In Relation To The United States 5th Periodic Report On The Convention Against Torture, Sarah Dávila-Ruhaak, Steven D. Schwinn, Jennifer Chan, John Marshall Law School International Human Rights Clinic

Faculty White Papers

This report relates to the mistreatment and abuse that adult immigrant detainees suffer in United States detention facilities. It is submitted in response to the United States’ periodic report relating to the Convention Against Torture (CAT) and specifically addresses the deplorable conditions of detention, the use of solitary confinement, the problem of sexual violence in detention and the lack of investigation of such acts, the refoulement of detainees who face risk of torture, the enforcement of the non-derogable prohibition of torture, and the prevention of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. This report discusses current practices of the U.S. …

Humanitarian Protections And The Need For Appointed Counsel For Unaccompanied Immigrant Children Facing Deportation, Ashley Ham Pong

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Unequal Inequalities? Poverty, Sexual Orientation, And The Dynamics Of Constitutional Law, Jane S. Schacter

Utah Law Review

As we think about the future role the judicial branch will play in our governance, we might consider one important function of the courts: addressing claims of constitutional inequality. In this Article, I explore this question by juxtaposing two claims of inequality that have been pressed by advocates—one concerning sexual orientation, the other concerning poverty. These two contexts are undoubtedly different in ways both numerous and significant. The lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights movement is today, while the constitutional movement for the rights of the poor was yesterday.1 The LGBT movement has won major Supreme Court victories in …

A Layperson's Guide To Fair Housing Law (2014), F. Willis Caruso, Michael P. Seng, Allison Bethel, John Marshall Law School Fair Housing Legal Support Center

Faculty White Papers

Housing discrimination can take many forms. Laws have been passed at the federal, state, and local levels to prohibit housing discrimination, and attorneys and many fair housing groups are working to eradicate the problem. But the solution to the fair housing problem will not come solely through the work of attorneys and fair housing agencies and organizations; it will also have to come from an educated public that is unwilling to tolerate the cost of housing discrimination. Housing discrimination affects every individual in the United States. Realtors and brokers, bankers and mortgage lenders, insurance companies and developers, real estate buyers …

Reforming Property Law To Address Devastating Land Loss, Thomas W. Mitchell

Faculty Scholarship

Tenancy-in-common ownership represents the most widespread form of common ownership of real property in the United States. Such ownership under the default rules also represents the most unstable ownership of real property in this country. Thousands of tenancy-in-common property owners, including members of many poor and minority families, have lost their commonly-owned property due to court-ordered, forced partition sales as well as much of their real estate wealth associated with such ownership as a result of such sales. Though some scholars and the media have highlighted how thousands of African-Americans have lost an untold amount of property and substantial real …

Equal Access To Justice: Ensuring Meaningful Access To Counsel In Civil Cases, Including Immigration Proceedings, Human Rights Institute, Program On Human Rights And The Global Economy

Human Rights Institute

Only a small fraction of the legal problems experienced by low‐income and poor people living in the United States — less than one in five — are addressed with the assistance of legal representation. Many people who are low‐income and poor in the United States cannot afford legal representation to protect their rights when facing a crisis such as eviction, foreclosure, domestic violence, workplace discrimination, termination of subsistence income or medical assistance, loss of child custody, or deportation.

There is no federal constitutional right to counsel in civil cases, including in immigration proceedings. On the contrary, the Supreme Court has …

Brief Of Fred T. Korematsu Center Et Al. As Amici Curiae In Support Of Appellants, Robert Chang, Lorraine Bannai, Jessica Levin, Ronald A. Peterson Law Clinic, Fred T. Korematsu Center For Law And Equality, Amici Curiae

Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality

Korematsu Center Civil Rights Amicus Clinic Challenges In-Group Racial Reference in Closing Argument

Race And Immigration, Then And Now: How The Shift To "Worthiness" Undermines The 1965 Immigration Law's Civil Rights Goals, Elizabeth Keyes

All Faculty Scholarship

This essay looks at how far immigration reform has come from the explicit civil rights character of the 1965 immigration law that reshaped America. The optimism surrounding that law’s dismantling of national-origins barriers to immigration proved to be overstated in the intervening decades, as the factors determining an immigrant’s “worth and qualifications” too often became proxies for race. After briefly looking at work done by critical race theorists tracing some of ways race and immigration have long intersected in immigration legal history, the article closely examines modern-day immigration reform proposals, particularly the Senate bill that remains the most complete articulation …

Challenging Discrimination Of Lgbt Youth In Juvenile Justice: Encouraging The Legal Strategy Of Selective Prosecution Motions, Alanna Holt

Criminal Law Practitioner

No abstract provided.

A Perfect Storm -- The Negative Effects Of Felony Voting Laws And The Repeal Of Section 4 Of The Voting Rights Act On Minority Americans, Genevive Saul

The Modern American

No abstract provided.

Paternalistic Interventions In Civil Rights And Poverty Law: A Case Study Of Environmental Justice, Anthony V. Alfieri

Articles

No abstract provided.

Legislating Incentives For Attorney Representation In Civil Rights Litigation, Douglas M. Spencer, Sean Farhang

Faculty Articles and Papers

Congress routinely relies on private lawsuits to enforce its mandates. In this article, we investigate whether, when it does so, the details of the legislation can importantly influence the extent to which the private bar is mobilized to carry out the prosecutorial function. Using an original and novel data set based on review of archived litigation documents for cases filed in the Northern and Eastern Districts of California over the two decades spanning 1981-2000, we examine the effects of the Civil Rights Act of 1991, which increased economic damages available to Title VII job discrimination plaintiffs, on their ability to …

A Lawyer Looks At Civil Disobedience: How Lewis F. Powell, Jr. Reframed The Civil Rights Revolution, Anders Walker

All Faculty Scholarship

This essay reconstructs Lewis F. Powell, Jr.’s thoughts on the civil rights movement by focusing on a series of little-known speeches that he delivered in the 1960s lamenting the practice of civil disobedience endorsed by Martin Luther King, Jr. Convinced that the law had done all it could for blacks, Powell took issue with King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, impugning its invocation of civil disobedience and rejecting its calls for compensatory justice to make up for slavery and Jim Crow. Dismissive of reparations, Powell developed a separate basis for supporting diversity that hinged on distinguishing American pluralism from Soviet totalitarianism. …

Implicit Bias Deserves Our Explicit Attention, Kimberly Jade Norwood

Scholarship@WashULaw

What are implicit biases? In brief, we all walk around with two sets of attitudes and beliefs: our conscious (explicit) attitudes and our unconscious (implicit) attitudes. Scientists believe that human consciousness takes up approximately 10 percent of our brain activity. That means that for most things, our unconscious mind is doing the work. Implicit biases exist within our unconscious mind. Our brains are bombarded with millions of bits of information every second. To avoid overload, our brains automatically categorize information into schemas that we use to guide us in our everyday living.

Leveraging Antidiscrimination, Olatunde C.A. Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

As the Civil Rights Act of 1964 turns fifty, antidiscrimination law has become unfashionable. Civil rights strategies are posited as not up to the serious task of addressing contemporary problems of inequality such as improving mobility for low-wage workers or providing access into entry-level employment. This Article argues that there is a danger in casting aside the Civil Rights Act as one charts new courses to address inequality. This Article revisits the implementation strategies that emerged in the first decade of the Act to reveal that the Act was not limited to addressing formal discrimination or bias, but rather drew …

Access To Justice: Ensuring Meaningful Access To Counsel In Civil Cases, Human Rights Clinic

Human Rights Institute

In order to meet its human rights obligations, the federal government must work toward the establishment of the right to counsel for indigent litigants in civil cases, especially where basic human needs are at stake. Direct steps the federal government should take include: supporting research into the impact of providing counsel in civil cases; fully funding the Legal Services Corporation and lifting restrictions that prevent legal services lawyers from providing necessary services; intensifying the Acc,ess to Justice Initiative's activities with respect to civil legal services and providing it with the necessary leadership and resources; and filing supportive amicus briefs when …