Digital Commons Network^™

Are Tents A 'Home'? Extending Section 8 Privacy Rights For The Precariously Housed, Sarah Ferencz, Alexandra Flynn, Nicholas Blomley, Marie-Eve Sylvestre

All Faculty Publications

The home, for most of us, is an obvious zone to assert privacy and property rights. However, this is not the case for those whose control of residential space is precarious. Our paper focuses on privacy rights under the Canadian constitution for those living in tents and, specifically, the judicial rejection of a tent as a home garnering legal protection under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. We focus on a 2018 case from British Columbia, R. v. Picard, the only judicial decision that we could locate that has explored this question. In holding that the tent is …

Presumed Unfit: The Dual Bind Faced By Pregnant And Parenting Youth In Foster Care, Kara R. Finck

American University Law Review

Pregnant and parenting youth in foster care are subject to a range of laws, policies, and practices that expose the realities of a child welfare system structured to focus on surveillance instead of support and family regulation instead of family integrity. Informed by my experience representing foster youth who become parents, this Article considers how youth in care are presumed unfit to parent their children because of a history in foster care and their age. A youth’s status as pregnant or parenting is weaponized to subject them to additional scrutiny, threats, and a shifting burden to justify their fundamental right …

Human Trafficking Of People With A Disability: An Analysis Of State And Federal Cases, Andrea Nichols, Erin Heil

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

The current academic discourse examining human trafficking is lacking in focus on survivors with a disability. The increased likelihood of abuse experienced by people with a disability is well documented in the research literature, and a small body of research indicates heightened sex trafficking victimization of minor girls with a disability. Yet, very little research specifically examines sex and/or labor trafficking of people with a disability, and no systematic research analyzes prosecuted cases of trafficking with disability as the focal point of analysis. Drawing from a content analysis of 18 federal and 17 state cases of human trafficking, the current …

International Bureaucracies: Extraterritorial Reach Of The European Commission’S Legal Expertise, Anu Bradford

Faculty Scholarship

The EU exercises significant influence over global regulatory standards, whether as a result of its ability to unilaterally export its rules to foreign markets via market mechanisms – a phenomenon that I have elsewhere described as ‘the Brussels Effect’ – or by entrenching them globally through bilateral or multilateral negotiations. In all cases, the legal expertise of the Commission is central. It either pro-actively supplies its expertise to their foreign counterparts or responds to the demand to offer technical expertise to create a rule-based order that closely imitates the regulatory state in Europe. Companies also resort to the Commission as …

Professional Liability, Sven Stricker, Jordan Brownlow, Tania Sethi

SMU Annual Texas Survey

No abstract provided.

Contractual Evolution, Matthew C. Jennejohn, Eric Talley

Faculty Scholarship

Conventional wisdom portrays contracts as static distillations of parties’ shared intent at some discrete point in time. In reality, however, contract terms evolve in response to their environments, including new laws, legal interpretations, and economic shocks. While several legal scholars have offered stylized accounts of this evolutionary process, we still lack a coherent, general theory that broadly captures the dynamics of real-world contracting practice. This paper advances such a theory, in which the evolution of contract terms is a byproduct of several key features, including efficiency concerns, information, and sequential learning by attorneys who negotiate several deals over time. Each …

Innovation In A Time Of Crisis: The Utah Supreme Court's Order On Emergency Diploma Privilege, Catherine Bramble

Faculty Scholarship

This article discusses the Utah Supreme Court's order on emergency diploma privilege during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Teaching About Justice By Teaching With Justice: Global Perspectives On Clinical Legal Education And Rebellious Lawyering, Catherine F. Klein, Richard Roe

Scholarly Articles

Teaching About Justice by Teaching with Justice: Global Perspectives on Clinical Education and Rebellious Lawyering is co-authored by cadre of clinicians from around the world: Catherine F. Klein, Richard Roe, Mizanur Rahman, Dipika Jain, Abhayraj Naik, Natalia Martinuzzi Castilho, Taysa Schiocchet, Sunday Kenechukwu Agwu, Olinda Moyd, Bianca Sukrow, and Christoph König. The piece captures and reflects the content of five presentations at the 2021 Global Alliance for Justice Education (GAJE) biannual gathering, conducted virtually due to the pandemic, with over 450 participants from 45 countries. The piece illuminates many themes and issues in the teaching and practice of transformational justice …

The Role Of Adoption In Dobbs-Era Pro-Life Policy, Elizabeth Kirk

Scholarly Articles

It is incumbent upon those who wish to provide alternatives to abortion for pregnant women to advance policies that highlight the unique gifts of adoption in a way that ensures it is a meaningful option. Of course, there are many venues for this to occur, whether in education, media, advertising, private initiative, or legislation. The particular policy appropriate for each state will depend on many factors, including the availability of legal abortion.

Can You Be A Legal Ethics Scholar And Have Guts?, Cynthia Godsoe, Abbe Smith, Ellen Yaroshefsky

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

Recent efforts to hold lawyers accountable for their actions-including lawyers who sought to overturn the 2020 Presidential election based on false evidence,and New York City prosecutors who have committed serious misconduct-failed to draw a significant number of legal ethics scholars. The authors of this Essay are troubled by this. We understand why practicing lawyers might be reluctant to join such an effort; calling out other lawyers inpositions of power can be had for clients. But it is less understandable when it comes to law professors who, except for those who teach in law clinics or otherwise engage in law practice, …

Expanding The Federal Work Product Doctrine To Unrepresented Litigants, Jennifer A. Gundlach, Zeus Smith

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

Clerk' offices in federal courthouses across the country designate individuals who do not have counsel as "pro se," a term that comes from the Latin inpropria persona meaning 'for oneself " The term is ambiguous as to the reasons why individuals appear without counsel. While some may purposefully choose not to hire a lawyer, for many it is not a choice.

Access to justice in federal courts requires not just entry into the courts for all litigants, but also fair treatment during the course of litigation. Unfortunately, all unrepresented individuals face disadvantages in federal courts. They are, for the most …

An Empirical Analysis Of Clinical Legal Education In Middle Age, Robert R. Kuehn, David A. Santacroce

Articles

Modern clinical legal education has turned fifty. Much has been written on its development and history, both as a pedagogy and in relation to the broader enterprise of legal education. But there has been no longitudinal empirical analysis documenting that growth until now. By looking at a series of nationwide surveys starting in 2007 and comparing those results to surveys dating back to the 1970s, this article paints a factual picture of clinical legal education’s progression from early adulthood to middle age.

The Intersection Of The Rule In Yerkey V Jones And Contemporary Anti-Discrimination Law In Australia – Can The ‘Special Wives’ Equity Survive?, Kenneth Yin, Mostafa M. Naser

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

The High Court in Yerkey v Jones considered the enforceability of a guarantee provided by a married woman to secure her husband’s debts. Dixon J said that although the relationship of husband and wife did not give rise to a presumption of undue influence, the law had never been divested completely of ‘the equitable presumption of an invalidating tendency’. Dixon J’s formulation was essentially adopted by the majority justices in Garcia v National Australia Bank and their judgment thus represents the definitive endorsement of Dixon J’s view. Kirby
J on the other hand rejected ‘the stereotype underlying Yerkey’, which he …

The Field Of State Civil Courts, Anna E. Carpenter, Alyx Mark, Colleen F. Shanahan, Jessica Steinberg

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This symposium Issue of the Columbia Law Review marks a moment of convergence and opportunity for an emerging field of legal scholarship focused on America’s state civil trial courts. Historically, legal scholarship has treated state civil courts as, at best, a mere footnote in conversations about civil law and procedure, federalism, and judicial behavior. But the status quo is shifting. As this Issue demonstrates, legal scholars are examining our most common civil courts as sites for understanding law, legal institutions, and how people experience civil justice. This engagement is essential for inquiries into how courts shape and respond to social …

The Rules Of Professional Responsibility And Legal Finance: A Status Update, Anthony J. Sebok

Articles

Legal finance occurs when strangers fund litigation for profit. Traditionally looked upon with suspicion in the common law, and limited by the doctrines of champerty and maintenance, legal finance is now a thriving part of the American legal landscape. Legal finance has been promoted as a solution to the access-to-justice problems facing working and middle class Americans, as well as a new asset class for Wall Street. At the center of legal finance, however, are lawyers – not the lawyers who write the contracts for the financing – but the lawyers for the cases being financed.
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Contractual Evolution, Matthew Jennejohn, Julian Nyarko, Eric L. Talley

Faculty Scholarship

Conventional wisdom portrays contracts as static distillations of parties’ shared intent at some discrete point in time. In reality, however, contract terms evolve in response to their environments, including new laws, legal interpretations, and economic shocks. While several legal scholars have offered stylized accounts of this evolutionary process, we still lack a coherent, general theory that broadly captures the dynamics of real-world contracting practice. This paper advances such a theory, in which the evolution of contract terms is a byproduct of several key features, including efficiency concerns, information, and sequential learning by attorneys who negotiate several deals over time. Each …

The Field Of State Civil Courts, Anna E. Carpenter, Alyx Mark, Colleen F. Shanahan, Jessica K. Steinberg

Faculty Scholarship

This symposium Issue of the Columbia Law Review marks a moment of convergence and opportunity for an emerging field of legal scholarship focused on America’s state civil trial courts. Historically, legal scholarship has treated state civil courts as, at best, a mere footnote in conversations about civil law and procedure, federalism, and judicial behavior. But the status quo is shifting. As this Issue demonstrates, legal scholars are examining our most common civil courts as sites for understanding law, legal institutions, and how people experience civil justice. This engagement is essential for inquiries into how courts shape and respond to social …

Access To A.I. Justice: Avoiding An Inequitable Two-Tiered System Of Legal Services, Drew Simshaw

Scholarly Works

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been heralded for its potential to help close the access to justice gap. It can increase efficiencies, democratize access to legal information, and help consumers solve their own legal problems or connect them with licensed professionals who can. But some fear that increased reliance on AI will lead to one or more two-tiered systems: the poor might be stuck with inferior AI-driven assistance; only expensive law firms might be able to effectively harness legal AI; or, AI's impact might not disrupt the status quo where only some can afford any type of legal assistance. The realization …

What Are The Barriers Experienced By Self-Represented Litigants In Civil Court?, Darwin Fitzgerald Rice

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The Judiciary Act of 1789 permits parties to plead and manage their cases personally or by a defense counsel. The legal provision laid the foundation for self-representation guidelines adopted by the courts. Despite self-representation becoming widely accepted in the legal system, there is limited understanding of the barriers faced by litigants. John Rawls’ theory of Justice written in 1971 guided an in-depth analysis of these experiences. The theory states that with the subject of justice things are just or unjust. With the need to answer the research questions that sought to explore the lived experiences of self-represented litigants, attorneys, and …

Teaching About Justice By Teaching With Justice: Global Perspectives On Clinical Legal Education And Rebellious Lawyering, Olinda Moyd, Catherine F. Klein, Richard Roe, Mizanur Rahman, Dipika Jain, Abhayraj Naik, Natalia Martinuzzi Castilho, Taysa Schiocchet, Sunday Kenechukwu Agwu, Bianca Sukrow, Christoph Konig

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The inspiration for this Article was the 2021 Conference of the Global Alliance for Justice Education (GAJE), a biannual gathering since 1999 of law educators and others interested in justice education from around the world. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the conference was conducted virtually. During the three-day conference, over 450 participants from 45 countries gathered to participate in the sharing of workshops and presentations, ranging from discussions of papers to five-minute "lightning talks." In addition, there were virtual spaces for social meetings with new and old friends. The authors attended as many of the sessions as possible in …

Building Fierce Empathy, Binny Miller

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

In this Article I explore the process of building and sustaining empathy with clients in the context of representing juvenile lifers-- people convicted of serious crimes as children and sentenced to life or sentences that ensure that they spend most of their lives in prison--in a law school clinic. Before turning to my own lawyering experiences and those of my clinic students, I ground the discussion of empathy in the competing theories of Charles Ogletree and Abbe Smith about the value of empathic lawyering for public defenders. These theories, together with the contributions of other scholars, provide a springboard for …

Defending Democracy Through Law: The Establishment Of The Legal Service Of The European Parliment, Fernanda Giorgia Nicola Dr., Antonio Caiola

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Democracy, as well as the rule of law, is one of the founding values of the European Union. With the recent rise of some authoritarian governments in Europe, scholars have focused primarily on the efforts led by the European Commission and the European Court of Justice (“ECJ”) to curb democratic backsliding. While European institutions have struggled defending the rule of law inside the Union through lawsuits and economic sanctions against those governments, the history of integration shows how the European Parliament (“EP”) led the efforts to cure the democratic deficit existing in the European institutional system. Since the end of …

Metasoftware: Building Blocks For Legal Technology, Houman Shadab

Articles & Chapters

This Article develops a novel concept in information technology called metasoftware. It then applies the concept of metasoftware to developing legal technology.

Metasoftware enables users to create the software of their choosing and stands in sharp contrast to traditional, functional software that is intended for a particular purpose or a defined range of tasks. Functional software is the default type of software that is currently produced and includes word processing, email, social networking, enterprise resource management, online marketplaces, and video game software. Metasoftware, by contrast, is not functional. Metasoftware presents the user with a blank slate upon which to build …

Lawyers And The Lies They Tell, Bruce Green, Rebecca Roiphe

Articles & Chapters

Noting that the First Amendment protects lies about the government made in the public square, this article explores whether lawyers’ free speech rights ought to be different from that of other speakers. The law holds lawyers to a more demanding standard of conduct than others when it comes to aspects of lawyers’ fiduciary relationships with courts and clients. But how much more demanding can the law be when it comes to lawyers’ speech — in this case, false political speech? Applying the current First Amendment framework, we question the bar’s assumption that lawyers’ speech outside of these contexts can be …

Afrofuturism And The Law, I. Bennett Capers

Faculty Scholarship

Long before the film Black Panther captured the public’s imagination, the cultural critic Mark Dery coined the term “Afrofuturism” to describe “speculative fiction that treats African-American themes and addresses African-American concerns in the context of twentieth-century technoculture.” Since then, the term has been applied to speculative creatives as diverse as the pop artist Janelle Monae, the science fiction writer Octavia Butler, and the visual artist Nick Cave. But only recently have thinkers turned to how Afrofuturism might guide, and shape, law. This special issue, “Afrofuturism and the Law,” features articles that explore the many ways Afrofuturism can inform a range …

Paying For Energy Peaks: Learning From Texas' February 2021 Power Crisis, Colleen M. Baker, James W. Coleman

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

From February 14–19, 2021, winter storm Uri blanketed Texas with extreme cold. Tragically, the severe temperatures overwhelmed the state’s power system. Texas’ power grid ended up more than 20 Gigawatts short of the electricity Texans needed 2 – more power than all of California produces on an average day. Over two-hundred lives were lost3 and an estimated $295 billion in damage resulted.4 Yet many had long regarded Texas’ electric power system, and its regulation, as a model for others. What happened? That question is the focus of this article. This article first provides an overview of the severe power outages …

Facts Versus Discretion: The Debate Over Immigration Adjudication, Jayanth K. Krishnan

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Justice Amy Coney Barrett recently issued her first majority-led immigration opinion in Patel v. Garland (2022). As background, some immigrants looking to avoid deportation may apply for what is called “discretionary relief’ (e.g., asylum or adjustment of status) initially in an immigration court and then, if they lose, at the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA). These immigration forums fall under the Department of Justice. Prior to Patel, immigrants who lost at the BIA could then ask a federal circuit court to review the factual findings of their case. Now, after Justice Barrett’s decision, Article III review is no longer available …

Don't Let The Digital Tail Wag The Transformation Dog: A Digital Transformation Roadmap For Corporate Counsel, Michele M. Destefano, Tellmann P. Bjarne, Daniel Wu

Articles

Due in part to the COVID-19 pandemic, enhancements in technology, as well as shifts in the macroeconomic and socioeconomic dynamics of globalization, Digital Transformation (DT) has become an enterprise-wide imperative for most multinational companies (MNCs). As a result, legal departments are being challenged to embrace enterprise DT and start their own departmental DT journeys. Despite these trends, there is little scholarship and research about how MNC legal departments are addressing the DT challenge. How are General Counsel (GCs) currently approaching DT? Is what they are doing effective and value-accretive? And importantly, how should GCs approach DT to best generate value? …

Aba Model Rule 8.4(G), Discriminatory Speech, And The First Amendment, Bruce A. Green, Rebecca Roiphe

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Disclosures For Equity, Atinuke O. Adediran

Faculty Scholarship

This Article addresses how to increase funding to nonprofit organizations that are led by minorities or serve communities of color and how to hold corporations and private foundations who make public commitments to fund these organizations accountable for those commitments. The Article makes two policy recommendations to address these problems, while engaging with Supreme Court jurisprudence on mandatory disclosures to ensure that the proposals are narrowly tailored to institutional donors and include an opt-out provision so as not to chill the constitutional protection of the freedom of association. The first is for charities to publicly disclose their institutional donors in …