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Critical Essays On Disability Rights Jurisprudence: Combating Exclusion, Embracing Inclusion, Sanjay Jain

Books

This book is a collection of high quality research papers contributed by eminent academicians, philosophers and jurists. Its main objective is to disseminate and spread awareness about rights of persons with disabilities. The book also provides useful inputs to activists, lawyers, jurists and academicians to evolve empowerment strategies for recognition, promotion and protection of rights of persons with disabilities. Besides the Indian scenario, the book also explores developments in disability rights in countries like Nepal, Sri Lanka and USA, thereby broadening the horizon of the field. It features high quality articles focusing on international law standards of Human Rights of …

Disorderly Conduct: An Investigation Into Police And Prosecutor Practices, Michael Cicchini

Lincoln Memorial University Law Review Archive

Disorderly conduct is usually a misdemeanor statute that criminalizes a broad range of behavior. Law professors have recently called for the abolition of such statutes, arguing that the police are surveilling African American neighborhoods “for signs of disorder” and using the statute “as a means of social control against people of color.”This Article investigates this claim of racist policing by examining a sample of disorderly conduct cases. The sample confirms that African Americans are indeed charged at a disproportionately high rate relative to their percentage of the population. However, the disproportionate charging is not due to racist police surveillance. Rather, …

Imf's Loan Conditionality: Negative Consequences In The Borrower Country And The Burden Of Responsibility, Sara Mohamed Osama Abdalla Atta

Theses and Dissertations

People often think that IFIs, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are prominent players in the global economy by providing funds to countries in need of development and sustainment of welfare, unfortunately these institutions can cause devastating effects in the borrower country. The harsh conditionality of the IMF plays a huge role in the negative economic consequences incumbent upon the borrower country. Meanwhile, the lack of legal remedies for private individuals suffering from the conditionality aggravates the consequences for these people. On the one hand, conditionality may strain the economy of the borrower country which leads …

Rejecting Word Worship: An Integrative Approach To Judicial Construction Of Insurance Policies, Jeffrey W. Stempel, Erik S. Knutsen

University of Cincinnati Law Review

Insurance coverage litigation is a quest for discerning meaning: Does the insurance policy cover the loss at issue? Construing the insurance policy, courts attempt to give legal effect to what the document purports to command. But what were the intentions and expectations of insurer and insured? Do those intentions even matter? Or is only the written text of the policy relevant to the coverage result? Courts addressing these questions typically frame the interpretative choice as one of strict textualism versus contextual functionalism.

In many, perhaps even most situations, text and context align to create an “easy” case. If a factory …

Birth Rights And Birth Wrongs Through A Common Law Lens: Why The No Liability Regime Is Likely To Endure, Richard A. Epstein

The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues

Dov Fox’s recent book, the aptly named Birth Rights and Wrongs, is, as its title suggests, a study of the stark conflicts that arise in the highly contested area of reproductive rights. Fox makes the powerful case that the legal protection of reproductive rights, in all their protean forms, is systematically under-protected relative to two key benchmarks: the standards of ordinary decency, and social expectations. In my view, he has an acute awareness of these failures. But his greatest strength is also his greatest weakness, as he systematically ignores the great successes wrought through the current system, as disjointed …

Family Planning And Its Limits, Dov Fox

The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues

A doctor botches a vasectomy. Or says it’d be dangerous to keep a healthy pregnancy. Or misses a risk of passing along disease. Our laws do little to deter such reproductive negligence or compensate its victims. Some of this misconduct leaves people without the baby they desperately want. Other times, it foists on parents a child they’d set out to avoid. Or one with meaningfully different traits than what they were led to believe.

I call these three harms procreation deprived, procreation imposed, and procreation confounded.

Thousands of fertility patients were deprived of biological parenthood when their …

Multimember Legislative Bodies And Intended Meaning, Jeffrey Goldsworthy

The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues

Intentionalists agree that the meaning of an ordinary communication is either identical to or depends heavily on what the speaker or author intended it to be. But the “or” marks a disagreement between “subjective” intentionalists, such as Larry Alexander and Richard Kay, and “objective” intentionalists such as me.

Subjective intentionalists claim that the meaning of any communication is whatever its speaker intended it to mean. Objective intentionalists find this dubious because it seems possible for the meaning that people intend to communicate to differ from the meaning they do communicate. It surely cannot be the case that, whenever we speak …

Plural Agents, Private Intentions, And Legal Interpretation, Scott Soames

The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues

The chief problem posed in Multimember Legislative Bodies and Intended Meaning is one in which lawmakers pass a tax bill supported by two equal groups with conflicting interpretations of the bill’s content. One believes it taxes imported tomatoes, among other things; the other believes it exempts tomatoes. They disagree because they received supposedly authoritative, but in fact conflicting, information about the meaning of “fruit” in the bill’s text. One group was told it is used with its biological sense, which includes tomatoes as edible seed-bearing reproductive parts of a plant. The other group was told that “fruit” is used with …

Commentary, Stanley Fish

The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues

Suppose you are walking in the corridors of a law firm and you hear a person in one of the offices say “You have no consideration.” What do you take the speaker to have said or meant? You might reasonably assume that you have overheard a snatch of a conversation between a lawyer and a client who is being told that he cannot allege breach of contract because in the conversation he reports between himself and the one he would accuse there was an absence of reciprocally offered inducements of the kind “if you do X, I will do Y” …

Fear, Loathing, And The Hemispheric Consequences Of Xenophobic Hate, Ernesto Sagás, Ediberto Román

University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review

“When you have fifteen thousand people marching up . . . how do you stop these people?” “You shoot them” [crowd member shouts] [chuckling, Trump responds:] “[O]nly in the Panhandle can you get away with that thing.”¹
President Donald Trump

“Thousands of criminal aliens. They’re pouring into our country.”²
President Donald Trump

“They’re not people, these are animals.”³
President Donald Trump

“Take a look at the death and destruction that’s been caused by people coming into this country caused by people that shouldn’t be here.”⁴
President Donald Trump

“ [We] have millions and millions of people …

Falling Through The Cracks Of Education: A Comparative Analysis Of Canada’S And The United States’ Use Of Standardized Testing Within The Realm Of Public Education, Micaela Baldner

University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review

The education system is foundational to society. Public education is based on the concept of equal educational opportunities for all. Although the purpose of standardized testing is the elimination of bias to prevent certain segments of society’s students from receiving unfair academic advantages, there is little empirical verification that suggests that standardized testing actually achieves its intended purpose. In fact, the evidence indicates that standardized testing negatively impacts low-income, marginalized, and English-learning students, as achievement gaps for these groups have remained the same or have even grown with the increased use of such tests. This article will discuss the intended …

Qualitative Leveraging Natural Language Processing To Establish Judge Incrimination Statistics To Educate Voters In Re-Elections, Aurian Ghaemmaghami, Paul Huggins, Grace Lang, Julia Layne, Robert Slater

SMU Data Science Review

The prevalence of data has given consumers the power to make informed choices based off reviews, ratings, and descriptive statistics. However, when a local judge is coming up for re-election there is not any available data that aids voters in making data-driven decision on their vote. Currently court docket data is stored in text or PDFs with very little uniformity. Scaling the collection of this information could prove to be complicated and tiresome. There is a demand for an automated, intelligent system that can extract and organize useful information from the datasets. This paper covers the process of web scraping …

Audiovisual Metadata Platform Pilot Development (Amppd), Final Project Report, Jon W. Dunn, Ying Feng, Juliet L. Hardesty, Brian Wheeler, Maria Whitaker, Thomas Whittaker, Shawn Averkamp, Bertram Lyons, Amy Rudersdorf, Tanya Clement, Liz Fischer

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

This report documents the experience and findings of the Audiovisual Metadata Platform Pilot Development (AMPPD) project, which has worked to enable more efficient generation of metadata to support discovery and use of digitized and born-digital audio and moving image collections. The AMPPD project was carried out by partners Indiana University Libraries, AVP, University of Texas at Austin, and New York Public Library between 2018-2021.

Access To Justice For Refugees: How Legal Aid And Quality Of Counsel Impact Fairness And Efficiency In Canada’S Asylum System, Craig Damien Smith, Sean Rehaag, Trevor C. W. Farrow

Canadian Forum on Civil Justice

This report presents findings from a study exploring relationships between refugee legal aid, quality of counsel, the fairness and efficiency of asylum procedures, and access to justice for refugee claimants in Canada. Legal scholars, jurists and legal associations across Canada have recognized an access to justice “crisis”. The crisis extends to refugee claimants, and is exacerbated by unique vulnerabilities and barriers to justice. This report defines access to justice for refugee claimants in Canada as early and affordable access to high-quality legal representation to both prepare claims and appear before the Immigration and Refugee Board, without systemic or economic barriers; …

Domestic Terrorist Acts As Cultural Texts: A Pentadic Analysis, A. J. Grant, Guy Philbin

Journal of Hate Studies

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once said that publicity is the oxygen of terrorism. It is our position that mass-mediated terrorism, white supremacy, and doctrines of racial superiority that justify discrimination, segregation, domination, and even extermination of persons of color should be deprived of the oxygen of publicity. At the same time, we believe that analysis, discussion, confrontation, and condemnation of terrorism and hateful ideologies is painful but necessary. The hate speech and radical ideologies of today’s web-based terrorists reach far beyond traditional means of communication. The purpose of this paper is to use Kenneth Burke’s pentad to analyze …

The Shortcomings Of Corporate Accountability In Post-Conflict Colombia: Land, Rivers And Animals, Isabella Ariza Buitrago, Luisa Gomez Betancur

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Although the notion of sustainable peace requires acknowledging the role played by all actors, transitional processes around the world have inadequately addressed or completely ignored the direct and indirect participation of economic actors. In particular, Colombia's transitional justice regime left out corporations entirely. A skillshare between Colombian lawyers and US-based human rights attorneys showed some of the gaps that let corporations continue in impunity for profiting, benefiting from, or directly financing the conflict. Other than harming and deeply fracturing communities, the shortcomings of corporate accountability in post-conflict Colombia also leave land, rivers, and animals without redress. This paper explores some …

I Want You To Panic: Leveraging The Rhetoric Of Fear And Rage For The Future Of Food, Iselin Gambert

Journal of Food Law & Policy

"Humanity Is About to Kill 1 Million Species in a Globe-Spanning Murder-Suicide. Only 11 Years Left to Prevent Irreversible Damage from Climate Change." Doomsday headlines like these are terrifying. But are they enough to make us act? The causes of the current climate crisis are many, but the science is clear that the meat and dairy industry shoulders much of the blame. Given the role the animal agriculture industry plays in perpetuating the climate crisis, combined with the harms the industry imposes on the animals and workers within it, politicians and governments—given their degree of power and influence—should ostensibly be …

Express Dispute Assessment: A Much-Welcomed Form Of Expert Neutral Evaluation (Ene) At The Stockholm Chamber Of Commerce, Ylli Dautaj, William F. Fox

Journal of International Business and Law

No abstract provided.

In Defense Of 5g: National Security And Patent Rights Under The Public Interest Factors, Kenny Mok

University of Chicago Law Review

Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930 authorizes the International Trade Commission (ITC) to stop—or “exclude”—patent-infringing imports. Exclusion orders protect the country against unfair trade practices and help enforce U.S. patent rights. But before issuing an order, the ITC is required by Section 337 to consider the order’s harm to the public health and welfare, its effect on competitive conditions, the availability of substitutes, and the harm to consumers. Because it rarely finds that these “public interest factors” outweigh the benefits of patent enforcement, the ITC has mostly granted exclusion orders despite growing concerns related to the public’s reliance …

The Legislative Recipe: Syntax For Machine-Readable Legislation, Megan Ma, Bryan Wilson

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property

Legal interpretation is a linguistic venture. In judicial opinions, for example, courts are often asked to interpret the text of statutes and legislation. As time has shown, this is not always as easy as it sounds. Matters can hinge on vague or inconsistent language and, under the surface, human biases can impact the decision-making of judges. This raises an important question: what if there was a method of extracting the meaning of statutes consistently? That is, what if it were possible to use machines to encode legislation in a mathematically precise form that would permit clearer responses to legal questions? …

Speech Regulation By Algorithm, Enrique Armijo

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

The rapid convergence of speech and technology on social media platforms means it is likely the case that, either now or soon, more expressive activity will be regulated by Artificial Intelligence (AI) than by any legislature, regulator, or other government entity. Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly told Congress and other audiences that AI is the key to resolving Facebook's content moderation challenges, envisioning a moderation regime where algorithms detect and take down speech infringing Facebook's Community Standards ex ante, that is, prior to its public posting and before it reaches other users. According to Zuckerberg, this would eventually replace its initial …

Bostock Was Bogus: Textualism, Pluralism, And Title Vii, Mitchell N. Berman, Guha Krishnamurthi

Notre Dame Law Review

In Bostock v. Clayton County, one of the blockbuster cases from its 2019 Term, the Supreme Court held that federal antidiscrimination law prohibits employment discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity. Unsurprisingly, the result won wide acclaim in the mainstream legal and popular media. Results aside, however, the reaction to Justice Neil Gorsuch’s majority opinion, which purported to ground the outcome in a textualist approach to statutory interpretation, was more mixed. The great majority of commentators, both liberal and conservative, praised Justice Gorsuch for what they deemed a careful and sophisticated—even “magnificent” and “exemplary”—application of textualist principles, …

Stating It Simply: A Comparative Study Of The Quantitative Readability Of Apex Court Decisions From Australia, Canada, South Africa, The United Kingdom, And The United States, Mike Madden

North Carolina Journal of Law & Technology

No abstract provided.

We're All Originalists Now… Or Are We?: Bostock's Misperceived Quest To Distinguish Title Vii's Meaning From The Public's Expectations, Steven Semeraro

Hofstra Law Review

Two principal tenets underlie originalism-textualism: First, judicial interpreters of a statute should not use modern values to supplant original meaning because the law should change only through democratic processes. Second, original meaning is limited to the intersubjective original understanding that a reasonable reader would draw from a statute’s text. Meaning does not include anyone’s extratextual subjective expectations about how a statute should apply.

The divided Bostock Court’s decision that Title VII prohibits sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination reveals a contradiction between originalism-textualisms dual tenets. The mid-1960s public’s expectations about how Title VII would apply to sexual orientation and gender …

Media Paratext And Constitutional Interpretation, Benjamin J. Priester

Faculty Articles

In the fields of media studies and fan studies, the concept of paratext is an analytical paradigm for understanding how audiences consume and interpret media texts, such as a novel or movie. Amid today's media-rich society, it is all but impossible to encounter a media text in isolation. Rather, we also invariably interact with a wide variety of associated paratexts, from official materials like trailers or marketing to unofficial materials like reviews or fan reactions, which play a role in shaping our interpretation of the core media text. This concept of media paratext provides a compelling analogy for constitutional interpretation. …

The Pocketbook Next Time: From Civil Rights To Market Power In The Latinx Community, Rachel F. Moran

Faculty Scholarship

The United States is undergoing a demographic transformation. Nearly one in five Americans already is Latinx, and the United States Census Bureau projects that by 2060, nearly one in three will be. Latinx will substantially outnumber every other historically underrepresented racial and ethnic minority group, and non-Hispanic whites no longer will be a majority. Those changes have unsettled traditional approaches to full inclusion.

Civil rights activists have suffered numerous setbacks, and the burgeoning Latinx population is searching for other paths to belonging. Some leaders have turned to growing Latinx market power to demand recognition and equal opportunity. These efforts rely …

Metaphors Of International Law, Harlan G. Cohen

Scholarly Works

This chapter explores international law in search of its hidden and not-so-hidden metaphors. In so doing, it discovers a world inhabited by states, where rules are mined or picked when ripe, where trade keeps boats forever afloat on rising tides. But is also unveils a world in which voices are silenced, inequality is ignored, and hands are washed of responsibility.

International law is built on metaphors. Metaphors provide a language to describe and convey the law’s operation, help international lawyers identify legal subjects and categorize situations in doctrinal categories, and provide normative justifications for the law. Exploring their operation at …

Plausible Retaliation: Using Modern Pleading Standards As A Blueprint For First Amendment Retaliation Claims, Amy L. Moore

Law Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines the Supreme Court’s evolving doctrine governing First Amendment retaliatory arrest claims, focusing on the Court’s decision in Nieves v. Bartlett and its imposition of a lack-of-probable-cause requirement as a threshold element. Tracing the doctrinal development from Mt. Healthy City School District Board of Education v. Doyle through Hartman v. Moore, Reichle v. Howards, Lozman v. City of Riviera Beach, and Nieves, the Article argues that the Court improperly imported retaliatory prosecution logic into the arrest context without adequately accounting for modern pleading standards under Twombly and Iqbal. The Article contends that requiring …

Collateral Damage: How Expanding Public Charge Policy Influences Adult Esl Enrollment, Allison M. Eckert

Master's Theses

This study used statistical analysis of enrollment records for ESL programs at community colleges throughout California from 2015-2019 to determine whether adult immigrants’ participation in public ESL programs was reduced under President Donald Trump. Immigrant families’ lesser use of public education services and means-tested federal benefits has been widely documented in the wake of Trump’s expansion of the public charge rule, which counted immigrants’ use of a wider array of public benefits against their case for residency in the United States than had any previous iteration of the rule. Failing the public charge test can block an immigrant’s entry into …

Doers Not Dreamers: Supporting Un-Daca-Mented Students After College, Fatima Perez Murguia

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Thinking about life after college can be exciting. However, for some, it can be a scary and uncertain time. The focus issue addressed in this Capstone Project is on how to support undocumented college students better to prepare them for life after graduation. This is an important issue for undocumented college students because they are working hard to earn their degrees but cannot get a job in the fields they are prepared for. An evidence-based argument is made that investment should be made in the future of undocumented students, as they are well prepared and qualified to take on jobs …