Digital Commons Network^™

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 …

Textual Gerrymandering: The Eclipse Of Republican Government In An Era Of Statutory Populism, William N. Eskridge, Victoria Frances Nourse

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

We have entered the era dominated by a dogmatic textualism—albeit one that is fracturing, as illustrated by the three warring original public meaning opinions in the blockbuster sexual orientation case, Bostock v. Clayton County. This Article provides conceptual tools that allow lawyers and students to understand the deep analytical problems faced and created by the new textualism advanced by Justice Scalia and his heirs. The key is to think about choice of text—why one piece of text rather than another—and choice of context—what materials are relevant to confirm or clarify textual meaning. Professors Eskridge and Nourse apply these concepts …

Environmental Justice Issues And Sea Level Rise In Frontline Communties Along The Gulf Coast, Karla Michel Lopez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Sea level rise poses a great threat to coastal areas and our way of life. As flooding increases in frequency and intensity across the country, vulnerable populations become a target to its impacts. The U.S. dedicates much research to risk communication and climate change adaptation strategies; however, these coastal areas are home to a large percentage of underserved and underrepresented communities that can be challenging to meaningfully engage. The impacts of short-term sea level rise combined with long-term sea level rise will not only cause flooding, erosion, and intrusion of saltwater into freshwater resources but also increased financial consequences, such …

Decolonizing Shipwrecks Through Considerations Of Indigeneity In Underwater Cultural Property Decisions, Chelle Haynes

Florida Journal of International Law

Under current international law, indigenous rights are not considered in ascertaining ownership of underwater cultural property. Indigenous people in Latin America and South America have faced long histories of colonialism, wherein their resources, property, and heritage were appropriated and taken by imperial powers. In this Article, I present the historical context of both the San Jose and Mercedes shipwrecks—Spanish colonial ships that were sunk in battle. I explore the history and legal decisions in both cases, while also considering how indigenous rights can be introduced into the current legal framework. Current international law concerning underwater cultural resources is primarily comprised …

Justiciability Of All Human Rights: Scottish Independence As Redress For British Human Rights Abuses, Ann M. Piccard

Florida Journal of International Law

On September 18, 2014, an overwhelming number of Scottish residents turned out to vote on one simple question: Should Scotland be an independent country? The deceptively simple yes or no question on the ballot could not begin to reflect the complex underlying issues. If the Independence Referendum had been approved—meaning a “yes” vote, the goal of Independence proponents and of the Scottish National Party (SNP)—every facet of life for the Nation and its citizens could have been affected. The presence of nuclear weapons; membership in the European Union; the very nature and name of the currency used in every transaction …

Covid Research Inequalities: Highlighting The Need For Increased Minority Participation In Clinical Trials, Olivia C. Perlstein

Seton Hall Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Kids Are Alright: Applying A Fault Liability Standard To Amateur Digital Remix, Steven Hetcher

Florida Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Sense Of Disentitlement: Frame-Shifting And Metaphor In Ashcroft V. Iqbal, Lisa Eichhorn

Florida Law Review

No abstract provided.

Passenger Standing To Challenge Searches And Seizures: A Distinction Without A Constitutional Difference, Dante P. Trevisani

Florida Law Review

This Note argues that the holding of the Court’s past decisions denying passengers standing to challenge searches comports neither with logic nor with its recent decision in Brendlin, and should there fore be changed. Part II explains the development of the law regarding passenger standing in searches, which Part III explains the development of the law regarding passenger in seizures. Part IV argues that the differing approaches to passenger standing are theoretically inconsistent and cannot be reconciled. Part V addresses the reason for this inconsistency; namely, the Court’s erroneous determinations of how a “reasonable” person feels during searches and …

Drinking Wine Between The Limit ‎And Discretionary In Islamic ‎Law, Ahmad Al-‎Smadi

Jerash for Research and Studies Journal مجلة جرش للبحوث والدراسات

Linguistically wine means what is taken from grape juice ‎ and gets someone intoxicated . It is called wine for it affects one`s mind , jurists differed in Limiting the meaning of the ‎ term "wine" evidences of each team of jurists , I have com-‎ mission understanding that wine involves any intoxicating material according to the right versions . They generally limit the meaning of the term and what it denotes .‎ After surveying and discussing the jurists evidences , I can clarify that the punishment of a drunk is not a judgment because an evidence is not existing …

Saving Substantial Similarity, Daryl Lim

Florida Law Review

Substantial similarity, an analysis of the similarity between two works, is the fulcrum of copyright infringement. Recent cases involving Led Zeppelin’s signature song “Stairway to Heaven,” the award-winning movie “The Shape of Water,” and Google and Oracle’s dispute over computer code all required courts to grapple with this fundamental analysis. This Article reveals that today’s copyright plaintiffs have only a one-in-ten chance of winning—the worst in a century—and also discusses the cause of this trend—defendants’ devastatingly effective use of pretrial motions and the rise of lawsuits against nonrival defendants. Scholarly debates on substantial similarity typically revolve around the works of …

Expanding Lgbt, Marie-Amélie George

Florida Law Review

In many circles, “LGBT” is an antiquated acronym that excludes many of the individuals that the movement is supposed to serve. “LGBTQ,” “LGBTQIA,” and other variations of the acronym have become ever more pervasive as nonbinary, intersex, and asexual individuals have become increasingly visible. The LGBT initials that once signaled solidarity and intersection are now appearing limited because they highlight only certain subgroups.

Although many movement organizations have adopted a more expansive formulation of LGBT, national legal rights organizations have limited their agendas to LGBT issues. Until recently, they devoted the bulk of their efforts to gay and lesbian concerns …

Gender-Neutral Pronouns: They Are Here To Stay, Olivia Mendes

Seton Hall Law Review

No abstract provided.

Legal Corpus Linguistics And The Half-Empirical Attitude, Anya Bernstein

Journal Articles

Legal writers have recently turned to corpus linguistics to interpret legal texts. Corpus linguistics, a social-science methodology, provides a sophisticated way to analyze large data sets of language use. Legal proponents have touted it as giving empirical grounding to claims about ordinary language, which pervade legal interpretation. But legal corpus linguistics cannot deliver on that promise because it ignores the crucial contexts in which legal language is produced, interpreted, and deployed.

First, legal corpus linguistics neglects the relevant legal context—the conditions that give legal language authority. Because of this, legal corpus studies’ evidence about language use perversely obscures and misstates …

Aesthetic Judging And The Constitution (Or, Why Supreme Court Justices Are Less Like Umpires And More Like Figure-Skating Judges), Chad M. Oldfather

Florida Law Review

This Article extends the project of exploring the metaphor to the specific context of constitutional adjudication and change. It works from the understanding that both sports and constitutional law can be understood as “practices” in the philosophical sense, as “activities that are constituted by the convergent or overlapping understandings, expectations, and intentions of multiple participants.” The analysis is thus fundamentally comparative in nature. Conceiving of the operation of constitutional law in these terms, like any comparative analysis, helps to uncover and highlight certain of its features, including the ways in which its content is susceptible to change, only some of …

The "Fixation Thesis" And Other Falsehoods, Frederick Mark Gedicks

Florida Law Review

This Article challenges the so-called “fixation thesis” of public-meaning originalism. This thesis holds that the meaning of the Constitution was fixed when adopted and exists in the past as a fact, unaffected by what anyone thinks about it in the present. For public-meaning originalists, constitutional meaning is always ontologically “there” in the past to be found, even if their epistemological method sometimes fails to find it.

The fixation thesis underwrites the powerful rhetoric of fidelity that public-meaning originalists deploy against nonoriginalists, whom they deride for “making up” constitutional meaning without any interpretive theory: “it takes a theory to beat a …

Justifying The Supreme Court’S Standards Of Review, R. Randall Kelso

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract forthcoming.

Contemporary Trends In Combating Transnational Financial Crimes, Khamzaev Dilaver

ProAcademy

In the article, the author highlights the lack of effective law enforcement in the field of combating transnational financial crimes as an existing problem in this area. This conclusion was made based on an analysis of the views and opinions of representatives of legal science and practitioners in this field, as well as the reporting documents of mutual assessments for compliance with international standards of Anti-Money Laundering and Counter Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) systems of the participating states of the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATF). The author, dividing the ways of improving the effectiveness of the implementation …

Testing Privilege: Coaching Bar Takers Towards “Minimum Competency” During The 2020 Pandemic, Benjamin Afton Cavanaugh

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming.

Voting As Exclusion, Ava Ayers

Fordham Law Review

This Essay considers two prevalent narratives about voting. In one narrative, voting expresses the civic virtue of the voter. In another, voting is an expression of inclusion in our political community’s circle of membership. I argue that although both narratives are true, and important, there is a third narrative that shadows them both. In this third narrative, voting affirms the exclusion of millions of people from our political community. The stories we tell about voting are incomplete and, sometimes, harmful.

A Reasonable Possibility Of Refoulement: The Inadequacies Of Procedures To Protect Vulnerable Noncitizens From Return To Persecution, Torture, Or Death, Lexie Marilyn Ford

Texas A&M Law Review

Due primarily to increases in individuals fleeing violence and turmoil in Central America, over 40% of noncitizens arriving in the United States are put on a fast-track removal process and subsequently claim fear of returning to their home countries. A decade ago, the number was only 5%. This influx of asylum-seekers at the border has led to tension between those who wish to protect them and those who view such migrants as “invaders.” In 2019 and 2020, the Trump Administration proffered sweeping regulatory changes with the aim to substantively and procedurally restrict noncitizens’ access to protection from persecution and torture …

Increasing Housing Stability Through State-Funded Community Mediation Delivered By The Massachusetts Housing Mediation Program (Hmp): Evaluation Report, Madhawa Palihapitiya, David Sulewski, Kaila O. Eisenkraft, Jarling Ho

Massachusetts Office of Public Collaboration Publications

This report presents findings and recommendations from a formative evaluation of the Massachusetts Housing Mediation Program (HMP) administered by the MA Office of Public Collaboration (MOPC) at the University of Massachusetts Boston in partnership with 12 Community Mediation Centers (CMCs). The program is funded by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and overseen by the Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) as part of the Baker-Polito Administration’s Eviction Diversion Initiative (EDI). The evaluation was conducted by MOPC’s research unit comprised of staff and graduate student researchers, and does not necessarily represent the views of DHCD. As a statutory state office, MOPC …

Limits Of The Rule Of Law: Negotiating Afghan "Traditional" Law In The International Civil Trials In The Czech Republic, Tomas Ledvinka, James M. Donovan

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Drawing on ethnographic research of judicial cases in the Czech Republic which involve the law in migrants' countries of origin, this Article outlines how multiple strategies handle encounters with the legal-cultural differences of Afghanistan in order to neutralize what may be called the "alterity" of law. The Article suggests that far from being analytical tools, concepts such as "context," "culture," and "customary" are strategically used by courts to neutralize unsettling aspects of foreign Afghan legalities. Further, it applies Leopold Pospisil's ethnological concept of legal authority as a vehicle for reinterpreting the contextual differentiation of Afghan "traditional" law as an alternative …

Building Legal Datasets, Jerrold Soh

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Data-centric AI calls for better, not just bigger, datasets. As data protection laws with extra-territorial reach proliferate worldwide, ensuring datasets are legal is an increasingly crucial yet overlooked component of “better”. To help dataset builders become more willing and able to navigate this complex legal space, this paper reviews key legal obligations surrounding ML datasets, examines the practical impact of data laws on ML pipelines, and offers a framework for building legal datasets.

There Is Only One Texas Constitution, Joshua Morrow

St. Mary's Law Journal

The pre-ratification text of the Texas Constitution appeared throughout the state in conflicting English-and foreign-language copies. Some commentators argue that it is impossible to know which copy the people ratified, or even that Texas does not have a constitution. These arguments create theoretical problems, because courts interpreting the constitution assume that it consists of fixed and determinable text. And the principle of popular sover­eignty precludes denying that the constitution exists. The conflicting copies also create practical problems. Are the legislature’s acts void for failing to include a Spanish-language enacting clause? May the state imprison citizens for debt, since the German …

Tort Law: Cases & Critique, Thomas E. Kadri

Books

My goal in creating this casebook is to do my part to make legal education more affordable, accessible, and adaptable. That’s why I’m making the book available to all for free. By using a CC BY-NC license, I’m also inviting others to adapt these materials for their own use, so long as they adhere to the non-commerciality and attribution terms. (Anyone interested in “remixing” this book for their own purposes should feel free to contact me, including if you’d like a more adaptable non-PDF version.)

You’re welcome to print any part of this casebook if you want a hard …

Tjlp, Vol.11 Special Issue Winter 2016

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Total Scholarly Impact: Law Professor Citations In Non-Law Journals, J. B. Ruhl, Michael P. Vandenbergh, Sarah E. Dunaway

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

What To Learn From Pandemic Teaching? Our Student’S Names, Eun Hee Han

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.