Digital Commons Network^™

The Second Amendment’S Racial Justice Complexities, Daniel S. Harawa

Minnesota Law Review Vols. 106:2 onward (2021-present)

The relationship between the Second Amendment and racial justice is complicated. That's because the relationship between penal administration and racial justice is complicated. The briefing in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen perfectly proves this point. A group of public defenders favored striking down New York's concealed carry licensing law to further racial justice, while a group of civil rights organizations argued that the law should be upheld to further racial justice. What the briefing revealed is that Black people have an interest in being free from racially disparate policing and prosecution of all criminal laws, including …

An Abiding Commitment To The Death Penalty? Centrality Of The Rule Of Law In The Administration Of Capital Punishment In Singapore, Eugene K. B. Tan

Singapore Law Journal (Lexicon)

Capital punishment remains in use in Singapore. The Singapore government’s position is that the death penalty works in deterring the most serious crimes. Public trust and confidence remains healthy that the death penalty regime in Singapore has the requisite deterrent effect on criminals and has sufficient safeguards to prevent any miscarriage of justice. In 2012, the Singapore Parliament made significant amendments to the Penal Code and the Misuse of Drugs Act, marking a shift from the longstanding mandatory to a discretionary death penalty system for some of the most serious crimes. It demonstrates the authorities’ belief that the mandatory death …

Reconceiving Corporate Rights And Regulation In The Ai Era, Michael R. Siebecker

Missouri Law Review

Can existing corporate governance principles properly guide the relationship between shareholders and directors as artificial intelligence (“AI”) plays an increasingly prominent role in corporate management, planning, and operations? Without a doubt, AI technologies allow corporations to enjoy enhanced efficiency and innovation. But the vast range of AI capabilities—from sophisticated data analytics to autonomous decision-making—raises profound questions about whether traditional governance principles remain sufficiently robust to cabin the proper development and deployment of such a powerful and rapidly evolving set of new technologies. Current corporate governance structures that focus on human actors and traditional business decision-making mechanisms seem ill-suited to address …

From Lightbulbs To #Sheinhauls: Considerations For Planned Obsolescence Regulation In The Modern Era, Nicole Cullen

Washington Law Review

“Planned obsolescence,” broadly defined as conduct by manufacturers to shorten product lifespans and spur consumption, is characteristic of the American economy. Such conduct largely manifests in widely accepted competitive strategies that require consumer participation: The periodic release of products or emergence of a trend, for example. In some instances, planned obsolescence conduct reaches beyond the accepted competitive practices, desired by consumers, to conduct that clearly harms consumers with no countervailing rationale. Such practices effectively cease product function prematurely, either through product failure or poor performance and inefficient repair costs. While this conduct largely evades legal capture, it intersects with many …

State-By-State Morality Superseding Federal Immigration Law: An Analysis Of The “Crimes Involving Moral Turpitude” Distinction Through The Lens Of Post-Dobbs Anti-Abortion Law, Coryn Johnson

Minnesota Journal of Law & Inequality

No abstract provided.

Actions Speak Louder Than Words: The Supreme Court Of Georgia Textualizes “Action” In The Georgia Constitution, Abigail C. Letts

Mercer Law Review

It comes as no surprise to those tuned into Georgia jurisprudence—textualism has taken root in the Supreme Court of Georgia. Since a series of holdings in the late twenty-tens including Olevik v. State, Georgia courts have produced a steady stream of decisions committed to pointing legal interpretation back to the intent of the framers. At first glance, the court’s proclamation in State v. SASS Group, LLC that “action” as it is used in Article I, Section II, Paragraph V(b) of the Georgia Constitution refers to an entire lawsuit appears simply to be another instance of the court’s staunch commitment …

Reckless Parties Should Foot The Bill: Advocating For State Agency Search And Rescue Service Reimbursement, Anna Vanbuskirk

UMKC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Abortion, Gay Equality, And The Normative Power Of The Actual, Pamela S. Karlan

North Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Subfederal In Immigration Polarization, Huyen Pham, Pham Hoang Van

Faculty Scholarship

The framing of subfederal immigration regulation as a red- blue divide is conventional wisdom. As more states, cities, and counties have engaged in the regulation of immigrants within their jurisdictions, it is not particularly surprising to see deep-red states like Texas enacting laws that restrict the rights of immigrants in their jurisdictions (e.g., requiring police within the state to honor detainers issued by United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)) or deep-blue states like California enacting laws that protect immigrants’ rights (e.g., issuing driver’s licenses without requiring proof of lawful immigration status).

Rather than only reflecting national polarization on immigration …

Mind The Gap: Toussaint And The Reception Of International Human Rights Law In Canada, Karinne Lantz

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This article explores the reception of international human rights law (“IHRL”) in Canada and the enforcement gap that may arise when legislation is not passed expressly implementing human rights treaties that Canada has ratified. Despite establishing a variety of interpretive methods that may result in Canada’s binding IHRL obligations having domestic effect even when they are not expressly implemented, Canadian courts have struggled to provide clear and consistent guidance on how IHRL applies in Canada. The selective approach in Canada to implementing legislatively IHRL obligations may give rise to an enforcement gap when rights individuals purportedly enjoy under international law …

Firearms Carceralism, Jacob D. Charles

Minnesota Law Review Vols. 106:2 onward (2021-present)

Gun violence is a pressing national concern. And it has been for decades. Throughout nearly all that time, the primary tool lawmakers have deployed to stanch the violence has been the machinery of the criminal law. Increased policing, intrusive surveillance, vigorous prosecution, and punitive penalties are showered on gun offenders. This Article spotlights and specifies this approach--what it calls “firearms carceralism”--and details how a decades-long bipartisan consensus generated a set of state-centered solutions to gun violence that has not meaningfully impacted the problem. Instead, those policies have exacerbated racial inequity and compounded civic and community harms. The Article traces the …

Criminal Legal Reform In New Hampshire: One Law Professor's Activism, Albert E. Scherr

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

Criminal legal reform is a perpetual work in progress. The system itself is, at best, maddeningly imperfect. It too often fails to produce anything close to justice. Structural problems afflict the system in a way that incarcerates too many people, particularly people of color. For example, over the last thirty years, the Innocence Project has demonstrated imperfections in the system caused by faulty eyewitness identification procedures by ineffective assistance of counsel, by prosecutorial misconduct, by shoddy forensic practices and by police behavior that produced false confessions.

That the United States has well over fifty-one independent criminal legal systems frustrates efforts …

Nextgen Licensure & Accreditation, Nachman N. Gutowski

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

The Bar Exam is changing. The National Conference of Bar Examiners is pushing full steam ahead with a replacement for the current elements that make up the Uniform Bar Exam (UBE). This new exam, called the NextGen Bar Exam (NextGen), is scheduled to launch in Summer 2026. Current American Bar Association (ABA) accreditation standards do not consider the coming changes. A full picture of what the adjustments will look like is hazy and very much in the trial stages still. These shifts impact current law students, the legal education practices of law schools, and accreditation standards. There is a near-universal …

Safe Storage And Self-Defense From Heller To Bruen, Joseph Blocher

North Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Principles Of Prosecutor Lenience, Jeffrey Bellin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Once "the Darth Vader of academic writing,"' American prosecutors are making a comeback. In recent years, "progressive prosecutors" have leveraged prosecutors' one true superpower-lenience-to "reform the criminal justice system from the inside." There is so much scholarly enthusiasm for this project that the existing commentary can be summarized as offering a one-word principle to govern considerations of prosecutorial lenience: yes. But there is surely more to say. American criminal law covers a broad array of offenses with vast differences in punitiveness across jurisdictions and courts. And even harsh critics of the system's severity tend to pivot when it comes to …

We Cannot Police Systemic Racism And Systemic Poverty: Why Policing Is Not A Solution To Our Public Health Crisis, Semir Bulle

Utah Law Review

From drug addiction to issues with homelessness, the mental health crisis, community disputes, traffic violations and more, there does not seem to be any evidence that increased police budgets and spending are the best use of limited resources. Criminalization in substitution for measured and targeted interventions has not worked in structurally vulnerable and marginalized communities and it is far past the time to accept tangible alternatives, such as funding initiatives like TCCS. Instead of perpetually increasing our police budget, let’s instead invest in healing our communities. Let’s invest this money in education, recreation, childcare, housing, health; measures that are proven …

E-Rate Program Expansion: A Pathway To Combating Cybersecurity Attacks In K-12 Schools, Madeline Strasser J.D. Candidate

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Every day, a K-12 school in the United States falls victim to a harmful cyberattack that can cost it millions of dollars and keep its doors closed for days or weeks. Schools are desperate for funding to purchase essential cybersecurity services and products to protect their school’s networks from these cyberattacks. Such funding should be available through the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) E-Rate program, which was established as part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 to provide discounts for connectivity services in K-12 schools across the country. During the COVID-19 pandemic, schools and other telecommunications industry stakeholders submitted petitions asking …

Justice Is Not A Game: The Devastating Racial Inequity Of Washington’S Three Strikes Law, Civil Rights Clinic At Seattle University School Of Law, Fred T. Korematsu Center For Law And Equality, Melissa Lee, Jessica Levin

Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality

Justice Is Not a Game: The Devastating Racial Inequity of Washington’s Three Strikes Law

Transforming The Welfare State, One Case At A Time: How Utrecht Makes Customized Social Care Work, Charles F. Sabel, Jonathan Zeitlin, Jan-Kees Helderman

Faculty Scholarship

Advanced welfare states are under pressure to customize services, promptly enough to prevent a cascade of harms. With these goals, the Netherlands in 2015 decentralized social care services to municipalities, and within municipalities to neighborhood teams in continuing contact with clients. The overall results have been disappointing. But the experience of Utrecht, the Netherlands’ fourth-largest city, has been strikingly different. By using hard-to-resolve cases to signal conflicts in rules, obstructive jurisdictional boundaries, and the shortcomings of private service providers, Utrecht is learning to customize and speed delivery of social care through incremental steps. This article explains how Utrecht’s success addresses …

Duty, Breach, Deterrence: The Ncaa’S Legacy Of Immortalizing Competitive Glory Over The Well-Being Of The Student-Athletes It Aims To Protect, Gabi A. Grillon

Barry Law Review

No abstract provided.

The (Not So) United States Of Parole: A State-Of-The-Art Review Of Discretionary Release For Individuals Serving Life, Stuti S. Kokkalera, Angelica M. Allison

Journal of Criminal Justice and Law

About one in seven individuals are currently in prison serving a life sentence. A substantial proportion of this incarcerated population have the opportunity for early release through parole. Given the complexity and variety of parole board systems, capturing a comprehensive understanding of parole decision-making is imperative. This article provides a state of the art review of statutory and administrative provisions describing parole practices for individuals serving life sentences were collected and evaluated by employing content analytical techniques. We find that the formalization of discretionary release procedures in statutes, administrative rules, and policy manuals reflects a confluence of perspectives ranging from …

Juvenile Life Without Parole In Pennsylvania: Age, Cognitive Immaturity, And Culpability, Margaret E. Leigey, Marco Granston

Journal of Criminal Justice and Law

While there has been momentum at both the federal and state levels to curtail extreme punishments for justice-involved juveniles (The Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth, 2023), 22 states continue to permit the sentence of juvenile life without parole (JLWOP). Pennsylvania is among them. This essay focuses on judicial rationale in five JLWOP re-sentencing cases in the state, and more specifically, how the appellant’s age and implied adult-level culpability were used by the judge to justify permanent incarceration. In the re-sentencing documents, judges neglected the ample research in the areas of neuroscience and developmental psychology that indicates reduced legal …

Why We Should Stop Talking About Violent Offenders: Storytelling And Decarceration, Mira Edmonds

Articles

The movement to decarcerate risks foundering because of its failure to grapple with so-called violent offenders, who make up nearly half of U.S. prisoners. The treatment of people serving sentences for offenses categorized as violent is a primary reason for the continued problem of mass incarceration, despite widespread awareness of the phenomenon and significant bipartisan interest in its reduction. People convicted of “violent offenses” are serving historically anomalous and excessively long sentences, are generally denied clemency and compassionate release, and are excluded from a wide array of legal reform and policy changes with decarceral aims. Keeping these people in prison …

In Vino Veritas: An Examination Of New Jersey’S Intoxication Defense, Samuel M. Silver

Seton Hall Journal of Legislation and Public Policy

No abstract provided.

Wardlow After Black Lives Matter: Using A Protest Movement To Establish A Colorable Equal Protection Challenge To Supreme Court Precedent, Patrick Maley

Seton Hall Law Review

No abstract provided.

Labor Law, Ownership, And The Firm, Sanjukta Paul

Law & Economics Working Papers

Labor law has its own working theory of the business firm, not derivable from another area of law. This "theory of the firm," which the affirmative provisions of labor law are taken to both modify and preserve, is more overtly hierarchical than in other areas. This is true across the main functional domains of labor law: union formation; expressive and associational rights; and the scope of collective bargaining. A rich vein of existing scholarship deals with both hierarchy and deference to property within labor law. The arguments of this essay emerge from considering these aspects of labor law in conjunction …

Seeking Asylum Somewhere Over The Rainbow: The Long-Term Effect Of Southern Border Restrictions Upon Lgbtq+ Asylum Seekers, London Jones

Seton Hall Journal of Legislation and Public Policy

No abstract provided.

Should Racially Vulnerable Victims Show Mercy?, Ekow N. Yankah

Articles

On June 17, 2015, twenty-one-year-old Dylann Roof entered the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, sat, and prayed with nine congregants for at least an hour before pulling out a handgun and killing Cynthia Hurd, Susan Jackson, Ethel Lance, DePayne Middleton-Doctor, State Senator Rev. Clementa Pinckney, Tywanza Sanders, Rev. Daniel Simmons, Sharonda Singleton, and Myra Thompson.' He left three survivors, explicitly so they could "tell the story" of his killings. Roof did so for his own demented reasons; his racist rage was laid out publicly in an online manifesto, and he hoped his murders would begin a …

A State-Centered Approach To Digital Equity, Colin Dennis

Seton Hall Law Review

No abstract provided.