Digital Commons Network^™

Black Lives Monitored, Chaz Arnett

Faculty Scholarship

The police killing of George Floyd added fuel to the simmering flames of racial injustice in America following a string of similarly violent executions during a global pandemic that disproportionately ravaged the health and economic security of Black families and communities. The confluence of these painful realities exposed deep vulnerabilities and renewed a reckoning with the long unfulfilled promise of racial equality, inspiring large-scale protests around the country and across the globe. As with prior movements for racial justice, from slavery abolition to the civil rights movement’s demand to end Jim Crow, protests have been met with extreme force, either …

The Absurdity Of Criminalizing Encouraging Words, Eric Franklin Amarante

Scholarly Works

This article discusses the Supreme Court’s holding in Hansen v. U.S., which upheld a statute that makes it a felony to encourage an undocumented person to remain in the United States.

Covid-19 And Broadband Internet: Historic Government Funding In The Wake Of A Global Pandemic Poised To Bridge The Digital Divide, Kaitlin M. Kroll

Duquesne Law Review

The COVID-19 pandemic impacted how Americans live, work, and learn. As the country returns to normalcy, reliable, fast internet connection is critical for Americans it is no longer a luxury, it is a necessity. While many Americans do not think twice about having internet connectivity, there are still many Americans who are unable to access or afford the internet, especially in rural communities and low-income households. In the wake of the pandemic, Congress allocated historic amounts of funding for broadband initiatives. The most substantial of which are the broadband allocations under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act ("IIJA'). While the …

Dr. Meghan Conley's Comments - Panel 2, Meghan Conley

Tennessee Law Review

No abstract provided.

New York State Rifle & Pistol Association V. Bruen, T.C. Lisle Whitman Ii

Tennessee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Organizations Behind Ending The Gun Violence Epidemic, Melissa Spero

Children's Legal Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

National Space Law, Frans Von Der Dunk

Space, Cyber, and Telecommunications Law Program: Faculty Publications

This chapter addresses national space law. While often slightly different terms such as national space legislation or national space regulation are used, the term national space law initially should be interpreted in the broadest possible sense. National law would thus refer to the totality of all relevant legal documents at the national level, whether entitled law, statute, act, decree, directive, or regulation, plus customary law, implementation by way of government authorization and jurisprudence, as relevant further explained through the writings of recognized experts.

Then, as space law encompasses “every legal or regulatory regime having …

(How) Is Prison Philosophy Public?, Shannon Fyfe, Amy Mckiernan, Elizabeth Lanphier

Scholarly Articles

In this essay we reflect on our shared experiences participating in a prison philosophy program, to consider just how our philosophical activities inside prison, and our related work outside, were—or were not—“public.” Some may also wonder if all the activities we describe are instances of “philosophy.” We take it that they are, insofar as they all engage teaching or reflecting on philosophy, deploying philosophical skills (including critical thinking, writing, and argumentation), or rely on philosophical concepts, including from feminist and critical race theory and praxis. However, we also suggest ways in which this work highlights the need to further refine …

Voiceless Victims: Addressing The Issues Of Prosecuting Intimate Partner Violence Without Victim Cooperation, Carolyn Powers

Hofstra Law Student Works

No abstract provided.

As Long As There Is Money Involved In Justice, There Will Be No Justice: The United States' Criminalization Of Poverty And The Need To Demonitize Our Criminal "Justice" System, Amanda Piccione

Hofstra Law Student Works

This paper will show how the United States will fail to achieve a criminal “justice” system if money is involved. The cyclical impacts of poverty and marginalization on communities of color throughout our nation’s history will continuously perpetuate an unequal and unfair criminal system. Section II begins by delving into the history of poverty in the United States. It then analyzes poverty and its impacts today while specifically discussing the effects on communities of color and the intersections with crime. Section III examines the legal issue, exploring our monetized legal system and discussing how we can change our criminal legal …

Redefining The Lawyer's Role In Calls For A Dignified Death, Patricia Bober

Hofstra Law Student Works

No abstract provided.

Expanding The Sixth Amendment’S Right To Counsel To Ensure Fairness For Noncitizen Defendants, Kathy Santamaria Mendez

Mitchell Hamline Law Journal of Public Policy and Practice

No abstract provided.

The False Promise Of Jurisdiction Stripping, Daniel Epps, Alan M. Trammell

Scholarly Articles

Jurisdiction stripping is seen as a nuclear option. Its logic is simple: By depriving federal courts of jurisdiction over some set of cases, Congress ensures those courts cannot render bad decisions. To its proponents, it offers the ultimate check on unelected and unaccountable judges. To its critics, it poses a grave threat to the separation of powers. Both sides agree, though, that jurisdiction stripping is a powerful weapon. On this understanding, politicians, activists, and scholars throughout American history have proposed jurisdiction-stripping measures as a way for Congress to reclaim policymaking authority from the courts.

The conventional understanding is wrong. Whatever …

The Need For Fairness And Accuracy For Women In Sentencing: Surmounting Challenges To Gender-Specific Statistical Risk Assessment Tools, Elizabeth E. Wainstein

JCLC Online

States across the country have increasingly adopted statistical risk assessment tools in multiple stages of their criminal legal systems with the hope of reducing incarceration without increasing crime. These tools use various characteristics to estimate an individual’s future risk of recidivism, and judges consider the results of these assessments when determining levels of custody or community supervision for convicted individuals. Despite much debate amongst academics and activists on the utility and fairness of these tools, one critique seems beyond debate: the tools are built for men, not women. These tools are based on criteria, statistics, and theory drawn from the …

Dog Owners Deserve Public Housing: Why Florida's Dog Breed Restrictions Are Discriminatory And Should Be Repealed, Melissa Betancourt

St. Thomas Law Review

This Comment analyzes why dog breed restrictions are discriminatory and ineffective, and how responsible dog owners throughout Florida lack access to inclusive public housing laws. Part II provides background on the breed-specific ordinances in Florida and Public Housing Authorities, including history and definitions. Part III discusses why breed-specific legislations are ineffective, and Florida’s recent attempts to eliminate them. Part IV considers three solutions to trump over Florida’s dog breed restrictions and aid dog owners during the current housing crisis. Lastly, Part V will summarize and conclude the analysis throughout the Comment.

Narrowing The Playing Field On Nil Collectives, Kathryn Kisska-Schulze

Marquette Sports Law Review

No abstract provided.

Restoring Balance To The Federal Tax-Exemption Regime’S Treatment Of Hospitals: Let Their Actions Speak Louder Than Their Charters, Nicholas Archibald

Campbell Law Review

The tax-exemption system for American hospitals was created both to optimize care for those who cannot afford it and to encourage good deeds by hospitals. But despite well-intentioned attempts by the IRS to implement these lofty policy goals, for-profit hospitals today pay taxes despite at times providing more public benefit than their nonprofit brethren while nonprofit hospitals are incentivized to seek profit rather than provide free care. This rise of this state of affairs coincides with changes by the IRS to the standards required to obtain the exemption. Originally, the nonprofit system operated on a quid pro quo model, where …

Pedaling Backwards: Examining The King County Board Of Health’S Choice To Repeal Its Bicycle Helmet Law, Schuyler M. Peters

Seattle University Law Review

In Part I, this Comment will explain the Helmet Law itself and the timeline that ultimately led to its repeal. Part II will focus on the positive impact of the Helmet Law, the dangers associated with the repeal, why the repeal should not have occurred in the manner it did, and what societal costs stem from the BOH’s decision. Part III will address the actions that must be taken to revoke this repeal and the reasons behind these alternative pathways, including an Equity Impact Review study specifically on the consequences of repeal, a collaborative outreach program to bring helmets to …

The Laws That Regulate Police: The Wilson Center’S Policing Legislation Database, Brandon L. Garrett

Faculty Scholarship

To better understand lawmaking in response to calls for reform, the Wilson Center for Science and Justice began tracking the introduction of policing-related legislation. This report covers our database tracking policing legislation and our initial findings.

Annual Report, Fiscal Year 2023, Tennessee. Department Of Correction

Annual Reports

This document is the annual report for the Tennessee Department of Correction during the fiscal year.

When Designed Outcomes Are “Unforeseeable”: Proximate Causation In The Opioid Crisis, 56 Uic L. Rev. 259 (2023), Oliver Kassenbrock

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Rules And Laws For Civil Actions 2023, Stella Burch Elias, Derek T. Muller, Jason Rantanen, Caroline Sheerin, Maya Steinitz

Books

Rules and Laws for Civil Actions is an open-access resource for law students containing the U.S. Constitution, Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Federal Rules of Evidence, Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, and selected federal and state statutes. The book was created by a team of faculty members at the University of Iowa College of Law to supplement the study of Civil Procedure, Evidence, Constitutional Law, and other law school courses. In addition to containing the official text, each legal source found in Rules and Laws for Civil Actions is accompanied by an introductory section written by an Iowa Law professor …

Equal Protection Against Policing, Evan D. Bernick

College of Law Faculty Publications

A White police officer pins his knee against a Black man’s neck. The Black man lies prone. He says he can’t move. He says he can’t breathe. He says he’s through. He pleads for his mama. He moans, gasps, and writhes. Blood runs out of his nose and mouth. After eight minutes and forty-six seconds, George Floyd is dead.

Videos of the killing went viral. All four of the Minneapolis Police Department officers who arrested Floyd for allegedly using a counterfeit $20 bill at a convenience store were fired. Derek Chauvin—who held his knee to Floyd’s neck—was initially charged by …

Burning Questions: Changing Legal Narratives On Cannabis In Indian Country, Robin M. Rotman, Sam J. Carter

Faculty Publications

In the not-so-distant past, thoughts of Cannabis legalization in the United States were radical. In the present day, the narratives around Cannabis are changing. The term “present day” affixes this Article to early 2023, a snapshot in time. To understand the current legal narratives surrounding Cannabis, and what they might become in the future, it is important to examine the history of Cannabis law and policy in United States. This Article begins by discussing Cannabis regulation in the United States, from the rise of federal regulation to the gradual deregulation by states with tacit federal consent. The Article then examines …

Community-Based Justice Research (Cbjr) Project: Exploring Community-Based Services, Costs And Benefits For People-Centered Justice, Trevor C. W. Farrow, Ab Currie

Canadian Forum on Civil Justice

The CBJR Project is a collaborative international initiative featuring exciting new research exploring the costs and benefits of community-based justice. The CBJR Project partners include the Katiba Institute in Kenya, the Center for Alternative Policy Research & Innovation in Sierra Leone and the Centre for Community Justice & Development in South Africa, with collaboration and support from the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice and the International Development Research Centre.

Since 2018, the CBJR Project partners have been working to learn more about the benefits, costs and opportunities of providing and scaling various community-based justice services and initiatives, as well as …

First Amendment Protections For “Good Trouble”, Dawn C. Nunziato

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

In the classical era of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, activists and protestors sought to march, demonstrate, stage sit-ins, speak up, and denounce the system of racial oppression in our country. This was met not just by counterspeech—the preferred response within our constitutional framework—but also by efforts by the dominant power structure to censor and shut down those forms of public rebuke of our nation’s racist practices. Fast forward seventy years, and the tactics of the dominant power structure have essentially remained the same in response to today’s civil rights activists who seek to protest …

Carceral Control: A Nationwide Survey Of Criminal Court Supervision Rules, Kate Weisburd

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The day-to-day operation of criminal court supervision—including probation, parole, and electronic ankle monitoring—is understudied and undertheorized. To better understand the mechanics of these systems, this study comprehensively analyzes the rules governing people on criminal court supervision in the United States. Drawing on the analysis of 187 public records from all fifty states, this study documents how criminal court supervision functions and impacts daily life. In particular, this study examines the various ways that supervision rules limit or restrict privacy, bodily autonomy, liberty, dignity, speech, and financial independence. This study also explores the nature and prevalence of supervision rules across the …

Major Questions About Agency Authority: A Practical Discussion On The Impact Of Limiting Administrative Authority, Aram Gavoor

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The Administrative Law Review’s Fall 2022 Symposium humanized administrative law while tackling substantive administrative law issues. With the human impact of administrative law as the touchpoint, the panels explored the practical implications of deregulation, nondelegation, and major questions. Resultant discussion transcribed below allowed for a thoughtful conversation, but one that was at the same time accessible to those who do not routinely practice in the space. We thank Professors Gillian Metzger, William Buzbee, Aram Gavoor, Kimberly Wehle, Jonas Monast, and Administrative Law Judge Doug Rawald for their contributions.

The Carceral Home, Kate Weisburd

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

In virtually all areas of law, the home is the ultimate constitutionally protected area, at least in theory. In practice, a range of modern institutions that target private life—from public housing to child welfare—have turned the home into a routinely surveilled space. Indeed, for the 4.5 million people on criminal court supervision, their home is their prison, or what I call a “carceral home.” Often in the name of decarceration, prison walls are replaced with restrictive rules that govern every aspect of private life and invasive surveillance technology that continuously records intimate information. While prisons have always been treated in …

Biden V. Nebraska: The New State Standing And The (Old) Purposive Major Questions Doctrine, Jed Handelsman Shugerman

Faculty Scholarship

Chief Justice Roberts’s majority opinion in Biden v. Nebraska does not sufficiently explain how Missouri has standing under established Article III doctrine, nor how the Court approaches the major questions doctrine as a method of statutory interpretation. Clarification can come from other opinions, even other cases entirely, in which Justice’s counterarguments are suggestive of the real arguments underlying the decisions.

MOHELA may have faced a concrete injury from the student debt waiver, but there was no evidence that Missouri would – and the majority had no answer for how Missouri had standing without an injury. A debate over special state …