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A Unified Theory Of Code Connected Contracts, Carla L. Reyes

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Smart contracts and their promise of automatic performance capture legal and entrepreneurial imaginations. But the excitement around the technology led to some confusing legal responses. Several legal scholars use chronology to help reduce the confusion and place smart contracts within what is already familiar about computational contracting. According to this line of thinking, blockchain-based smart contracts simply represent the next technological advancement in a long history of computable contracting technologies. However, other scholarly work suggests that such a chronological explanation under-simplifies the nature of the linkages between smart contracts and other forms of code-connected contracts. This Article offers a unified …

Tributes To Family Law Scholars Who Helped Us Find Our Path: Dorothy E. Roberts, Jessica Dixon Weaver

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Professor Dorothy Roberts is a legacy builder and an inspiration for women, African American scholars, youth, and ordinary folks who want to make a difference in the lives of others. Her work in the field of family, race, and gender law is nothing short of prolific. She is a powerhouse whose research and advocacy reach across law into the fields of Africana studies, sociology, anthropology, medicine, psychology, political science, business, economics, and human rights. She is one of the first female professors to unpack how the law interfaces with Black women in various roles—as mother, wife, partner, daughter, caretaker, worker, …

Latina And Latino Critical Legal Theory: Latcrit Theory, Praxis And Community, Marc-Tizoc Gonzaléz, Sarudzayi Matambanadzo, Sheila I. Vélez Martínez

Faculty Scholarship

LatCrit theory is a relatively recent genre of critical “outsider jurisprudence” – a category of contemporary scholarship including critical legal studies, feminist legal theory, critical race theory, critical race feminism, Asian American legal scholarship and queer theory. This paper overviews LatCrit’s foundational propositions, key contributions, and ongoing efforts to cultivate new generations of ethical advocates who can systemically analyze the sociolegal conditions that engender injustice and intervene strategically to help create enduring sociolegal, and cultural, change. The paper organizes this conversation highlighting Latcrit’s theory, community and praxis.

A teoria LatCrit é um gênero relativamente recente de teoria do direito “outsider” …

The Deborah Jones Merritt Center For The Advancement Of Justice, Claudia Angelos, Mary Lu Bilek, Joan W. Howarth

Scholarly Works

When invited to write an essay on clinical legal education honoring our friend, we were struck by the importance of a focus on clinical legal education in any collection of work paying tribute to Professor Deborah Jones Merritt. Legal education has benefited from a fifty-year movement for clinical education. This movement necessarily interrogates and seeks to overcome the anachronistic, inherited Langdellian paradigm that dominates and continues to define the curricula and policies of our law schools. But the movement for clinical education has been exponentially confounded by contemporary legal education’s shape as a pyramid of statuses and privileges accumulated over …

2021: How Gender And Race Affect Justice Now - Final Report, Justice Sheryl Gordon Mccloud, Dana Raigrodski, Sierra Rotakhina, Kelley Amburgey-Richardson

Books

In 1989, the Washington Supreme Court’s Task Force on Gender and Justice in the Courts produced a groundbreaking report on the impact of gender on selected areas of the law. It concluded that gender did affect the availability of justice. We – the Washington State Supreme Court Gender and Justice Commission – are a product of that report and its recommendations. Now, in 2021, we have completed our follow-up study.

Our legal and social science research, our data collection, and our independent pilot projects all led us to the same frustrating conclusion about the effect of gender in Washington State …

Compassion: A Critical Skill For Law Students, Stephanie Smith Ledesma, Ma, Jd, Cwls

Marquette Benefits and Social Welfare Law Review

No abstract provided.

School-To-Prison Pipeline, Haley Walker

Marquette Benefits and Social Welfare Law Review

This article explores the intersect between mentally ill youth and the juvenile justice system. Mentally ill youth are disproportionately represented at every stage in the juvenile justice system due to their symptoms being mistaken for delinquent behavior. This stems from the legislators reforming the juvenile justice system from rehabilitative to punitive over the years in an attempt to hold delinquent youth accountable for their actions. Federal statutes have been enacted and federally funded programs have been implemented that seek to address the mental health crisis in today’s youth and keep mentally ill youth out of the juvenile justice system. This …

Marginalizing Mothers: Child Maltreatment Registries, Statutory Schemes, And Reduced Opportunities For Employment, Colleen Henry, Vicki Lens

City University of New York Law Review

State child welfare systems substantiate over 500,000 allegations of child maltreatment each year and hold parents responsible for this maltreatment in most cases. Parents who are substantiated are often listed on state child maltreatment registries for years, if not decades. Originally designed to investigate and process allegations of child mal-treatment, registries and the data they contain are increasingly used by employers to identify perpetrators of maltreatment and essentially bar them from employment in occupations that care for children and other vulnerable populations. As a consequence of this use, thousands of parents are prevented from engaging in paid care work, undermining …

Antiracism, Reflection, And Professional Identity, Eduardo R.C. Capulong, Andrew King-Ries, Monte Mills

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

Intent on more systematically developing the emerging professional identities of law students, the professional identity formation movement is recasting how we think about legal education. Notably, however, the movement overlooks the structural racism imbedded in American law and legal education. While current models of professional development value diversity and cross-cultural competence, they do not adequately prepare the next generation of legal professionals to engage in the sustained work of interrupting and overthrowing race and racism in the legal profession and system. This article argues that antiracism is essential to the profession’s responsibility to serve justice and therefore key to legal …

The Jurisprudence Of The First Woman Judge, Florence Allen: Challenging The Myth Of Women Judging Differently, Tracy A. Thomas

Akron Law Faculty Publications

This Article delves into the life and work of Judge [Florence] Allen to provide insight to the contributions and jurisprudence of the first woman judge. For history questions what difference putting a woman on the bench might have made. Part I explores Allen’s early influences on her intellectual development grounded in her progressive and politically active family, and her close network of female professional friends. Part II discusses her pivotal work with the women’s suffrage movement, working with the national organizations in New York and leading the legal and political efforts in Ohio. This proactive commitment to gender justice, however, …

The Dysfunctional Criminalization Of Family Violence, Andrea L. Dennis

Scholarly Works

Legal responses to elder, child and intimate partner abuse have developed along similar tracks from civil and regulatory to criminal, employed much of the same mechanisms, and shifted power from victims to law enforcement officers and prosecutors. The siloed evolutionary process leading to the criminalization of the se behaviors has not significantly resolved the problems and criticisms of the behavior. Indeed, thirty years ago, Peter Edelman critiqued the government's role in remediating child abuse and domestic violence. In particular Edelman identified three issues: (1) the failure to recognize the inter-relatedness of different types of family violence; (2) the lack of …

Specialty Bar Associations And The Marketing Of Ethics: The Example Of The Academy Of Adoption Attorneys, Malinda L. Seymore

Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy

No abstract provided.

When We Breathe: Re-Envisioning Safety And Justice In A Post-Floyd Era, Aya Gruber

Publications

10th Annual David H. Bodiker Lecture on Criminal Justice delivered on Wed., Oct. 21, 2020 at Ohio State University Moritz College of Law.

Canadian Policymaker Experiences On Reducing Syndemic Stigma For Hiv And Substance Use Disorder, Nickolas James Cherwinski

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

People living with HIV (PLWH) and substance use disorder (SUD) experience highly stigmatized lives fraught by influences such as criminal law and stigmatizing public policies. Despite free access to antiretroviral therapy (ART) and mental health services for all Canadian citizens, suboptimal adherence to ART and administratively cumbersome mental health interventions still exist. Many researchers have found the health services for both HIV and SUD to be dynamic, costly, and difficult to maintain; as such, the purpose of this study was to explore the knowledge gap related to the policy implications of syndemic stigma experienced by PLWH and SUD in Canada. …

The Jurisprudence Of The First Woman Judge, Florence Allen: Challenging The Myth Of Women Judging Differently, Tracy Thomas

Con Law Center Articles and Publications

A key question for legal scholars and political scientists is whether women jurists judge differently than men. Some studies have suggested that women judges are more likely to support plaintiffs in sexual harassment, employment, and immigration cases. Other studies conclude that women are more likely to vote liberally in death penalty and obscenity cases, and more likely to convince their male colleagues to join a liberal opinion. Yet other studies have found little evidence that women judge differently from men.

This article explores the jurisprudence of the first woman judge, Judge Florence Allen, to test these claims of gender difference …

Antiracism, Reflection, And Professional Identity, Monte Mills, Eduardo R.C. Capulong, Andrew King-Ries

Articles

Intent on more systematically developing the emerging professional identities of law students, the professional identity formation movement is recasting how we think about legal education. Notably, however, the movement overlooks the structural racism imbedded in American law and legal education. While current models of professional development value diversity and cross-cultural competence, they do not adequately prepare the next generation of legal professionals to engage in the sustained work of interrupting and overthrowing race and racism in the legal profession and system. This article argues that antiracism is essential to the profession’s responsibility to serve justice and therefore key to legal …

The Stoic Who Didn't Know It: The University Of Wyoming College Of Law's First Woman Graduate Hazel Bowman Kerper, Lindsay Hoyt

Wyoming Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Strategically Broken System: A Grounded Theory Study Of The Clinical Implications Of Immigration Law, Policy, And Practice, Kelle Agassiz

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

The majority of clinicians do not receive education pertaining to the legal aspects of immigration in their curriculum, training, or continuing education. In addition, the process of navigating the immigration system has been exacerbated in recent years due to rapid policy changes under the Trump administration, which has contributed to a hostile political climate, particularly for immigrants from Central America and Mexico. Using a classic grounded theory research approach, this study explored the relationship between the psychological implications of immigration and the legal challenges that immigrants face today, with a specific focus on immigration from Central America and Mexico. Through …

Non-Consensual Condom Removal In Canadian Law Before And After R. V. Hutchinson, Isabel Grant, Lise Gotell

All Faculty Publications

This paper examines the phenomenon of nonconsensual condom removal (NCCR) and its relationship to sexual assault in Canada. Using empirical studies and the insights of feminist theory, we explore the nature of the harms caused by NCCR and contend that this pervasive practice constitutes sexual assault. We then critique the decision of R v Hutchinson, which held that condom sabotage does not negate subjective consent, ignoring the dignitary harms of NCCR. While lower court decisions before Hutchinson recognized that consent to sex with a condom does not include consent to sex without, courts after Hutchinson have struggled to distinguish the …

Setting The Health Justice Agenda: Addressing Health Inequity & Injustice In The Post-Pandemic Clinic, Emily Benfer, James Bhandary-Alexander, Yael Cannon, Medha Makhlouf, Tomar Pierson-Brown

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The COVID-19 pandemic surfaced and deepened entrenched preexisting health injustice in the United States. Racialized, marginalized, poor, and hyper-exploited populations suffered disproportionately negative outcomes due to the pandemic. The structures that generate and sustain health inequity in the United States—including in access to justice, housing, health care, employment, and education—have produced predictably disparate results. The authors, law school clinicians and professors involved with medical-legal partnerships, discuss the lessons learned by employing a health justice framework in teaching students to address issues of health inequity during the pandemic. The goal of health justice is to eliminate health disparities that are linked …

Abolish Municipal Courts: A Response To Professor Natapoff, Brendan Roediger

All Faculty Scholarship

If we are serious about disrupting the generational reproduction of the racial social order, we are going to have to learn to let go. Taking up the legacy of criminal municipal courts and racial control, this Response argues against the practice of prescribing from the traditional “medication list” of liberal reforms (substantive, procedural, and “democratizing”) without grappling with whether a system or apparatus is so inextricably bound up with the maintenance of race and class hierarchy that it should be demolished. I assert that we should always ask whether something is redeemable before we ask whether it is reformable. In …

Sexkopslagen In The States: An American Version Of The Nordic Model To Address Sex Trafficking In The United States, Olivia Hartjen

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Prostitution, and the widely-encompassing commercial sex industry, has been a staple of all societies for centuries. Although the typical narrative regarding prostitution is one of moral abhorrence and criminalization, prostitution's spotlight has been recast with the acknowledgment and advocacy against related conduct: sex trafficking. Traffickers earn about $150 million annually from trafficking operations, $99 million of which is accounted for by sex trafficking. Although the United States officially criminalized trafficking in 2000, those engaged in prostitution, whether voluntarily or via trafficking, continue to be criminalized and further victimized through legal schemes perpetuated by the federal and state governments. Various other …

Breaking Down The Silos That Harm Children: A Call To Child Welfare, Domestic Violence And Family Court Professionals, Joan S. Meier, Vivek Sankaran

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The intersection of domestic violence and child maltreatment has been the subject of research and reform efforts focused on the need to integrate a better understanding of domestic violence into child welfare system practice. But a similar effort at integration of domestic violence and child maltreatment concerns has never been directed at family courts adjudicating private custody litigation. And while such courts’ responses to domestic violence have been analyzed and discussed extensively in the literature, legal discussions of custody courts’ responses to child maltreatment are few and far between. At the same time, there has been an explosion of traumatic …

Starting With Life: Murder Sentencing And Feminist Prison Abolitionist Praxis, Debra Parkes

All Faculty Publications

Advocates of decarcation often focus their critiques on imprisonment for non-violent offences. In this vein, current advocacy efforts to end mandatory sentences in Canada tend to carve out “serious violent offences” as not part of a reform agenda. In this chapter, Debra Parkes sketches out the contours of an argument for why feminists might not want to cede that ground, why anti-carceral feminism might involve centering our analysis on the most, rather than the least, serious crimes – starting with those who are serving life sentences for murder. Parkes identifies four non-exhaustive reasons for that focus. The first reason relates …

Talking Back In Court, M. Eve Hanan

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Extending Postpartum Medicaid: State And Federal Policy Options During And After Covid-19, Jamie R. Daw, Emily Eckert, Heidi Allen, Kristen Underhill

Faculty Scholarship

The United States is facing a maternal health crisis with rising rates of maternal mortality and morbidity and stark disparities in maternal outcomes by race and socioeconomic status. Among the efforts to address this issue, one policy proposal is gaining particular traction: extending the period of Medicaid eligibility for pregnant women beyond 60 days after childbirth. The authors examine the legislative and regulatory pathways most readily available for extending postpartum Medicaid, including their relative political, economic, and public health trade-offs. They also review the state and federal policy activity to date and discuss the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on …

A Ringing Endorsement Of Lawyers, And The Most Important Development In Child Protection Law, Joshua Gupta-Kagan

Faculty Scholarship

Two empirical studies demonstrating the impact of vigorous family defense legal work on child protection cases bookended the 2010s. In 2012, Mark Courtney and Jennifer Hook found that cases in which a specialized interdisciplinary law office (ILO) represented parents had faster reunifications, guardianships, and adoptions than similar cases with different parental representation, though it did not explore how those results were obtained. In 2019, Lucas Gerber, Yuk Pang, Timothy Ross, Martin Guggenheim, Peter Pecora, and Joel Miller found that, compared to solo and small office practitioners, ILOs in New York City hastened reunification and guardianships for their clients, leading to …

A Human Rights Agenda For The Biden Administration, Sarah H. Cleveland

Faculty Scholarship

The Biden administration has much to do to restore the United States’ credibility as a human rights leader and to strengthen the human rights system in an era of rising right-wing nationalism, authoritarianism, and competition for global power. In doing so, it needs to lead by example by putting its own house in order, and act with both courage and humility in the face of deep global skepticism and distrust. Specifically, the administration should pursue five stages of engagement on human rights: reverse and revoke measures taken by the Trump administration, reaffirm the United States’ traditional commitments to human rights …

Strengthened Bonds: Abolishing The Child Welfare System And Re-Envisioning Child Well-Being, Nancy D. Polikoff, Jane M. Spinak

Faculty Scholarship

The 2001 book, Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare, by Dorothy Roberts, called out the racism of the child welfare system and the harms that system perpetrates on families and communities. Twenty years later, despite numerous reform efforts, the racism and profound harms endure. It is time for transformative change. In this foreword to the symposium Strengthened Bonds: Abolishing the Child Welfare System and Re-Envisioning Child Well-Being, honoring the 20th anniversary of Shattered Bonds, we highlight Professor Roberts’ articulation of her development as a family policing abolitionist and summarize the articles and comments contributed from scholars …

Mediation Ethics After The Singapore Convention, Zachary R. Calo

Scholarly Works

The aim of this essay is to consider the shape of mediation ethics after the Singapore Convention. It assesses the role of ethics with the Convention framework, as well as how the Convention can inform broader conversations about mediation ethics. The international commercial mediation landscape initiated by the Convention commends certain approaches to ethics for its effective and efficient operation. In particular, it is argued that the Convention system is best complemented by codes of ethics that are clear and standardized in their norms as well as modest in the scope of their regulatory ambitions. An ethical system defined by …