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Asymmetry Of Representation In Poor People’S Courts, Tonya L. Brito, Daniela Campos Ugaz

Fordham Law Review

This Essay examines the asymmetry of representation in poor people’s courts, specifically in child support enforcement cases involving the State. The asymmetry of representation is a common occurrence in various civil law fields, but it is notably prominent in family law, which has the highest number of unrepresented parties. As one of the authors has previously explained, we use “poor people’s courts” to refer to state civil courts that hear family, housing, administrative, and consumer cases. These courts present severe challenges to the civil justice system because they are characterized by a substantial volume of cases, socioeconomically disadvantaged litigants, and …

Should State Trial Courts Become Laboratories Of Upl Reform?, Bruce A. Green

Fordham Law Review

There is a growing “access to justice” movement that is principally driven by lawyers and judges. It has multiple objectives. One such objective is to make state court proceedings fairer, more reliable, and more accessible. This is important because state courts have a significant impact on peoples’ lives. They are where family members lose custody of children, where property owners obtain permission to evict tenants, where creditors are empowered to repossess people’s cars or garnish their wages, and (in some jurisdictions) where judges send people to jail to compel them to pay judgments or fees that they cannot afford to …

Charging Abortion, Milan Markovic

Fordham Law Review

As long as Roe v. Wade remained good law, prosecutors could largely avoid the question of abortion. The Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has now placed prosecutors at the forefront of the abortion wars. Some chief prosecutors in antiabortion states have pledged to not enforce antiabortion laws, whereas others are targeting even out-of-state providers. This post-Dobbs reality, wherein the ability to obtain an abortion depends not only on the politics of one’s state but also the policies of one’s local district attorney, has received minimal scrutiny from legal scholars.

Prosecutors have broad charging discretion, …

Extraordinary Punishment: Conditions Of Confinement And Compassionate Release, Meredith B. Esser

Fordham Law Review

People experience severe forms of harm while incarcerated, including medical neglect, prolonged solitary confinement, sexual and physical violence, and a host of other ills. But civil rights litigation under the Eighth Amendment—the most common vehicle through which people seek to redress these harms—presents significant practical and doctrinal barriers to incarcerated plaintiffs. Most notably, the Eighth Amendment’s “deliberate indifference” standard asks not whether a person has been harmed, but instead requires plaintiffs to demonstrate a criminally reckless mental state on the part of prison officials. Further, Eighth Amendment remedies are limited to damages or injunctions, which may not adequately redress a …

Foreword: The Legal Profession And Social Change, Atinuke O. Adediran, Bruce A. Green

Fordham Law Review

Fordham University School of Law’s Stein Center for Law and Ethics has collaborated with the Fordham Law Review every year since the late 1990s to encourage, collect, and publish scholarly writings on different aspects of the legal profession, including its norms, regulation, organization, history, and development—that is, on themes relating to what law schools loosely call “legal ethics.” The legal profession is an important subject of study for legal scholars, among others. Although one U.S. Supreme Court Justice, himself a former law professor, airily derided legal ethics as the “least analytically rigorous . . . of law-school subjects,” we dispute …

Community Responsive Public Defense, Alexis Hoag-Fordjour

Fordham Law Review

This colloquium asks us to consider how social change is influencing the legal profession and the legal profession’s response. This Essay applies these questions to organizing around criminal injustice and the response from public defenders. This Essay surfaces the work of four innovative indigent defense organizations that are engaged with and duty-bound to the communities they represent. I call this “community responsive public defense,” which is a distinct model of indigent defense whereby public defenders look to their clients and their clients’ communities to help shape advocacy, strategy, and representation.

Methodologically, this Essay relies primarily on qualitative interviews with leaders …

Ability To Pay: Closing The Access To Justice Gap With Policy Solutions For Unaffordable Fines And Fees, Lauren Jones

Fordham Urban Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Prosecutorial Conduct Commissions: A Possibility For Accountability?, Rachel A. Nolan

Fordham Urban Law Journal

No abstract provided.

“Kill, Rape, Control”: Gender-Based Violence By Gang Members In El Salvador As Crimes Against Humanity Under International Criminal Law, Elizabeth Garrison

Fordham International Law Journal

In the Northern Triangle countries (El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala), gang violence, particularly against women, girls, and LGBTQ+ persons, results in gross violations of human rights and is a major driver of forced displacement. Gang members systematically use gender-based violence, including rape, femicide, kidnapping, sexual slavery, and persecution of LGBTQ+ persons, to exert territorial control over the local population. However, the international community has failed to recognize both the severity and systemic nature of gender-based violence by gang members. This Note—which focuses on El Salvador, but has implications for the rest of the Northern Triangle countries—argues that gender-based violence by …

Liberty On Hold: The Constitutional Test And Source For Overdetention Claims, Sarya Baladi

Fordham Law Review

The persistence of overdetention—meaning continued detention after officers knew or should have known that the arrested person was entitled to release—poses major concerns about both the fundamental right against arbitrary detention and other unenumerated constitutional rights. The U.S. Supreme Court’s 1979 decision in Baker v. McCollan established a vague constitutional protection against overdetention, but it left lower courts to answer many open questions about its parameters.

Although courts agree that the Constitution prohibits law enforcement from arbitrarily detaining indefinitely an arrested person who protests their legitimate release, the application of this protection has been inconsistent across federal courts of appeals. …

The Legacy Of The Troubles: Casting A Long Shadow Over Northern Ireland, Jacqueline M. Nolan-Haley

Faculty Scholarship

The Good Friday/Belfast Agreement (Agreement) brought hope to Northern Ireland after thirty years of violent conflict during a period known as the Troubles (1968 - 1998). The Agreement offered a framework for ending the conflict and for addressing the needs of victims. However, unlike peace agreements from many other post-conflict societies, it did not provide a transitional justice process for dealing with contentious issues of the past. As a result, more than 25 years after the signing of the Agreement, the problematic legacy of the conflict continues. Paramilitaries are still a cause for concern. Peace walls still exist. Competing sectarian …

Criminal "Apartheid" In The Occupied Palestinian Territory?: A Call For A More Nuanced Approach From The Perspective Of International Criminal Law, Kai Ambos

Fordham International Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Time To Abolish The Dea: Evaluating The Agency’S Failures And Calling For Community Investments, Ifetayo Harvey

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Fend For Yourself: Lifetime Consequences Of Sending Kids To Municipal Courts Without Legal Representation, Lucy Johnston-Walsh, Tom Welshonce

Fordham Urban Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Establishing A Right To Food For “Justice”-Impacted People: An Abolitionist Strategy To Build Community, Sustainability, And Small Business In The United States, Elissa Underwood Marek

Fordham Urban Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Multitudinous Racial Harms Caused By Florida’S Anti-Dei And “Stop Woke” Laws, Katheryn Russell-Brown

Fordham Urban Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Pocket Sportsbooks: Mobile Sports Gambling In The Modern Era, Jacob Davis

Fordham Urban Law Journal

No abstract provided.

A Major Question For The Sec: Analyzing Constitutional Limits On Regulatory Authority, Matthew Diller, Meredith Berger, Samuel W. Buell, John M. Golden, Suzanne Ashley, Coy Garrison, Aaron Saiger, Suman Naishadham, Mary Jo White

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

No abstract provided.

Corporate Esg Falls Short: Systemic Anti-Black Racism And Inequality Should Be Addressed Through A Cumulative Integrated Approach, Ferrell L. Littlejohn

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

In the 1896 case Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court endorsed the “separate but equal” doctrine, essentially codifying racial segregation. This decision guaranteed that systemic racism would permeate every fabric of society despite the abolition of slavery. Recently, many corporate institutions have pledged to actively support the fight against systemic racism through their environmental, social, and governance (“ESG”) initiatives. Corporate stakeholders have actively advocated for these initiatives, particularly in response to recent scholarship revealing the significant involvement of capitalist institutions in historical slavery, and the continued perpetuation of anti-Black racism. Nevertheless, such initiatives, for example, internal diversity, equity, and …

A Decade Of Impunity: Finding Justice For The Yazidi Women Victims Of The Islamic State, Leah Calabro

Fordham International Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Beyond Implicit Bias, Thomas Albright, William A. Darity Jr., Diana Dunn Dunn, Rayid Ghani, Deena Hayes-Greene, Tanya K. Hernandez, Sheryl Heron

Faculty Scholarship

In their introduction to this edition of Dædalus, Goodwin Liu and Camara Phyllis Jones write that “it is unlikely that implicit bias can be effectively addressed by cognitive interventions alone, without broader institutional, legal, and structural reforms.” They note that the genesis for the volume was a March 2021 workshop on the science of implicit bias convened by the Committee on Science, Technology, and Law of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. That workshop provided an opportunity to demonstrate that implicit bias is a common form of cognitive processing that develops in response to social, cultural, and …

Impact Ipsa Loquitur: A Reverse Hand Rule For Consumer Finance, Susan Block-Lieb, Edward J. Janger

Faculty Scholarship

Algorithms in consumer finance can entrench, exacerbate, and conceal bias. This article considers the increased importance, in the age of algorithmic lending, of disparate impact analysis as a tool to combat predation and discrimination in consumer finance transactions. It explores the existing legal landscape and finds gaps in the relationship between discrimination and predatory lending doctrines. It then situates both disparate impact analysis and UDAAP doctrines within the broader context of balancing and burden-shifting rules in tort law and considers how this analysis might be tailored for the new algorithmic lending environment. We conclude that predatory discrimination permits consideration of …

Proportionalities, Youngjae Lee

Faculty Scholarship

"Proportionality" is ubiquitous. The idea that punishment should be proportional to crime is familiar in criminal law and has a lengthy history. But that is not the only place where one encounters the concept of proportionality in law and ethics. The idea of proportionality is important also in the self-defense context, where the right to defend oneself with force is limited by the principle of proportionality. Proportionality plays a role in the context of war, especially in the idea that the military advantage one side may draw from an attack must not be excessive in relation to the loss of …

Correcting Federal Rule Of Evidence 404 To Clarify The Inadmissibility Of Character Evidence, Hillel J. Bavli

Fordham Law Review

Courts misinterpret Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b)(2) as an exception to Rule 404(b)(1)’s prohibition on character evidence rather than a mere clarification that emphasizes the permissibility of other-acts evidence whose relevance does not rely on propensity reasoning. This misinterpretation turns the rule against character evidence on its head by effectively replacing Rule 404 with a Rule 403 balancing—and one that incorrectly treats character inferences as probative rather than prejudicial, thereby favoring admissibility rather than exclusion. Consequently, as currently interpreted, Rule 404(b)(2) generates substantial unpredictability and verdicts based on conduct not at issue in a case.

I therefore propose that the …

Eliminating Rule 609 To Provide A Fair Opportunity To Defend Against Criminal Charges: A Proposal To The Advisory Committee On The Federal Rules Of Evidence, Jeffrey Bellin

Fordham Law Review

Federal Rule of Evidence 609 authorizes the admission of prior convictions to impeach criminal defendants who testify. And in this important and uniquely damaging application, the [r]ule’s logic fails, distorting American trials and depriving defendants of a fair opportunity to defend against the charges. The Advisory Committee [on Evidence Rules (the “Advisory Committee”)] should propose the elimination of Rule 609 and prohibit cross-examination with specific instances of a criminal defendant’s past conduct when those instances are unrelated to the defendant’s testimony and unconnected to the case.

This short essay begins by setting out the proposed rule change alongside a proposed …

State Drug Laws, Mason Marks

Fordham Law Review

States have long enacted drug laws that depart from federal laws and regulations. In the early twentieth century, several states prohibited marijuana while it remained federally unregulated. In the 1960s, states started criminalizing psychedelic substances. Shortly thereafter, in the early 1970s, they started reversing the trend to criminalize drugs by reducing or eliminating criminal penalties associated with personal marijuana use. State-level decriminalization accelerated in the 1990s and 2000s.

More recently, states have extended drug policy reforms to other substances, including psychedelics, stimulants, and opioids. Some states have eliminated criminal penalties while others have replaced criminal penalties with fines or diversion …

Gubernatorial Inability And Absence In The New York Constitution: Proposals And Arguments For Reform, Fordham Law School Rule Of Law Clinic, Antonia Spano, Liam Turner

Rule of Law Clinic

The New York Constitution's provisions related to gubernatorial inability and absence from the state are in need of reform. In this report, the Fordham Law School Rule of Law Clinic advances recommendations for addressing the vulnerabilities created by both provisions. The absence provision, which transfers power whenever the governor leaves the state, can cause confusion, cast doubt on the legality of gubernatorial actions, prompt rival politicians to simultaneously claim to be governor, and undermine confidence in the rule of law. The constitution's inability provision provides for transfers of power when the governor is "unable," but does not define what it …

Police Officers, Policy, And Personnel Files: Prosecutorial Disclosure Obligations Above And Beyond Brady, Lauren Giles

Fordham Law Review

Police officers play a significant role in the criminal trial process and are unlike any other witness who will take the stand. They are trained to testify, and jurors find them more credible than other witnesses, even though officers may have more incentive to lie than the ordinary witness. Despite the role of police officers in criminal proceedings, state statutes say virtually nothing about evidence used to impeach police officers, often contained in the officer’s personnel file. Worse still, the standard for disclosing information in an officer’s personnel file varies among and within states, resulting in inconsistent Brady disclosures. This …

Due Process Protections For Charter School Students In Long-Term Exclusionary Discipline Proceedings, Leah E. Soloff

Fordham Law Review

Charter schools—public schools that are subject to minimal state regulation—often employ high levels of exclusionary discipline. Because charter schools in many states are exempt from state laws regulating school discipline, the U.S. Constitution provides charter school students their only source of protections during such disciplinary proceedings. However, the constitutional due process protections afforded to public school students in disciplinary proceedings remain a source of significant disagreement among courts. Although the U.S. Supreme Court has established that public school students must be afforded due process protections in exclusionary discipline proceedings, the Court has yet to determine what process is actually due …

Proceedings At An Impasse: Appealing Fugitive Disentitlement Orders Of International Defendants Under The Collateral Order Doctrine, Parker Siegel

Fordham Law Review

The doctrine of fugitive disentitlement allows federal courts to decline to entertain a defendant’s claims when that defendant is deemed a fugitive from justice. Once disentitled, defendants cannot seek relief from the judicial system until they submit to the court’s jurisdiction. But complications emerge when federal district courts disentitle non–U.S. citizens who reside outside of the United States, who are indicted for alleged misconduct committed abroad, and who attempt to dismiss charges while remaining in their home countries. Federal circuit courts of appeals are split on whether such defendants can appeal from a fugitive disentitlement ruling without submitting to the …