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2009-2010 Fordham Law School Faculty Bibliography, Fordham Law School Library

Faculty Bibliography

No abstract provided.

Out With The New, In With The Old: The Importance Of Section 504 Of The Rehabilitation Act To Prisoners With Disabilities, Betsy Ginsberg

Fordham Urban Law Journal

People with disabilities are all too well represented in America’s prisons and are frequently not provided with the accommodations necessary to ensure their full participation in prison life. The Supreme Court’s 1997 pronouncement that Title II of the ADA applies to their claims of failure to accommodate and disability-based discrimination has been making its way through the prison grapevine (and hopefully the prison law libraries) over the last dozen years, inspiring prisoners, their advocates and the federal government to use this broad civil rights statute to enforce these rights. Their efforts have been thwarted to some extent by the states’ …

Discrimination, Coercion, And The Bail Reform Act Of 1984: The Loss Of The Core Constitutional Protections Of The Excessive Bail Clause, Samuel Wiseman

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This Article examines the history and judicial interpretation of the Eighth Amendment's Excessive Bail Clause, which reads "excessive bail shall not be required." Debate on this topic has centered around two questions: whether the Clause binds only the courts or Congress as well and whether it creates any substantive right to bail. Specifically, the Article discusses the Bail Reform Act of 1984, and the Supreme Court's subsequent interpretation of the Act in United States v. Salerno. The Salerno court suggested that the Excessive Bail Clause limits only the judiciary and found, at a maximum, only an extremely limited substantive right …

The Precedent Of Pretrial Release At The Icty: A Road Better Left Less Traveled, Megan A. Fairlie

Fordham International Law Journal

This Article facilitates just such an inquiry by tracking the progression of pretrial provisional release at the ICTY. This Article first considers pretrial release (or release pursuant to bail) in the abstract along with those rights that may theoretically be implicated by an act of pretrial detention. It then examines the relevant activity of the ICTY's predecessors, interim advancements in human rights law and the absence of a release-based statutory provision at the Yugoslav Tribunal. The applicable rule adopted by the ICTY is then assessed, along with subsequent amendments. At each stage, specific regard is given to the rights affected …

The Growing Influence Of European Union Law, Piet Eeckhout

Fordham International Law Journal

This Essay discusses a number of themes which show the growing influence of European Union ("EU") law. Four themes were chosen to illustrate that influence. The themes are interconnected, and hopefully bringing them together allows the reader to get a sense of the unique experiment which this "new legal order" continues to conduct. Part I examines the EU's own "federal question:" what exactly is the scope of EU law, and how is it determined? How does the case law, in particular that of the EU's supreme court, the European Court of Justice ("ECJ"), determine the boundaries of the EU law …

The Rome Statue And Captain Planet: What Lies Between 'Climate Against Humanity' And The 'Natural Environment?, Mohadmmed Saif-Alden Wattad

Fordham Environmental Law Review

No abstract provided.

Notice Otherwise Given: Will In Absentia Trials At The Special Tribunal For Lebanon Violate Human Rights?, Chris Jenks

Fordham International Law Journal

This Article examines whether the Special Tribunal for Lebanon's ("STL's") in absentia trial provisions violate human right norms and, if so, whether the right to tribunal-appointed counsel or to retrial remedies any such violation. Part I explains the operation of the STL, with particular attention drawn to the funding difficulties the tribunal faces, and details the STL's in absentia trial provisions and subsequent right to counsel and retrial. Part II compares the in absentia trial provisions of the STL to those of other tribunals to demonstrate that the STL's in absentia trial provisions represent a radical departure from prior law. …

Fighting Piracy In Somalia (And Elsewhere): Why More Is Needed, Milena Sterio

Fordham International Law Journal

This Article argues that pirates should be treated as terrorists and that piracy-fighting countries should rely on a variety of antiterrorist conventions to justify the capture and prosecution of pirates. To provide a comprehensive outlook on piracy, Part I of this Article describes the history of piracy and its reappearance in the modern world. Part II briefly describes the resurgence of modern-day piracy, first in Southeast Asia and then in Somalia. Part III provides the current international legal framework for battling piracy, by focusing first on the definition of piracy in international law, and then on the existing international legal …

Japan's New Criminal Jury Trial System: In Need Of More Transparency, More Access, And More Time, Matthew J. Wilson

Fordham International Law Journal

The lay judge system has considerable potential both in concept and form. To realize its full potential, the system needs to overcome various structural impediments and cultural challenges. This Article further contributes to the emerging discussion by detailing three related areas that merit attention and reform if the system is going to realize its full potential. Namely, the lay judge system would benefit from 1) increased transparency by eliminating punitive measures against citizen judges desiring to freely speak about the trial proceedings or deliberation process oncle the trial is complete; 2) impoved access to the interrogation of detained suspects and …

Combat Veterans, Mental Health Issues, And The Death Penalty: Addressing The Impact Of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder And Traumatic Brain Injury, Anthony E. Giardino

Fordham Law Review

More than 1.5 million Americans have participated in combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past seven years. Some of these veterans have subsequently committed capital crimes and found themselves in our nation’s criminal justice system. This Essay argues that combat veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or traumatic brain injury at the time of their offenses should not be subject to the death penalty. Offering mitigating evidence regarding military training, post-traumatic stress disorder, and traumatic brain injury presents one means that combat veterans may use to argue for their lives during the sentencing phase of their trials. Alternatively, …

How The Decisions In Favor Of The Stein Thirteen Will Affect The Litigation Of Corporate Crime And Department Of Justice Policies And Expand The Sixth Amendment Right To Counsel, Christopher Mcnamara

Fordham Law Review

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit became the first appellate court in nearly thirty years to uphold the dismissal of criminal indictments for a Sixth Amendment right-to-counsel vilation. United States v. Stein is a unique case that intertwines constitutional interpretation, constitutional remedies, white collar crime, and U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) policy. The immediate effects of the Stein decisions not only reflect the changing attitudes at the DOJ on how to prosecute white collar crime but have simultaneously caused the Doj to implement such changes. As the Sixth Amendment has developed and augmented such changes, so has …

It's Been A Privilege: Advising Patients Of The Tarasoff Duty And Its Legal Consequences For The Federal Psychotherapist-Patient Privilege, Elisia Klinka

Fordham Law Review

State laws modeled on Tarasoff v. Regents of the University of California require psychotherapists to warn potential victims of law enforcement when treating dangerous patients who make serious threats of harm to another person. In practice, many psychotherapists advise their patients who make such threats about their duty under these Tarasoff-model laws. Although they are not required to make these advisories by law, psychotherapists generaly assume that they asldo have a concomitant ethical duty to advise their patients taht such threats will not be kept confidential, as their communications normally world be. This Note looks at how these advisories affect …

Rethinking Criminal Law And Family Status , Dan Markel, Ethan J. Leib, Jennifer M. Collins

Faculty Scholarship

In our recent book, Privilege or Punish: Criminal Justice and the Challenge of Family Ties (OUP 2009), we examined and critiqued a number of ways in which the criminal justice system uses family status to distribute benefits or burdens to defendants. In their review essays, Professors Alafair Burke, Alice Ristroph & Melissa Murray identify a series of concerns with the framework we offer policymakers to analyze these family ties benefits or burdens. We think it worthwhile not only to clarify where those challenges rest on misunderstandings or confusions about the central features of our views, but also to show the …

Leveraging Maximum Reform While Enforcing Minimum Standards, Alphonse Gerhardstein

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This Article focuses on criminal justice reform in the context of litigation. Specifically, it offers solutions for how to promote effective policies to reduce recidivism and ultimately keep the public safe from crime. It takes the position that litigation that merely focuses on constitutional violations of prison confinement is not complete without a focus on programming and supervision options upon return to society. Part I of the Article reviews some of the problems facing efforts to improve recidivism rates, specifically litigation that solely focuses on prison conditions. Part II deals with programs that should be undertaken to reduce recidivism in …

Defending Demaree: The Ex Post Facto Clause's Lack Of Control Over The Federal Sentencing Guidelines After Booker, Daniel M. Levy

Fordham Law Review

In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Federal Sentencing Guidelines violated a defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial because they allowed a judge to depart from a mandatory range based on facts not presented to a jury. As a solution, the Court modified the Guidelines to be “advisory,” yet curiously held that sentences were still subject to appellate review for reasonableness. Given this tension, U.S. courts of appeals are split on whether the Guidelines are “laws,” subject to the Ex Post Facto Clause of the U.S. Constitution. This Note argues that the Guidelines are advisory, given …

The Duty To Avoid Wrongful Convictions: A Thought Experiment In The Regulation Of Prosecutors, Fred C. Zacharias, Bruce A. Green

Faculty Scholarship

This Article explores the possible role of the attorney disciplinary process in discouraging prosecutorial conduct that contributes to false convictions. It asks what the impact would be, for better or worse, of disciplining prosecutors for incompetence when they fail to exercise reasonable care to prevent the conviction of the innocent. The inquiry provides a new vehicle for thinking about the nature of the disciplinary process, the work of prosecutors, the challenge of preventing erroneous convictions and, ultimately, the complexities of prosecutorial regulation.

The Article demonstrates that it would be plausible to interpret the attorney competence rule as encompassing prosecutorial negligence …

Ethically Representing A Lying Cooperator: Disclosure As The Nuclear Deterrent, Bruce A. Green

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Values And Value Creation In Public-Private Transactions , Nestor M. Davidson

Faculty Scholarship

Scholars have developed a significant body of literature exploring the work of deal lawyers with the essential insight that attorneys acting as transaction-cost engineers have unique potential to add to the overall value of deals. This value-creation literature has traditionally made two foundational assumptions about the role of the state in transactional law. First, scholars have assumed that regulation is essentially irrelevant to transacting-that from the deal lawyer's perspective, the government is a factor only to the extent that the state will enforce private agreements. Second, scholars have assumed that private parties uniformly view public policy as a constraint in …

Getting Real About Race And Prisoner Rights, Michael B. Mushlin, Naomi Roslyn Galtz

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This Article explores the connection between the dramatic increases in the incarceration of non-whites and the parallel decline in the legal protections for prisoners over the same period. Using the social sciences, the Article suggests that racial tensions play a role in the decisions made by both guards and prison administrators. Further, the authors argue that the communities of these non-white prisoners are the least well equipped to advocate for their well-being. Ultimately, the Article concludes that the law is not currently equipped to confront the possibility of dealing with race-based tensions and structural inequities that are present in the …

Eighth Amedment Gaps: Can Conditions Of Confinement Litigation Benefit From Proportionality Theory?, Alexander A. Reinert

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This Article focuses on two separate issues deriving from the Eighth Amendment's "cruel and unusual punishment" clause. Specifically, it discusses classic conditions of confinement litigation and sentencing proportionality litigation. Confinement litigation includes cases challenging the lived experiences of prisoners such as overcrowding, excessive force, failure to provide adequate medical care, and deprivation of material needs. Sentencing proportionality litigation involves challenges to the length of a prison sentence or mode of punishment. The Article, unlike modern contemporary scholarship, attempts to draw connections between each doctrinal area, ultimately suggesting ways in which proportionality litigation can invigorate conditions litigation. Part I consists of …

The Path Of Mentally Ill Offenders, William J. Rich

Fordham Urban Law Journal

Beginning with the premise that both the number and percentage of mentally ill inmates as sharply risen in recent years, this Article explores the path of mentally ill offenders in the American criminal justice system. It seeks to identify points of relief from the current crisis, in which a recent report stated that over 40% of state prisoners reported symptoms that met the criteria for mania. The challenge is exacerbated by the fact that prisons now provide a large share of the mental health treatment in the United States, taxing the resources of even the most progressive correctional systems. Part …

Public Rights, Global Perspectives, And Common Law, Martha F. Davis

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This Article sets out the case that common law adjudication involving such claims as contractual breaches, wrongful termination, and tort can be, and often are, public rights litigation. Many common law decisions have significant impacts in the community, and—because of the nature of precedent—become quickly embedded in the law where they contribute to the outcomes of future cases as well. Common law cases are a particularly important aspect of public rights litigation because of the paucity of constitutional protections for economic and social rights. In the absence of constitutional protections for such rights, rigorous enforcement of common law claims addressing …

A "New Beginning" For Adolescents In Our Criminal Justice System, Judith S. Kaye

Fordham Urban Law Journal

As I step away from the bench, I am feeling more than ever what Dr. Martin Luther King called “the fierce urgency of now.” Now is the time for all of us who care about justice in this country to roll up our sleeves and get to work. We may be in a moment of crisis, but as the saying goes, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. We urgently need to change our focus from jails and prisons to treatment, education, job training. So where is the “new beginning”? The “new beginning” is not a search for new …

Deconstructing The Pipeline: Evaluating School-To-Prison Pipeline Equal Protection Cases Through A Structural Racism Framework, Chauncee D. Smith

Fordham Urban Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Outsourcing Immigration Compliance, Eleanor Marie Lawrence Brown

Fordham Law Review

Immigration is a hot-button issue about which Americans have sent a clear message. They prefer not to admit more aliens until the government is able to screen credibly for entrants who will abide by the terms of admission and sanction those who do not. While immigration debates now focus almost entirely on undocumented workers, they have overshadowed another critical, yet poorly understood, challenge: designing institutions to screen properly for aliens who are visa-compliant and sanction noncompliant aliens. Because failed guest worker programs unquestionably increase the size of the undocumented population, this Article addresses the difficulty of institutional design by analyzing …

Beyond Training Prosecutors About Their Disclosure Obligations: Can Prosecutors' Offices Learn From Their Lawyers' Mistakes Symposium: New Perspectives On Brady And Other Disclosure Obligations: What Really Works, Bruce A. Green

Faculty Scholarship

Prosecutors, criminal defense lawyers, judges, and legal academics from around the country recently met at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York to discuss prosecutors' compliance with their disclosure obligations. The overarching question was how prosecutors' offices could do a better job. To assist representatives of the legal profession in approaching this question from new directions, the Symposium organizers invited speakers from outside the legal profession to talk about the causes of error and methods used to reduce error in other contexts. One of the themes was that, outside the practice of law, individuals and institutions learn …

Between A Rock And A Hard Place: Tensions Between The U.S.-Rok Status Of Forces Agreement And The Duty To Ensure Individual Rights Under The Iccpr , Rijie Ernie Gao

Fordham International Law Journal

This Note argues that the Korea SOFA illustrates how the current approach to implementing SOFA agreements hinder state parties from complying with their legal obligations under article 2 of the ICCPR. Part I first provides an overview of the two competing bodies of international law at issue: the law governing the U.S. approach to foreign criminal jurisdiction, on the one hand, and the development of human rights law and the terms of article 2 of the ICCPR, on the other. Part II assesses the incompatibility between ICCPR and SOFA obligations from the point of view of both receiving and sending …

Rule 11 Bis: An Examination Of The Process Of Referrals To National Courts In Icty Jurisprudence, Olympia Bekou

Fordham International Law Journal

Rule 11 bis forms a cornerstone of the ICTY's completion strategy. Part I of this Article provides an analysis of the elements of the rule. This Part will highlight the purpose of Rule 11 bis, offer an overview of the legal basis through which the transfer of jurisdiction has taken place in the ICTY, discuss the referral process and the elements necessary for a successful referral, and, finally, round out the discussion with an overview of the decision making process of the referral bench in identifying which state is suitable to proceed with a trial once it is determined that …

"A Mere Pretense Of Justice": Complementarity, Sham Trials, And Victor's Justice At The Rwanda Tribunal, Lars Waldorf

Fordham International Law Journal

This Article beings by sketching the background of the recent Rwandan Patriotic Front ("RPF") trial, focusing on domestic impunity for RPF crimes and strained relations between Rwanda and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda ("ICTR"). It next describes and analyzes the components of the ICTR-Rwanda agreement: the agreement itself, the RPF trial, and the ICTR prosecutor's assessment of the trial. The Article then explores the larger issues of prosecutorial discretion and independence, complementarily, and victor's justice, while examining the implications for the International Criminal Court ("ICC").

Future Of Appellate Sentencing Review: Booker In The States, The Symposium: Criminal Appeals: Sentencing Appeals, John F. Pfaff

Faculty Scholarship

In this Article, I look at the theoretical implications of the United States Supreme Court‘s recent contradictory sentencing cases, and I then examine how they are playing out in practice at the state level. Though Booker purports to follow, not repudiate, Blakely, its view of the role of appellate courts is wholly inconsistent with Blakely‘s view. Many states have sidestepped this contradiction by simply following Blakely and ignoring the option laid out in Booker. But at least three states have chosen to pass through the door opened by Booker. Their experiences allow us to examine the implications of Booker and …