Digital Commons Network^™

State Leadership Vs. Lawyers' Entrepreneurship: The Globalization Trajectories Of Chinese Legal Professionals Under The Belt & Road Initiative, Jing Li

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Based on the analysis of the online profiles of 205 BRI Talent Bank lawyers as accredited by China's national bar association, this article generates important empirical knowledge about the approaches and processes that a nation-state may use in directing the internationalization of legal professionals. In addition to designing the general roadmap and offering broad incentives, the state has demonstrated a much more handson approach. By collecting the so-called "state-adjacent" lawyers and commissioning them to take some concrete first steps stipulated in the roadmap, the Chinese state effectively envisions them as role models for other lawyers to follow to ensure that …

Robocourt: How Artificial Intelligence Can Help Pro Se Litigants And Create A “Fairer” Judiciary, Justin Snyder

Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality

No abstract provided.

Facts Versus Discretion: The Debate Over Immigration Adjudication, Jayanth K. Krishnan

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Justice Amy Coney Barrett recently issued her first majority-led immigration opinion in Patel v. Garland (2022). As background, some immigrants looking to avoid deportation may apply for what is called “discretionary relief’ (e.g., asylum or adjustment of status) initially in an immigration court and then, if they lose, at the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA). These immigration forums fall under the Department of Justice. Prior to Patel, immigrants who lost at the BIA could then ask a federal circuit court to review the factual findings of their case. Now, after Justice Barrett’s decision, Article III review is no longer available …

The Myanmar Shwe: Empowering Law Students, Teachers, And The Community Through Clinical Education And The Rule Of Law, Stephen Rosembaum, Britane Hubbard, Kaylee Sharp-Bauer, David Tushaus

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Myanmar's attorneys, judges, law officers, and law teachers are slowly emerging from the isolated world they inhabited during decades of military authoritarianism. Almost a decade ago, the country triumphantly burst into an era of "disciplined" democracy under the leadership of Aung San Suu Kyi, de facto head of state. Yet, the legal education system continues to be marked by hierarchical and bureaucratic practices, infrastructural and pedagogical neglect, and low confidence in the formal justice sector. The authors-two American law professors and practitioners and two students-discuss the direction of legal education in Southeast Asia and how clinical legal education (CLE) methodologies …

To “Defund” The Police, Jessica M. Eaglin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Much public debate circles around grassroots activists’ demand to “defund the police,” raised in public consciousness in the summer of 2020. Yet confusion about the demand is pervasive. This Essay adopts a literal interpretation of “defund” to clarify and distinguish four alternative, substantive policy positions that legal reforms related to police funding can validate. It argues that the policy debates between these positions exist on top of the ideological critique launched by grassroots activists, who use the term “defund the police” as a discursive tactic to make visible deeper transformations in government practices that normalize the structural marginalization of black …

Vol. 60, No. 10 (March 8, 2021)

Indiana Law Annotated

No abstract provided.

Vol. 60, No. 04 (January 25, 2021)

Indiana Law Annotated

No abstract provided.

Vol. 60, No. 03 (January 18, 2021)

Indiana Law Annotated

No abstract provided.

Lawyers For The Undocumented: Addressing A Split Circuit Dilemma For Asylum-Seekers, Jayanth K. Krishnan

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The immigration crisis at the border, since 2016, has seen children separated from parents, the detention of noncitizens increase, and record-breaking numbers of applicants denied entry into the United States. For individuals fleeing their home countries because of persecution, the hardship has been particularly severe. To start, the chances of gaining asylum have dwindled significantly. For those who are successful, a subsequent and crucial question is whether the lawyers who represent them can recoup their legal fees from the government.

Since 1980, a federal statute known as the Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA) has allowed for a “prevailing party” …

Insuring Evolving Technology, Asaf Lubin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The study of the interaction between law and technology is more critical today than ever before. Advancements in artificial intelligence, information communications, biological and chemical engineering, and space-faring technologies, to name but a few examples, are forcing us to reexamine our traditional understanding of basic concepts in torts and insurance law.

Yet, few insurance professionals and scholars will identify themselves as working in the field of “law-and-technology.” For many of them, technology is “just a fact about the world like any other,” as Ryan Calo once put it, not one that always merits “special care.”

This short paper is an …

Why States Should Consider Expanding Sales Taxes To Services, Part 1, Gladriel Shobe, Grace Stephenson Nielsen, Darien Shanske, David Gamage

Articles by Maurer Faculty

States are facing a severe budget crisis as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. And with the federal government unlikely to pass a relief bill to address those state budget issues,1 states will need to play a significant role in making up revenue shortfalls.

This is the first in a three-part series, which is a contribution to Project SAFE: State Action in Fiscal Emergencies. This essay will lay out the general case for why states should consider expanding their sales tax bases to more services as a response to the COVID-19 crisis. The follow-ups will discuss further mechanics and details …

Why States Should Now Consider Expanding Sales Taxes To Services, Part 1, Gladriel Shobe, Grace Stephenson Nielsen, Darien Shanske, David Gamage

Articles by Maurer Faculty

States are facing a severe budget crisis as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. And with the federal government unlikely to pass a relief bill to address those state budget issues,1 states will need to play a significant role in making up revenue shortfalls.

This is the first in a three-part series, which is a contribution to Project SAFE: State Action in Fiscal Emergencies. This essay will lay out the general case for why states should consider expanding their sales tax bases to more services as a response to the COVID-19 crisis. The follow-ups will discuss further mechanics and details …

December 2020 Magazine

Ergo

No abstract provided.

Dean's Desk: Iu Maurer Research Focusing On Most Topical Issues Of 2020, Austen L. Parrish

Austen Parrish (2014-2022)

The three major stories of 2020 — the COVID-19 pandemic, the heightened awareness of racial injustice and the election — have made this year one that we will remember. While we couldn’t have envisioned all that would happen at the beginning of the year, our faculty are producing useful and thought-provoking scholarship on all these topics.

I often use my Dean’s Desk columns to celebrate student and alumni achievement, to describe new and innovative programs in our curriculum, or to share how the law school supports and collaborates with community organizations and the courts to provide pro bono legal services …

Fee-Shifting Statutes And Compensation For Risk, Maureen Carroll

Indiana Law Journal

A law firm that enters into a contingency arrangement provides the client with more than just its attorneys’ labor. It also provides a form of financing, because the firm will be paid (if at all) only after the litigation ends; and insurance, because if the litigation results in a low recovery (or no recovery at all), the firm will absorb the direct and indirect costs of the litigation. Courts and markets routinely pay for these types of risk-bearing services through a range of mechanisms, including state feeshifting statutes, contingent percentage fees, common-fund awards, alternative fee arrangements, and third-party litigation funding. …

Vol. 59, No. 04 (September 14, 2020)

Indiana Law Annotated

No abstract provided.

Sea Change: The Rising Tide Of Pro Bono Legal Services For The Creative Community, Victoria Phillips

IP Theory

No abstract provided.

Who Sues The Supreme Court, And Why? Pro Se Litigation And The Court Of Last Resort, Jona Goldschmidt

Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality

No abstract provided.

June 2020 Magazine

Ergo

No abstract provided.

Bhopal In The Federal Courts: How Indian Victims Failed To Get Justice, Jayanth K. Krishnan

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Over thirty-five years ago, the city of Bhopal, India, witnessed a horrific gas leak that originated from a facility operated by Union Carbide India Limited (“UCIL”), which had as its parent company the American-based Union Carbide Corporation (“UCC”). Thousands were killed, with many more injured. One hundred forty-five cases were filed throughout various U.S. federal district courts on behalf of the victims asserting that UCIL and UCC were liable. Eventually, these cases were consolidated through the multi-district litigation (“MDL”) process and placed onto the docket of federal Judge John Keenan. In 1986, Judge Keenan issued his famous forum non conveniens …

Vol. 58, No. 08 (March 2, 2020)

Indiana Law Annotated

No abstract provided.

The Right To Access To Justice: Its Conceptual Architecture, Daniel Bonilla Maldonado

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

The aim of this article is descriptive and analytical, rather than normative. This article aims to contribute to the current understanding of the ways in which modern legal consciousness builds, and is built by, the concept of access to justice. This concept, as part of the web of meanings that structures modern legal culture, provides the context in which modern subjects make sense of who they are and how they should interact with the world around them. This article examines the subjectivities, conceptual geographies, and interpretations of history created by the right to access to justice. It also examines a …

Introduction, Colin Crawford, Daniel Bonilla Maldonado

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

The papers gathered in this volume analyze access to justice in Latin America, Europe, and North America from a philosophical, legal, and sociological perspective. In these three regions of the world, as in the rest of the globe, liberal democracies face a troubling gap between the normative and the descriptive: the access to justice promises made by the legal and political system are not fully realized in practice. The studies collected here, therefore, share two baseline assumptions. First, the right of access to justice is fundamental in a liberal state. Access to justice ensures that citizens are able to defend …

Public Defenders' Offices In Brazil: Access To Justice, Courts, And Public Defenders, Alexandre Dos Santos Cunha

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This essay discusses the impact of public defenders' offices in promoting equality through the enforcement of the right to access to justice in Brazil. To achieve this goal, this note is divided into two parts.

Part I presents the Brazilian public defenders' offices, their history, institutional design, rights, and prerogatives. Part II discusses the role played by public defenders in the enforcement of the right to access to justice in Brazil, as well as the relations established between public defenders and courts. The Conclusion attempts to assess the sustainability of the Brazilian model, in order to determine if there is …

Cause Lawyering And Compassionate Lawyering In Clinical Legal Education: The Case Of Chile, Fernando Munoz L.

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

In order to contribute from a situated perspective to a global narrative of access to justice, in the next sections I will trace the origins of compassionate and cause lawyering in the history of Chilean legal aid and training. Part II will explain how legal assistance to the poor was codified as a duty of legal professionals during the Middle Ages, in both canon law and in Castilian legislation. Part III will show that practical legal training, both in Spain and in Chile, began much later as the result of the ambition among prominent members of the legal profession to …

The Mandarins Of The Law: Pro Bono Legal Work From A Comparative Perspective, Daniel Bonilla Maldonado

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

In Part I, I present the elements that form the standard global concept of pro bono work. Pro bono work is a global phenomenon defined by, and based on, a transnational discourse. In the first section of Part I, I argue that this transnational discourse conceptualizes pro bono work as a set of institutionalized free legal services that lawyers voluntarily provide to people with few financial resources or to protect the public interest. In the three following sections, I specify and analyze the concepts of subject, time, and space that this understanding of pro bono work creates, to present the …

Pro Bono Work In Colombia: How Can It Help Broaden, Equalize, And Ensure Access To Justice, Ana Bejarano Ricaurte

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This article does not discuss whether pro bono programs should exist in Colombia, or whether they cause positive transformation in the legal profession. These issues are examined in other types of legal literature, and this author departs from the standpoint of viewing this type of work as a positive practice within the legal culture. The main thesis of this article is that pro bono work is still developing in Colombia, both in its numbers of participating attorneys and clients, as well as in the ways it is affecting the legal culture. As important as it might be, the work of …

Access To Justice And Legal Clinics: Developing A Reflective Lawyering Space Some Insights From The Italian Experience, Marzia Barbera, Venera Protopapa

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This paper first provides a brief description of the genesis of legal clinics in Italy, and highlights the motivations and expectations lying behind the emergence of the legal clinic movement in this context. Second, the paper gives a brief description of the institutional context of legal aid in Italy, and assesses its effectiveness in terms of granting legal assistance to those unable to afford a lawyer. The third and fourth parts then offer an account of court enforcement mechanisms that aim to ensure effective access to justice. Part three gives this account through the lens of court enforcement of the …

Keeping Up With New Legal Titles, Susan David Demaine, Susan Azyndar

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Beyond Policing, India Thusi

Books & Book Chapters by Maurer Faculty

We all deserve to live in communities where we feel safe

And true community safety means feeling safe from violence by the state, which includes the police. Social inequity has systematically and institutionally permeated our country since its founding, becoming more visible at various times in our history. We are now living in one of those moments of tremendous clarity, and it calls on us to look deeply at the efficacy of the reforms and narratives which preceded it . The deadly consequences of political decisions that create health disparities are now a wound that cannot be unseen as the …