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Reframing The Punishment Test Through Modern Sex Offender Legislation, Jane Ramage Dec 2019

Reframing The Punishment Test Through Modern Sex Offender Legislation, Jane Ramage

Fordham Law Review

Modern sex offender registration and notification laws blur the distinction between criminal and civil law. Despite being labeled as civil regulatory schemes, these laws impose severe burdens on personal liberty—burdens that we tend to associate with criminal punishment. In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court determined that at least one sex offender registration and notification program functioned as a civil remedy rather than a criminal sanction. In upholding the Alaska Sex Offender Registration Act, the Supreme Court held that the burdens imposed by the statute did not impose additional punishment on registered sex offenders and thus did not trigger the constitutional …


The Role Of “Coordinating Discovery Attorneys” In Multidefendant Federal Criminal Cases, Hannah Silverman Dec 2019

The Role Of “Coordinating Discovery Attorneys” In Multidefendant Federal Criminal Cases, Hannah Silverman

Fordham Law Review

The twenty-first century’s technological revolution has shifted the practice of law, including litigation, from being primarily paper-based to paperless. To manage the increasingly complex organization and review of evidence in civil and criminal cases, attorneys outsource legal tasks, work on teams, and use discovery coordinators. This Note examines the development of court-appointed coordinating discovery attorneys and their role in multidefendant federal criminal trials involving voluminous discovery. With a background in criminal defense and electronic discovery, these lawyers provide hands-on assistance as a way to cut costs, help overburdened and underfunded defense counsel, and improve representation of criminal defendants. In 2014, …


Liability For Ai Decision-Making: Some Legal And Ethical Considerations, Iria Giuffrida Nov 2019

Liability For Ai Decision-Making: Some Legal And Ethical Considerations, Iria Giuffrida

Fordham Law Review

The creation and commercialization of these systems raise the question of how liability risks will play out in real life. However, as technical advancements have outpaced legal actions, it is unclear how the law will treat AI systems. This Article briefly addresses the legal ramifications and liability risks associated with reliance on—or delegation to—AI systems, and it sketches a framework suggesting how we can address the question of whether AI merits a new approach to deal with the liability challenges it raises when humans remain “in” or “on” the loop.


See No Evil, Hear No Evil: Applying The Sight And Sound Separation Protection To All Youths Who Are Tried As Adults In The Criminal Justice System, Lauren Knoke Nov 2019

See No Evil, Hear No Evil: Applying The Sight And Sound Separation Protection To All Youths Who Are Tried As Adults In The Criminal Justice System, Lauren Knoke

Fordham Law Review

American law treats youths within the criminal justice system with contrasting impulses. In some cases, the law deems youths worthy of special protections and places them within the juvenile justice system. In other situations, however, it views youths as posing distinct dangers and funnels them into justice systems designed for adults. So long as youths remain under the jurisdiction of the juvenile justice system, they are afforded the protections of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA). One of the JJDPA’s core protections, sight and sound separation, aims to prevent youths from having any visual or spoken exchanges with …


Power, Process, And Automated Decision-Making, Ari Ezra Waldman Nov 2019

Power, Process, And Automated Decision-Making, Ari Ezra Waldman

Fordham Law Review

Automated decision-making systems based on “big data”–powered algorithms and machine learning are just as prone to mistakes, biases, and arbitrariness as their human counterparts. The result is a technologically driven decision-making process that seems to defy interrogation, analysis, and accountability and, therefore, undermines due process.


Milkovich, #Metoo, And “Liars”: Defamation Law And The Fact-Opinion Distinction, Pooja Bhaskar Nov 2019

Milkovich, #Metoo, And “Liars”: Defamation Law And The Fact-Opinion Distinction, Pooja Bhaskar

Fordham Law Review

Since the start of the #MeToo movement, sexual assault survivors have increasingly turned defamation law against their alleged assaulters. In these #MeToo defamation cases, an alleged victim publicly claims that another person, usually someone of considerable wealth and fame, sexually assaulted them. The alleged assaulter then calls their accuser a liar, causing their accuser to sue their alleged assaulter for defamation. These cases have consistently raised an element of the defamation analysis that has long challenged courts: distinguishing between statements of actionable “fact” and nonactionable “opinion.” #MeToo defamation cases raise the question of whether an alleged assaulter’s claim that their …


Prosecuting Dark Net Drug Marketplace Operators Under The Federal Crack House Statute, Thomas J. Nugent Oct 2019

Prosecuting Dark Net Drug Marketplace Operators Under The Federal Crack House Statute, Thomas J. Nugent

Fordham Law Review

Over 70,000 Americans died as the result of a drug overdose in 2017, a record year following a record year. Amidst this crisis, the popularity of drug marketplaces on what has been called the “dark net” has exploded. Illicit substances are sold freely on such marketplaces, and the anonymity these marketplaces provide has proved troublesome for law enforcement. Law enforcement has responded by taking down several of these marketplaces and prosecuting their creators, such as Ross Ulbricht of the former Silk Road. Prosecutors have typically leveled conspiracy charges against the operators of these marketplaces—in Ulbricht’s case, alleging a single drug …


When Law Frees Us To Speak, Danielle Keats Citron, Jonathon W. Penney May 2019

When Law Frees Us To Speak, Danielle Keats Citron, Jonathon W. Penney

Fordham Law Review

A central aim of online abuse is to silence victims. That effort is as regrettable as it is successful. In the face of cyberharassment and sexualprivacy invasions, women and marginalized groups retreat from online engagement. These documented chilling effects, however, are not inevitable. Beyond its deterrent function, the law has an equally important expressive role. In this Article, we highlight law’s capacity to shape social norms and behavior through education. We focus on a neglected dimension of law’s expressive role: its capacity to empower victims to express their truths and engage with others. Our argument is theoretical and empirical. We …


Toxic Misogyny And The Limits Of Counterspeech, Lynne Tirrell May 2019

Toxic Misogyny And The Limits Of Counterspeech, Lynne Tirrell

Fordham Law Review

Gender equality, across all the ways that we humans are engendered, is an unrealized ideal of many contemporary Americans. It is not enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, unless one interprets “men” to include women, which the Framers did not. Although passed by Congress in 1972, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) failed to gain the necessary thirty-eight state ratifications, and it has never become law. Thirty-five states initially ratified it between 1972 and 1977, then two more in 2017 and 2018. It remains one state short. These ratifications indicate significant social progress for women, but the progress is uneven, even within …


Daca, Government Lawyers, And The Public Interest, Stephen Lee, Sameer M. Ashar Apr 2019

Daca, Government Lawyers, And The Public Interest, Stephen Lee, Sameer M. Ashar

Fordham Law Review

On June 15, 2012, the Obama administration announced a significant change in immigration policy: Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano began to instruct immigration officials to defer enforcement actions against those noncitizens who would likely be eligible for relief under the DREAM Act, should Congress choose to pass it. This program, which came to be known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), has become the most significant immigration-benefits program in a generation. Not since Congress passed a comprehensive reform bill in 1986, which included a pathway to citizenship, has an immigration program so quickly and positively changed the lives of …


Hidden Nondefense: Partisanship In State Attorneys General Amicus Briefs And The Need For Transparency, Lisa F. Grumet Apr 2019

Hidden Nondefense: Partisanship In State Attorneys General Amicus Briefs And The Need For Transparency, Lisa F. Grumet

Fordham Law Review

In all fifty states, the State Attorney General (SAG)—as the state’s chief legal officer—is charged with defending state laws that are challenged in court. If an SAG declines to defend or challenges a state law on the ground that it is unconstitutional—an action scholars describe as “nondefense”— the SAG ordinarily will disclose this decision to the public. This Essay discusses a hidden form of nondefense that can occur when SAGs file amicus curiae briefs on behalf of their states in matters before the U.S. Supreme Court. Surprisingly, some SAGs have joined multistate amicus briefs that support invalidating other states’ laws …


May Federal Prosecutors Take Direction From The President?, Bruce A. Green, Rebecca Roiphe Apr 2019

May Federal Prosecutors Take Direction From The President?, Bruce A. Green, Rebecca Roiphe

Fordham Law Review

Suppose the president sought to serve as prosecutor-in-chief, telling prosecutors when to initiate or dismiss criminal charges in individual cases and making other discretionary decisions that are normally reserved to trained professionals familiar with the facts, law, and traditions of the U.S. Department of Justice. To what extent may prosecutors follow the president’s direction? In recent presidential administrations, the president has respected prosecutorial independence; while making policy decisions, the president deferred to the Attorney General and subordinate federal prosecutors to conduct individual criminal cases. In a recent article, we argued that this is as it should be because the president …


Law And Nonlegal Norms In Government Lawyers' Ethics: Discretion Meets Legitimacy, W. Bradley Wendel Apr 2019

Law And Nonlegal Norms In Government Lawyers' Ethics: Discretion Meets Legitimacy, W. Bradley Wendel

Fordham Law Review

This Essay is about the role of unwritten norms in the ethical decisionmaking of government lawyers. Because the ethical obligations of lawyers, including government lawyers, are closely tied to the legal rights and obligations of clients, this analysis necessarily depends on understanding the relationship between written law and unwritten norms. As we all know, however, written law leaves gaps, ambiguities, and zones of unregulated discretion. Prosecutors in the United States, for example, have virtually unreviewable discretion to decide who to investigate and charge, what charges to bring, and whether to offer immunity in exchange for cooperation. No one has a …


Reevaluating School Searches Following School-To-Prison Pipeline Reforms, Josh Gupta-Kagan Apr 2019

Reevaluating School Searches Following School-To-Prison Pipeline Reforms, Josh Gupta-Kagan

Fordham Law Review

The U.S. Supreme Court held in New Jersey v. T.L.O. that school officials could search students without a warrant and with only reasonable suspicion, not probable cause, because of schools’ need for discipline and the relationship between educators and students. That case belongs to a body of Fourth Amendment cases involving, in T.L.O.’s terms, “special needs, beyond the normal need for law enforcement.” What Fourth Amendment standard, then, governs searches involving one of the roughly 20,000 school resource officers (SROs) in American schools? Most state courts to decide the issue in the 1990s and 2000s found that T.L.O. applied to …


Policing The Admissibility Of Body Camera Evidence, Jeffrey Bellin, Shevarma Pemberton Mar 2019

Policing The Admissibility Of Body Camera Evidence, Jeffrey Bellin, Shevarma Pemberton

Fordham Law Review

Body cameras are sweeping the nation and becoming, along with the badge and gun, standard issue for police officers. These cameras are intended to ensure accountability for abusive police officers. But, if history is any guide, the videos they produce will more commonly be used to prosecute civilians than to document abuse. Further, knowing that the footage will be available as evidence, police officers have an incentive to narrate body camera videos with descriptive oral statements that support a later prosecution. Captured on an official record that exclusively documents the police officer’s perspective, these statements—for example, “he just threw something …


The Light We Shine Into The Grey: A Restorative #Metoo Solution And An Acknowledgement Of Those #Metoo Leaves In The Dark, Nora Stewart Mar 2019

The Light We Shine Into The Grey: A Restorative #Metoo Solution And An Acknowledgement Of Those #Metoo Leaves In The Dark, Nora Stewart

Fordham Law Review

In the past year and a half, American women have publicly discussed experiences of sexual assault, harassment, and—notably—grey-area misconduct in an unprecedented manner. The rhetoric of the #MeToo movement is rife with references to “shining a light” on a set of unexplored issues hitherto obscured in cultural darkness, to following women’s experiences into the grey. What is new about #MeToo, and what likely will be the through line that defines its historical importance, has been its sensitivity to nuance. The grey range of #MeToo misconduct is not a new problem. It is emphatically new, however, as a subject of public …


The Courier Conundrum: The High Costs Of Prosecuting Low-Level Drug Couriers And What We Can Do About Them, Adam B. Weber Mar 2019

The Courier Conundrum: The High Costs Of Prosecuting Low-Level Drug Couriers And What We Can Do About Them, Adam B. Weber

Fordham Law Review

Since the United States declared its “War on Drugs,” federal enforcement of drug-trafficking crimes has led to increased incarceration and longer prison sentences. Many low-level drug couriers and drug mules have suffered disproportionately from these policies; they face mandatory punishments that vastly exceed their culpability. Drug couriers often lack substantial ties to drug-trafficking organizations, which generally recruit vulnerable individuals to act as couriers and mules. By using either threats of violence or promises of relatively small sums of money, these organizations convince recruits to overlook the substantial risks that drug couriers face. The current policies of pursuing harsh punishments for …


Back To The Future: Permitting Habeas Petitions Based On Intervening Retroactive Case Law To Alter Convictions And Sentences, Lauren Casale Mar 2019

Back To The Future: Permitting Habeas Petitions Based On Intervening Retroactive Case Law To Alter Convictions And Sentences, Lauren Casale

Fordham Law Review

In 1948, Congress enacted 28 U.S.C. § 2255, which authorizes a motion for federal prisoners to “vacate, set aside or correct” their sentences, with the goal of improving judicial efficiency in collateral review. Section 2255(e), known as the “savings clause,” allows federal inmates to challenge the validity of their imprisonments with writs of habeas corpus if § 2255 motions are “inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of [their] detention[s].” Due to the U.S. Supreme Court’s and Congress’s silence regarding what suffices as “inadequate or ineffective,” the circuit courts have adopted varied standards. The Sixth and Seventh Circuits hold that …


The Role Of Direct-Injury Government-Entity Lawsuits In The Opioid Litigation, Edgar Aliferov Dec 2018

The Role Of Direct-Injury Government-Entity Lawsuits In The Opioid Litigation, Edgar Aliferov

Fordham Law Review

The opioid epidemic has ravaged the United States, killing over 100 Americans every day and costing the nation upward of $90 billion a year. All branches and levels of the government have pursued measures to combat the epidemic and reduce its societal costs. Perhaps the most interesting response is the emergence of direct-injury government-entity lawsuits, which seek to recover damages from opioid companies that facilitated prescription pill addictions. Cities, counties, and states across the country are suing opioid manufacturers and distributors in unprecedented numbers. This Note explores the role of direct-injury government-entity claims as compared to other forms of civil …


Rape Messaging, Alena Allen Dec 2018

Rape Messaging, Alena Allen

Fordham Law Review

When feminists began advocating for rape reform in the 1970s, the rape message was clear: rape was not a crime to be taken seriously because women lie. After decades of criminal law reform, the legal requirement that a woman vigorously resist a man’s sexual advances to prove that she was raped has largely disappeared from the statute books, and, in theory, rape shield laws make a woman’s prior sexual history irrelevant. Yet, despite what the law dictates, rape law reforms have not had a “trickle-down” effect, where changes in law lead to changes in attitude. Women are still believed to …


Public Dollars, Private Discrimination: Protecting Lgbt Students From School Voucher Discrimination, Adam Mengler Dec 2018

Public Dollars, Private Discrimination: Protecting Lgbt Students From School Voucher Discrimination, Adam Mengler

Fordham Law Review

More than a dozen states operate school voucher programs, which allow parents to apply state tax dollars to their children’s private school tuition. Many schools that participate in voucher programs are affiliated with religions that disapprove of homosexuality. As such, voucher-accepting schools across the country have admissions policies that discriminate against LGBT students and students with LGBT parents. Little recourse exists for students who suffer discrimination at the hands of voucher-accepting schools. This Note considers two ways to provide protection from such discrimination for LGBT students and ultimately argues that the best route is for an LGBT student to bring …


Universal Representation, Lindsay Nash Nov 2018

Universal Representation, Lindsay Nash

Fordham Law Review

In an era in which there is little good news for immigrant communities and even holding the line has become an ambitious goal, one progressive project has continued to gain steam: the movement to provide universal representation for noncitizens in removal proceedings. This effort, initially born out of a pilot project in New York City, has generated a host of replication projects throughout the nation and holds the promise of even broader expansion. But as it grows, this effort must confront challenges from within: the sort-of supporters who want to limit this representation system’s coverage in a number of ways, …


Open The Jail Cell Doors, Hal: A Guarded Embrace Of Pretrial Risk Assessment Instruments, Glen J. Dalakian Ii Oct 2018

Open The Jail Cell Doors, Hal: A Guarded Embrace Of Pretrial Risk Assessment Instruments, Glen J. Dalakian Ii

Fordham Law Review

In recent years, criminal justice reformers have focused their attention on pretrial detention as a uniquely solvable contributor to the horrors of modern mass incarceration. While reform of bail practices can take many forms, one of the most pioneering and controversial techniques is the adoption of actuarial models to inform pretrial decision-making. These models are designed to supplement or replace the unpredictable and discriminatory status quo of judicial discretion at arraignment. This Note argues that policymakers should experiment with risk assessment instruments as a component of their bail reform efforts, but only if appropriate safeguards are in place. Concerns for …


Immigration Blame, David S. Rubenstein Oct 2018

Immigration Blame, David S. Rubenstein

Fordham Law Review

This Article provides the first comprehensive study of blame in the U.S. immigration system. Beyond blaming migrants, we blame politicians, bureaucrats, and judges. Meanwhile, these players routinely blame each other, all while trying to avoid being blamed. As modeled here, these dynamics of “immigration blame” have catalyzing effects on the politics, policies, and structures of immigration law. Yoking key insights from a range of social sciences, this Article offers unique perspectives on the operation and design choices of the immigration system. Moreover, through a blame lens, the terms of debate over amnesty, immigration enforcement, the travel ban, sanctuary cities, and …


Family Courts As Certifying Agencies: When Family Courts Can Certify U Visa Applications For Survivors Of Intimate Partner Violence, Sylvia Lara Altreuter May 2018

Family Courts As Certifying Agencies: When Family Courts Can Certify U Visa Applications For Survivors Of Intimate Partner Violence, Sylvia Lara Altreuter

Fordham Law Review

Undocumented intimate partner violence survivors living in the UnitedStates have limited options for immigration relief. One of the only avenuesopen to them is the U Visa: a nonimmigrant visa established by the BatteredImmigrant Women Protection Act of 2000. To apply for a U Visa, a survivormust prove to immigration authorities that she was the victim of a crime;suffered substantial abuse; and was, is,or is likely to be helpful in theinvestigation of her abuser. The statute requires that all U Visa applicationsbe certified by an appropriate officialwho testifies to the applicant’shelpfulness with the investigation. This certification is a tremendous obstaclefor survivors: …


Multiracial Malaise: Multiracial As A Legal Racial Category, Taunya Lovell Banks May 2018

Multiracial Malaise: Multiracial As A Legal Racial Category, Taunya Lovell Banks

Fordham Law Review

The focus of this Article is the underlying assumption of the Brookings Institution report that multiracial individuals constitute a separate racial category. My discussion of legal racial categories focuses only ongovernment “racial” definitions. Multiracial individuals should enjoy thefreedom to self-identify as they wish—and, like others, be afforded theprotections of antidiscrimination law.The question is whether a separate legal racial category is needed to provide that protection. Race in this country has been “crafted from the point of view of [white] race protection” protecting the interests of white Americans from usurpation by non whites and, unless the creation of a separate multiracial …


Unstitching Scarlet Letters?: Prosecutorial Discretion And Expungement, Brian M. Murray May 2018

Unstitching Scarlet Letters?: Prosecutorial Discretion And Expungement, Brian M. Murray

Fordham Law Review

This Article argues that scholarly discussions about prosecutorial discretion need to extend their focus beyond the exercise of prosecutorial judgment pretrial or questions of factual and legal guilt. Given that the primary role of the prosecutoris to do “justice,” this Article calls for increased attention to the exercise of discretion after the guilt phase is complete, specifically in the context of expungement of nonconviction andconviction information. It offers a framework for exercising such discretion and, in doing so, hopes to initiate additional conversation about the role of prosecutors during the phases that follow arrest and prosecution.


Wrongful Convictions, Constitutional Remedies, And Nelson V. Colorado, Michael L. Wells Apr 2018

Wrongful Convictions, Constitutional Remedies, And Nelson V. Colorado, Michael L. Wells

Fordham Law Review

The end result in Nelson will satisfy nearly everyone’s sense of basic justice, at least insofar as the monetary refund is concerned. Still, the case is interesting not for its outcome but because the Court’s analysis touches on, but fails to fully engage with, subtle and difficult questions of constitutional law. This Article examines three important aspects of the case—outside of the procedural due process balancing question—that receive little, if any, attention in the Court’s opinion. Part I shows that the Court’s procedural due process analysis skips over the logical first step and doctrinally harder question of whether Nelson had …


The Influence Of Government Defenders On Affirmative Civil Rights Enforcement, Alexander A. Reinert Apr 2018

The Influence Of Government Defenders On Affirmative Civil Rights Enforcement, Alexander A. Reinert

Fordham Law Review

The focus of this brief Article will be on a conundrum, particularly in the area of civil rights enforcement: the federal government—in particular the DOJ—can be one of the most efficient and powerful vindicators of civil rights, while at the same time one of the most effective advocates for imposing barriers to affirmative civil rights enforcement. At the same time that the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division (CRD) is entering federal court to “vindicat[e] rights and remedy[] inequities,” attorneys in the Civil Division (either from Main Justice or in any number of U.S. Attorney’s offices) are appearing in court to prevent …


Challenges Facing Judges Regarding Expert Evidence In Criminal Cases, Paul W. Grimm Mar 2018

Challenges Facing Judges Regarding Expert Evidence In Criminal Cases, Paul W. Grimm

Fordham Law Review

With regard to criminal cases, the focus of this Article, judges face significant challenges in ruling on the admissibility of expert testimony that do not occur in most civil cases. This Article starts by describing these challenges and then offers some suggestions about what can be done to address them.