Digital Commons Network^™

Carnivores, Urban Landscapes, And Longitudinal Studies: A Case History Of Black Bears, Jon P. Beckmann, Carl W. Lackey

Human–Wildlife Interactions

As urban landscapes expand across the globe, it becomes imperative to understand how these landscapes affect large carnivore populations. We examined the effects of humanaltered landscapes on age-specific fecundity and life history parameters for female black bears (Ursus americanus) in urban and wildland regions in the northern Sierra Nevada Mountains of Nevada, including the Lake Tahoe Basin. We followed 12 marked female bears in an urban environment and 10 females in wildland habitats from 1997–2006. Our results show that female bears in urban areas have higher age-specific fecundity rates than did wildland female bears. Despite this difference, female …

The Legal Status Of Hijab In The United States: A Look At The Sociopolitical Influences On The Legal Right To Wear The Muslim Headscarf, Aliah Abdo

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

The First Amendment of the United States Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, however the current sociopolitical and legal climate has allowed for various restrictions on hijab, the headscarf worn by Muslim women. This note surveys recent restrictions and bans affecting the wearing of hijab in educational settings, employment, prison entry, state driver license photos, athletic competitions, airports, and in court, noting an alarming trend both internationally and domestically. The author suggests that the justifications associated with actions against hijab are merely pretextual and that these actions are often based on misconceptions and misunderstandings surrounding hijab, the Muslim community, and the …

Scalian Skepticism And The Sixth Amendment In The Twilight Of The Rehnquist Court, M.K. B. Darmer

University of San Francisco Law Review

this Article sketches the judicial philosophy of Justice Scalia as contrasted with that of Rehnquist and analyzes how those competing visions were reflected in the Court's Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendment jurisprudence before the death of Chief Justice Rehnquist

The Unmet Promises Of Care Not Cash, Teddy Ky-Nam Miller

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

In November of 2002 San Francisco voters approved Proposition N, titled Care Not Cash, with the intent that it would reduce homelessness and improve the health and welfare of homeless persons receiving General Assistance. This note examines the effectiveness of Care Not Cash in combating homelessness and in achieving its promise of services and aid with the curtailment of General Assistance. In evaluating Care Not Cash's effectiveness, the author reviews homeless assistance programs employed by cities and municipalities throughout the United States. Additionally, the author explores alternative homeless outreach programs currently existent in San Francisco which have been effective in …

Challenges Of Tough Love: Examining San Francisco's Community Justice Center And Evaluating Its Prospects For Success, Todd W. Daloz

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

Decaying urban neighborhoods are a reality in cities across the United States. As various local governments work to improve the quality of life for the residents of such areas through increased law enforcement, many have come up against the limitations of the criminal justice system as a tool for change. This note examines the history and challenges of quality-of-life ordinances and the growth and development of community courts as a reaction to ineffective urban courts and as a structure for enabling change. The author focuses specifically on the new community justice center in San Francisco and offers an assessment of …

On Thin Ice: Cracking Down On The Racial Profiling Of Immigrants And Implementing A Compassionate Enforcement Policy, Abby Sullivan

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

This note explores racial profiling in the enforcement of federal immigration law. In consistently deferring to the judgment of immigration officers, the United States Supreme Court has vested Immigration and Customs Enforcement with broad and sweeping discretion to adopt racist law enforcement practices that would be impermissible outside of the immigration context. In doing so, the Court has taken the erroneous position that immigration proceedings are purely civil and therefore do not require the procedural protections that collectively form the pillar of the criminal justice system. A myriad of studies demonstrate that immigrants are significantly less likely than their American-born …

Race And Religion In The United Nations Committee On The Elimination Of Racial Discrimination, José A. Lindgren Alves

University of San Francisco Law Review

This Article analyzes the work of CERD in the area of religion, a field which, by definition, would not necessarily be covered by the mandate of a committee devoted to the eradication of racism and racial discrimination. Notwithstanding this difference of scope, to the extent that, in the contemporary world, race and religion appear increasingly interwoven, the work of CERD on religion has gradually become accepted and considered necessary.

Sentencing Our Children To Die In Prison: Global Law And Practice, Connie De La Vega, Michelle Leighton

University of San Francisco Law Review

This Article focuses on the sentencing of child offenders to a term of life imprisonment without the possibility of release or parole ("LWOP"). These are children convicted of crimes when younger than eighteen years of age, as defined by the international standards contained in the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Understanding California Sentencing, Kara Dansky

University of San Francisco Law Review

This article describes some constitutional foundations, California's punishment history and themes, and efforts to alleviate prison overcrowding.

The Incarceration Of Women In California, Angela Wolf, Barbara E. Bloom, Barry A. Krisberg

University of San Francisco Law Review

This articles addresses why the California prison system needs broad reform aimed toward providing female offenders the support structure necessary to maximize their opportunities for success.

Lawmaking And Interpretation: The Role Of A Federal Judge In Our Constitutional Framework, Diarmuid F. O'Scannlain

Marquette Law Review

No abstract provided.

How Tribe And State Cooperative Agreements Can Save The Adam Walsh Act From Encroaching On Tribal Sovereignty, Brian P. Dimmer

Marquette Law Review

None

Smart Growth And Transit - Oriented Development At The State Level: Lessons From California, New Jersey, And Western Australia, John L. Renne

Planning and Urban Studies Faculty Publications

The states of California, New Jersey, and Western Australia encourage smart growth through the employment of transit-oriented development (TOD). This article documents each state’s approach and highlights the importance of interagency cooperation at the state-level and intergovernmental cooperation between state and local governments. This article discusses the importance of state government participation in the planning and creation of policy to facilitate TOD and recommends elements for a model state TOD program.

Sex Offender Registration In Indian Country, Kevin Washburn, Virginia Davis

Faculty Scholarship

This article critiques Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act [SORNA] and places it in the context of the broader scheme of public safety and criminal jurisdiction on Indian reservations. Part I briefly explains the jurisdictional background of criminal law and regulatory authority on Indian lands. Part II discusses the particular development of federal and tribal sex offender registration and notification laws. Part III explains how SORNA engages Indian tribes and other registration jurisdictions as a prelude to discussion of the obstacles of effective implementation on Indian lands. Part IV offers some criticisms of SORNA for further fragmenting regulatory and criminal …

Tolling For The Luckless, The Abandoned And Forsaked: Community Safety, Therapeutic Jurisprudence And International Human Rights Law As Applied To Prisoners And Detainees, Michael L. Perlin, Astrid Birgden

Articles & Chapters

There has been an explosion of interest in therapeutic jurisprudence as both a filter and lens for viewing theextent to which the legal system serves therapeutic or anti therapeutic consequences. However, little attention has been paid to the impact of therapeutic jurisprudence on questions of international human rights law and the role of forensic psychologists. Human rights are based on legal, social, and moral rules. The paper will propose that human rights principles can add to the normative base of therapeutic jurisprudence, and in turn, therapeutic jurisprudence can assist forensic psychologists to actively address human rights. As duty bearers, forensic …

Whose Child Is This?: Genetic Analysis And Family Reunification Immigration In France, Tera R. Murdock

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

In an attempt to limit fraudulent family reunification immigration and control how many migrants enter its borders, France statutorily implemented the use of DNA testing in family reunification immigration in late 2007. Where an immigrating child possesses suspicious documentation, and the child is seeking to reunite with his or her mother in France, the statute provides for voluntary DNA testing to establish that the child has a biological connection with the mother. The requirement of proof of a biological link between family members is diametrically opposed to family recognition policies that apply to French citizens, which emphasize the establishment of …

Business Improvement Districts: Should Lexington Establish One?, Melissa A. Hagan

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Downtown districts are falling victim to surges of new development increasingly taking place outside the city as people seek to escape fast‐paced city life for a more peaceful life in the suburbs. As people move to the suburbs, they either take the businesses with them or the businesses fail to maintain profitability in empty downtowns. Downtown Lexington has been no exception. The recent developments of Hamburg Place and, more recent the developments around Fayette Mall have attracted even more business owners away from downtown.

A new implementation approach for revitalization is gaining momentum, as downtowns are introducing policies that enable …

Imagining Gun Control In America: Understanding The Remainder Problem Article And Essay, Nicholas J. Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

Gun control in the United States generally has meant some type of supply regulation. Supply restrictions ranging from one-gun-a-month schemes to flat gun bans cannot work without a willingness and ability to reduce total inventory to levels approaching zero ("the supply-side ideal"). This is an impossible feat in a country that already has 300 million guns tightly held by people who think they are uniquely important tools. The average defiance ratio in places that have attempted gun confiscation and registration is 2.6 illegal guns for every legal one. In many countries defiance is far higher. None of those countries has …

Four Steps To Progress: A Reality Test For Assembly Bill 900, Michael Marcus

University of San Francisco Law Review

An in depth look at CALIFORNIA'S 2007 ASSEMBLY BILL 900 which responds to California's prison crisis by adding prison and jail beds, proclaiming attention to treatment and prisoner reentry, and authorizing some fifty million dollars for treatment and rehabilitation services.

What Yoder Wrought: Religious Disparagement, Parental Alienation And The Best Interests Of The Child, Jeffrey Shulman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Despite its grounding in a specific and peculiar set of facts, the strict scrutiny mandate of Wisconsin v. Yoder (decided in 1972) has changed the constitutional landscape of custody cases - - and it has done so in a way that is unsound both as a matter of law and policy. Following Yoder, most courts require a showing of harm to the child, or a substantial threat of harm to the child, before placing any restrictions on exposure to a parent’s religious beliefs and practices. This harm standard leaves children in an untenable position when parents compete for “spiritual custody,” …

Faith In The Rule Of Law, Marc O. Degirolami

Faculty Publications

This is an essay on Brian Z. Tamanaha's Law as a Means to an End: Threat to the Rule of Law (2006).

For all but the most unflinching consequentialist, "instrumentalism" tends to draw mixed reviews. So it does from Brian Tamanaha. His book, Law as a Means to an End: Threat to the Rule of Law, documents with measured diffidence the ascendancy and current reign of "legal instrumentalism," so entrenched an understanding of law that it is "taken for granted in the United States, almost a part of the air we breathe." Professor Tamanaha shows that in our legal theorizing, …

Killing Them Softly: Meditations On A Painful Punishment Of Death, Robert I. Blecker

Articles & Chapters

This brief essay argues that any attempt by the U.S. Supreme Court and others to establish a painless punishment, especially lethal injection, fails logically and morally.

From the beginning, by definition, etymologically and existentially, “punishment” and “pain” have been inseparably connected. Those who advocate ‘painless punishment’ call for contradiction. Whether looking to the future (utilitarians) or the past (retributivists), we once clearly understood and embraced the inseparable connection between punishment and pain. Gradually, however, punishment has morphed into something which denies its own nature, culminating in today's move toward a massive dose of anesthetic as the ultimate punishment - as …

Regulation Of Extremist Speech In The Era Of Mass Digital Communications: Is Brandenburg Tolerance Obstacle In The Terrorist Era, The Free Speech In An Era Of Terrorism, Nadine Strossen

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Terrorism, The Constitution, And Individual Liberties Lecture 20, Nadine Strossen

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Morris Ernst's Troubled Legacy, Brett Gary

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Examining the contradictory life of the important legal activist Morris Ernst, this essay repositions its subject as one of the most significant public intellectuals of the 1920s and 1930s. Yet the intellectual independence demonstrated by Ernst is shown to have been compromised through his post-war collaboration with the F.B.I.

A New Look At Neo-Liberal Economic Policies And The Criminalization Of Undocumented Migration, Teresa A. Miller

Journal Articles

This paper situates the current “crisis” surrounding the arrival and continued presence of undocumented immigrants in the United States within penological trends that have taken root in American law over the past thirty years. It positions the shift from more benevolent to the increasingly harsh legal treatment of undocumented immigrants as the continuation of a succession of legal reforms criminalizing immigrants, and governing immigration through crime. By charting the increasing salience of crime in public perceptions of undocumented immigrants, and comparing the immediately preceding criminal stigmatization of so-called “criminal aliens”, this paper exposes current severity toward undocumented immigrants as consistent …

Promoting Prosecutorial Accountability, Independence And Effectiveness, Timothy W. Waters, Belinda Cooper

Books & Book Chapters by Maurer Faculty

Promoting Prosecutorial Accountability, Independence and Effectiveness assists readers in identifying and understanding best practices, and serves as a reference for policymakers, senior prosecutors, academics, and civil society leaders.

The publication should also guide and enrich national debates on prosecutorial reform, especially in countries—such as Bulgaria—which have recently transitioned to democracy.

How To Justify An Emergency Regime And Preserve Civil Liberties In Times Of Terrorism, Emmanuel Gross

South Carolina Journal of International Law and Business

No abstract provided.

Overcoming Lochner In The Twenty-First Century: Taking Both Rights And Popular Sovereignty Seriously As We Seek To Secure Equal Citizenship And Promote The Public Good, Thomas B. Mcaffee

University of Richmond Law Review

Professor McAffee reviews substantive due process as the textual basis for modern fundamental rights constitutional decision-making. He contends that we should avoid both the undue literalism that rejects the idea of implied rights, as well as the attempt to substitute someone's preferred moral vision for the limits, and compromises, that are implicit in and intended by the Constitution's text. He argues, moreover, that we can largely harmonizethe variousgoals of our constitutionalsystem by taking rights se- riously and by understanding that securing rights does not ex-haustthe Constitution'spurposes.

Parker V. District Of Columbia: Putting The "I'S" In Milita, Katharine E. Kohm

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.