Digital Commons Network^™

Technology, Ethics, And Access To Justice: Should An Alogrithm Be Deciding Your Case?, Anjanette H. Raymond, Scott J. Shackelford

Michigan Journal of International Law

At a time of U.S. budget cuts, popularly known as the “sequester,” court systems across the nation are facing financial shortfalls. Small claims courts are no exception. Among the worst hit states is California, which is suffering staffing cutbacks that result in long delays prompting consideration of the old maxim, “justice delayed is justice denied.” Similar problems, albeit on a larger scale, are evident in other nations including India where the Law Commission has argued that the millions of pending cases combined with the lagging uptake of technological best practices has impeded judicial productivity, leading to “disappointment and dissatisfaction among …

Fidelity Diluted: Client Confidentiality Gives Way To The First Amendment & Social Media In Virginia State Bar, Ex Rel. Third District Committee V. Horace Frazier Hunter, Jan L. Jacobowitz, Kelly Rains Jesson

Campbell Law Review

No abstract provided.

Data And Diversity In The Canadian Justice Community, Sabrina Lyon, Lorne Sossin

Osgoode Legal Studies Research Paper Series

This study explores the importance of quantitative and qualitative data in the development of more inclusive policies of recruitment and appointment in the justice community. Since at least the Abella Equality in Employment Royal Commission Report in 1984, the link between obtaining and analyzing data on recruitment and achieving greater inclusion has been well-documented and oft-repeated. The authors focus on the apparent resistance on the part of governments (in the case of judicial appointments) and private as well as public legal employers (in the case of legal recruitment) to keep, track and publish demographic data on who seeks these opportunities …

Towards A Pedagogy Of Diversity In Legal Education, Faisal Bhabha

Osgoode Legal Studies Research Paper Series

There is resounding consensus that diversity in legal education is a priority. Yet, North American law schools continue to be criticized for failing to reflect the diversity of the society that they are training lawyers to serve. With the backdrop of critical scholarship and empirical evidence, this paper is a project of conceptual reorientation. The first part examines the past 20 years of diversity promotion in legal education and concludes that, while several advances have been made, especially in increasing numerical representation of diverse groups in law schools, the promise of meaningful diversity remains unfulfilled. The next part situates the …

No Lawyer For A Hundred Miles? Mapping The New Geography Of Access Of Justice In Canada, Jamie Baxter, Albert Yoon

Osgoode Legal Studies Research Paper Series

Recent concerns about the geography of access to justice in Canada have focused on the dwindling number of lawyers in rural and remote areas, raising anxieties about the profession’s inability to meet current and future demands for localized legal services. These concerns have motivated a range of policy responses that aim to improve the education, training, recruitment and retention of practitioners in underserved areas. We surveyed lawyers in Ontario to better understand their physical proximity to clients and how, if at all, that proximity promotes access to justice. We find that lawyers' scope of practice varies based on a number …

What Is Access To Justice?, Trevor C. W. Farrow

Osgoode Legal Studies Research Paper Series

Access to justice is the most pressing justice issue today. It has recently and very quickly become the major focus of attention of essentially all stakeholders in the legal community – governments, regulators, judges, bar associations, researchers and educators. And it needs also to become an increasing topic of attention for those who use the system – the public. But with all of this new attention, do we really know what we are talking about? What does the phrase "access to justice" mean, particularly from the perspective of the public? Primarily through a series of qualitative interviews, this study looks …

Comments And Feedback On 'Growing Up: Ontario's Condominium Communities Enter A New Era' - Condominium Act Review: Stage Two Solutions Report, Sas Ansari, Sujoy Chatterjee

Osgoode Legal Studies Research Paper Series

The Urban Law Centre ("ULC") has carefully reviewed the Stage Two Solutions Report ("Report") on the revisions to the Condominium Act ("the Act"). Our submissions briefly address five (5) areas that will enrich the discussion on, and improve the resulting, reforms to the Act. The ULC’s recommendations relate to sustainability, condominium dispute resolution, infrastructure needs, tenant and multicultural residents, and the effects of investors or absentee owners. The ULC would be happy to provide more detailed submissions on any of the issues raised as part of the final development of the proposed amendments to the Condominium Act.

Balancing Privacy And The Open Court Principle Of Family Law: Does De-Identifying Case Law Protect Anonymity?, Sujoy Chatterjee

Dalhousie Journal of Legal Studies

This paper discusses the right to privacy in the context of family law cases. In balancing the open court principle against the right of the individual to remain anonymous, it is argued that there is a greater public good in maintaining transparency of the judicial process. Disclosing the personal details of individuals who use the public court system allows the public to hold the judiciary accountable for their decisions. While advocates for greater privacy would argue that the personal details of litigants have no bearing on the legal rules that emerge from cases, landmark decisions such as Murdoch v Murdoch …

Checkup, Lehigh Valley Health Network

Checkup

No abstract provided.

The Punishment Agenda In The Courts, Debra Parkes

The Supreme Court Law Review: Osgoode’s Annual Constitutional Cases Conference

This paper critically examines the potential of prisoner litigation in Canada to shed light on what U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy has called “the hidden world of punishment”. It considers whether prisoners’ rights litigation can act as a meaningful legal check on the growing punishment agenda in Canada. The paper begins with a brief description of some aspects of the punishment agenda before moving on to consider case law under the section of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms which speaks directly to punishment and its limits, the section 12 right to be free from “cruel and unusual …

Cause To Believe What? The Importance Of Defining A Search's Object—Or, How The Aba Would Analyze The Nsa Metadata Surveillance Program, Christopher Slobogin

Oklahoma Law Review

Courts and scholars have devoted considerable attention to the definition of probable cause and reasonable suspicion. Since the demise of the “mere evidence rule” in the 1960s, however, they have rarely examined how these central Fourth Amendment concepts interact with the “object” of the search. That is unfortunate, because this interaction can have significant consequences. For instance, probable cause to believe that a search “might lead to evidence of wrongdoing” triggers a very different inquiry than probable cause to believe that a search “will produce evidence of criminal activity.” The failure to address the constraints that should be imposed on …

Using Technology To Facilitate Production Of E-Discovery, Timothy J. Pramas, Allison Berres, Shannon L. Bjorklund, Steven J. Ellison

William Mitchell Law Review

No abstract provided.

Using Preventive Legal Advocacy To Keep Children From Entering Foster Care, Vivek Sankaran

William Mitchell Law Review

No abstract provided.

Creating A New Norm: Engaging Fathers Through Direct Representation In Child In Need Of Protection Or Services Actions, Cyrenthia D. Shaw

William Mitchell Law Review

No abstract provided.

Third-Party Financing Of Class Action Litigation In The United States: Will The Sky Fall?, Deborah R. Hensler

DePaul Law Review

No abstract provided.

Litigation Funding Versus Liability Insurance: What's The Difference?, Charles Silver

DePaul Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Possibility Of Private Rights And Duties, Adam J. Macleod

Faculty Articles

Is it possible for us to know what we owe others, or do we need the state to tell us? To ask the question this way could be understood as a provocation. It might suggest that the possibility of private rights and duties - a possibility that common law takes for granted and which lawyers witness in their daily practice threatens the foundations of the legal realist jurisprudential project and the liberal political project. But it is not my intention here to attack those projects. I simply want to consider the possibility that legal realism and liberalism might not be …

Punitive Damages, Chinese Tort Law, And The American Experience, Vincent R. Johnson

Faculty Articles

In a country such as China, with abundant consumer products and the inevitability of product defects, claims for punitive damages are sure to arise under Article 47 of the new Chinese Tort Law. Article 47 provides that “(w)hereany producer or seller knowingly produces or sells defective products, causing death or serious damage to the health of others, the injured party may request appropriate punitive damages.” As Chinese jurists and scholars interpret Article 47, they may wish to consider whether lessons can be drawn from the American experience. During the past two decades, few areas of American law have changed more …

The Folly Of Expecting Evil: Reconsidering The Bar's Character And Fitness Requirements, Leslie Levin

Faculty Articles and Papers

The bar's character and fitness requirement is based on the largely untested premise that an applicant's past history helps predict whether that individual possesses the moral character needed to be a trustworthy lawyer. The primary purpose of the character inquiry is to protect the public and the judicial system from potentially problematic lawyers.The inquiry may also signal to the public that lawyers possess "good character" and deserve to be trusted with their important legal matters, thereby facilitating client representation and the administration of justice. An alternative-and more critical characterization of this purpose is that it is designed to protect the …

Legislating Incentives For Attorney Representation In Civil Rights Litigation, Douglas M. Spencer, Sean Farhang

Faculty Articles and Papers

Congress routinely relies on private lawsuits to enforce its mandates. In this article, we investigate whether, when it does so, the details of the legislation can importantly influence the extent to which the private bar is mobilized to carry out the prosecutorial function. Using an original and novel data set based on review of archived litigation documents for cases filed in the Northern and Eastern Districts of California over the two decades spanning 1981-2000, we examine the effects of the Civil Rights Act of 1991, which increased economic damages available to Title VII job discrimination plaintiffs, on their ability to …

The White Whale: Bringing Emotion And Relevance To The Contemporary Trusts And Estates Course, Wayne M. Gazur

Saint Louis University Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Improbable Birth And Conceivable Death Of The Securities Arbitration Clinic, Jill I. Gross

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article explores the birth, life, and possible death of securities arbitration clinics (SACs) in the United States. Part II of this Article describes the history of the securities arbitration clinic in the United States. Part III describes how a SAC operates and how SAC students help investors. Part IV reviews the pedagogical advantages and disadvantages of a SAC, and addresses the reluctance of many law schools to embrace this type of clinic. Part V concludes by predicting whether these clinics have a future in light of the modern challenges to clinical legal education.

The Call For And Role Of Asian Lawyers In The Deep South, Jou-Chi Ho

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

A Crisis And Its Afterlife: Some Reflections On ‘Scholars In Self-Estrangement’, Ruth Buchanan

Articles & Book Chapters

This essay is an extended reflection on the avenues of influence of a single article, one that is arguably the most cited contribution to scholarship on law and development of the last 40 years. In that article, published in the Wisconsin Law Review in 1974, David Trubek and Marc Galanter confidently identified and cogently parsed a ‘crisis’ in law and development studies in the United States. ‘Scholars in Self-Estrangement: Some Reflections on the Crisis in Law and Development Studies in the United States’ (hereinafter SISE), was undoubtedly a key intervention in the debate over US funding of law reform …

Georgia Southern Magazine, Georgia Southern University

Georgia Southern Magazine

• Blink of an Eye
• First Class
• Double Major
• The Ride

Sex Crimes Litigation As Hazardous Duty: Practical Tools For Trauma-Exposed Prosecutors, Defense Counsel, And Paralegals, Evan R. Seamone

Journal Articles

Military prosecutors and defense attorneys must both interact with traumatic case material stemming from victims, offenders, or evidence tied to a sexual offense. The context of the attorney's specific duties makes them susceptible to different types of indirect or "Secondary Traumatic Stress" [STS] stemming from the litigation. At base, STS generically describes the manner in which a person can be traumatized simply from hearing or being exposed to someone else's trauma or implementations that caused it.

Curricular Priorities For Business Ethics In Medical Practice And Research: Recommendations From Delphi Consensus Panels, James M. Dubois, Elena M. Kraus, Kamal Gursahani, Anthony Mikulec, Erin Bakanas

Open Access Publications

No abstract provided.

The Rise Of The Reproductive Brothel In The Global Economy: Some Thoughts On Reproductive Tourism, Autonomy, And Justice, April L. Cherry

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This article explores some of the ethical issues raised by the rise of a global reproductive tourism model that includes “the reproductive brothel,” a place where women are gathered together in confined areas and their reproductive capacities sold to men as commodities. After exploring the phenomenon of reproductive tourism as it has developed in India, and the ways in which economic globalization has shaped the practice, the article then considers two ethical responses to the development of the practice of global commercial surrogacy; the first of which focuses on the value of autonomy (both as choice and as dignity), and …

Mindful Ethics - A Pedagogical And Practical Approach To Teaching Legal Ethics, Developing Professional Identity, And Encouraging Civility, Jan L. Jacobowitz, Scott L. Rogers

Articles

Aristotle spoke of virtue and ethics as a combination of practical wisdom and habituation-an individual must learn from the application of critical reasoning skills to experience. Perhaps one of the earliest proclamations of the value of experiential learning, the Aristotelian view, reappears throughout history and is captured once again by the Carnegie Foundation's Report on Legal Education, which includes a call for instruction that provides practical skills and ethical grounding to complement the teaching of legal analysis. The Carnegie Report continues to play a role in the ongoing discussion of the need to reform legal education; a debate that is …

Cultivating Professional Identity & Creating Community: A Tale Of Two Innovations, Jan L. Jacobowitz

Articles

No abstract provided.