Digital Commons Network^™

Farming And Eating, Margot J. Pollans

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This essay argues that the “us versus them” rhetoric that dominates food and agriculture policy today drives a wedge between farmers and food consumers. Together, farmers and food consumers could form a powerful coalition to challenge the true obstacle to sustainable and equitable food production: concentration of market and political power elsewhere along the food chain.

"Your Mission, Should You Choose To Accept It . . .": Taking Law School Mission Statements Seriously, Vanessa Merton

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Learning about the process and the results of mission definition in law schools has made palpable the tension between clarity and inflexibility, candor and marketing concerns, and the specificity that fosters accountability as opposed to the generality that embraces a vague multitude of approaches to the law school endeavor. Building on the strong endorsement of the use of mission statements in the original Best Practices for Legal Education, we present some “Best Practices” for both the development and the content of law school mission statements. We hope that this piece hastens further conversation and commentary that will foster a richer …

Teaching And Practicing Community Development Poverty Law: Lawyers And Clients As Trusted Neighborhood Problem Solvers, Susan Bennett, Alicia Alvarez, Louise Howells, Hannah Lieberman

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Expanding Our Reach: Direct Client Representation Vs. Policy And Advocacy Impact In A Transactional Clinic, Joseph Pileri

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The 2016 presidential election was met immediately around the country with calls to action for lawyers to provide legal representation and resources to vulnerable populations that would inevitably be affected by the incoming presidential administration. Lawyers showed up en masse, for example, at airports to offer services to travelers and families impacted by the executive order banning individuals from several predominantly Muslim countries from entering the country. Those lawyers were not alone. Calls also went out around the clinical community to use clinicians’ positions and resources in ways that further our work on behalf of communities which suddenly found themselves …

Cultural Brokers In The Changing Landscape Of Legal Education: Associate Deans For Experiential Education, Binny Miller

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Freeing The Law, Khelani Clay

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

From Visualization To Legal Design: A Collaborative And Creative Process, Gerlinde Berger-Walliser, Thomas D. Barton, Helena Haapio

Faculty Scholarship

The digital revolution has prompted a strong and accelerating interest in "visualization"-the use of images, photos, icons, diagrams, charts, or videos to enhance or supplant printed language. Although the law remains predominately focused on the written word, the appeal of images to clarify and persuade suggests that legal visualization will be increasingly explored in research and legal practice in coming years. As Michael D. Murray writes, "socio-epistemic and law and society studies affirm that as modern culture becomes increasingly visual, discourse of every kind must follow suit."

Pioneering visualization studies have been groundbreaking and expansive. Murray provides a helpful overview …

Luxembourg Judicial Style With Or Without The Uk, Fernanda Nicola

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

“Were the Court to leave the world, the world would continue without our participation,” 1 writes Justice Breyer to explain that global constitutionalism will survive regardless of the more or less isolationist role that the US Supreme Court chooses for itself. In an era of increasing relevance of international treaties, Breyer explains, the Supreme Court has acquired a deeper knowledge of other legal systems and its judges welcome exchanges with foreign judges, bar associations and students.2 The parallel with the US context is that even if the United Kingdom leaves the EU and “Brexit means Brexit,” in its harder or …

Social Networks In The Context Of Microfinance And Intimate Partner Violence In Bangladesh: A Mixed-Methods Study, Nadine S. Murshid, Allison Zippay

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

This mixed-methods study draws from social network theory to examine disclosure and help seeking for intimate partner violence among microfinance participants in Bangladesh. This study uses data on women from the nationally representative Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey 2007 and from in-depth interviews with 30 microfinance participants in Dhaka. Propensity Score Matching analyses indicated that increase in social contacts due to microfinance participation was not associated with disclosing IPV. Responses from the urban sample indicated that reasons for nondisclosure include feelings of shame, stigma, and fear of being perceived as weak by others. Implications regarding how microfinance organizations can tap …

Dollars And Sense: Fee Shifting, Gerry Singsen, Joel Feldman, Michael A. O’Connor, Kyle Dandelet

Western New England Law Review

This Article encourages cause-orientated attorneys to build powerful litigation practices around valued issues. The Authors offer case studies of two private law firms, Heisler, Feldman, & McCormick, P.C. and Mauk & O’Connor, LLP., describing the use of fee-shifting statutes to fund law practices on behalf of low and moderate-income clients. Additionally, insights of their business models, goals, and operations are provided.

Using Appellate Advocacy To Expand A Civil Right To Counsel In Child Custody Cases, Susan M. Finegan, Laura W. Gal

Western New England Law Review

This Article explores the access to justice movement by appellate lawyers using the due process clause of both the state and federal constitutions to advocate for a constitutionally based right to counsel. This approach is detailed in the context of private child custody actions through examination and discussion of the Supreme Judicial Court’s April 2016 decision in L.B. v. Chief Justice of the Probate & Family Court Department. The Authors identify opportunities to protect and advocate for the right to counsel analysis, and to lobby the legislature for a child’s right to counsel in custody proceedings or a tenant’s …

Access To Justice: A Call For Progress, Dina E. Fein

Western New England Law Review

The civil justice system must discharge its responsibility to preserve and advance the rule of law for all members of society. It is incumbent upon the system to recognize the needs of all who seek access to justice, and ensure that entry points and services exist commensurate with those needs. In this Article, the Author discusses what is meant by access to justice; reflects on the challenge to access in the civil justice system and the various efforts underway to address that challenge; describes the continuum of resources that exist to ensure access to justice; and explores an approach for …

The Broad Reach Of Limited Scope Representation: A Pathway To Access To Justice, Krista A. Hess

Western New England Law Review

The promise of a fair and free society, of equal access to courts and of justice for all cannot be met when most of the citizens in many of our courts are deprived of access to the advice, counsel and guidance that a lawyer can provide. Working together, we must find a way to match supply with demand for competent, affordable and essential legal services.

Gender And Incarceration — Family Relationships And The Right To Be A Parent, Carol Strickman

Western New England Law Review

Parental incarceration thwarts the relationships of children with their parents. Nurturing family bonds run counter to the dominant philosophy and practices of incarceration, which punish people by removing them from their families and communities, restraining them in small spaces, and depriving them of ordinary freedoms, pleasures, and self-determination. Family-friendly programs mandated by the legislature often fail in the implementation phase due to a lack of political and community support.

This article examines three California prison programs that focus on prisoners’ relationships with their children and other family members. California’s mother-infant programs provide innovative alternatives to traditional prison, where pregnant women …

Foreword: Classcrits Ix Symposium Issue, Matthew Titolo

Western New England Law Review

These are dangerous but also hopeful times for the left. The Trump years, and the years of right-wing governance that may lie in store for other countries, are not likely to be good ones for progressive policymaking. Since 2008, a network of scholars, practitioners and activists meet as the ClassCrits group to discuss socioeconomic inequality in the United States and around the world. The Articles in this ClassCrits IX Symposium issue all deal in one way or another with the problems created or exacerbated by neoliberalism or by longstanding defects of the American legal, economic and political systems: access to …

Incarceration As A Threat To Reproductive Justice In Massachusetts And The United States, Rachel Roth

Western New England Law Review

This Article is an edited and expanded version of Rachel Roth’s presentation at the 2016 Western New England Law Review Symposium on Gender and Incarceration. It provides an overview of reproductive justice and describes (1) how prisons and jails undermine reproductive health, rights, and justice for the people they confine, and (2) how mass incarceration undermines the prospect for reproductive justice in the United States overall. It focuses on examples from women’s prisons and includes issues and advocacy work from Massachusetts and across the country.

A Tort In Search Of A Remedy: Prying Open The Courthouse Doors For Legal Malpractice Victims, Susan S. Fortney

Fordham Law Review

Using this broad connotation of justice, this Article questions whether many victims of legal malpractice are denied access to justice. In writing about the regulatory function of legal malpractice as a tort, Professor John Leubsdorf argues that legal malpractice relates to three important functions of the law of lawyering: “[D]elineating the duties of lawyers, creating appropriate incentives and disincentives for lawyers in their dealings with clients and others, and providing access to remedies for those injured by improper lawyer behavior.” Arguably, persons injured by lawyer misconduct are denied access to justice if our civil liability system does not provide them …

Innovation And Access To Justice: Addressing The Challenge Of A Diverse Justice Ecosystem, Nicole Aylwin, Martha E. Simmons

Articles & Book Chapters

Despite having been a mainstay topic of conversation for many years in the fields of business, technology, public administration and other specialized service sectors such as medicine, ‘innovation’ has only recently begun to infuse conversations in the justice sector. With the widespread recognition that globalization is disrupting traditional legal roles and organizational structures, that technology is poised to radically reconfigure how legal services are delivered, and that despite best efforts, the access to justice gap continues to grow in Canada, innovation – as both a noun and a verb - has become a talisman, poised to help address the challenges …

Annual Report Of The Town Officers Of Stark, New Hampshire For The Year Ending December 31, 2016., Stark Town Representatives

Stark, NH Annual Reports

This is an annual report containing vital statistics for a town/city in the state of New Hampshire.

Legalized Rent-Seeking: Eminent Domain In Kazakhstan, Margaret Hanson

Cornell International Law Journal

No abstract provided.

2017 Commencement Program, New York Law School

Commencement Programs

Click here to view online.

Strategic Plan Progress And Outcomes (2017), New York Law School

Strategic Plan and Initiatives

No abstract provided.

New York Law School Magazine, Vol. 36, No. 2 (2017), New York Law School

New York Law School Magazine

Features:

Bookshelf: Professor David Schoenbrod’s DC Confidential: Inside the Five Tricks of Washington

Answering the Call: NYLS leads the way in a new era of immigration law

Ready to Launch: Five students reflected on beginning their final year at NYLS

Indigency, Secrecy, And Questions Of Quality: Minimizing The Risk Of "Bad" Mediation For Low-Income Litigants, Robert Rubinson

Marquette Law Review

Mediation can be magical. In the face of seemingly insurmountable differences, it can lead to productive resolutions far beyond what litigation could ever produce. In the hands of sophisticated practitioners and in appropriate cases, it offers a means for participants to engage in self-determination and more flexible conflict resolution. In light of how well mediation can work, it has experienced explosive growth in all areas of conflict, and in both private and court-connected contexts. There is, nevertheless, a risk that mediators can be unskilled or, worse, affirmatively damaging. The risk is endemic to all mediation but play out in particularly …

A Tale Of Two Clinics: Similarities And Differences In Evidence Of The Clinic Effect On The Development Of Law Students' Ethical And Altruistic Professional Identities, Jonel Newman, Donald Nicolson

Articles

No abstract provided.

Mothers In The Margins: Addressing The Consequences Of Criminal Records For Young Mothers Of Color, Jesse Krohn, Jaime Gullen

University of Baltimore Law Review

As young women pull ahead of young men in higher education, the wage gap narrows, and young men continue to be arrested and incarcerated at higher rates than young women, there has been much discussion at the policy level and in the media regarding the need to concentrate resources on men and boys. President Barack Obama’s “My Brother’s Keeper" and “Responsible Fatherhood” initiatives typify this shift.

As legal aid lawyers who represent youth, many of whom have been involved in the juvenile and criminal legal systems, we are pulled into the debate and asked to answer with increasing frequency: “What …

Another Look At The Need For Family Law Education Reform: One Law School's Innovations, Barbara A. Babb

All Faculty Scholarship

The pressing need to change family law education stems from increased numbers and types of family law matters before the courts, changing legal standards, and the evolution of family law practice. The Family Law Education Reform Project, the Families Matter Report, and the IAALS Family Bar Summit recommend that traditional family law education be supplemented to reflect the importance of a holistic blend of theory and practice. This involves expanding student clinical or experiential programs, incorporating interdisciplinary studies specific to the context of family law, and enhancing continuing legal education opportunities. As one law school example, the University of Baltimore …

Razing The Patent Bar, William Hubbard

All Faculty Scholarship

Innovation is vital to economic prosperity, and lawmakers consequently strive to craft patent laws that efficiently promote the discovery and commercialization of new inventions. Commentators have long recognized that legal fees are a significant cost affecting innovation, but remarkably a crucial driver of these costs has largely escaped scrutiny: the Patent Bar. Every year innovators spend billions of dollars on legalfees for representation in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ("USPTO"), where inventors apply for patents and potential infringers seek to invalidate issued patents. Supply in this essential legal services market, however, is sharply limited because patent law requires innovators …

Indigency, Secrecy, And Questions Of Quality: Minimizing The Risk Of "Bad" Mediation For Low-Income Litigants, Robert Rubinson

All Faculty Scholarship

Mediation can be magical. In the face of seemingly insurmountable differences, it can lead to productive resolutions far beyond what litigation could ever produce.' In the hands of sophisticated practitioners and in appropriate cases, it offers a means for participants to engage in self-determination and more flexible conflict resolution. In light of how well mediation can work, it has experienced explosive growth in all areas of conflict, and in both private and court-connected contexts. There is, nevertheless, a risk that mediators can be unskilled or, worse, affirmatively damaging. This risk is endemic to all mediation but play out in particularly …

Whom Do You Represent?: The Role Of Attorneys Representing Individuals With Surrogate Decision Makers, Nina A. Kohn

Court Review: Journal of the American Judges Association

Surrogate decision-making arrangements are ubiquitous. Surveys suggest that the majority of older Americans have a surrogate decision maker who is empowered to make decisions on their behalf, most commonly an agent appointed under a power of attorney (“POA”) for finances or for health care.1 The result is that attorneys frequently represent clients who have a surrogate decision maker with the authority to make decisions on the matter underlying the representation.

From the perspective of the attorney, such representations raise several important questions. First, from whom should the attorney take direction? Should the attorney look to the surrogate or to the …