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Contingency Fee Conflicts: Attorneys Push For Quick-Kill Settlements When Their Clients Would Be Better Off Going To Trial, Steve Calandrillo, Chryssa V. Deliganis, Neela Brocato

Articles

Despite the checkered history of contingency fees in the practice of law, attorneys often claim that such fee arrangements perfectly align the interests of lawyer and client. After all, contingency fee lawyers proclaim in TV ad after TV ad, "we don’t get paid unless you win." That superficial logic does not withstand economic scrutiny. Utilizing a behavioral economics lens, this Article demonstrates that contingency fee arrangements give attorneys excessive incentives to settle cases that their clients would be better off taking all the way through trial. In addition to highlighting this undertheorized problem in law, we offer normative recommendations to …

Is There A Fundamental Right To Privacy When An Educational Institution Requires A Student To Disclose Proof Of His Or Her Vaccination Status?, Mary D. Fatscher

Touro Law Review

In 2020, the coronavirus disease (“COVID-19”) dominated the world. Although the public has progressively become more informed about the disease and how to safeguard itself, challenges persist as there is still much unknown. Aside from wearing masks, social distancing, and despite its undetermined consequences, the COVID-19 vaccination has emerged as a primary solution to substantially reducing the incidence and severity of the virus in our country. Many COVID-19 vaccine mandates were initiated once three pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies including Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson received Emergency Use Authorization from the Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”).

A Pcl-R, Pai, And Rorschach Study Of Women Who Murder, Jason M. Smith, Carl B. Gacono, Ted B. Cunliffe

Archives of Assessment Psychology

Murder is antithetical to any traditional conceptualization of femininity or the nurturer role. Women do, however, commit murder, as well as a plethora of other heinous offenses. Understanding the personality of women who murder is of both clinical and scientific interest. In this study, we present the PCL-R, PAI, and Rorschach data of 24 incarcerated women who have murdered. We explored the interpersonal, affective, cognitive, and self-concept vulnerabilities that contributed to this behavior within the female offender model. The results were placed within societal contexts (i.e., media) as well as providing recommendations for assessment and treatment of this population.

The Effectiveness Of The Ethics Officer’S Influence: An Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis Exploration, Cheryl K. Douthitt

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The position of ethics officer was created to watch over corporate behavior. However, scandals have continued to demonstrate unethical leadership involving government officials, sports heroes, religious organizations, and corporate leaders. The research problem was that despite the adoption of corporate ethics programs and government oversight, there is a lack of understanding of ethics officers’ experiences, perceptions of effectiveness, and whether they effectively influence executive-level ethical conduct. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to explore the lived experiences of ethics officers regarding their interactions with executives. Shaped by Brown and Treviño’s ethical leadership theory, the research question concerned the …

Perceptions Of Law Enforcement Officers Regarding Their Interactions With Persons In Mental Health Crises., Monica Roundtree

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Law enforcement officers are guided by principles to protect and serve the community in general; this includes persons with mental health illnesses. These officers are often the sole community resource responding to calls involving persons in mental health crises. However, many officers lack the knowledge and skills to effectively interact with this group. This quantitative study addressed how law enforcement officers perceive that a selected policy, procedure, or strategy is effective for interacting with a person experiencing a mental health crisis. The theoretical framework for this study is the procedural justice theory. A convenience sample of 100 sworn law enforcement …

An Examination Of The Impact Of Police Chaplain Programs And Spirituality On Police Officers’ Mental Health, Samuel Protel Maxwell

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Spirituality has been a fundamental aspect of treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in many officers. PTSD affects a high percentage of officers and many of whom live a highly stressful and traumatic life even outside of work. The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine the impact of police chaplain programs and spirituality on police officers' mental health. The research question asked how a police chaplain program and spirituality impacted police officers. This study's theoretical framework was Pargament's theory. Qualitative research with a narrative analysis design was chosen to collect data from semi-structured interviews. The 10 participants, including six …

Educating Providers And Nurses On Human Trafficking, Valerie Smith

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Human trafficking is a global public health problem. Victims of human trafficking experience higher rates of sexually transmitted diseases, reproductive damage, sexual violence, infertility, and mental and behavioral issues. To help end human trafficking, which is potentially deadly, raising awareness about this topic is essential for victim survival. A gap in practice among staff at a community health center regarding recognition of victims of human trafficking and procedures for potential victims was identified. An education program focused on increasing knowledge and awareness was developed to close this gap. Guided by Watson’s theory of human caring, a 30-minute educational session followed …

Identifying And Examining Key Themes Emanating From The U.S. Legislative Tobacco Policy Subsystem, Arnon Dayak

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Americans’ continuously increasing tobacco use in the form of smoking presents an ongoing and rising negative health impact on this leading cause of preventable death. Despite existing U.S. federal level tobacco regulation through the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (FSPTCA), U.S. tobacco use remains ubiquitous demonstrating existent ineffectiveness of tobacco control legislation. Unknown underlying attributing factors present critical information gaps which, when exposed, could improve tobacco regulation. Using a case study approach, the question, “What key themes are aligned with legislative subsystem actors when voting on the FSPTCA” was examined. Multi-source data streams using existing secondary datasets including …

Occupational Burnout Factors Among Correctional Mental Health Providers, Morgan Gruhot

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Burnout rates of correctional employees are higher than employees in the general public. The purpose of this study was to identify how occupational factors impact burnout rates among correctional mental health workers. Grounded in the job-demands theoretical model, this study compared burnout rates among mental health staff within county jails and state prisons. Burnout was measured using the Maslach Burnout Inventory and Occupational factors were measured using the Areas of Work life Survey and Pandemic Experience and Perception Survey. Data was analyzed using IBM SSPS software to address multiple a priori directional research questions. Research questions considered how occupational factors …

Criminology And Violent Extremist Radicalization, Starlett Michele Martin

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, research on foreign terrorism became extensive in the United States while research on domestic terrorism and violent extremist radicalization was lacking. Despite the research that has been done, there was a lapse in scholarship analyzing terrorism radicalization and its relationship with criminology. The purpose of this general qualitative study was to analyze the perceptions of experts in terrorism and criminology about how factors of criminology can explain violent extremist radicalization. This study used two conceptual models of terrorism radicalization: (a) the staircase to terrorism and the (b) 4-stage model of the terrorist mindset. In addition, …

Effect Of Detention Facilities Toward Juvenile Delinquency And Exposure To Criminalization, Calvin Clark

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

AbstractDetention facility settings present opportunities and risks in relation to violent extremism. Criminalization as the main concern would increase the crime rates in the United States while allowing the formation of terrorist groups on U.S. soil. The purpose of this quantitative cross-sectional study was to investigate the relationship between juveniles’ experiences in detention centers and their exposure to criminalization. The study was guided by social control theory, narrative theory, and differential opportunity theory. Data were collected using a survey of 15 juvenile detention officers. Results of correlation analyses indicated a significant relationship between detention experience and increased exposure to criminalization …

Rolling Back Transparency In China's Courts, Benjamin L. Liebman, Rachel E. Stern, Xiaohan Wu, Margaret Roberts

Faculty Scholarship

Despite a burgeoning conversation about the centrality of information management to governments, scholars are only just beginning to address the role of legal information in sustaining authoritarian rule. This Essay presents a case study showing how legal information can be manipulated: through the deletion of previously published cases from China’s online public database of court decisions. Using our own dataset of all 42 million cases made public in China between January 1, 2014, and September 2, 2018, we examine the recent deletion of criminal cases from the China Judgements Online website. We find that the deletion of cases likely results …

The (Immediate) Future Of Prosecution, Daniel C. Richman

Faculty Scholarship

Even as others make cogent arguments for diminishing the work of prosecutors, work remains – cases that must be brought against a backdrop of existing economic inequality and structural racism and of an array of impoverished institutional alternatives. The (immediate) future of prosecution requires thoughtful engagement with these tragic circumstances, but it also will inevitably involve the co-production of sentences that deter and incapacitate. Across-the-board sentencing discounts based on such circumstances are no substitute for the thoughtful intermediation that only the courtroom working group – judges, prosecutors and defense counsel- can provide. The (immediate) future also requires prosecutors to do …

Unexceptional Protest, Amber Baylor

Faculty Scholarship

Anti-protest legislation is billed as applying only in the extreme circumstances of mass-movements and large scale civil disobedience. Mass protest exceptionalism provides justification for passage of anti-protest laws in states otherwise hesitant to expand public order criminal regulation. Examples include a Virginia bill that heightens penalties for a “failure to disperse following a law officer’s order”; a Tennessee law directing criminal penalties for “blocking traffic”; a bill in New York criminalizing “incitement to riot by nonresidents.” These laws might be better described as antiprotest expansions of public order legislation.

While existing critiques of these laws emphasize the chilling effects on …

Ignorance Of The Rules Of Omission: An Essay On Privilege Law, Rebecca Wexler

Faculty Scholarship

Evidentiary privileges--that is, rules that empower people to withhold evidence from legal proceedings-are one thread in a mesh of secrecy powers that control the flow of information in society. They are part and parcel of the laws, rules, norms, and practicalities that determine who can conceal and who can compel, that allocate power based on access to knowledge and its opposite. Despite the significance of privileges and of the harms that they produce, our understanding of this body of law has profound gaps.5 The questions posed above turn out to be more challenging than they might at first appear. Notwithstanding …

When Judges Were Enjoined: Text And Tradition In The Federal Review Of State Judicial Action, Alexandra Nickerson, Kellen R. Funk

Faculty Scholarship

It is virtually a tenet of modern federal jurisdiction that judges, at least when they are acting as judges, are inappropriate defendants in civil suits. Yet on rare but salient occasions, state judges might be the sole or primary party responsible for violating the constitutional rights of citizens, for instance by imposing excessive bail or by opening their courtrooms to oppressive private suits like those under Texas’s Senate Bill 8 bounty regime. In such cases, injunctive relief against judicial officers may be the only or most effective remedy against constitutional violations, but federal courts from the trial level up to …

To Change Everything, We Need Everyone: Belonging, Equity, And Diversity In The U.S. Climate Movement, Clara Changxin Fang

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Climate change affects everyone but lack of racial diversity in the climate movement makes it challenging for it to be truly inclusive, champion solutions that are equitable, and affect transformative change. This dissertation describes a two-part study of diversity in the climate movement using a survey of 1,003 climate activists and interviews with 17 people of color who work or volunteer in the U.S. climate movement. The study analyzes differences between Whites and people of color in terms of their (a) demographics, (b) engagement in climate action, (c) experience of climate impacts, (d) worries, (e) challenges and barriers to participation, …

How Racial Trauma Manifests In Black Women From Direct And Indirect Encounters With Police Brutality, Ashley Turner

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This phenomenological study explored Black women’s lived experiences with racial trauma stemming from direct and indirect encounters with police brutality. A total of nine participants living in Washington state participated in this study. They identified as Black, ciswomen, fluent in English, and at least 21-years-old. In-depth, semi-structured, qualitative interviews were conducted to explore participants’ experiences with police. Transcripts were analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. The results consisted of the following five themes: (a) forms of police encounters, (b) influence of identity, (c) perceived reason for police brutality, (d) emotions stemming from police brutality, and (e) tactics to survive police interactions. …

How Cultural Believes Support And Perpetuate Relational Violence: A Delphi Study For Violence Prevention, Alisha D. Guthery

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This study solicited experts in relational violence across the United States using the Delphi methodology and grounded theory. This research was conducted in two phases and designed to answer two primary questions: (1) What cultural beliefs are involved in relational violence in the United States? And (2) How are the beliefs about relational violence maintained? The findings showed agreement from the experts on the societal beliefs that hold relational violence, the specific beliefs held by the abuser, and the impacts of these beliefs on the survivor. The experts offered ideas for intervention and prevention, which are important contributions to professional …

Passive-Sampler-Derived Pcb And Ocp Concentrations In The Waters Of The World─First Results From The Aqua-Gaps/Monet Network, Rainer Lohmann, Branislav Vrana, Derek Muir, Foppe Smedes, Jaromír Sobotka, Eddy Y. Zeng, Lian-Jun Bao, Ian J. Allan, Peleg Astrahan, Ricardo O. Barra, Terry Bidleman, Evgen Dykyi, Nicolas Estoppey, Gilberto Fillmann, Naomi Greenwood, Paul A. Helm, Liisa Jantunen, Sarit Kaserzon, J. Vinicio Macías, Keith A. Maruya, Francisco Molina, Brent Newman, Raimon M. Prats, Manolis Tsapakis, Mats Tysklind, Barent L. Van Drooge, Cameron J. Veal, Charles S. Wong

Graduate School of Oceanography Faculty Publications

Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) are recognized as pollutants of global concern, but so far, information on the trends of legacy POPs in the waters of the world has been missing due to logistical, analytical, and financial reasons. Passive samplers have emerged as an attractive alternative to active water sampling methods as they accumulate POPs, represent time-weighted average concentrations, and can easily be shipped and deployed. As part of the AQUA-GAPS/MONET, passive samplers were deployed at 40 globally distributed sites between 2016 and 2020, for a total of 21 freshwater and 40 marine deployments. Results from silicone passive samplers showed α-hexachlorocyclohexane …

The Case For The Current Free Exercise Regime, Nathan Chapman

Scholarly Works

How the Supreme Court ought to implement the Free Exercise
Clause has been one of the most controversial issues in U.S. rights discourse
of the past fifty years. In Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, a majority of the
justices expressed dissatisfaction with the standard articulated in
Employment Division v. Smith, but they could not agree on what ought to
replace it. This Essay argues that focusing on whether to overrule Smith is a
distraction from the sensitive task of implementing the Free Exercise Clause.
This is not because Smith was “right,” but because (1) the history and
tradition are both …

Presuming Trustworthiness, Ronnell Andersen Jones, Sonja R. West

Scholarly Works

A half-century ago, the U.S. Supreme Court often praised speakers performing the press function. While the Justices acknowledged that press reports are sometimes inaccurate and that media motivations are at times less than public-serving, their laudatory statements nonetheless embraced a baseline presumption of the value and trustworthiness of press speech in general. Speech in the exercise of the press function, they told us, is vitally important to public discourse in a democracy and therefore worthy of protection even when it falls short of the ideal in a given instance. Those days are over. Our study of every reference to the …

A Guide To Mireille Delmas-Marty's “Compass”, Diane Marie Amann

Scholarly Works

This essay appears as the Afterword (pp. 55-64) to a volume featuring an important work by the late Mireille Delmas-Marty (1941-2022) titled A Compass of Possibilities: Global Governance and Legal Humanism. A Collège de France de Paris law professor and one of the pre-eminent legal thinkers of her generation, Delmas-Marty and the essay’s author were longtime colleagues and collaborators. The volume contains an English translation of a 2011 lecture by Delmas-Marty, originally titled “Une boussole des possibles: Gouvernance mondiale et humanismes juridiques.” Amann’s essay surveys that writing, in a manner designed to acquaint non-francophone lawyers and academics with Delmas-Marty’s …

Absolute Official Immunity In Constitutional Litigation, Michael L. Wells

Scholarly Works

Absolute official immunity blocks recovery for constitutional violations that occur in the course of legislative, judicial, prosecutorial, and testimonial functions, no matter how egregiously the officer has acted. The basic policy underlying the doctrine is that constitutional litigation will produce unacceptable social costs, mainly by discouraging officials from acting boldly and effectively in the public interest. It may be necessary to sacrifice the vindication of constitutional rights and deterrence of violations in some circumstances, but the Court’s broad function-based limits give too much weight to the costs of constitutional remedies and pays too little attention to the vindication and deterrence …

The Prosecution Bar, William Ortman

Scholarly Works

The American legal profession needs a prosecution bar. Before lawyers are permitted to appear for the government in a criminal case, they should be licensed not just to practice law, but to practice prosecution. The two are not the same. Regulating them as if they were fosters injustice and fortifies the carceral state.

“Doing justice” is the orienting creed of prosecutorial ethics, in theory, while on the ground, American prosecutors routinely indulge in unjust practices. This Article argues that prosecutors’ membership in an undifferentiated legal profession is the key to understanding the contradiction. Lawyers’ training, socialization, and professional regulation fixate …

Shinn V. Ramirez: Creating A Catch-22 To Habeas Corpus Relief, Madison Gosch

South Dakota Law Review

No abstract provided.

Juvenile Competency Restoration, David R. Katner

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Despite legal competence presumptions about juveniles facing delinquency charges, tens of thousands of forensic mental health evaluations challenge the status of court-involved children in the United States each year. Researchers now find mental health disorders prevalent among juveniles in the justice system, with up to 70% having a diagnosable mental health problem. It is inappropriate to think of adolescents as younger versions of adults whose behaviors can be viewed through the same lens as adult behaviors. The Article will explore some of the causes and conclusions about why many juveniles are not competent and why many of them may not …

Fault Lines Of Immigration Federalism: United States V. Texas And The Reverse-Commandeering Of Immigration Enforcement Power, Kristine Quint

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Federal supremacy over immigration enforcement is a primary tenet of U.S. immigration law. Despite this, states are now routinely, and often successfully, blocking executive immigration policy in federal court. One such case is United States v. Texas, in which the states argue that the Biden administration’s enforcement priority guidelines inflict significant injury on the states while also violating statutory mandates and the Administrative Procedure Act. This Note analyzes United States v. Texas and concludes that the states’ arguments constitute an act of reverse-commandeering that usurps executive enforcement and policymaking power. The result is a state-held de facto veto, wielded through …

Making Red Lives Matter: Public Choice Theory And Indian Country Crime, Adam Crepelle

Lewis & Clark Law Review

American Indians are victims of violence at higher rates than members of any other racial group. Nevertheless, Indian victims receive little media attention. Aside from the prevalence of violence against Indians, the violence is unique because of the rules governing Indian country law enforcement. Tribes, absent compliance with federally mandated procedural safeguards, cannot prosecute non-Indian criminals. While state or federal law enforcement have jurisdiction over reservation crimes involving non-Indian perpetrators, they often fail to respond. Hence, non-Indians know they can target Indians with little fear of reprisal. This Article argues the rules governing Indian country crimes were not designed to …

Rights Violations As Punishment, Kate Weisburd

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Is punishment generally exempt from the Constitution? That is, can the deprivation of basic constitutional rights—such as the rights to marry, bear children, worship, consult a lawyer, and protest—be imposed as direct punishment for a crime and in lieu of prison, so long as such intrusions are not “cruel and unusual” under the Eighth Amendment? On one hand, such state intrusion on fundamental rights would seem unconstitutional. On the other hand, such intrusions are often less harsh than the restriction of rights inherent in prison. If a judge can sentence someone to life in prison, how can a judge not …