Law Commons^™

Racial Disparities In Plea Bargaining: An Examination Of Coercive Dynamics In The Negotiation Process, Naszya Iman Heidi Bradshaw

Scripps Senior Theses

This research addresses the enduring concerns about the ethical and legal intricacies of coercion in plea bargaining within the U.S. criminal justice system, with a focus on its correlation with racial disparities. This study acknowledges an existing research gap in comprehending the subtle dynamics of coercion and its differential impact on Black and Latin individuals. By employing the Cumulative Disadvantage Theory and Dual Processing Theory, the research aims to investigate the differential susceptibility to coercion during plea bargaining among individuals from Black and Latin communities compared to their white counterparts. Variables such as the severity of criminal charges, the quality …

Gender Regrets: Banning Abortion And Gender-Affirming Care, Margot J. Pollans, Noa Ben-Asher

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article analyzes the use of “regret” in the campaigns to ban GAC and abortion. It identifies two overlapping threads. First, both campaigns against medical care point to protection of patients from future regret as a legitimate state interest justifying restrictions on providing medical care. Second, both rely on concerns about regret to redefine the legal meaning of “informed consent” and make it easier for potential future plaintiffs to prevail in civil suits against providers of medical care. In doing so, both treat the emotion of regret as a distinct injury that may give rise to a range of legal …

Resistance Proceduralism: A Prologue To Theorizing Procedural Subordination, Portia Pedro

Washington and Lee Law Review

Several legal scholars have discussed the role of slavery within their own family histories and a growing number of scholars are exploring the successes and strategies of lawyers and Black litigants in freedom suits and other litigation in the United States antebellum South. I build on these literatures with a focus on procedure. In this Article, I analyze procedures involved in a few of my ancestral and personal experiences. Some of the experiences with process involved litigation to be free from slavery while other experiences did not explicitly involve any law. But they all involved process.

Engaging in this practice—marshaling …

A License To Discriminate: The Risky Next Step Of Religious Charter Schools, Vania Blaiklock

Scholarly Articles

From 2017 to 2022, the Supreme Court strengthened its First Amendment Free Exercise jurisprudence by deciding that states can provide aid to religious educational institutions through general benefit programs. Six months after the Court’s most recent religious aid case, Carson v. Makin, Oklahoma’s Attorney General stated that he would no longer enforce the nonsectarian provision of the state’s public charter statute because it was unconstitutional under Carson and its progeny. That opinion initiated the application and 2023 approval of the first religious charter school, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School by Oklahoma’s Virtual Schoolboard. Immediately, state litigation ensued, …

Transforming Legal Sex, Noa Ben-Asher

Faculty Publications

Legal sex in the United States is undergoing a dramatic transformation. By "legal sex" this Article refers to various instances in which legal authorities engage in defining an individual's sex, either directly or indirectly. This Article begins by charting this transformation and then draws on this history to rethink the current political moment.

Until around the mid-twentieth century, legal sex was mostly understood as immutable sexual difference between males and females that is biologically determined prior to birth. Groundbreaking scientific and medical theories in the 1950s introduced gender identity as a new way to describe an internal sense of being …

We Shall Overcome: The Evolution Of Quotas In The Land Of The Free And The Home Of Samba, Stella Emery Santana

Seattle University Law Review

When were voices given to the voiceless? When will education be permitted to all? When will we need to protest no more? It’s the twenty-first century, and the fight for equity in higher education remains a challenge to peoples all over the world. While students in the United States must deal with the increase in loans, in Brazil, only around 20% of youth between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-four have a higher education degree.

The primary objective of this Article is to conduct an in-depth comparative analysis of the development, implementation, and legal adjudication of educational quota systems within …

Pacific Islands And The U.S. Military: The Legal Borderlands Of The Environmental Movement, Sonia Lei

Seattle University Law Review

Climate change remains an urgent, ongoing global issue that requires critical examination of institutional polluters. This includes the world’s largest institutional consumer of petroleum: the United States military. The Department of Defense (DoD) is a massive institution with little oversight, a carbon footprint spanning the globe, a budget greater than the next ten largest nations combined, and overly generous exemptions to environmental regulations and carbon reduction targets. This Comment examines how this lack of accountability and oversight plays out in the context of three Pacific islands that have hosted U.S. military bases for decades. By considering the environmental impact of …

Older Women Workers, The Pandemic, Employment Discrimination And Lifetime Disadvantage, Susan Bisom-Rapp

Faculty Scholarship

As a group, older women workers were among those most severely impacted by the COVID-19 crisis. Drawing from both intersectionality and cumulative disadvantage theory, the Model of Lifetime Disadvantage created by Bisom-Rapp and Sargeant helps frame the position of these workers in the labor market prior to and during the pandemic. The model also explains why and how disjointed, incremental legal interventions are unable to meet the challenge of gendered ageism, which surged during the crisis. Disasters produce impacts unevenly on individuals and communities. Older women are a diverse group, whose social position is mediated by race, ethnicity, sexual orientation …

Bodies On The Line: An Analysis Of Incarceration And Assassination And Their Role In The Civil Rights Movements, Courtney Mason

Law Student Publications

The history of American civil rights is understood largely through the context of various mass movements. Most famously, the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s was a remarkable representation of collective action. The success of that movement becomes even more significant when considering the realities of life for Black Americans at the time. In the spirit of those movements, the 2010s and 2020s have brought about modern movements that continue to push against discrimination toward Black Americans and push for progress in the legal system. The movements each were and are met with opposition. This article focuses on …

A Loophole In The Fourth Amendment: The Government's Unregulated Purchase Of Intimate Health Data, Rhea Bhatia

Washington Law Review Online

Companies use everyday applications and personal devices to collect deeply personal information about a user’s body and health. While this “intimate health data” includes seemingly innocuous information about fitness activities and basic vitals, it also includes extremely private information about the user’s health, such as chronic conditions and reproductive health. However, consumers have no established rights over the intimate health data shared on their devices. Believing that these technologies are created for their benefit, consumers hand over the most intimate aspects of their lives through health-related applications relying on the promise that their data will remain private. Today, the intimate …

Monitoring France's Performance Under The Strategic Action Plan For Roma And Traveller Inclusion (2020-2025), Sarah Brody

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

No abstract provided.

If It Can Make It There, It Can Make It Anywhere: How New York's "Green Amendment" Is Catalyzing Environmental Progress In Light Of Federal Failures, Zoe Zingale

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The note examines the challenges faced by minority and low-income communities in seeking legal redress for environmental injustices, highlighting how federal legal avenues like Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 have been limited by Supreme Court rulings. It proposes that state-level Green Amendments, such as New York's, offer a promising alternative for these communities to assert their right to a healthy environment and seek relief from disparate environmental impacts.

Atmed Treatment Ctr., Inc. V. Travelers Indem. Co., 285 A.3d 352 (R.I. 2022), Catherine R. Enos

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Second-Tier Marriages, Jeremiah A. Ho

All Faculty Scholarship

This Essay interrogates the reasoning behind the retrenchment toward LGBTQ rights progress that has taken place since marriage equality. With marriage rights for same-sex couples now "on the books," the Supreme Court's treatment of same-sex couples in both Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Comm'n and 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis reveals the status quo's hesitancy to recognize same-sex relationships on equal footing. Retrenchment, however, only describes the moment itself; it alludes to but offers no comprehensive or satisfying theory that identifies the motives behind the moves. This Essay theorizes from within the context of the Supreme Court's LGBTQ …

Infinite Queerness And American Settler Colonialism, Jeremiah A. Ho

All Faculty Scholarship

In Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes For Racial Reform, the late Derrick Bell refined his theory of racial progress in the United States by merging his interest convergence and racial sacrifice theses into a theoretical “two-sided coin” he called “racial fortuity.”¹  Bell’s original interest convergence thesis posited that racial progress for Blacks would only occur if their interests in obtaining equality for themselves and the interests of the dominant White establishment in granting such equality “converged.”²  This theory famously underpinned Bell’s interpretation of Brown and the Supreme Court’s eagerness to overturn …

Table Of Contents, Public Interest Law Reporter

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Diametrically Opposed: A Closer Look At Juvenile Probation In Illinois And Its Intersection With Rehabilitation, Anna Bowser

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Evidence-Based Funding In Illinois: The Solution It Promised To Be?, Marlee Burridge

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Native Nations' Autonomy In The Modern Era, Brynna Collins

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

In The Shadow Of Pico: Book Bans And The Struggle Between Viewpoint Discrimination And Educational Suitability, Tripp Frank

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

U.S. Hyper-Surveillance In The Name Of Counterterrorism: Responses To State-Sanctioned Repression Of Arabs And Muslims Then And Now, Rama Izar

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

The Epa's Failure To Revise The Clean Water Act And Its Impact On Communities, Will Matushek

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

From Bulwark To Puppet: A Call To Democratize The Archaic Grand Jury, Maris Medina

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

The Future Of Kinship Care: What Could Make This Ideal More Attainable For Families?, Dani Scudder

Public Interest Law Reporter

In recent years, there has been a radical shift by child protective agencies to look towards extended family before placing a child in foster care.¹ Placing children with family or fictive kin, people who are not related but still important to that child's life, is called kinship care.² This shift is a result of increased research surrounding the emotional and physical benefits of kinship care for displaced youth.³ Although professionals agree that placing children with relatives reduces trauma and enhances outcomes, the ability of relatives to care for their extended family members is hindered by financial and …

Pretrial Fairness Increases Procedural Fairness, Isabel Smith

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Collective Bargaining Agreements: An Untapped Pathway For Educators To Advocate For Students With Disabilities, Martha Rubin

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Capital Punishment In Context: Kenneth Smith And The Eight Amendment, Elizabeth Stamper

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Shotspotter And Chicago, Mehreen Tariq

Public Interest Law Reporter

On February 16, 2024, Mayor Brandon Johnson decided not to renew Chicago's contract with ShotSpotter. To better understand Mayor Johnson's reasoning, this article will explore Chicago's history with ShotSpotter, arguments from its proponents, concerns from those in opposition, and national takeaways from other municipalities that have faced a similar decision.

The War On Cannabis, Marla Zappa

Public Interest Law Reporter

Federal legalization of marijuana has the potential to drastically reform the criminal justice system as thousands of Americans face lifelong penalties for simple drug offenses, especially communities of color who are prosecuted at much higher rates compared to white individuals.

Today, possession of marijuana is the leading drug offense for which Americans are arrested.¹ Every year approximately 550,000 individuals are arrested for cannabis offenses, typically possession.² This is because marijuana is the most common illicit drug used in the United States.³ In 2021, over 52.2 million Americans consumed cannabis in some form.⁴ Across the population, marijuana …

Table Of Contents, Public Interest Law Reporter

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.