Law Commons^™

The Unitary Executive Theory: Benefits And Dangers, Dani Heba

Student Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines the unitary executive theory's growth and implications for the modern presidency.

Juror's Perceptions Of Evidence-Based Suspicion, Nicholas Welter

Student Theses

Eyewitness misidentification is a leading cause of wrongful conviction. Although the prior probability of guilt (i.e., pre-identification evidence strength) is the most important factor for predicting a defendant’s actual guilt status and the accuracy of any subsequent eyewitness identification, no study has examined whether it affects juror decisions. This oversight is problematic because when officers place suspects in lineups when there is little evidence connecting them to the crime, it falls on jurors to examine the probative value of identification evidence. Participants (N = 357) watched a mock trial depicting an armed robbery that varied pre-identification evidence (strong vs. …

The Association Between Mental Health Diagnoses And Trial Competency Assessments In Defendants: A Meta-Analysis, Danielle C. Severe

Student Theses

In the realm of trial competency evaluations, there are a variety of methods used to evaluate whether an individual is fit to stand trial. Presently, forensic psychologists conduct trial competency evaluations in order to assess one’s ability to stand trial, but for persons with a mental health diagnosis, the generic competency measures are not the most effective means to assess one’s ability to stand trial, as mental health diagnoses impair cognitive functions that are required in judicial proceedings. Forensic psychologists have opted to utilize other assessment methods such as the MacArthur Competence Assessment Tool – Criminal Adjudication [MacCAT-CA] and Fitness …

Allowed To Stay: An Exploration Of Dhs New Guidelines To Dismiss Certain Immigration Cases, Jazmin E. De La Cruz Sanchez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) guideline issued with the intent of reducing case backlogs has led to the dismissal of many immigrants’ legal proceedings. Having their case dismissed has allowed those immigrants to stay within the United States essentially with no legal status. I argue in this paper that these changes have left many in a state that’s been termed liminal legality. Building on previous research that employs this concept, I specifically argue that being in this position affects one’s employment, income, prospects for upward mobility, and future legal standing. Although this new guideline was created to …

Higher Law And Lincoln's Antislavery Constitutionalism: What It Means To Say The Civil War Was Fought Over Slavery, Joel A. Rogers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The US Civil War was fought over slavery. But what do we really mean when we say that? This paper examines that question, first by exploring the idea of “higher law,” which gained tremendous traction in American society starting around 1850. Proponents of the idea claimed that laws such as the Fugitive Slave Act are immoral; that the immorality of such laws is self-evident, and that such immoral laws should be resisted—sometimes even with violence. Meanwhile, opponents of the idea of higher law were not necessarily in favor of slavery, but they opposed the use of extra-Constitutional means to bring …

Bearer Negotiable Instruments: Addressing A Financial Intelligence Gap And Identifying Criminogenic Weaknesses, Hollis B. Kegg

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Bearer Negotiable Instruments (BNI) are a long-standing category of financial instruments used to transfer large amounts of money in ways that may not be subject to regulation, reporting, tracking, review, or oversight. There is limited information available on BNIs, and no evidence that any studies have been undertaken on BNIs alone, much less reported. Increasingly, BNIs are being used for illegal purposes including money laundering. This study gathers information about their characteristics, nature, purpose, legal status, and numbers. It also focuses on the crime risks associated with BNIs, the crime opportunities they facilitate, and the criminal weaknesses in the financial …

Children And The Cold War: Race & Hypocrisy Amid Fear Of Nuclear War, Richard D. Mctaggart Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

During the Cold War, American propaganda centered the wellbeing of the child in its messaging warning of atomic attack at the hands of the Soviet Union. However, despite American claims that all children were valued by the United States, this was proven untrue by its unequal treatment of Black children.

Helping The Helpers: The Role Of Organizational Support And Peer Influence On Police Officer Receptivity To Employee Assistance Programs, Kenneth Quick

Publications and Research

Purpose – This study aims to investigate critical differences between police officer willingness to use and recommend an employee assistance program (EAP) to a peer, including the relationship between officer perceptions of macro-level organizational support and micro-level EAP support.

Design/methodology/approach – A survey of 213 police officers from a large, urban police department in the Northeast United States of America is used to evaluate the relationship between officer perceptions of the EAP and the officers’ willingness to use and recommend the EAP to peers. Generalized linear regression models are used to evaluate the moderating effect of perceived organizational support (POS) …

Ukraine’S Quest For Justice: Accountability For Atrocities Committed In The Russia-Ukraine War, Tetiana Karpus

Dissertations and Theses

The Russian Federation's full-scale military invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, has been marked by numerous documented atrocities, potentially falling under the categories of war crimes and crimes against humanity. This thesis aims to explore whether these apparent human rights and humanitarian law violations merit international prosecution. It also assesses the suitability and feasibility of various mechanisms, such as establishing national courts, "internationalized" or "hybrid" tribunals, or resorting to the International Criminal Court (ICC), drawing insights from past experiences in transitional and retributive justice.

Extradition In Post-Roe America, Alejandra L. Caraballo, Cynthia Conti-Cook, Yveka Pierre, Michelle Mcgrath, Hillary Aarons

City University of New York Law Review

The United States is on the brink of a crisis brought on by the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health. Eliminating the constitutional right to abortion will create a massive discordance in the criminal laws between states not seen since before the Civil War. This discordance in criminal laws will create tension between states that criminalize abortion and those that protect it as a state constitutional right. States such as Connecticut are already passing shield laws for abortion access and gender affirming care, while states such as Louisiana are proposing to classify abortion as …

Nysrpa V. Bruen And New York: A Lost Opportunity For Racial Equity In The Polarizing Gun Conversation, Zamir Ben-Dan

City University of New York Law Review

On June 23, 2022, the United States Supreme Court handed down its decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen,1 which invalidated the “proper cause” requirement of New York’s “Sullivan Law,” its gun licensing statute. Reactions to this deci-sion were predictably mixed, largely drawn along the regular partisan lines.2 For those concerned about racial justice, this decision created an opportunity for honest dialogue about how to enhance public safety in a nondiscriminatory way while being consistent with the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Second Amendment. Unfortunately, this was bound to be a lost opportunity in New …

Footnote Forum’S Moderated Conversation With The Authors Of The Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act And Criminalized Immigrant Survivors, Assia Serrano And Nathan Yaffe, Assia Serrano, Nathan Yaffe

City University of New York Law Review

No abstract provided.

Reducing Multigenerational Poverty In New York Through Sentencing Reform, Jared Trujillo

City University of New York Law Review

The relationship between incarceration and poverty is circular, cyclical, and symbiotic – poverty is a cause of incarceration, and incarceration causes poverty. In the 1970’s and 1990’s, New York led the country in enacting draconian sentencing laws that required judges to sentence children and adults to longer periods of incarceration, while also reducing the ability of incarcerated people to earn time off of their sentences for participation in rehabilitative, vocational, and educational programming. For the past half century, these harsh sentencing laws have been the primary driver of mass incarceration in New York. As a result, generations of families with …

Front Matter

City University of New York Law Review

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

City University of New York Law Review

No abstract provided.

“What If You’Re Disabled And Undocumented?”: Reflections On Intersectionality, Disability Justice, And Representing Undocumented And Disabled Latinx Client, Elizabeth Butterworth

City University of New York Law Review

In Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice, Leah L. Piepzna-Samarasinha asks a series of questions to illustrate how disability rights law fails to address the needs of those who experience multiple systems of oppression, including: “What if you’re disabled and undocumented?” This article draws on research from across disciplines, with a focus on personal narratives, to reflect on and respond to Piepzna-Samarashinha’s question, specifically with regard to the experience of immigrants who are disabled, undocumented, and Latinx. As such, it centers disability justice analyses and describes how ableism and white nationalism are mutually reinforcing bedrocks of immigration law, and how the …

No Settled Law On Settled Land: Legal Struggles For Native American Land And Sovereignty Rights, Laura Waldman

City University of New York Law Review

Since the early years of colonization, Native American people have engaged in continuous legal struggles for land and sovereignty, which have exposed the colonial underpinnings and white supremacist worldview that are the root cause of their ongoing subjugation. In modern times, that often takes the form of government-backed corporate control over natural resources. This note traces the historical links from treaty violations by early white settlers for the purpose of usurping plantation land and gold, to recent incursions by companies building unwanted oil and gas pipelines on Native American lands.

Both then and now, using law as a tool of …

Women's Dignity, Women's Prisons: Combatting Sexual Abuse In America's Prisons, Erin Daly, Paul Stanley Holdorf, Kelly Harnett, Jane Doe, Domonique Grimes

City University of New York Law Review

Staff sexual abuse is rampant throughout the American prison system. This is true despite a federal law—the aspirationally titled Prison Rape Elimination Act (“PREA”)—that has been in place for 20 years and despite the rare conviction of prison officials who are found guilty of rape or sexual abuse of people who are incarcerated. Sexual contact between prison staff and incarcerated people is by definition illegal because the power imbalance between people in custody and those who are under their control makes consent impossible as a matter of law. Staff-on-prisoner sexual abuse takes many forms, including sexual humiliation, sexually degrading language …

An Asian American Challenge To Restrictive Voting Laws: Enforcing Section 208 Of The Voting Rights Act In Texas, Kyuwon Shim, Michelle David, Susana Lorenzo-Giguere

City University of New York Law Review

Under Section 208 of the Voting Rights Act (“VRA”), any voter who is blind, disabled, or unable to read or write is entitled to assistance to vote by a person of the voter’s choice. Section 208 guarantees that such voter may choose a person they trust to assist them in navigating the voting process and cast a ballot, with only two limitations: To prevent financial influence on the voter’s ballot choices, the assistor cannot be the voter’s employer or union representative. In Texas, this law protects millions of limited-English proficient (“LEP”), disabled, and illiterate citizens. In 2015, the Asian American …

This Article Is Considered Terrorism In The Philippines: The Role Of People's Lawyers In Class Struggle, Amanda Katapang

City University of New York Law Review

Lawyers do not need to be confined to simply supporting the fight for liberation but can and should be part and parcel to the struggle. Legal theory and practice do not need to be divorced from revolutionary theory and practice. In the National Democratic (ND) Movement in the Philippines, people’s lawyers do not just participate in legal defense or campaigns but ultimately in class struggle against the exploiters and oppressors. This Comment explores these principles and lessons from the Philippines and their application in the ND Movement’s overseas component, building upon the canon of movement lawyering.

The Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act And Criminalized Immigrant Survivors, Assia Serrano, Nathan Yaffe

City University of New York Law Review

This piece explores how New York’s Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act (“DVSJA”), a law meant to grant freedom to criminalized survivors, plays out in practice for criminalized immigrant survivors. New York enacted the DVSJA to address the unjust, but common, harsh punishment of survivors for conduct that an abuser compels, coerces, or otherwise causes. When the court grants a survivor DVSJA relief, the material benefit is shortening that survivor’s sentence of incarceration.

However, for criminalized immigrant survivors, the DVSJA’s promise of freedom may amount to little more than a mirage because DVSJA relief does not expunge, vacate, or alter underlying …

High Risk Hustling: Payment Processors Sexual Proxies And Discrimination By Design, Zahra Stardust, Danielle Blunt, Gabriella Garcia, Lorelei Lee, Kate D'Adamo, Rachel Kuo

City University of New York Law Review

Sex workers are increasingly documenting financial discrimination when accessing banks, payment processors and financial providers. As hustle economy workers, barriers to digital financial infrastructure impact sex workers’ abilities to maintain their livelihoods, resulting in structural marginalization and vulnerability to violence. Internationally, peer-led sex worker organizations have documented payment processors that discriminate, collating public policies and user experiences. They report refusals of merchant services, being unable to open accounts, being denied loans, finance or insurance, higher premiums, and having money frozen, withheld or forfeited.

In this article, we examine the policies of banks and payment providers who refuse service to sex …

Made For Export: How U.S. And Philippine Policies Commodify And Traffick Filipino Nurses, Emlyn Dy-Cok Medalla

City University of New York Law Review

Filipino nurses have been celebrated as heroes over the course of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Some publications used this time to highlight the experiences of Filipino healthcare workers and the legacy behind the migration of Filipino nurses. However, the mass migration of Filipino nurses is a phenomenon that has grown out of a legacy of colonialism and imperialism. The United States relies on the exploitation of Filipino nurses as a band-aid solution to the nursing shortage that started in the 1970s. In response to two recent federal court decisions that make clear the practice of human trafficking in U.S.-Philippine employment …

"Inherently Expressive": Bds Organizing For Palestinian Liberation At Cuny School Of Law And Beyond, Students For Justice In Palestine (Sjp), Jewish Law Students Association (Jlsa), City University Of New York (Cuny) School Of Law

City University of New York Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Heirs' Property Problem: Racial Caste Origins And Systemic Effects In The Black Community, Brenda Gibson

City University of New York Law Review

This article enters the conversation about Black poverty in a new way—discussing the phenomenon of the heirs’ property ownership model as an impediment to Black wealth. Though heirs’ property seems a rather innocuous concept in property law, juxtaposed with the history of Black people in the United States, particularly through the lens of the South Carolina Low Country and American systems that have birthed and nurtured incalculable inequities for us, it becomes clear that heirs’ property ownership is much more. It is both cause and effect: cause as it was birthed out of America’s racial caste system; and effect in …

Sexual Intimacy As A Fundamental, Human Right: Conjugal Visits And The Right To Be Unmarried, Deema Nagib

City University of New York Law Review

The United States incarcerates approximately 2 million people on any given day, more than any other country in the world. Over the years, we’ve seen growing emphasis on the rights and human needs of the incarcerated. Specifically, there have been growing movements to end the use of solitary confinement; reduce or eliminate the costs of phone calls, visits, and other methods of communication; end prison slavery and implement living wages for incarcerated people; and increase opportunities for education and other meaningful programming. However, little emphasis has been placed on an incarcerated person’s right and ability to be sexual. A desire …

Prosecutors Must Use Their Immense Discretion To End The Criminalization Of Survivors Of Gender-Based Violence Who Act In Self-Defense, Tracy Renee Mccarter, Samah Sisay

City University of New York Law Review

In March 2020, Tracy McCarter defended her life during a domestic violence incident that resulted in the death of her husband. She was arrested and subsequently spent months at Rikers Island during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic after being charged with murder in the second degree by the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. Tracy McCarter's case is only one example of how the United States' criminal legal system deems that certain individuals, particularly Black women, have no claim to self-defense. Discussing Tracy McCarter's case and other cases of self-defense, this Article provides an overview of the limited applicability of self-defense …

A Jailscraper Rises In New York City’S Skyline And Casts A Shadow Over Manhattan’S Chinatown: An Examination Of Its Approval Process, Kimberly Fong

City University of New York Law Review

New York City will soon have the distinction of constructing one of the tallest jails—if not the tallest—in the world. The jail will be a new addition to New York City’s skyline at 295 feet tall, even taller than Chicago’s Metropolitan Correctional Center. As part of former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan to close Rikers Island as a detention center, this jail is part of the Borough-Based Jail Program intended to accommodate a smaller jail population in four smaller jails located in the Bronx, Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens. The impetus for closing Rikers came in part from increased concern that …

Cookies, Pop-Ups And Commercials: How Tech Companies' Privacy Promises Are Preserving Their Data Dominance, Cailley Lapara

Capstones

As antitrust sentiment focused on Big Tech from regulators and consumers grows, companies like Google and Apple and more have announced plans to move away from the behavioral ad business model that brought the companies to the size they are today. This trend is marketed to customers as a way to address their growing concerns over privacy and data collection. It also comes as the companies face sweeping antitrust litigation and legislation that would break up the firms. But the companies' claims of moving towards privacy are sketchy at best, and appear to serve as a way for the companies …

Fighting For The Right To Dance In Nyc’S Public Parks, Caithlin Peña

Capstones

Kanami Kusajima is an ink dancer and street performer who dances and creates art at Washington Square Park. She’s also been clashing with the Park Enforcement Patrol officers, who patrol the area. Her attempts to create a safer space for her fellow performers brings to light the complicated rules and regulations as well as the obstacles street performers face on the daily. Link to capstone project: https://medium.com/@caithlin.pena53/fighting-for-the-right-to-dance-in-nycs-public-parks-2cab922d1a1c