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Articles 1441 - 1470 of 13354

Full-Text Articles in Law

A National Movement For Access To Justice Must Be Holistic, Justine Olderman, Runa Rajagopal Apr 2019

A National Movement For Access To Justice Must Be Holistic, Justine Olderman, Runa Rajagopal

Fordham Law Review Online

Jazmine Headley is one of many parents across New York City who depends on childcare benefits in order to work and to be the best single parent she can be to her one-year-old son. When her son’s daycare reported that it was no longer receiving payment from the city-issued childcare voucher, Jazmine’s only option was to take a day off of work to go to her local benefits center and figure out what was wrong. Making the trip to the benefits center meant that Jazmine had to miss a full day’s wage, and navigate the bureaucratic public assistance system, all …

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Building A Movement: The Lessons Of Fines And Fees, Lisa Foster Apr 2019

Building A Movement: The Lessons Of Fines And Fees, Lisa Foster

Fordham Law Review Online

I doubt we will ever experience something we (or others) would call an Access to Justice Movement in the United States. The goal is too amorphous, lacks immediacy, and doesn’t resonate: If people don’t perceive that many of their problems have a legal solution, why would they rally to support “100 percent access to effective assistance for essential civil legal needs”? The legal system is too big, too complicated, and too removed from people’s everyday experiences. And especially in low-income communities of color, distrust of the justice system runs deep. People don’t want access to a system they believe is …

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Integrating The Access To Justice Movement, Lauren Sudeall Apr 2019

Integrating The Access To Justice Movement, Lauren Sudeall

Fordham Law Review Online

Last fall, advocates of social change came together at the A2J Summit at Fordham University School of Law and discussed how to galvanize a national access to justice movement—who would it include, and what would or should it attempt to achieve? One important preliminary question we tackled was how such a movement would define “justice,” and whether it would apply only to the civil justice system. Although the phrase “access to justice” is not exclusively civil in nature, more often than not it is taken to have that connotation. Lost in that interpretation is an opportunity to engage in a …

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Self-Representation Is Becoming The Norm And Driving Reform, Katherine Alteneder Apr 2019

Self-Representation Is Becoming The Norm And Driving Reform, Katherine Alteneder

Fordham Law Review Online

The impact of civil legal entanglement on individuals and communities in matters involving essential basic needs—such as housing, safety, food security, health, education, wages, and family matters—is profound, and, unlike criminal proceedings, there is no right to counsel. Thus, people are, for the most part, their own champions. The outcomes of these entanglements shape the culture, well-being, and capacity of our communities and ought to be of fundamental concern for those engaged in social justice, anti-poverty, and civil rights work.

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Don't Go It Alone, Ariel Simon, Sandra Ambrozy Apr 2019

Don't Go It Alone, Ariel Simon, Sandra Ambrozy

Fordham Law Review Online

Civil legal challenges cut across an astonishing range of headline-making social issues. And so, while it is possible to make a compelling case for “access to justice” without tying it to issues of inequality, mobility, race, and equity, that is no way to build or ally with a movement. Access to justice should not just be about “justice” in a narrow legalistic sense, but in the way that the broader world understands it and people feel it, driven by imperatives such as: expanding opportunities for underserved populations; creating legal systems that protect the most vulnerable; and building institutions and structures …

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Access To Legal Help Is A Human Service, Jo-Ann Wallace Apr 2019

Access To Legal Help Is A Human Service, Jo-Ann Wallace

Fordham Law Review Online

We are in a pivotal, transformational moment for justice reform in the United States. One of the key strategies undergirding the transformation is a redefinition of interrelated systems that can work together to improve lives. This includes defining access to legal help as an integral part of human services systems.

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Striking A Match, Not A Pose, For Access To Justice, Gillian K. Hadfield Apr 2019

Striking A Match, Not A Pose, For Access To Justice, Gillian K. Hadfield

Fordham Law Review Online

One of the things that persistently puzzles and frustrates me in my work on access to justice is just how hard it is to light a fire under anyone about this issue. And I do not think that we are going to make progress on access to justice—to start a movement—until that fire is lit.

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"What Do We Want!"?, Rebecca L. Sandefur Apr 2019

"What Do We Want!"?, Rebecca L. Sandefur

Fordham Law Review Online

If asked, most Americans would very likely say that they would rather have “justice” than something like “injustice.” And if asked what “justice” means, many would have an answer. Some responses would name abstract ideals from one religious or cultural tradition or another. One of this type that is particularly dear to me speaks of letting the oppressed go free and breaking every yoke. But other answers about the meaning of justice would be more concrete: “my son wouldn’t be in jail”; “I could pay my hospital bills”; “somebody would help me with this problem.” These definitions of justice reflect …

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A Perspective From The Judiciary On Access To Justice, Jonathan Lippman Apr 2019

A Perspective From The Judiciary On Access To Justice, Jonathan Lippman

Fordham Law Review Online

I decided early in 2009, upon becoming Chief Judge and the steward of the justice system in New York, to focus my energy on ensuring that everyone gets their day in court. Regardless of how a person looks or where he or she was born, and regardless of whether or not a person has resources or power, justice cannot be about the color of your skin or the amount of money in your pocket. Justice must mean that when people are fighting for the necessities of life, for the roof over their heads, they must get the legal assistance that …

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Building The Access To Justice Movement, David Udell Apr 2019

Building The Access To Justice Movement, David Udell

Fordham Law Review Online

There are innumerable individual problems of access to civil justice. Civil justice, or its absence, will often determine whether people can keep their homes, their family relationships, their health and well-being, their actual safety, their jobs, and their opportunity for a fair resolution of so many more of the challenges that life presents. There are presently many important efforts that enable people to obtain justice, both through the direct provision of legal services and through the broader pursuit of systemic reforms, such as securing and expanding civil rights to counsel, expanding roles for non-lawyers to empower individuals and communities, making …

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Fordham Lawyer, No. 16 - Spring 2019, Fordham Law Alumni Association, Fordham Law School Apr 2019

Fordham Lawyer, No. 16 - Spring 2019, Fordham Law Alumni Association, Fordham Law School

Fordham Lawyer

Fordham Lawyer magazine was first published in 1988 and continued through 2004. It returned in 2011 under Dean Michael M. Martin. The magazine shines a spotlight on faculty research, the Law School community, and the accomplishments of our alumni. No issues were published between 2004 and 2011.

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Daca, Government Lawyers, And The Public Interest, Stephen Lee, Sameer M. Ashar Apr 2019

Daca, Government Lawyers, And The Public Interest, Stephen Lee, Sameer M. Ashar

Fordham Law Review

On June 15, 2012, the Obama administration announced a significant change in immigration policy: Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano began to instruct immigration officials to defer enforcement actions against those noncitizens who would likely be eligible for relief under the DREAM Act, should Congress choose to pass it. This program, which came to be known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), has become the most significant immigration-benefits program in a generation. Not since Congress passed a comprehensive reform bill in 1986, which included a pathway to citizenship, has an immigration program so quickly and positively changed the lives of …

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Institutional Independence: Lawyers And The Administrative State, Melissa Mortazavi Apr 2019

Institutional Independence: Lawyers And The Administrative State, Melissa Mortazavi

Fordham Law Review

The institutional structure where federal government lawyers practice is fraught with political and economic pressures that undermine the ability of lawyers to exercise independent professional judgment. A lack of candid legal advice in this space not only removes a pivotal fail-safe between legal and illegal state action but also precariously imbalances the powerful administrative state, exposing it to undue political influence. For these reasons, this Article argues that structural changes to administrative institutions must be made to support and nurture lawyers’ ability to independently determine the bounds of legality. Previous scholarship has examined the role of professional independence for lawyers …

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Lawyers In Government Service—A Foreword, Bruce A. Green Apr 2019

Lawyers In Government Service—A Foreword, Bruce A. Green

Fordham Law Review

Lawyers in government serve in many different roles, both representational and nonrepresentational. Some represent the federal, state, or local government, a particular governmental entity (such as a department of consumer affairs) or agency (such as the NLRB), or public officials in their official capacity. These lawyers render a range of legal services and act as litigators, negotiators, drafters, and counselors. Other lawyers in government serve in nonrepresentative capacities; for example, as elected or appointed officials or as their aides. Scholarship on government lawyers addresses these varied roles and functions from varied perspectives, drawing on different bodies of law and legal …

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Law And Nonlegal Norms In Government Lawyers' Ethics: Discretion Meets Legitimacy, W. Bradley Wendel Apr 2019

Law And Nonlegal Norms In Government Lawyers' Ethics: Discretion Meets Legitimacy, W. Bradley Wendel

Fordham Law Review

This Essay is about the role of unwritten norms in the ethical decisionmaking of government lawyers. Because the ethical obligations of lawyers, including government lawyers, are closely tied to the legal rights and obligations of clients, this analysis necessarily depends on understanding the relationship between written law and unwritten norms. As we all know, however, written law leaves gaps, ambiguities, and zones of unregulated discretion. Prosecutors in the United States, for example, have virtually unreviewable discretion to decide who to investigate and charge, what charges to bring, and whether to offer immunity in exchange for cooperation. No one has a …

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Fosta: A Hostile Law With A Human Cost, Lura Chamberlain Apr 2019

Fosta: A Hostile Law With A Human Cost, Lura Chamberlain

Fordham Law Review

The Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act of 2017 (“FOSTA”) rescinded legal immunity for websites that intentionally host user-generated advertisements for sex trafficking. However, Congress’s mechanism of choice to protect sex-trafficking victims has faced critique and backlash from advocates for those involved in commercial sex, who argue that FOSTA’s broad legislative language does far more to harm sex workers—a group distinct from sex-trafficking victims—than it does to end sex trafficking, chilling significant protected speech in the process. These critics posit that FOSTA’s results toward eradicating sex trafficking have been negligible and that its chief outcome has …

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It Is Emphatically The Province And Duty Of State Courts To Say What Tort Law Is, Sijin Choi Apr 2019

It Is Emphatically The Province And Duty Of State Courts To Say What Tort Law Is, Sijin Choi

Fordham Law Review

Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2011 decision in PLIVA, Inc. v. Mensing, consumers of generic prescription drugs suffering from unwarnedof side effects largely remain without an avenue of legal recourse due to their inability to sue their own manufacturers. But in the pursuit for legal redress, some generic plaintiffs have pursued a narrow window of liability by bringing failure-to-warn claims, sounding in negligence, against the manufacturer responsible for producing the brand-name equivalent of the generic drug. Such claims rest on the rationale that the sui generis federal regulatory scheme governing the prescription drug industry furnishes an inextricable nexus between …

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Mr. Try-It Goes To Washington: Law And Policy At The Agricultural Adjustment Administration, Daniel R. Ernst Apr 2019

Mr. Try-It Goes To Washington: Law And Policy At The Agricultural Adjustment Administration, Daniel R. Ernst

Fordham Law Review

In December 1933, Jerome Frank, the general counsel of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) but better known for writing Law and the Modern Mind (1930), a sensational attack on legal formalism, told an audience at the Association of American Law Schools a parable about two lawyers in the New Deal, each required to interpret the same ambiguous language of a statute. The first lawyer, “Mr. Absolute,” reasoned from the text and canons of statutory interpretation without regard for the desirability of the outcome. “Mr. Try-It,” in contrast, began with the outcome he thought desirable. He then said to himself, “The …

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May Federal Prosecutors Take Direction From The President?, Bruce A. Green, Rebecca Roiphe Apr 2019

May Federal Prosecutors Take Direction From The President?, Bruce A. Green, Rebecca Roiphe

Fordham Law Review

Suppose the president sought to serve as prosecutor-in-chief, telling prosecutors when to initiate or dismiss criminal charges in individual cases and making other discretionary decisions that are normally reserved to trained professionals familiar with the facts, law, and traditions of the U.S. Department of Justice. To what extent may prosecutors follow the president’s direction? In recent presidential administrations, the president has respected prosecutorial independence; while making policy decisions, the president deferred to the Attorney General and subordinate federal prosecutors to conduct individual criminal cases. In a recent article, we argued that this is as it should be because the president …

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Hidden Nondefense: Partisanship In State Attorneys General Amicus Briefs And The Need For Transparency, Lisa F. Grumet Apr 2019

Hidden Nondefense: Partisanship In State Attorneys General Amicus Briefs And The Need For Transparency, Lisa F. Grumet

Fordham Law Review

In all fifty states, the State Attorney General (SAG)—as the state’s chief legal officer—is charged with defending state laws that are challenged in court. If an SAG declines to defend or challenges a state law on the ground that it is unconstitutional—an action scholars describe as “nondefense”— the SAG ordinarily will disclose this decision to the public. This Essay discusses a hidden form of nondefense that can occur when SAGs file amicus curiae briefs on behalf of their states in matters before the U.S. Supreme Court. Surprisingly, some SAGs have joined multistate amicus briefs that support invalidating other states’ laws …

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All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace: Border Searches Of Electronic Devices In The Digital Age, Sean O'Grady Apr 2019

All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace: Border Searches Of Electronic Devices In The Digital Age, Sean O'Grady

Fordham Law Review

The border search exception to the Fourth Amendment has historically given the U.S. government the right to conduct suspicionless searches of the belongings of any individual crossing the border. The federal government relies on the border search exception to search and detain travelers’ electronic devices at the border without a warrant or individualized suspicion. The government’s justification for suspicionless searches of electronic devices under the traditional border search exception for travelers’ property has recently been called into question in a series of federal court decisions. In March 2013, the Ninth Circuit in United States v. Cotterman became the first federal …

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Differentiating Legislative From Nonlegislative Rules: An Empirical And Qualitative Analysis, Nadav D. Ben Zur Apr 2019

Differentiating Legislative From Nonlegislative Rules: An Empirical And Qualitative Analysis, Nadav D. Ben Zur

Fordham Law Review

The elusive distinction between legislative rules and nonlegislative rules has frustrated courts, motivated voluminous scholarly debate, and ushered in a flood of litigation against administrative agencies. In the absence of U.S. Supreme Court guidance on the proper demarcating line, circuit courts have adopted various tests to ascertain a rule’s proper classification. This Note analyzes all 241 cases in which a circuit court has used one or more of the enunciated tests to differentiate legislative from nonlegislative rules. These opinions come from every one of the thirteen circuits and span the period of the early 1950s through 2018. This Note identifies …

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Dignity And Social Meaning: Obergefell, Windsor, And Lawrence As Constitutional Dialogue, Steve Sanders Apr 2019

Dignity And Social Meaning: Obergefell, Windsor, And Lawrence As Constitutional Dialogue, Steve Sanders

Fordham Law Review

The U.S. Supreme Court’s three most important gay and lesbian rights decisions—Obergefell v. Hodges, United States v. Windsor, and Lawrence v. Texas—are united by the principle that gays and lesbians are entitled to dignity. Beyond their tangible consequences, the common constitutional evil of state bans on same-sex marriage, the federal Defense of Marriage Act, and sodomy laws was that they imposed dignitary harm. This Article explores how the gay and lesbian dignity cases exemplify the process by which constitutional law emerges from a social and cultural dialogue in which the Supreme Court actively participates. In doing …

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Legal Dilemmas Facing White House Counsel In The Trump Administration: The Costs Of Public Disclosure Of Fisa Requests, Peter Margulies Apr 2019

Legal Dilemmas Facing White House Counsel In The Trump Administration: The Costs Of Public Disclosure Of Fisa Requests, Peter Margulies

Fordham Law Review

Not every presidential administration can forge a new brand of government lawyering. Historically, government lawyering has swung between two poles: (1) dialogic lawyering, which stresses reasoned elaboration, respect for institutions, and continuity with unwritten norms embodied in past practice; and (2) insular lawyering, which entails opaque definitions, disregard of other institutions, and departures from unwritten norms. Because President Trump regularly signals his disdain for institutions, such as the intelligence community, and unwritten norms, such as prosecutorial independence, senior lawyers in the White House have added a new mode of legal representation that entails ad hoc adjustments to President Trump’s mercurial …

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Professionals, Politicos, And Crony Attorneys General: A Historical Sketch Of The U.S. Attorney General As A Case For Structural Independence, Jed Handelsman Shugerman Apr 2019

Professionals, Politicos, And Crony Attorneys General: A Historical Sketch Of The U.S. Attorney General As A Case For Structural Independence, Jed Handelsman Shugerman

Fordham Law Review

Historically, the office of the U.S. Attorney General has been identified as “quasi-judicial” or having “quasi-judicial” aspects. Other parts of the Department of Justice (DOJ) have also been described as quasi-judicial, such as the Office of Legal Counsel and the Solicitor General. A glance at a list of past attorneys general seems to confirm this judicial aspiration in practice. Nine attorneys general became U.S. Supreme Court justices, and others were notably judicious and professional in their tenure in the office. Of course, there are some infamous examples of unprofessional cronyism—the appointment of friends or associates to positions of authority, without …

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Disagreeing Over Agreements: A Cross-Sectional Analysis Of No-Poaching Agreements In The Franchise Sector, Catherine E. Schaefer Apr 2019

Disagreeing Over Agreements: A Cross-Sectional Analysis Of No-Poaching Agreements In The Franchise Sector, Catherine E. Schaefer

Fordham Law Review

In October 2016, the Department of Justice Antitrust Division announced its intent to proceed criminally against parties to no-poaching agreements, or agreements between or among employers not to hire each other’s workers. Consequently, a wave of class action antitrust lawsuits has raised questions about the legality of no-poaching or no-hire provisions that certain franchised food businesses use. Fast-food restaurant chains, including McDonald’s, Carl’s Jr., and Pizza Hut, have recently found themselves embroiled in such litigation. This Note examines prior antitrust litigation involving no-poaching agreements between companies and discusses the differences and similarities between these cases and the cases involving franchised …

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Reevaluating School Searches Following School-To-Prison Pipeline Reforms, Josh Gupta-Kagan Apr 2019

Reevaluating School Searches Following School-To-Prison Pipeline Reforms, Josh Gupta-Kagan

Fordham Law Review

The U.S. Supreme Court held in New Jersey v. T.L.O. that school officials could search students without a warrant and with only reasonable suspicion, not probable cause, because of schools’ need for discipline and the relationship between educators and students. That case belongs to a body of Fourth Amendment cases involving, in T.L.O.’s terms, “special needs, beyond the normal need for law enforcement.” What Fourth Amendment standard, then, governs searches involving one of the roughly 20,000 school resource officers (SROs) in American schools? Most state courts to decide the issue in the 1990s and 2000s found that T.L.O. applied to …

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Don't Bring A Cad File To A Gun Fight: A Technological Solution To The Legal And Practical Challenges Of Enforcing Itar On The Internet, Catherine Tremble Mar 2019

Don't Bring A Cad File To A Gun Fight: A Technological Solution To The Legal And Practical Challenges Of Enforcing Itar On The Internet, Catherine Tremble

Fordham Law Review Online

This Essay begins by outlining Cody Wilson’s motivation to found his organization, Defense Distributed, and the organization’s progress toward its goals. Then, Part II provides a brief overview of the protracted legal battle between Wilson and the State Department over the right to publish Computer-Aided Design (CAD) files on the internet that enable the 3D printing of guns and lower receivers. Part III.A takes a brief look at whether these CAD files are rightly considered speech at all and, if so, what level of protection they might receive. Part III.B then addresses the problem of even asking whether the files …

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Negligent Disruption Of Genetic Planning: Carving Out A New Tort Theory To Address Novel Questions Of Liability In An Era Of Reproductive Innovation, Tracey Tomlinson Mar 2019

Negligent Disruption Of Genetic Planning: Carving Out A New Tort Theory To Address Novel Questions Of Liability In An Era Of Reproductive Innovation, Tracey Tomlinson

Fordham Law Review Online

This Essay will address current concerns pertaining to ART-related negligence, and ultimately recommends the adoption of a new tort— negligent disruption of genetic planning (NDGP). This tort would enable plaintiffs to recover damages when an ART clinic’s negligent actions thwart reproductive planning, while simultaneously balancing the serious moral and ethical questions that arise in these situations. This argument proceeds in three Parts. Part I discusses the technological evolution of ART and gives examples of ART-related negligence cases that have occurred in the United States. Part II lays out the current U.S. tort remedies relied on by plaintiffs in these situations, …

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Gender And Religious Dress At The European Court Of Human Rights: A Comparison Of Șahin V. Turkey And Arslan V. Turkey, Bronwyn Roantree Mar 2019

Gender And Religious Dress At The European Court Of Human Rights: A Comparison Of Șahin V. Turkey And Arslan V. Turkey, Bronwyn Roantree

Fordham Law Review Online

This paper examines the regulation of the religious dress of men and women in two decisions by the European Court of Human Rights: Şahin v. Turkey and Arslan v. Turkey. In Şahin, the Court upheld a ban on the wearing of the Islamic headscarf, an article of clothing worn exclusively by women, at a public university. In Arslan, the Court rejected a ban on the wearing of a type of religious uniform worn only by men who were members of a politically subversive Islamic group. In both cases, the Court asserted that its decision was necessary to …

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