Law Commons^™

Building Community, Still Thirsty For Justice: Supporting Community Development Efforts In Baltimore, Renee Hatcher, Jaime Alison Lee

All Faculty Scholarship

Baltimore is a city of many challenges, but it possesses true communitybased strength. The city’s residents and community organizations are its greatest assets. This article highlights some of the community’s work and how the Community Development Clinic at the University of Baltimore School of Law (CDC) supports this work through its experiential learning curriculum.

The challenges facing Baltimore’s communities (systemic disinvestment, structural racism, vacant buildings, unemployment, and the criminalization of poverty, to name a few) existed long before the national media coverage and uprising surrounding the death of Freddie Gray, an unarmed Black man who suffered a fatal spinal injury …

How The Right To Speedy Trial Can Reduce Mass Pretrial Incarceration, Zina Makar

All Faculty Scholarship

Kenny Johnson1 was thirty-two years old when he was released from a Baltimore City jail— almost three years after his arrest in October 2012. Johnson was not serving a sentence, but these three years were spent under pretrial detention. He had been denied bail. Johnson’s case was a rollercoaster of delays and uncertainty, particularly towards the end of his pretrial incarceration. The need for certainty convinced Johnson to plead guilty—he could not stand knowing that his pretrial incarceration could be indefinite and he wanted to be sure he was going home, guilty or not guilty.

Between the time he was …

Faced With Crisis: The Importance Of Establishing A Comprehensive Crisis Management Plan, David E. Matchen Jr., Jason Hawkins

All Faculty Scholarship

By now, the story surrounding the death of Baltimore man Freddie Gray while in police custody is common knowledge. A series of protests afterward and emergency responses by state and local governments turned the lives of many of Baltimore’s residents upside-down for more than a week in late April and early May, including the staff at the law libraries at the University of Baltimore School of Law (UB Law) and the Thurgood Marshall Law Library at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law (Carey Law). The mood got progressively uglier as the days wore on until, just …

The Maryland Legal Aid Bureau: Decades Of Service And Reform, José F. Anderson

All Faculty Scholarship

In a legal and judicial career that spans nearly five decades, few issues have affected retiring Chief Judge Robert Mack Bell more than access for the poor to civil justice. As a student at Harvard University in the late 1960s, he would work at the Boston Legal Aid Society. As a young lawyer at a prominent Baltimore law firm, he did community and poverty law work and impressed his colleagues as one "committed to the use of the law not only to serve his clients, but also to improve society. The zeal of Chief Judge Bell for supporting access to …

Groveling At The Feet Of Football's Greedy Lords, Kenneth Lasson

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Some Words Are Injurious . . . Some Cause A Raging Storm, Kenneth Lasson

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Two Workers, Kenneth Lasson

All Faculty Scholarship

This article profiles two individuals who were workers in two distinct industries. The first profile is of Dotty Neal, who at the time of this article's writing, worked for the Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Company, in Maryland. The nature of her job and work are described, often in her own words. The second profile is of Ray Murdock, who worked as a sanitary worker, or "garbageman," in Boston, MA. Again, the nature of this kind of work is described, often in Murdock's own words. The article shows how much technology has changed in the telecommunications industry, and perhaps how much …