Law Commons^™

Office Of Attorney General Peter F. Neronha, Attorney General: Access To Public Records Act, Open Meetings Act, Attorney General, State Of Rhode Island, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

25th Annual Open Government Summit: Your Guide To The Access To Public Records Act & Open Meetings Act, Peter F. Neronha, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

No Sense Of Decency, Kathryn E. Miller

Articles

For nearly seventy years, the Court has assessed Eighth Amendment claims by evaluating “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.” In this Article, I examine the evolving standards of decency test, which has long been a punching bag for critics on both the right and the left. Criticism of the doctrine has been fierce, but largely academic until recent years. Some fault the test for being too majoritarian, while others argue that it provides few constraints on the Justices’ discretion, permitting their personal predilections to rule the day. For many, the test is seen …

Law Library Blog (January 2023): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

24th Annual Open Government Summit 2022, Roger Williams University School Of Law, Rhode Island Office Of The Attorney General

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Respecting The Identity And Dignity Of All Indigenous Americans, Bill Piatt

Faculty Articles

The United States government attempted to eliminate Native Americans through outright physical extermination and later by the eradication of Indian identity through a boarding school system and other "paper genocide" mechanisms. One of those mechanisms is the recognition of some Natives but not the majority, including those who ancestors were enslaved. The assistance provided to recognized tribes by the government is inadequate to compensate for the historical and continuing suffering these people endure. And yet the problem is compounded for those unrecognized Natives whose ancestors were enslaved and whose tribal identity was erased. They are subjected to a double-barreled discrimination. …

Perceptions Of Justice In Multidistrict Litigation: Voices From The Crowd, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch, Margaret S. Williams

Scholarly Works

With all eyes on criminal justice reform, multidistrict litigation (MDL) has quietly reshaped civil justice, undermining fundamental tenets of due process, procedural justice, attorney ethics, and tort law along the way. In 2020, the MDL caseload tripled that of the federal criminal caseload, one out of every two cases filed in federal civil court was an MDL case, and 97% of those were products liability like opioids, talc, and Roundup.

Ordinarily, civil procedure puts tort plaintiffs in the driver’s seat, allowing them to choose who and where to sue, and what claims to bring. Procedural justice tells courts to ensure …

Changing Every Wrong Door Into The Right One: Reforming Legal Services Intake To Empower Clients, Jabeen Adawi

Articles

It’s recognized that people affected by poverty often have numerous overlapping legal needs and despite the proliferation of legal services, they are unable to receive full assistance. When a person is faced with a legal emergency, rarely is there an equivalent to a hospital’s emergency room wherein they receive an immediate diagnosis for their needs and subsequent assistance. In this paper, I focus on the process a person goes through to find assistance and argue that it is a burdensome, and demoralizing task of navigating varying protocols, procedures, and individuals. While these systems are well intentioned from the lawyer’s perspective, …

Menstrual Dignity And The Bar Exam, Margaret E. Johnson, Marcy L. Karin, Elizabeth Cooper

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines the issue of menstruation and the administration of the bar exam. Although such problems are not new, over the summer and fall of 2020, test takers and commentators took to social media to critique state board of law examiners’ (“BOLE”) policies regarding menstruation. These problems persist. Menstruators worry that if they unexpectedly bleed during the exam, they may not have access to appropriately sized and constructed menstrual products or may be prohibited from accessing the bathroom. Personal products that are permitted often must be carried in a clear, plastic bag. Some express privacy concerns that the see-through …

23rd Annual Open Government Summit: Access To Public Records Act, Open Meetings Act Powerpoint Presentation 07-30-2021, Office Of Attorney General State Of Rhode Island, Peter F. Neronha

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Menstrual Dignity And The Bar Exam, Marcy L. Karin, Margaret E. Johnson, Elizabeth B. Cooper

Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines the issue of menstruation and the administration of the bar exam. Although such problems are not new, over the summer and fall of 2020, test takers and commentators took to social media to critique state board of law examiners’ (“BOLE”) policies regarding menstruation. These problems persist. Menstruators worry that if they unexpectedly bleed during the exam, they may not have access to appropriately sized and constructed menstrual products or may be prohibited from accessing the bathroom. Personal products that are permitted often must be carried in a clear, plastic bag. Some express privacy concerns that the see-through …

Queering Bostock, Jeremiah A. Ho

All Faculty Scholarship

Although the Supreme Court’s 2020 Title VII decision, Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, is a victory for LGBTQ individuals, its doctrinal limitations unavoidably preserve a discriminatory status quo. This Article critically examines how and why Bostock fails to highlight the indignities experienced by queer minorities under decades of employment discrimination. In Bostock, Justice Gorsuch presents a sweeping textualist interpretation of Title VII that protects against sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination. Yet, the decision sparsely recognizes queer lived experiences, compared to prior pro-LGBTQ cases where such recognition contributed to developing an anti-stereotyping framework that confronted some of the heteronormative biases …

Discerning A Dignitary Offense: The Concept Of Equal 'Public Rights' During Reconstruction, Rebecca J. Scott

Articles

The mountain of modern interpretation to which the language of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution has been subjected tends to overshadow the multiple concepts of antidiscrimination that were actually circulating at the time of its drafting. Moreover, as authors on race and law have pointed out, Congress itself lacked any African American representatives during the 1866–68 moment of transitional justice. The subsequent development of a “state action doctrine” limiting the reach of federal civil rights enforcement, in turn, eclipsed important contemporary understandings of the harms that Reconstruction-era initiatives sought to combat. In contrast to the oblique language …

Law School News: Remembering John Lewis 07-18-2020, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Donald Trump, Twitter, And Islamophobia: The End Of Dignity In Presidential Rhetoric About Terrorism, Gabriel Rubin

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Donald Trump’s rhetoric is markedly different than that of just about every other American president. Trump’s speeches on terrorism and his related Islamophobia and anti-immigrant rhetoric are examined in this chapter. Trump’s use of Twitter and view of the presidency as a “permanent campaign” keep his followers in a state of near-permanent mobilization. Trump uses the rhetoric of fear to push his followers against Muslims and immigrants by linking terrorism to both groups. As Jeffrey Tulis opines, Trump is America’s first demagogue. This chapter highlights how Trump’s demagoguery and novel method for communicating with his followers has framed the terror …

Privative Copyright, Shyamkrishna Balganesh

All Faculty Scholarship

“Privative” copyright claims are infringement actions brought by authors for the unauthorized public dissemination of works that are private, unpublished, and revelatory of the author’s personal identity. Driven by considerations of authorial autonomy, dignity, and personality rather than monetary value, these claims are almost as old as Anglo-American copyright law itself. Yet modern thinking has attempted to undermine their place within copyright law and sought to move them into the domain of privacy law. This Article challenges the dominant view and argues that privative copyright claims form a legitimate part of the copyright landscape. It shows how privative copyright claims …

Constitutionalizing Nature's Law: Dignity And The Regulation Of Biotechnology In Switzerland, James Toomey

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The Swiss Constitution was amended by referendum in 1992 to include two unique provisions: Article 119, which imposes strict limits on genetic and reproductive technologies in humans in order to protect ‘human dignity’, and Article 120, which commits the Swiss federal government to limiting genetic technologies in non-human species on the basis of the ‘dignity of the creature’. This article analyzes the role of ‘dignity’ as a limit on biotechnologies in the Swiss constitutional order. It concludes that the understanding of dignity the constitution embraces codifies a contestable metaphysical theory of value at the constitutional level. Specifically, the Swiss constitutional …

An Economic Approach To Religious Exemptions, Stephanie H. Barclay

Journal Articles

Externalities caused by religious exemptions have been getting the spotlight again in light a case the U.S. Supreme Court will hear this term: Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. Some argue that religious individuals should be required to internalize the costs they impose on third parties and thus should be denied the right to practice that harmful behavior. These new progressive theories about harm trade on rhetoric and normative intuitions regarding externalities and costs. But curiously, these theories also largely ignore an influential theoretical movement that has studied externalities and costs for the last fifty years: law and economics.

This Article …

Reproducing Dignity: Race, Disability, And Reproductive Controls, Mary Crossley

Articles

Human rights treaties and American constitutional law recognize decisions about reproduction as central to human dignity. Historically and today, Black women and women with disabilities have endured numerous impairments of their freedom to form and maintain families. Other scholars have examined these barriers to motherhood. Unexplored, however, are parallels among the experiences of women in these two groups or the women for whom Blackness and disability are overlapping identities. This Article fills that void. The disturbing legacy of the Eugenics movement is manifest in many settings. Black and disabled women undergo sterilizations at disproportionately high rates. Public benefit programs discourage …

Law School News: Logan To Serve As Adviser On Restatement Third Of Torts 11-07-2019, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Law School News: Roger Williams Celebrates Pride 06-17-2019, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Dignity And Civility, Reconsidered, Leah Litman

Articles

People often talk about the Chief Justice, Justice Kagan, and Justice Breyer as the institutionalists on the modern Supreme Court. And that’s true, they are. Those Justices care about the Court as an institution and the Court’s reputation. They do not want people to look at the Court as a set of politicians in robes; and they do not want people to see judges as having ideological or partisan agendas. That is how they think of themselves, and they are willing to make compromises to maintain that image of the Court, and to set aside their personal beliefs in order …

Law School News: 'Hate And Bigotry Have No Place In America' April 18, 2019, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

2nd Annual Stonewall Lecture 04-16-2019, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Law School News: A Mandate For Change 01-24-2019, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Equality, Equity, And Dignity, Nancy E. Dowd

UF Law Faculty Publications

In this Essay I explore the definition and scope of children’s equality. I argue that equality includes equity and dignity. The meaning of each of these concepts is critical in imagining a deep, rich vision of equality, and in constructing policies to achieve that vision. This definition of equality creates affirmative rights, demands action to resolve structural discrimination that creates and sustains hierarchies among children, and requires affirmative support for children’s developmental equality.

Who Will Judge The Many When The Game Is Through: Considering The Profound Differences Between Mental Health Courts And Traditional Involuntary Civil Commitment Courts, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

This paper is an expansion of a presentation given by the author at the annual Therapeutic Jurisprudence Workshop at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, October 15, 2016. There is a developing robust literature about mental health courts (MHCrts) in the United States, and researchers have begun to focus on a broad range of empirical issues, such as the extent to which defendants are competent to waive their trial rights in such settings, the significance of diversion, etc. Also, advocates and other scholars have engaged in vigorous debates about the value of these courts, and the extent …

She's Nobody's Child/The Law Can't Touch Her At All': Seeking To Bring Dignity To Legal Proceedings Involving Juveniles, Michael L. Perlin, Alison Lynch

Articles & Chapters

Recent Supreme Court decisions declaring unconstitutional both capital punishment (Roper v. Simmons, 2005) and life without parole (Graham v. Florida, 2010) in cases involving juveniles might lead a casual observer to think that we are now in an era in which dignity of juveniles is privileged in the legal system and in which humiliation and shame are subordinated. This observation, sadly, would be wrong.

Inquiries into a range of issues involving juveniles – commitment to psychiatric institutions; trials in juvenile courts; aspects of criminal procedure that, in many jurisdictions, bar juveniles from raising the incompetency status or the insanity defense; …

From Reparations To Dignity Restoration: The Story Of The Popela Community., Bernadette Atuahene, Sanele Sibanda

All Faculty Scholarship

In certain circumstances property takings are part of a larger strategy to further subjugate a certain group within the polity by denying their humanity or their capacity to reason. These takings involve more than the confiscation of property; they also involve the deprivation of dignity. In her book, We want what’s ours: Learning from South Africa’s land restitution program, Atuahene has called these dignity takings. The Popela people are a resource-poor, but culturally-rich African community from South Africa’s Limpopo region that the colonial and apartheid regimes subjected to dignity takings. The post-apartheid state was interested not only in providing compensation …

Rethinking The Boundaries Of "Criminal Justice", Benjamin Levin

Publications

This review of The New Criminal Justice Thinking (Sharon Dolovich & Alexandra Natapoff, eds.) tracks the shifting and uncertain contours of “criminal justice” as an object of study and critique.

Specifically, I trace two themes in the book:

(1) the uncertain boundaries of the “criminal justice system” as a web of laws, actors, and institutions; and

(2) the uncertain boundaries of “criminal justice thinking” as a universe of interdisciplinary scholarship, policy discourse, and public engagement.

I argue that these two themes speak to critically important questions about the nature of criminal justice scholarship and reform efforts. Without a firm understanding …