Law Commons^™

California Is On Fire – Firefighters And Prisoners To The Rescue, Cathryn Howell

GGU Law Review Blog

California is burning at a record high rate and has seen unprecedented damage due to the increase of the severity of fires as well as the increase in the duration of fire season. However, many are unaware that inmates have been playing a very important role in mitigating these fires while serving their prison sentences by helping alongside employed firefighters in battling these dangers.

Despite all of the training and first-hand experience, many inmates are unable to become employed firefighters because the California Emergency Medical Services Authority (EMSA) will not issue them an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) Certificate, which is …

Los Angeles’S Social Equity Cannabis Applicants Are Getting Left In The Weeds, Kaitlin Martinez

GGU Law Review Blog

The passage of California Proposition 64 (Prop 64) opened the door for cities to grant licenses to businesses for the purpose of selling cannabis and to legalize personal recreational use within their own jurisdiction. The City of Los Angeles, unlike other cities, delayed the licensing of new cannabis businesses while they refined and reworked regulations to include a Social Equity Program. The City acknowledged the cannabis criminalization and enforcement had long-term and disproportionate impacts to low-income and minority communities during The War on Drugs. The Social Equity Program is designed to repair those harms by creating regulations to support and …

Executive Order No. 13925: An Attempted Stop Sign On Our Global Cyber-Freeway, Robert C. Montañez

GGU Law Review Blog

The year 2020 has brought times of physical isolation and the world has turned to the Internet as a bridge to normalcy. It is not uncommon for a person to wake up and grab his or her phone and consult it (rather than a newspaper) to gather news, browse through friends’ video “stories” shared overnight, check what is “trending” via Twitter, or even stream a popular video on YouTube. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Internet is more important than ever before and its key to success is its immediacy. On May 26, 2020, without any supporting evidence, President Trump …

The Gig Economy’S Battleground – California Proposition 22, Rebekah Didlake

GGU Law Review Blog

This November, California voters will have the chance to voice their opinion in the ongoing battle between app-based tech companies and the state of California. These companies want to continue classifying their drivers as independent contractors even though the state of California has determined these drivers are employees. So far, Uber, Lyft, and Doordash have spent $110 million backing Proposition 22, titled the “Save App-Based Drivers & Services Act.” These companies are hoping California voters will give them the relief they have not been able to receive through the courts or the state. This article analyzes Prop 22 in light …

Hiv Is Not A Crime, There Should Be No Jail Time, Bacilio Mendez Ii

GGU Law Review Blog

By way of personal, activist narrative, this blog post will provide broad context to the post-Stonewall legal landscape and the gay rights (now, the LGBTQ+) movement. The stage set, the writer will inform the audience of specific injustices brought upon persons living with HIV, during modern times, in the United States, simply based on their serostatus and offer solutions and actions that readers can take themselves.

This article includes links to State-by-State Statutory Information and several embedded video interviews, as well as an extensive bibliography.

Children In Foster Care: The Odds Are Against Them, Shawna Doughman

GGU Law Review Blog

Most child welfare reports that lead to removal of children from their homes are filed for neglect rather than abuse. Often, their parents want to take care of them, but are failing for one reason, or for many. Nonetheless, the lion’s share of the $30 billion annual budget of state and federal child welfare funding goes overwhelmingly to foster care and adoption services which remove the children from their parents, instead of to helping those families care for their own children.

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Law In The Time Of Covid-19: Legal Considerations Amidst A Growing Crisis, Justice Tecson

GGU Law Review Blog

COVID-19 has resulted in the destabilization of several aspects of human society, which may potentially cause an influx in litigation in certain practice areas such as employment, healthcare, and contract law. Although the legal effects of the pandemic have yet to be seen in their entirety, having knowledge of the potential legal issues better prepares individuals and businesses in dealing with this increased risk of litigation and could possibly help mitigate the circumstances caused by this viral, unprecedented attack on humanity.

A Narrowly-Tailored, Technical Disenfranchisement: Risking Death To Vote Amidst A Viral Pandemic, Athena Hernandez

GGU Law Review Blog

In what has been referred to as a tragedy for American democracy and one of the most egregious examples of voter suppression in history, a United States Supreme Court ruling on April 6th made it harder for citizens of Wisconsin to cast their votes amidst the coronavirus pandemic.

The Bill That Disrupted The Gig Economy: Ab-5 And Uber’S Troubling Response, Suzin Win

GGU Law Review Blog

Taken effect on January 1st, California’s Assembly Bill 5 (“AB-5”) has created a great deal of controversy. Supporters of the law praise it for its attack on inequality in the workplace, while gig-based companies, like Uber and Postmates, have filed complaints, alleging that it is unconstitutional. Signed into law in September 2019, the statute codifies the ruling of Dynamex Operations West Inc. v. Superior Court of Los Angeles, a decision by the California Supreme Court that restricts employers from labeling its workers as independent contractors. In Dynamex, the court created a new standard of presumption that all workers are …

The Submerged Metaphoricality Of Legal Language, Michael Angelo Tata

GGU Law Review Blog

According to psychoanalysis in Freud and beyond, human beings have an ego ideal, or self-identity projected outward onto society, so why can’t a discipline like the Law? Like Mathematics or Psychoanalysis, Law surely has a self-identity it continually articulates and applies. If the Law would speak for itself, how would it explain this identity? One answer would be that the Law’s version of itself as logical to the point of absurdity is projected onto society as a whole, which it subjugates through the illusion of quasi-mathematical certainty. Caught up in this intoxicating mirage, its various purveyors and practitioners, like lawyers, …

The 11th Annual Chief Justice Ronald M. George Distinguished Lecture Series, Bacilio Mendez Ii

GGU Law Review Blog

To celebrate the GGU Law Review’s 50th Anniversary milestone, the event featured a discussion with GGU Law alumna, the Honorable Morgan Brenda Christen (JD ‘86), Judge at the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. If you were unable to make this year’s Distinguished Lecture, below is just a snapshot of what you missed.