Law Commons^™

Law School News: For 30 Years: A Justice-Centered Mission 12-19-2023, Helga Melgar

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Haiti’S Legal Claim For Restitution: The Political Context For The Recovery Of The Double-Debt, Ira J. Kurzban

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

This article discusses Haiti’s efforts to seek restitution from France for the “Double-Debt” imposed in 1825. After Haiti gained independence in 1804 following a slave revolt, France threatened to invade and re-enslave the Haitian people if they did not pay compensation to French slave owners for their lost “property.” This became known as the Double-Debt, as French and American banks profited by converting the debt into high-interest loans. In 2003, on the 200th anniversary of Haitian hero Toussaint Louverture’s death, Haiti’s president Jean-Bertrand Aristide announced his intention to demand repayment from France. This sparked retaliation from France and Haiti’s elite, …

Redress For Historical Injustices: Haiti’S Claim For The Restitution Of Post-Independence Payments To France, Günther Handl

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

No abstract provided.

Restitution For Haiti, Reparations For All: Haiti’S Place In The Global Reparations Movement, Brian Concannon Jr., Kristina Fried, Alexandra V. Filippova

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

Haiti’s claim for restitution of the debt coerced by France in exchange for Haiti’s 1804 independence has unique legal advantages that can open the door to broader reparations for the descendants of all people harmed by slavery. But in order to assert the claim, Haiti first needs help reclaiming its democracy from a corrupt, repressive regime propped up by the powerful countries that prospered through slavery and overthrew the Haitian President who dared to assert his country’s legal claim. This article explores Haiti’s Independence Debt, and the fight for restitution of it, in the context of two centuries of continued …

Haiti And The Indemnity Question, Alex Dupuy

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

1) Haiti did not agree to pay an indemnity to France in 1825 because it feared a war with its former colonial power. In 1814, France sent envoys to Haiti to demand that King Henry Christophe, who controlled the north of Haiti, and President Alexandre Pétion, who controlled the south and west, resubmit to French sovereignty. Christophe had that envoy arrested and jailed. Pétion, on the other hand, offered to pay an indemnity to France to compensate the former colonial property owners in return for France’s official recognition of Haiti’s independence.

2) Jean-Pierre Boyer succeeded Pétion as president of the …

The Lost Haitian Generation And The 1826 “French Debt”: The Case For Restitution To Haiti, Charlot Lucien

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

No abstract provided.

Haiti: Confronting An Immense Challenge, Irwin Stotzky

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

This article analyzes the history of Haiti, from its origins as a slave colony of France, which was the richest colony in the Americas, to its war of independence leading to the first Black independent nation in the Americas, to its economic re-enslavement under the power of France and then the United States. The article discusses the great harm the French caused the Haitian people by imposing through force a ransom of billions of dollars that has led Haiti to its present position of being on the brink of becoming a failed state, with all of the disastrous consequences for …

Haiti And The Burden Of History, Frédérique Beauvois

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

No abstract provided.

Learning To Do Good While Doing Well 11-2023, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Addressing Health Crises Through Courts? Climate Litigation In Latin America, The Right To Health And Vulnerable Populations, Thalia Viveros Uehara

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

As Latin America faces increasing climate-related health crises that disproportionately affect populations experiencing poverty and social exclusion, it becomes increasingly urgent to realize the most vulnerable's right to health. While the region's new constitutionalism (NLAC) has made progress in protecting this right, it has only recently begun to intersect with climate change law through rights-based climate litigation. This dissertation takes a transdisciplinary multi-methods research approach to answer the following question: How do health crises emerge within, and how are they addressed by courts through, domestic climate litigation in Latin America? Specifically, it examines how health concerns for vulnerable populations are …

The Irrationality Of Child Support Enforcement In The United States: Harming Children And Punishing The Poor, Hannah Pitcher

Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality

No abstract provided.

Criminological Evaluation Of The Impact Of Pathological Ludomania To Gambling Among Nigerian Youths, George Nzeadi Duru Mr., Larry Okechukwu Awo Mr.

International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking

ABSTRACT

The study was designed to evaluate the effects of pathological ludomania to gambling on Nigerian youth. The study looked at how get-rich-quick mentality, access to gaming, and poverty can lead to gambling ludomania in young people. The Social Learning and Differential Association Theories were debated and chosen as the theoretical framework for the study. A questionnaire created to represent the study's research topics was utilized to collect the study's data. A structured questionnaire was sent to two hundred (200) respondents, who were chosen using a multi-stage sampling procedure. The data were analyzed using simple percentage, descriptive, and chi-square statistical …

A New Deal For A Right To Work: Confronting Racism And Inequality In The U.S., James A. Gross

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Whites have always controlled the country’s major economic and political institutions at all levels. Starting with slavery, the enduring and pervasive dogmas of White superiority and Black inferiority, once openly asserted as “keeping Negroes in their place,” were also used to restrict Black men and women to subordinate “negro jobs.” The vast riches of the United States “were available to all who had the enterprise to take them and the good fortune to be White.”

This denial of the right to work in freely chosen endeavors continues to have immense consequences for Black men, women, and children in every aspect …

Gender Violence As A Penalty Of Poverty, Deborah M. Weissman

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

The matter of gender violence, including intimate partner violence (IPV), has long been categorized as a particularly egregious crime. The consequences of IPV are profound and affect all members of the household, family members near and far, and the communities where they live. Gender violence impacts the national economy. Costs accrue to workplaces, health care institutions, and encumber local and state coffers. Survivors are deprived of income, property, and economic stability: conditions that often endure beyond periods of physical injuries. Offenders also experience economic hardship as a result of involvement with the legal system. They often face significant obstacles when …

As Long As There Is Money Involved In Justice, There Will Be No Justice: The United States' Criminalization Of Poverty And The Need To Demonitize Our Criminal "Justice" System, Amanda Piccione

Hofstra Law Student Works

This paper will show how the United States will fail to achieve a criminal “justice” system if money is involved. The cyclical impacts of poverty and marginalization on communities of color throughout our nation’s history will continuously perpetuate an unequal and unfair criminal system. Section II begins by delving into the history of poverty in the United States. It then analyzes poverty and its impacts today while specifically discussing the effects on communities of color and the intersections with crime. Section III examines the legal issue, exploring our monetized legal system and discussing how we can change our criminal legal …

Protecting Low-Income Consumers In The Era Of Digital Grocery Shopping: Implications For Wic Online Ordering, Qi Zhang, Priyanka Patel, Caitlin M. Lowery

Community & Environmental Health Faculty Publications

The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) is now expected to allow participants to redeem their food benefits online, i.e., via online ordering, rather than only in-store. However, it is unclear how this new benefit redemption model may impact participants’ welfare since vendors may have an asymmetric information advantage compared with WIC customers. The WIC online ordering environment may also change the landscape for WIC vendors, which will eventually affect WIC participants. To protect WIC consumers’ rights in the new online ordering model, policymakers need an appropriate legal and regulatory framework. This narrative review provides that …

An Intersectional Examination Of U.S. Civil Justice Problems, Kathryne M. Young, Katie Billings

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Millions of Americans face civil justice problems each year, and most of these problems never make it to court, let alone to a legal expert. Although research has established that race and class are associated with a person’s chance of experiencing a civil justice problem, detailed intersectional examinations of everyday people’s justice experiences are largely absent. A more in-depth empirical understanding of the access to justice crisis can equip lawyers, policymakers, and other designers of justice interventions to create higher-impact, more efficient, and better- targeted programs to meet the justice needs of everyday people.

This Article fills a critical gap …

A Critical Jeffersonian Mind For A Community Reinvestment Bind, Chaz Brooks

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 ("CRA") primarily sought to remedy decades of government sanctioned disinvestment in so-called “redlined communities.” Through the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation and later the Federal Housing Administration, the United States of America created from whole cloth a structure that encouraged and subsidized the explosion of homeownership in white American households. Following decades of racialized wealth generation, the United States had a change of heart. Congress determined that financiers needed a gentle push to invest fairly. Additionally, Congress wanted one thing clear in the drafting of this remedy—it must not allocate credit.

This essay considers how …

Changemakers: From The Classroom To The Courtroom: Miguel Garcia, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Law School News: From Classroom To Courtroom 11-10-2022, Michelle Choate

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Me, Myself And My Digital Double: Extending Sara Greene’S Stealing (Identity) From The Poor To The Challenges Of Identity Verification, Michele E. Gilman

All Faculty Scholarship

Identity is an essential part of the human condition. When one’s identity is stolen or when a state rejects a citizen’s identity, the consequences can be devastating to one’s notion of selfhood as well as undermine their economic security. In Stealing (Identity) from the Poor, Sara Greene explores the serious harms suffered by low-income people who are victimized by identity theft. She explains that our plutocratic regime of identity theft laws serves the interests of wealthier Americans at the expense of those experiencing poverty.

This Essay extends Greene’s analysis and framing to the harms of identity verification systems, particularly in …

The Third Annual Women In Law Leadership Lecture: A Fireside Chat Featuring Amy Barasch, Esq., Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Reclaiming Safety: Participatory Research, Community Perspectives, And Possibilities For Transformation, Janet Moore

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

This paper offers the first known interdisciplinary, community-based participatory research study to focus directly on two questions that have drawn increased attention in the wake of global protests over racialized police violence: 1) What is the definition of safety? and 2) How can safety be made equally accessible to all? The study is part of a larger project that was co-designed by community members and academic researchers. The project aimed to strengthen local justice reform efforts by adding new data literacy skills to existing community-organizing capacity among Black residents of the Cincinnati, Ohio metropolitan area. Community-led roundtable discussions offered community …

Movement Constitutionalism, Brandon Hasbrouck

Scholarly Articles

The white supremacy at the heart of the American criminal legal system works to control Black, Brown, and poor people through mass incarceration. Poverty and incarceration act in a vicious circle, with reactionaries mounting a desperate defense against any attempt to mitigate economic exploitation or carceral violence. Ending the cycle will require replacing this inequitable system with the life- and liberty-affirming institutions of abolition democracy. The path to abolition democracy is arduous, but abolitionists can press for change through what I coin “movement constitutionalism.” Movement constitutionalism is the process by which grassroots abolitionist movements shift—through demands and in solidarity with …

Trademark Law And Consumer Constraints, Laura A. Heymann

Faculty Publications

Trademark law’s focus is on the consumer. Both the trademark literature and the marketing literature, however, tend to assume a consumer with few constraints on economic or cognitive processing resources. For example, scholars have argued that some confusion in the marketplace is not only inevitable but is also an overall positive in that encountering confusion trains consumers to be more resourceful and to learn how to interpret marketing communications more carefully. But not all consumers have the same level of cognitive and economic resources. Disadvantaged consumers—such as those not literate in the English language, those with lower socioeconomic status, and …

Credit Scoring Duality, Pamela Foohey, Sara Sternberg Greene

Articles

Credit scoring is central to people’s financial growth and prosperity or financial decline and stagnation. People with a good credit score and accompanying credit report can buy opportunities to advance economically. The benefits they reap from their attractiveness to lenders and employers helps feed their future success. In contrast, people with a fair or poor credit score become stuck in cycle of high interest rates and costly loan terms, large required down payments, and denied applications for rentals, cell phone plans, and employment. Employers, service providers, lenders, and alternative financial service providers have begun to use alternative credit scoring models, …

The Westminster Model And The Destabilizing Of Democracy In The Caribbean, Peter L. René

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The problem with the Westminster model is the model’s lack of governance, oversight and colonial mindset which has led to a crisis that includes severe government corruption, deepening poverty, upticks in crime, debt and decreasing trade opportunities. This makes life harder for the citizens and threatens to destabilize the democracies with no one nation situated to cope with these existential challenges. National independence for the region was designed to maintain the status quo of colonial times while providing the illusion of autonomy and individual sovereignty. The purpose of the study was to analyze the Westminster model enacted in the Caribbean …

Stemming The Shadow Pandemic: Integrating Sociolegal Services In Contact Tracing And Beyond, Medha D. Makhlouf

Faculty Scholarly Works

The COVID-19 pandemic has shed light on the challenges of complying with public health guidance to isolate or quarantine without access to adequate income, housing, food, and other resources. When people cannot safely isolate or quarantine during an outbreak of infectious disease, a critical public health strategy fails. This article proposes integrating sociolegal needs screening and services into contact tracing as a way to mitigate public health harms and pandemic-related health inequities.

Court Personalities And Impoverished Parents, Ezra Rosser

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Professor Tonya Brito's in-depth examination of the pursuit of child support from poor fathers continues to pay significant dividends that extend well beyond family law. Producing Justice in Poor People's Courts: Four Models of State Legal Actors highlights the that differing personalities and approaches can have on impoverished parents involved in child-support-enforcement disputes before the courts. Based on an impressive ethnographic study, Brito's article shows how the actors involved craft stories about impoverished family dynamics as a way to make sense of their own role and complicity in an often unjust system of regulating poor families.

Equal Protection And Abortion: Brief Of Equal Protection Constitutional Law Scholars Serena Mayeri, Melissa Murray, And Reva Siegel As Amici Curiae In Support Of Respondents In Dobbs V. Jackson Women's Health Organization, Reva Siegel, Melissa Murray, Serena Mayeri

All Faculty Scholarship

Equal Protection changes the questions we ask about abortion restrictions. In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, an amicus brief filed on our behalf demonstrated that Mississippi’s ban on abortions after 15 weeks violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. The brief continues a tradition of equality arguments that preceded Roe v. Wade and will continue, in new forms, after Dobbs. Our brief shows how the canonical equal protection cases United States v. Virginia and Department of Human Resources v. Hibbs extend to the regulation of pregnancy, hence provide an independent constitutional basis for abortion rights.

Under equal …