Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons^™

Worthless Checks? Clemency, Compassionate Release, And The Finality Of Life Without Parole, Daniel Pascoe

Northwestern University Law Review

Life without parole (LWOP) sentences are politically popular in the United States because, on their face, they claim to hold prisoners incarcerated until they die, with zero prospect of release via the regularized channel of parole. However, this view is procedurally shortsighted. After parole there is generally another remedial option for lessening or abrogating punishment: executive clemency via pardons and commutations. Increasingly, U.S. legal jurisdictions also provide for the possibility of compassionate release for lifers, usually granted by a parole board.

On paper, pardon, commutation, and compassionate release are thus direct challenges to the claim that an LWOP sentence will …

A New Private Law Of Policing, Cristina Carmody Tilley

Brooklyn Law Review

American law and American life are asymmetrical. Law divides neatly in two: public and private. But life is lived in three distinct spaces: pure public, pure private, and hybrid middle spaces that are neither state nor home. Which body of law governs the shops, gyms, and workplaces that are formally accessible to all, but functionally hostile to Black, female, poor, and other marginalized Americans? From the liberal midcentury onward, social justice advocates have treated these spaces as fundamentally public and fully remediable via public law equity commands. This article takes a broader view. It urges a tort law revival in …

Foreword: The Legal Profession And Social Change, Atinuke O. Adediran, Bruce A. Green

Fordham Law Review

Fordham University School of Law’s Stein Center for Law and Ethics has collaborated with the Fordham Law Review every year since the late 1990s to encourage, collect, and publish scholarly writings on different aspects of the legal profession, including its norms, regulation, organization, history, and development—that is, on themes relating to what law schools loosely call “legal ethics.” The legal profession is an important subject of study for legal scholars, among others. Although one U.S. Supreme Court Justice, himself a former law professor, airily derided legal ethics as the “least analytically rigorous . . . of law-school subjects,” we dispute …

Community Responsive Public Defense, Alexis Hoag-Fordjour

Fordham Law Review

This colloquium asks us to consider how social change is influencing the legal profession and the legal profession’s response. This Essay applies these questions to organizing around criminal injustice and the response from public defenders. This Essay surfaces the work of four innovative indigent defense organizations that are engaged with and duty-bound to the communities they represent. I call this “community responsive public defense,” which is a distinct model of indigent defense whereby public defenders look to their clients and their clients’ communities to help shape advocacy, strategy, and representation.

Methodologically, this Essay relies primarily on qualitative interviews with leaders …

Throwing Tomato Soup At A Van Gogh: How Climate Activists Leveraged Legal Theory, Criminal Law, And Moral Outrage To Conduct A Radical Protest Campaign In The World's Most Famous Museums, Joe Udell

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

How Can You Tell If There Is A Crisis? Data And Measurement Challenges In Assessing Jury Representation, Mary R. Rose, Marc A. Musick

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Arrival Of The Civil Jury In Argentina: The Case Of Chaco, Shari S. Diamond, Valarie P. Hans, Natali Chizik, Andres Harfuch

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

Lay Participation Reform In China: Opportunities And Challenges, Zhiyuan Guo

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

Beacons Of Democracy? A Worldwide Exploration Of The Relationship Between Democracy And Lay Participation In Criminal Cases, Sanja K. Ivkovic, Valarie P. Hans

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Hybridization Of Lay Courts: From Colombia To England And Wales, Jeremy Boulanger-Bonnelly

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

Judges, Lawyers, And Willing Jurors: A Tale Of Two Jury Selections, Barbara O'Brien, Catherine M. Grosso

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

Virtual Technology And The Changing Rituals Of Courtroom Justice, Meredith Rossner, David Tait

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

Race, Peremptory Challenges, And State Courts: A Blueprint For Change, Nancy S. Marder

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

P*Law 2024, Center For Public Service Law

2023–2024 Flyers

This document outlines the full schedule for P*LAW Week 2024 at Cardozo School of Law, hosted by the Center for Public Service Law. Held from January 29 to February 1, the week featured panels, workshops, and student-led presentations on critical public interest topics, including immigration, incarceration, housing justice, student debt, reproductive rights, and exoneration. With contributions from legal professionals, alumni, faculty, and students, the events provided education, mentorship, and career development opportunities for those pursuing paths in public interest law.

Power V. Power: Federal Pattern-Or-Practice Enforcement Actions Applied To Local Prosecutors, Thomas P. Hogan

Maine Law Review

One of the most powerful tools available to the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) to stop abuses in the criminal justice system is the federal pattern-or-practice statute, which allows DOJ to bring an enforcement action to prevent discriminatory conduct by government agencies. The most powerful actor in the criminal justice system is the district attorney, the local prosecutor who is at the center of the system. Does DOJ’s pattern-or-practice enforcement authority extend to local prosecutors? This crucial question remains unresolved in formal precedent and has not been addressed in the relevant literature. This Article explores the issue in detail, …

Global Criminal Justice Practices And Public Safety, Rachel Hwang

Posters-at-the-Capitol

Popular political discourse in the U.S. assumes that more funding for law enforcement and prison facilities will make civilians safer, presumably by reducing crime and sense of disorder. However, studies have shown that the relationship between these factors may not be as straightforward. With the killing of George Floyd and increased media coverage of police brutality, existing literature focuses mainly on the relationship between police and crime in the U.S. The impact of incarceration (the result of procedural justice) on the community (for whom procedural justice exists) is less known, especially on a global scale. We argue that cycling people …

The Automated Fourth Amendment, Maneka Sinha

Faculty Scholarship

Courts routinely defer to police officer judgments in reasonable suspicion and probable cause determinations. Increasingly, though, police officers outsource these threshold judgments to new forms of technology that purport to predict and detect crime and identify those responsible. These policing technologies automate core police determinations about whether crime is occurring and who is responsible. Criminal procedure doctrine has failed to insist on some level of scrutiny of—or skepticism about—the reliability of this technology. Through an original study analyzing numerous state and federal court opinions, this Article exposes the implications of law enforcement’s reliance on these practices given the weighty interests …

In The Mind Of A Prisoner, Christopher Gattos

Writing Beyond the Prison Living Archive

Law (Crime Bill, Felon Disenfranchisement, 13th Amendment, legal representation); Ku Klux Klan; Historical memory; Reform; Prison Life; Drugs (War on); Sentencing; Children of Incarcerated; BLM; Pop Culture/media; Prison Education; Rehabilitation; Forgiveness; Gun Violence; COVID 19

Black Lives Matters, Sometimes, Bobby Delgado

Writing Beyond the Prison Living Archive

Critical Essay on Prison life; race/racism; Latinx; gangs; reform; race traitors; US politics; popular culture (film); Texas syndicate; brutality; torture; building tenders; convict guards; Donald J. Trump; Nazism; Hitler

Prisons As Laboratories Of Antidemocracy, Brandon Hasbrouck

Scholarly Articles

Prisons are woefully ineffective as tools to protect society from violence and exploitation, yet America’s prison population exploded in the twentieth century. On the outside, this devastated Black communities, Black opportunities, Black economic power, and Black voting power. Yet a similarly insidious development came from inside prison walls: prison administrators honed antidemocratic techniques for constraining and oppressing incarcerated persons, techniques that would later be deployed against the ostensibly free population. Jeffrey Bellin’s Mass Incarceration Nation provides a robust analysis of the ways state and federal policies have combined to create an explosion in the scope of American prisons in the …

Social Justice Autobiography, Dewitt Faulkner

Writing Beyond the Prison Living Archive

Social Justice autobiography on: LA Riots; Rodney King; Gangs; racial violence; police brutality; criminal justice system; Wisconsin; Truth-in-Sentencing; Black history; Sharecropping.

Department Of Corruption, Rashad El

Writing Beyond the Prison Living Archive

Poem on Prison Life, Mental Health; Rehabilitation; Policing; Sentencing; Popular culture (film)

Henderson And The Objective Observer Standard: The Future Of Race-Conscious Standards Post-Students For Fair Admissions, Gabriela Dionisio

Seattle University Law Review

On June 29, 2023, the Supreme Court of the United States decided Students for Fair Admissions v. President & Fellows of Harvard College, which struck down race-conscious admissions policies. Within just a year after its ruling, Students for Fair Admissions has already had a sweeping impact, reaching beyond higher education. Although the Supreme Court did not indicate whether Students for Fair Admissions applies to sectors beyond higher education, law firms, and other employers have already modified their diversity policies and initiatives, erasing race and company diversity considerations. Given those dramatic changes, there is growing fear that Students for Fair Admissions …

Same Crime, Different Time: Sentencing Disparities In The Deep South & A Path Forward Under The Fourteenth Amendment, Hailey M. Donovan

Seattle University Law Review

The United States has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. The American obsession with crime and punishment can be tracked over the last half-century, as the nation’s incarceration rate has risen astronomically. Since 1970, the number of incarcerated people in the United States has increased more than sevenfold to over 2.3 million, outpacing both crime and population growth considerably. While the rise itself is undoubtedly bleak, a more troubling truth lies just below the surface. Not all states contribute equally to American mass incarceration. Rather, states have vastly different incarceration rates. Unlike at the federal level, …

Public Primacy In Corporate Law, Dorothy S. Lund

Seattle University Law Review

This Article explores the malleability of agency theory by showing that it could be used to justify a “public primacy” standard for corporate law that would direct fiduciaries to promote the value of the corporation for the benefit of the public. Employing agency theory to describe the relationship between corporate management and the broader public sheds light on aspects of firm behavior, as well as the nature of state contracting with corporations. It also provides a lodestar for a possible future evolution of corporate law and governance: minimize the agency costs created by the divergence of interests between management and …

Robo-Voting: Does Delegated Proxy Voting Pose A Challenge For Shareholder Democracy?, John Matsusaka, Chong Shu

Seattle University Law Review

Robo-voting is the practice by an investment fund of mechanically voting in corporate elections according to the advice of its proxy advisor— in effect fully delegating its voting decision to its advisor. We examined over 65 million votes cast during the period 2008–2021 by 14,582 mutual funds to describe and quantify the prevalence of robo-voting. Overall, 33% of mutual funds robo-voted in 2021: 22% with ISS, 4% with Glass Lewis, and six percent with the recommendations of the issuer’s management. The fraction of funds that robo-voted increased until around 2013 and then stabilized at the current level. Despite the sizable …

The Limits Of Corporate Governance, Cathy Hwang, Emily Winston

Seattle University Law Review

What is the purpose of the corporation? For decades, the answer was clear: to put shareholders’ interests first. In many cases, this theory of shareholder primacy also became synonymous with the imperative to maximize shareholder wealth. In the world where shareholder primacy was a north star, courts, scholars, and policymakers had relatively little to fight about: most debates were minor skirmishes about exactly how to maximize shareholder wealth.

Part I of this Essay discusses the shortcomings of shareholder primacy and stakeholder governance, arguing that neither of these modes of governance provides an adequate framework for incentivizing corporations to do good. …

The Pioneers, Waves, And Random Walks Of Securities Law In The Supreme Court, Elizabeth Pollman

Seattle University Law Review

After the pioneers, waves, and random walks that have animated the history of securities laws in the U.S. Supreme Court, we might now be on the precipice of a new chapter. Pritchard and Thompson’s superb book, A History of Securities Law in the Supreme Court, illuminates with rich archival detail how the Court’s view of the securities laws and the SEC have changed over time and how individuals have influenced this history. The book provides an invaluable resource for understanding nearly a century’s worth of Supreme Court jurisprudence in the area of securities law and much needed context for …

Three Stories: A Comment On Pritchard & Thompson’S A History Of Securities Laws In The Supreme Court, Harwell Wells

Seattle University Law Review

Adam Pritchard and Robert Thompson’s A History of Securities Laws in the Supreme Court should stand for decades as the definitive work on the Federal securities laws’ career in the Supreme Court across the twentieth century.1 Like all good histories, it both tells a story and makes an argument. The story recounts how the Court dealt with the major securities laws, as well the agency charged with enforcing them, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the rules it promulgated, from the 1930s into the twenty-first century. But the book does not just string together a series of events, “one …

On The Value Of History: A Review Of A.C. Pritchard & Robert B. Thompson’S A History Of Securities Law In The Supreme Court, Joel Seligman

Seattle University Law Review

A.C. Pritchard and Bob Thompson have written a splendid history of securities law decisions in the Supreme Court. Their book is exemplary because of its detailed use of the long unpublished papers of Supreme Court justices, including those of Harry Blackmun, William O. Douglas, Felix Frankfurter and Lewis F. Powell, primary sources which included correspondence with other Justices and law clerks as well as interviews with law clerks. The use of these primary sources recounted throughout the text and 67 pages of End Notes deepens our understanding of the intentions of the Justices and sharpens our understanding of the conflicts …