Law and Society Commons^™

Naming Men As Men In Corporate Legal Practice: Gender And The Idea Of “Virtually 24/7 Commitment” In Law, Richard Collier

Fordham Law Review

This Article seeks to reframe and turn the conversation about gender equity in the legal profession on its head, taking up Hannah Brenner’s recent call to reconceptualize problems and rethink solutions around gender equity in the profession. It does so by moving beyond the frame of the retention of women and exploring selected aspects of the gendered practices of men in relation to this notion of the ideal legal professional in large transnational “city” law firms. The Article traces how particular ideas about men and gender are, on closer examination, implicated in a broader recasting of lawyer professionalism within the …

Obergefell'S Conservatism: Reifying Familial Fronts, Clare Huntington

Fordham Law Review

I am delighted with the result in Obergefell v. Hodges, but I am unhappy with the Court’s reasoning. In lieu of a straightforward, and far more defensible, decision based purely on the Equal Protection Clause, Justice Kennedy’s reliance on the Due Process Clause is deeply problematic.

Test Unrest: New York City's Examination High Schools, Aaron J. Saiger

Faculty Scholarship

New York City bases admissions to its eight “specialized” high schools entirely upon scores on a single standardized test. This policy, hotly contested when it was codified by state law in 1971, faces renewed political and legal attacks today. Single-test admissions consistently result in alarmingly low levels of African-American and Hispanic enrollment at the most sought-after specialized schools. This brief essay compares today’s debate to that of 1971. It notes two major developments since then. The City now has eight test-only high schools, not three. Moreover, the eight schools now function in the larger context of New York’s system of …

The Rise Of The Security State, Wang Yuhua, Carl F. Minzner

Faculty Scholarship

Over the past two decades, the Chinese domestic security apparatus has expanded dramatically. “Stability maintenance” operations have become a priority for local Chinese authorities. We argue that the birth of these trends dates to the early 1990s, when central Party authorities adopted new governance models that differed dramatically from those that of the 1980s. They increased the bureaucratic rank of public security chiefs within the Party apparatus, expanded the reach of the Party political-legal apparatus into a broader range of governance issues, and altered cadre evaluation standards to increase the sensitivity of local authorities to social protest. We show that …

Race, Dignity, And The Right To Marry, Robin A. Lenhardt

Fordham Law Review

Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges asserts legal marriage’s capacity to afford same-sex couples a measure of “equal dignity” and belonging too long denied. In this Essay, I ask whether there is any reason to believe that marriage could do the same for African Americans. Could broader entrance into marriage, as some conservatives suggest, provide Blacks—gay and straight—a measure of belonging that has been frustratingly elusive, even as the nation prepares to celebrate the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Thirteenth Amendment’s ratification?

Volunteerism And Transition, John D. Feerick, Jessica Thaler

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Privacy In Public, Joel R. Reidenberg

Faculty Scholarship

As government and private companies rapidly expand the infrastructure of surveillance from cameras on every street corner to facial recognition for photographs on social media sites, privacy doctrines built on seclusion are at odds with technological advances. This essay addresses a key conceptual problem in US privacy law identified by Justice Sotomayor in U.S. v. Jones and by Justice Scalia in Kyllo v. U.S.; namely that technological capabilities undermine the meaning of the third-party doctrine and the 4th Amendment's ‘reasonable expectation of privacy’ standard. The essay argues that the conceptual problem derives from the evolution of three stages of development …

Breaking Up Payday: Anti-Agglomeration Zoning & Consumer Welfare, Sheila R. Foster

Faculty Scholarship

In the last decade, dozens of local governments have enacted zoning ordinances designed to limit the concentration of payday lenders and other alternative financial services providers (AFSPs), such as check-cashing businesses and auto title loan shops, in their communities. The main impetus for these ordinances is to shield economically vulnerable residents from the industry’s lending practices in the absence of sufficiently aggressive federal and state consumer protection regulation. This Essay casts considerable doubt on whether zoning is the appropriate regulatory tool to achieve the consumer protection and welfare goals animating these ordinances. The author’s analysis of the aftermath of payday …

New Formalism In The Aftermath Of The Housing Crisis, Nestor M. Davidson

Faculty Scholarship

The housing crisis has left in its wake an ongoing legal crisis. After housing markets began to collapse across the country in 2007, foreclosures and housing-related bankruptcies surged significantly and have barely begun to abate more than six years later. As the legal system has confronted this aftermath, courts have increasingly accepted claims by borrowers that lenders and other entities involved in securitizing mortgages failed to follow requirements related to perfecting and transferring their security interests. These cases – which focus variously on issues such as standing, real party in interest, chains of assignment, the negotiability of mortgage notes, and …

What Direction For Legal Reform Under Xi Jinping?, Carl F. Minzner

Faculty Scholarship

In the fall of 2014, Chinese Communist Party authorities made legal reform the focus of their annual plenum for the first time. The Fourth Plenum Decision confirmed a shift away from some of the policies of the late Hu Jintao era, but liberal reforms still remain off the table. The top-down vision of legal reform developing under Xi Jinping’s administration may have more in common with current trends in the party disciplinary apparatus or historical ones in the imperial Chinese censorate than it does with Western rule-of-law norms. This essay attempts to do three things: (1) analyze how and why …

Review Of "Confucian Constitutional Order: How China’S Ancient Past Can Shape Its Political Future" By Jiang Qing, Carl F. Minzner

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Translating Fiduciary Principles Into Public Law, Ethan J. Leib, David L. Ponet, Michael Serota

Faculty Scholarship

Because public office is a public trust, fiduciary architecture can help orient us in figuring out how political power should be exercised legitimately. Part of the appeal of conceiving the political relationship between representative and represented in fiduciary terms is that it regards politics in more realistic and textured ways — as a constellation of power relationships in a web of trust and vulnerability — rather than as a mere social contract no one ever signed. Thinking of legislators as public fiduciaries tells us much about the nature of the relationship between the governed and their governors and it can …

State Speech And Political Liberalism, Abner S. Greene

Faculty Scholarship

Jim Fleming and Linda McClain have written an impressive book on the responsible exercise of rights, which flows from prior writing by each.Their title, "Ordered Liberty," is a bit of a misnomer, however. When one thinks of that phrase, one thinks of the ways in which we balance liberty against order, i.e., against security, police power, controlling the excesses of liberty. Responsibility in the exercise of rights is an aspect of how rights are orderly, but the major hard cases involving rights are hard because significant claims of harm are in play. Think of much of constitutional criminal procedure, free …

Commentary, Critical Legal Theory In Intellectual Property And Information Law Scholarship, Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal Spring Symposium, Sonia K. Katyal, Peter Goodrich

Faculty Scholarship

The very definition and scope of CLS (critical legal studies) is itself subject to debate. Some scholars characterize CLS as scholarship that employs a particular methodology—more of a “means” than an “end.” On the other hand, some scholars contend that CLS scholarship demonstrates a collective commitment to a political end goal—an emancipation of sorts —through the identification of, and resistance to, exploitative power structures that are reinforced through law and legal institutions. After a brief golden age, CLS scholarship was infamously marginalized in legal academia and its sub-disciplines. But CLS themes now appear to be making a resurgence—at least in …

Notes Toward A Critical Contemplation Of Law, Sonia K. Katyal

Faculty Scholarship

In this tribute to Professor Derrick Bell’s legacy, Professor Katyal reflects on one of Bell’s greatest gifts: the necessary, and perhaps unfinished gift of critical contemplation of law, along with its possibilities and its concomitant limitations. In her paper, Katyal reflects on two seemingly disparate areas of civil rights that might benefit from Bell’s critical vision: the area of LGBT rights and equality, and federal Indian law. Relying on some of Bell’s most valuable insights, Katyal calls for the creation of a “critical sexuality studies” and a “critical indigenous studies” that employs some of Bell’s groundbreaking lessons in reimagining broader …

A Legacy Of Teaching, Robin A. Lenhardt

Faculty Scholarship

In this essay, Professor R.A. Lenhardt describes the lasting educational legacy of Professor Derrick Bell. Using a Bell article entitled “Humanity in Legal Education” as its starting point, the essay explores Bell’s emphasis on social justice and “conscience” in legal instruction. In particular, it discusses the impact that Bell’s unique approach to teaching law had on students enrolled at Harvard Law School in the 1990s, where Professor Bell taught before a much publicized protest leave.

"Undead" Wartime Cases: Stare Decisis And The Lessons Of History, Harlan G. Cohen

Faculty Scholarship

References to the “lessons of history” are ubiquitous in law. Nowhere has this been more apparent than in recent debates over U.S. counterterrorism policy. In response to the Bush Administration’s reliance on World War II-era decisions - Johnson v. Eisentrager, Ex Parte Quirin, Hirota v. MacArthur, and In re Yamashita - opponents have argued that these decisions have been rejected by the “lessons of history.” They argue that the history of wartime cases is one marked by executive aggrandizement, panic-driven attacks on civil liberties, and overly quiescent courts - none of which should be repeated.

But what does it really …

Gender And Nation-Building: Family Law As Legal Architecture Symposium - Nation Building: A Legal Architecture: Articles And Essays, Tracy E. Higgins, Rachel P. Fink

Faculty Scholarship

Although the discipline of family law in the western legal tradition transcends the public/private law boundary in many ways, it is the argument of this Essay that family law, in the private law sense of defining the rights and obligations of members of a family, forms an important part of the legal architecture of nation-building in at least three ways. First, access to the resources of the nation-state devolves through biologically and culturally gendered national boundaries, both reflecting and reinforcing the differential status of men and women in the sphere of the family. Second, the social institution of the family …

Integrative Lawyering: Navigating The Political Economy Of Urban Redevelopment Symposium: Race, Economic Justice, And Community Lawyering In The New Century, Sheila R. Foster

Faculty Scholarship

This shift from defending and reacting to creating and envisioning requires a more engaged organizational role for the lawyer. The lawyer is now expected to do more than translate the organization/community's grievance into discreet legal frameworks and discourse---e.g., a civil rights violation, a nuisance, participatory right, etc. The lawyer now intervenes in negotiations from which the organization or community has been excluded. This new role requires a shifting, flexible mix of skills and a more dynamic interaction with the organization and its varied functions-policy, community education, lobbying, and organizing. This new role is what we call "integrative lawyering," an emergent …

The Lawyer Is Not The Protagonist: Community Campaigns, Law, And Social Change, The Symposium: Race, Economic Justice, And Community Lawyering In The New Century: Concluding Essay, Jennifer Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

Stories about law and social change can have a sameness to them. Yet in many ways, the tales told in this volume stand out from the crowd. Each story is shaped around a campaign undertaken by a community organization or coalition deeply engaged in the struggle for racial and economic justice. Attorneys appear as supporting players rather than main characters, seeking to help organizations build the power needed to achieve their goals. These lawyers translate information about the law into lay language, pressure opponents, defend the organization, open up spaces for community voice and action, and seek to establish new …

Religious Lawyering's Second Wave, Russell G. Pearce, Amelia J. Uelmen

Faculty Scholarship

Since the mid-1990s, the "religious lawyering movement" has expanded dramatically, receiving greater attention within the academy and the bar. As the movement enters what we term its "second wave" of development, this essay begins with a look back to its "first wave" of path-breaking scholarship and its gradual shift toward more institutionalized structures and programs. It argues that the predominant characteristic of first-wave religious lawyering scholarship was to claim a space within the professional conversation for lawyers to bring religious values to bear on their work. The essay then predicts that in the second wave religious lawyering conversations and scholarship …

Revenge Of Mullaney V. Wilbur: United States V. Booker And The Reassertion Of Judicial Limits On Legislative Power To Define Crimes, The, Ian Weinstein

Faculty Scholarship

This article offers a historically grounded account of the twists and turns in the Supreme Court's sentencing jurisprudence from the end of World War II to the Court's stunning rejection of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. The doctrinal shifts that have roiled this area of the law can best be understood as the Court's effort to respond to the changing political and social landscape of crime in America. In the mid 1970's, legislative activity in the criminal law was largely focused on Model Penal Code influenced recodification. In that era, the Supreme Court took power from an ascendant judiciary and gave …

Self-Determination In International Mediation: Some Preliminary Reflections , Jacqueline Nolan-Haley

Faculty Scholarship

Few concepts have generated as much discussion in the post-war international legal system as that of “self-determination.” Scholars debate the proper identity of the "selves" endowed with this right, its boundaries, and its normative relevance. When the focus turns to mediation, the discussion becomes murky because the concept of self-determination has both procedural and substantive components, and is noticeably different in the private and public sectors. The generic concept of self-determination relates to ideas of democratic governance and the Enlightenment belief that legitimate government depends upon the consent of the governed. As adapted to private mediation theory, the right of …

Religious Lawyering In A Liberal Democracy: A Challenge And An Invitation William A. Brahms Lecture On Law & Religion, Russell G. Pearce

Faculty Scholarship

At a time when many believe that law is no longer a noble profession, many lawyers see no reason to devote time and energy to promoting the public good. Religious lawyering may offer a powerful antidote: a robust framework for lawyers to integrate into their professional lives their most deeply rooted values, perspectives and critiques, and persuasive reasons to improve the quality of justice and work for the common good. At its best, religious lawyering echoes Martin Luther King's advice to the street sweeper. How wonderful it would be, indeed, if we practiced law so well that the host of …

Practice What You Preach: Power, Paternalism, And The Christian Lawyer For The Poor, Melanie D. Acevedo

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This Essay will focus on the approach a Christian poverty lawyer can take to answering these questions. This Essay will argue that because a lawyer's actions are ultimately based on what she believes about herself and her place in the world, the Christian lawyer will begin her move away from paternalism and towards power-sharing. She will do this by embracing a Christian self-understanding and integrating that understanding into her work in the most significant ways possible. Further, when she looks at power itself through a biblical lens, the Christian poverty lawyer sees a framework for practice that is radically different …

Civil Legal Assistance For Low-Income Persons: Looking Back And Looking Forward, Alan W. Houseman

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This Article discusses the importance of legal aid and the services it provides to low-income persons. The Article also addresses the need for further change. It advocates for the development of a stronger base of public support at the local level. It also calls for an integrated, comprehensive statewide system to ensure that access is available to all those who need relief.

The Public Is Willing, Margot Lindsay, Mary K. Shilton

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This Article discusses the importance of public outreach and education in the judicial system. The Article advocates for various court-sponsored outreach programs to increase citizen contact with the courts for problem solving purposes. It also addresses such alternatives as community courts and neighborhood advisory boards. It discusses measures taken by state courts to increase communication with underrepresented communities. It concludes by making suggestions to improve outreach programs.

Access To Justice: On Dialogues With The Judiciary, Margaret Martin Barry

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This Article considers the effects of nurturing law student interest in public service intersects with the goals of developing lawyering expertise. It then examines the insight provided to the judiciary by clinical educational programs with regards to making the courts more accesible to the public. The author hopes to encourage a greater, more meaningful dialogue between the judiciary and law school faculty.

Traveling Justice: Providing Court Based Pro Se Assistance To Limited Access Communities, Tina L. Rasnow

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This Article discusses one Southern California court's attempt to provide greater access to underrepresented litigants in a mixed urban and rural county northwest of Los Angeles. The Article explores Ventura County Superior Court's outreach program designed to increase court access through pro se self-help services, educational outreach, specialty courts, and collaboration with social service organizations. The Article hopes to inspire others to try creative methods to improve access in their jurisdictions.

Access To Justice In Idaho, Frances H. Thompson

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This Article addresses the efforts made by the Idaho Court Assistance Office Project to increase access to the Idaho court system. The Article discusses the Projects goals of addressing concerns over plain English forms and brochures, pro bono legal and paralegal services, and equipment and technology needs. It describes the four primary model used by the Project in assisting pro-se litigants.