Law and Society Commons^™

Reflections On The Challenging Proliferation Of Mental Health Issues In The District Court And The Need For Judicial Education, Jessie B. Gunther

Maine Law Review

Maine's courts constantly deal with litigants with mental health issues. Historically, our decisions have relied on expert testimony addressing specific issues of responsibility, risk, and treatment. In recent years, by my observation, court involvement in the treatment process has increased, but the availability of expert evidence has decreased. Thus, we as judges have become the ultimate decision-makers regarding litigants' mental health treatment in both criminal and civil contexts, without supporting expert testimony. In the face of this development, three interconnected issues arise. The first issue is whether judges should even attempt to fill the void caused by lack of expert …

Judges, Racism, And The Problem Of Actual Innocence, Stephen J. Fortunato Jr.

Maine Law Review

The facts and data are in and the conclusion they compel is bleak: the American criminal justice system and its showpiece, the criminal trial, harbor at their core a systemic racism. For decades, criminologists, law professors, sociologists, government statisticians, and others have been collecting and collating data on crime, punishment, and incarceration in the United States. These intrepid scholars have looked at crime, criminals, and the justice system from all angles—the race of defendants and victims; the relationship of poverty to criminality; severity of crime; severity of punishment; incarceration rates for different racial groups; sentencing and sentence disparities; and so …

The Pro Bono Collaborative Project Spotlight: Rwu Law Street Law: Teaching Teens About The Law And Inspiring Future Lawyers 11-16-2017, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Pro Bono Collaborative Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Honor For Veterans Day November 10, 2017, Roger Williams University

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Where Have All The Soldiers Gone Ii: Military Veterans In Congress And The State Of Civil-Military Relations, Donald N. Zillman

Maine Law Review

In a 1997 essay in these pages, I reported on the fact that a declining number of senators and members of the House of Representatives were veterans of military service. At the height of the Vietnam War, roughly 70% of the members of Congress were veterans. By 1991, the Congress that approved the use of force against Iraq in Operation Desert Storm had only slightly more veterans than non-veterans. Three Congresses later, the percentage of veterans had dropped to 32%. The explanation for the decline is almost certainly not that the American voter no longer likes to elect veterans to …

Trending @ Rwu Law: Professor David Coombs's Post: The Immigrant Veteran: Service And Honor 11-14-2017, David Coombs

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.

A New Future? The Catholic Church, Grassroots Justice, And Accountability, Regina Menachery Paulose

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Between the 1970s and 1980s, Guatemalans, particularly the indigenous populations, were targets of a state-sponsored genocide. Several years after the genocide, Catholic Bishop Juan Gerardi of Guatemala City took the lead in creating the Recovery of Historical Memory Project which was an independent investigation into the events of the genocide. Gerardi was murdered before the report was made public. This paper will briefly discuss Gerardi’s work and his contribution to local justice in Guatemala. The author will then explore what contributions the Catholic Church could make in creating similar fact-finding missions. Could a grassroots mechanism such as the one Gerardi …

The Socialization Of Human Rights As An Inroad To Protect Sacred Space, Leonard Hammer

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Serious problems exist for cultural heritage protection, and these problems are even more serious when accounting for the protection of sacred space and holy places. The lack of effectiveness of the majority of existing international norms and institutions will be reviewed in this paper, which shall then turn to potential sources for entrenching protection of scared space within states.

The paper shall rely on the human right to freedom of religion or belief as the basis for upholding sacred space given an emerging broader understanding of the right within the human rights framework.

The paper shall principally focus on the …

Where Do We Go From Here? Charting Perceptions Of The Impact Of The Human Rights City Boston Resolution, Kostas Koutsioumpas, Maggie Schneider, Matthew Annunziato

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

In 1948, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) as a common standard of achievement and called upon every individual and organ of society to promote the rights enshrined in the document. The UDHR has been applied in many ways around the world, including by the international Human Rights Cities movement, which began in Rosario, Argentina, in 1997.

Today more than two dozen Human Rights Cities have formed around the globe, including at least nine in the United States (Washington, DC; Eugene, OR; Pittsburgh, PA; Chapel Hill, NC; Columbus, IN; Jackson, MI; Seattle, WA; Mountain View, …

Objective And Subjective Tests In The Law, R. George Wright

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

Across many subject areas, the law commonly attempts to distinguish between objective and subjective tests, and to assess the merits of objective as opposed to subjective legal tests. This Article argues that all such efforts are fundamentally incoherent and ultimately futile in practice. As demonstrated below, what the law takes to be objective in the relevant sense is essentially constituted by what the law takes to be subjective, and vice versa. Judicial preoccupation with objective and subjective tests thus does no more than distract from more meaningful concerns. Judicial attention should be directed away from this hopeless distinction, and instead …

Prompting Deliberation About Nanotechnology: Information, Instruction, And Discussion Effects On Individual Engagement And Knowledge, Lisa M. Pytlikzillig, Myiah J. Hutchens, Peter Muhlberger, Alan Tomkins

Lisa PytlikZillig Publications

Deliberative (and educational) theories typically predict knowledge gains will be enhanced by information structure and discussion. In two studies, we experimentally manipulated key features of deliberative public engagement (information, instructions, and discussion) and measured impacts on cognitive-affective engagement and knowledge about nanotechnology. We also examined the direct and moderating impacts of individual differences in need for cognition and gender. Findings indicated little impact of information (organized by topic or by pro-con relevance). Instructions (prompts to think critically) decreased engagement in Study 1, and increased it in Study 2, but did not impact postknowledge. Group discussion had strong positive benefits for …

Blethen Maine Newspapers, Inc. V. State: Balancing The Public's Right To Know Against The Privacy Rights Of Victims Of Sexual Abuse, Kenleigh A. Nicoletta

Maine Law Review

In Blethen Maine Newspapers, Inc. v. State, a sharply divided Maine Supreme Judicial Court, sitting as the Law Court, held that release of records relating to Attorney General G. Steven Rowe's investigation of alleged sexual abuse by Catholic priests was warranted under Maine's Freedom of Access Act (FOAA). Although such investigative records are designated confidential by statute, the majority held that the public's interest in the contents of the records mandated their disclosure after all information identifying persons other than the deceased priests had been redacted. The concurrence asserted that the majority had reached the correct conclusion, but in so …

Consent Decrees, The Enlightenment, And The "Modern" Social Contract: A Case Study From Bates, Olmstead, And Maine's Separation Of Powers Doctrine, Dana E. Prescott

Maine Law Review

On December 17, 2004, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, sitting as the Law Court, issued its decision in Bates v. Department of Behavioral & Developmental Services, which affirmed in part, and vacated in part, the decision of Superior Court Chief Justice Nancy Mills, and remanded for further proceedings in the so-called Augusta Mental Health Institute (AMHI) Consent Decree case. In the underlying litigation, patients at the mental health hospital filed motions for sanctions and findings of contempt alleging the State of Maine failed to comply with the 1990 Consent Decree and incorporated settlement agreement. After a seventeen-day trial on whether …

Alexis De Tocqueville And American Constitutional Law: On Democracy, The Majority Will, Individual Rights, Federalism, Religion, Civic Associations And Originalist Constitutional Theory, Philip C. Kissam

Maine Law Review

Count Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America has been said to be "at once the best book ever written on democracy and the best book ever written on America. " This praise should perhaps be tempered by consideration of Tocqueville' s purposes and the historical circumstances within which he worked and understood both democracy and America. Yet Tocqueville's insights into American democracy as of the 1830s undoubtedly constitute a rich source of constitutional thought-either as support for particular constitutional principles or as constitutional ideas that should be contested. In a recent notable instance, John McGinnis has argued that Tocqueville's ideas …

The Fragility Of Constitutional Democracy, Yasmin Dawood

Maryland Law Review

Is the survival of constitutional democracy in America at serious risk? Given the actions of the Trump administration, and given the decline of democracy and concomitant rise of authoritarianism the world over, there is genuine cause for alarm. In light of these fears, it is worth remembering that the authors of The Federalist Papers were notably pessimistic about the survival chances of republican government. To what extent have their constitutional design innovations contributed to present woes, and conversely, to what extent will the Constitution ensure the survival of democracy? This Essay argues that while the design of the Constitution is …

Defense Counsel And Public Defence, Eve Brensike Primus

Book Chapters

Public-defense delivery systems nationwide are grossly inadequate. Public defenders are forced to handle caseloads that no one could effectively manage. They often have no funding for investigation or expert assistance. They aren’t adequately trained, and there is little to no oversight of their work. In many jurisdictions, the public-defense function is not sufficiently independent of the judiciary or the elected branches to allow for zealous representation. The result is an assembly line into prison, mostly for poor people of color, with little check on the reliability or fairness of the process. Innocent people are convicted, precious resources are wasted, and …

The Failure Of Education Federalism, Kristi L. Bowman

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Since the Great Recession of 2007–09, states have devoted even less money to public education and state courts have become even more hostile to structural reform litigation that has sought to challenge education funding and quality. Yet the current model of education federalism (dual federalism) leaves these matters largely to the states. As a result, state-level legislative inaction, executive acquiescence, and judicial abdication can combine to create a situation in which the quality of traditional public schools declines sharply. This is the case in Michigan, which is an unusually important state not only because the dynamics that are emerging in …

Law Library Blog (November 2017): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Annual Survey 2017: Table Of Contents

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Algorithmic Jim Crow, Margaret Hu

Faculty Publications

This Article contends that current immigration- and security-related vetting protocols risk promulgating an algorithmically driven form of Jim Crow. Under the “separate but equal” discrimination of a historic Jim Crow regime, state laws required mandatory separation and discrimination on the front end, while purportedly establishing equality on the back end. In contrast, an Algorithmic Jim Crow regime allows for “equal but separate” discrimination. Under Algorithmic Jim Crow, equal vetting and database screening of all citizens and noncitizens will make it appear that fairness and equality principles are preserved on the front end. Algorithmic Jim Crow, however, will enable discrimination on …

Rationing Criminal Justice, Richard A. Bierschbach, Stephanos Bibas

Michigan Law Review

Of the many diagnoses of American criminal justice’s ills, few focus on externalities. Yet American criminal justice systematically overpunishes in large part because few mechanisms exist to force consideration of the full social costs of criminal justice interventions. Actors often lack good information or incentives to minimize the harms they impose. Part of the problem is structural: criminal justice is fragmented vertically among governments, horizontally among agencies, and individually among self-interested actors. Part is a matter of focus: doctrinally and pragmatically, actors overwhelmingly view each case as an isolated, short-term transaction to the exclusion of broader, long-term, and aggregate effects. …

Improving Access To Justice In State Courts With Platform Technology, J. J. Prescott

Articles

Access to justice often equates to access to state courts, and for millions of Americans, using state courts to resolve their disputes—often with the government—is a real challenge. Reforms are regularly proposed in the hopes of improving the situation (e.g., better legal aid), but until recently a significant part of the problem has been structural. Using state courts today for all but the simplest of legal transactions entails at the very least traveling to a courthouse and meeting with a decision maker in person and in a one-on-one setting. Even minimally effective access, therefore, requires time, transportation, and very often …

There Are No Ordinary People: Christian Humanism And Christian Legal Thought, Richard W. Garnett

Journal Articles

This short essay is a contribution to a volume celebrating a new casebook, "Christian Legal Thought: Materials and Cases", edited by Profs. Patrick McKinley Brennan and William S. Brewbaker.

Side By Side: Revitalizing Urban Cores And Ensuring Residential Diversity, Andrea J. Boyack

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

Linchpin Approaches To Salvaging Neighborhoods In The Legacy Cities Of The Midwest, Shelley Cavalieri

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

Freeing The City To Compete, James J. Kelly Jr.

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Natural Capital Crisis In Southern U.S. Cities, Blake Hudson

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Public Pension Crisis Through The Lens Of State Constitutions And Statutory Law, Kristen Barnes

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Detroit Frontier: Urban Agriculture In A Legal Vacuum, Jacqueline Hand, Amanda Gregory

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

Small Sustainability Supply: How Small Business And Lean Manufacturing Can Change Supply Chains, Carlos Lopez

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

No abstract provided.