Law and Society Commons^™

(A)Woke Workplaces, Michael Z. Green

Faculty Scholarship

With heightened expectations for a reckoning in response to the broad support for the Black Lives Matter movement after the senseless murder of George Floyd in 2020, employers explored many options to improve racial understanding through discussions with workers. In rejecting any notions of the existence of structural or systemic discrimination, let alone the need to address the consequences of such discrimination, certain groups have begun to oppose BLM by seeking to diminish any social justice actions. One of those key resistance efforts includes labelling in pejorative terms any employers that pursue anti-racism objectives via social justice statements or internal …

Acknowledgements, Matthew L. Brock

University of Richmond Law Review

Each year, in a tradition dating back twenty-three years to Volume 33, the Editor-in-Chief of the University of Richmond Law Review authors acknowledgements to be included in their volume’s final publication. In keeping with tradition, I offer below my gratitude to those who have contributed to this publication and to the overall success of the Law Review, and reflect upon the fifty-seventh volume of our journal.

"What's In A [Dead] Name?": Title Vii Protections Against Misgendering And Deadnaming Of Gender Diverse Individuals, Mackenzie O'Connell

University of Florida Journal of Law & Public Policy

The Supreme Court’s 2020 holding in Bostock v. Clayton County monumentally altered the availability of employment discrimination claims under Title VII to individuals identifying as members of the LGBTQ+ community. The Court did so by finding that the meaning of Title VII’s prohibition of workplace discrimination “because of sex” includes discrimination against individuals on the basis of their homosexual or transgender statuses. The effects of this decision on other aspects of employment litigation are still uncertain.

Pre-Bostock, transgender and non-binary individuals were largely left without a legal remedy under Title VII for hostile work environment sexual harassment claims. …

Up In Smoke: Preparing The Air Force For The Legalization Of Marijuana, Major Jeffrey D. Baldridge

University of Florida Journal of Law & Public Policy

Over the last four decades, public sentiment regarding marijuana has changed drastically. Many states now allow medicinal marijuana to be prescribed and consumed, while some even permit recreational use. The federal government, as both sovereign and employer, is behind the curve. In both roles, the federal government has failed to act meaningfully. Lax enforcement and the shift in public sentiment will force Congress and the President to enact some significant changes to marijuana law in the very near future. If no action is taken, a dramatic clash between state and federal law will ensue within the nation’s court system.

The …

Editorial Foreword Ijsls Volume 2 Number 2, Sulistyowati Irianto

The Indonesian Journal of Socio-Legal Studies

No abstract provided.

Public Service Loan Forgiveness? How Improvements To A Student Debt Cancellation Program Can Help To Deliver Gideon's Promise, Jane Fox, Winston Berkman-Breen

Journal of Law and Policy

Student debt is a generational crisis facing forty-five million Americans today. Among those with the highest rates of student loan debt are attorneys and among attorneys, those working in public interest have been hit particularly hard as they carry these same high debt rates yet earn low salaries. While student debt has run roughshod over Americans seeking higher education for almost forty years, another crisis has ravaged Americans who are swept up in the criminal legal system. Mass incarceration and mass policing have sent millions to prisons and jails and separated millions of parents and children through family courts. Often …

State Of Delay: Are Outdated Capital Post-Conviction Defense Tactics Undermining Effectiveness And The Attorney-Client Relationship?, Lyle C. May

Journal of Law and Policy

In 2018, death row prisoner Scott Allen was ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation to determine whether he was competent enough to fire his appointed attorneys. The competency hearing was not ordered by Scott’s counsel; rather, a superior court judge did so at the behest of an undisclosed third party. The problem was that Scott Allen had no history or symptoms of an intellectual disability or mental illness, nor was either a mitigatory claim in his appeal. The attorney-client conflict was triggered by Scott’s pro se effort to remove counsel after they ignored his lawful instructions to include potentially exculpatory …

A Call To Action For Parents' Lawyers In The Family Regulation System: Bearing Witness As Praxis And Practice In The Face Of Structural Injustice, Joshua Michtom

Journal of Law and Policy

In this Essay, a public defender specializing in parent defense argues that the family regulation system is fundamentally unfair to parents, and that this unfairness is perpetuated by closed courtrooms and a lack of public understanding. He calls on lawyers who represent parents in these proceedings to make the practice of public storytelling integral to their work, by reporting the injustices that happen in family regulation courts to a broader audience, and helping clients tell their own stories publicly when they want to. He argues that only when the workings of this system are broadly exposed can policy change and …

Defendants In The Dark: How The Jencks Act Is Incompatible With The Adversarial Legal System, Eli J. Esakoff

Journal of Law and Policy

The Jencks Act is a McCarthy Era law that prohibits compelling the disclosure of any statement made by a government witness in a federal criminal prosecution until after the witness has testified at trial. Passed in 1957 in response to the Supreme Court’s decision in Jencks v. United States, the Act’s life in Congress was “nasty, brutish, and short.” In prosecuting its anti-communist “witch hunts” of the era, the government strove to keep hidden as much of its case against those accused as possible. Against this backdrop of the desire for secrecy, the Supreme Court held that a criminal defendant …

When Permanency Is Permanent Separation: In The Family Regulation System, A Temporary Removal Fast Tracks Terminating Parents' Rights, Alison Peebles

Journal of Law and Policy

The Adoption and Safe Families Act (“ASFA”) is a federal law that creates a mandate for states to move to terminate parents’ rights if a child has been in foster care for fifteen out of the twenty-two most recent months. The federal government then pays states for each adoption over a set threshold amount, which has resulted in terminating over two million children’s parents’ rights and disbursing over four hundred million dollars to states. Black families, Indigenous families, and families of color as well as low-income families disproportionately experience the trauma and harm of permanent family separation. This Note argues …

Leave Your Phone At Home: Combatting Data Exploitation In A Post-Dobbs America, Danielle Terracciano

Journal of Law and Policy

This Note comments on the dangers of an under-regulated data privacy sphere and highlights the particularly troubling threats posed to individuals seeking reproductive healthcare. In an ever-digitalizing world, smart phone and device users are subjected to violative data practices, like geofencing and location tracking, without their knowledge or consent. Some data service providers use personal data as a commodity to advance advertising or political objectives. Reproductive healthcare patients are at a heightened risk of exploitation because their personal data may infer or reveal their private healthcare decisions. As the fight for bodily autonomy was upended by the Supreme Court’s decision …

Preventing Trafficking By Protecting Refugees, Rebecca L. Feldmann

Utah Law Review

An inherent tension underlies the duty to prevent trafficking. On the one hand, nation-states are required to take border control measures aimed at preventing trafficking. At the same time, such measures must respect international obligations toward asylum-seekers and other migrants relating to the free movement of people. In the past twenty years, countries such as the United States have developed increasingly sophisticated systems designed to regulate and restrict the movement of people across borders. However, the same period has seen an increasing disregard for the human rights of the very people who are crossing those borders. In order to fully …

The Public Stakes Of Consumer Law: The Environment, The Economy, Health, Disinformation, And Beyond, Rory Van Loo

Faculty Scholarship

This Article shows how consumer law, a field “derided as the law of small problems,”⁴ is more accurately viewed as important for addressing large-scale societal threats. It also offers a more integrated conceptual and institutional approach to consumer law so that the field can have a better chance of fulfilling its societal potential.

Part I of this Article outlines the importance of consumer law. It maps consumer law’s connections to some of the most pressing societal threats: climate change, public health, inequality, and disinformation. Part II focuses on consumer law’s place in the legal academy and government. Currently, important …

Choosing Not To Choose Is A Choice: A Noble Lesson Of The Baduy People In Interpreting Neutral Choices In Voting In General Elections, Ratih Lestari

Indonesia Law Review

Democracy can simply be interpreted as "the government of the people by the people and for the people". One of the pillars of democracy is elections, which are a means of forming power based on popular sovereignty. With elections, democracy can be run through a system that guarantees citizens the freedom to actively participate in politics. Article 22E paragraph (1) of the 1945 NRI Constitution, elections are held directly, publicly, freely, and confidentially. This means that every citizen who is already qualified has the right and freedom to choose and be selected and get the same treatment in accordance with …

Combating Systemic Racism With Truth Commissions, Katherine E. Miles

Theses

The main form of justice practiced in the United States when it comes to criminal proceedings and individual wrongdoings is a form of justice called Retributive Justice. Retributive justice is committed to following these three principles, 1: that those who commit certain kinds of wrongful acts, morally deserve to suffer an equivalent punishment; 2: that it is intrinsically morally good—good without reference to any other goods if some legitimate punisher gives them the punishment they deserve; and 3: that it is morally impermissible to punish the innocent intentionally or to inflict disproportionately large punishments on offenders. From the three principles …

A More Perfect Union For Whom?, Emmanuel Hiram Arnaud

Faculty Scholarship

Amending the federal Constitution has been instrumental in creating and developing the North American constitutional project. The difficult process embedded in Article V has been used by “The People” to expand rights and democracy, fix procedural deficiencies, and even overturn Supreme Court precedent. Yet, it is no secret that the amendment process has fallen to the wayside and that a constitutional amendment in our present age of extreme political polarization feels impossible.

Our nation’s history suggests otherwise. In John F. Kowal and Wilfred U. Codrington III’s exciting and inspirational new book, they explain that interest in constitutional amendments has coincided …

Relations Between Peer Influence, Perceived Cost Versus Benefits, And Sexual Offending Among Adolescents Aware Of Sex Offender Registration Risk, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Hayley M. D. Cleary, Paige M. Oja

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

A policy's general deterrent effect requires would-be offenders to be aware of the policy, yet many adolescents do not know they could be registered as sex offenders, and even adolescents who do know may still commit registerable sexual offenses. We tested whether peer influences shape the perceived costs/benefits of certain sexual offenses and, subsequently, registration policy's general deterrent potential in a sample of policy-aware adolescents. The more adolescents believed their peers approve of sexting of nude images, the more likely they were to have sexted. For forcible touching, having more positive peer expectations about sex and perceiving forcible touching as …

Law School News: Joyce And Bill Cummings Of Cummings Foundation To Deliver Keynote Address At Rwu Commencement 4-20-2023, Jill Rodrigues

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Rescaling City Property, Amnon Lehavi

Arkansas Law Review

This Article seeks to identify the growing tension between the contemporary physical and digital reality of cities across the world and the formal, often archaic, body of norms that governs city powers and duties vis-à-vis different types of persons and corporations: locals, non-local residents of the same nation-state, and foreigners. The nation-state’s continuing dominance, both in the domestic division of power across various legal systems and in the international arena, often results in a systemic mismatch.

Q&A: W&M Law Professor Jeffrey Bellin On 'Mass Incarceration Nation', W&M Law School Staff, Jeffrey Bellin

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Pathology Logics, S. Lisa Washington

Northwestern University Law Review

Every year, thousands of marginalized parents become ensnared in the family regulation system, an apparatus more commonly referred to as the child welfare system. In prior work, I examined how the coercion of domestic violence survivors in the family regulation system perpetuates harmful knowledge production and serves to legitimize family regulation intervention. This Article focuses on another logic deeply embedded in the family regulation system: the pathologizing of impoverished and racialized groups. Scholars have discussed the pathologizing of marginalized groups to describe a host of different phenomena. In this Article, “pathology logic” refers to a logic that produces notions of …

2023 Academy Of Law Alumni Fellows Induction Ceremony Program, Maurer School Of Law - Indiana University

Academy of Law Alumni Fellows

The Academy of Law Alumni Fellows was established in 1985 to recognize alumni whose careers are defined by exceptional personal achievement and dedication to the highest standards of the profession.

Academy Fellows are part of an elite group that includes US senators, federal judges, successful business leaders, and distinguished practitioners. A committee of anonymous alumni selects each year’s Fellows from among many deserving candidates. To be named an Academy of Law Alumni Fellow is to receive the very highest honor that the Maurer School of Law can bestow.

This year, we are honored to recognize four alumni whose remarkable contributions …

Elitism In The Legal World: A Comparison Between The U.K. And U.S.A, Michael Johnson Jr

Faculty Curated Undergraduate Works

In this paper I will be discussing the various ways that the United Kingdom has played an integral part in creating the way the world looks at and practices common law, while also addressing the systemic racism and elitism entrenched in the U.K. legal system. I will also be comparing the U.K. to the United States as American law was built on the influence of British law and share deep similarities to how minorities are treated due to constant and ongoing systemic disadvantages and legal elitism. I will be discussing how the U.K. and U.S. are trying to address the …

Applying Bentham's Theory Of Fallacies To Chief Justice Roberts' Reasoning In West Virginia V. Epa, Dana Neacsu

Law Faculty Publications

This essay summarizes the Court’s decision in West Virginia v. EPA. It also analyzes Chief Justice Robert’s reasoning and addresses the case’s flaws from two perspectives. It references the Court’s decision connecting it to the so-called New Deal Cases, because in both Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan, and West Virginia v. EPA, the Court accepted to review a lower court’s decision about a non-existent regulation. In 1935, the governmental kerfuffle was due to a lack of regulatory transparency; the Federal Register had yet to be established. This essay’s analysis incorporates Jeremy Bentham’s 1809 work on two classes of fallacies, authority …

What The Heller Is Going On With The Second Amendment: Are Licensing Requirements Living Up To The Heller Standard?, Josue Barron

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

The full extent and guarantees of the Second Amendment have yet to be understood in light of modern advances in weaponry. Further, there is little Supreme Court precedent to aid in defining the scope of the Second Amendment. With challenges to restrictions on concealed carrying of firearms in public, the Second Amendment requires much clarification. Federal circuit courts are divided on how to apply the Second Amendment to firearm licensing schemes and differ on the interpretation of the Heller decision. This Note provides guidance on understanding the core protection of the Second Amendment and the presumptions left by the Supreme …

Keep Austin…White? How Equitable Development Can Save Austin, Texas From Its Racist Past And Homogenized Future, Kaylie Hidalgo

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

More than a century of racist federal, state, and local government policies created inequitable and racially segregated neighborhoods through a practice known as redlining. I-35 in Austin, Texas, represents one of the most iconic and stark segregationist splits in the country, with the Eastside being impoverished and mostly Black while the Westside’s mostly White population thrives. As a result, Austin is the only fastest-growing city in the nation losing people of color. While there have been some private and local efforts in Austin and across the country to increase investment in marginalized and divested communities, most of these approaches are …

Hacking Or Hatching The Skinny Label: How The Federal Circuit’S Decision In Gsk V. Teva Threatens Generics And Induced Infringement, Kayla Mccallum

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

This Note focuses on the recent precedential decision handed down by the Federal Circuit in GlaxoSmithKline LLC v. Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc., which impacts “one of the greatest public health inventions of the 21st century”: generic drugs. An invention that rose to prominence when former President Ronald Reagan signed into law the Hatch-Waxman Act (“the Act”), formally known as the Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act of 1984. The Act aimed to increase competition between brand-name and generic manufacturers while balancing two seemingly opposing interests: (1) encourage and reward innovation by pioneer drug companies and (2) increase access …

Judicial Off-Bench Resistance In Post-Revolution Tunisia, Farah Tolu-Honary

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Since the populist Kaid Said has risen to the office of the presidency in Tunisia, the country has been experiencing its largest threat to its hard-fought democracy since the 2011 Revolution. In this paper, I argue that Tunisian judges have utilized off-bench resistance tactics to protect their own autonomy from executive encroachment. I find that judges’ strikes are the dominant form of off-bench resistance. I explain this by looking at the relationships that judges’ unions maintain with other civil society organizations and unions, particularly the UGTT. I argue that the post-revolutionary environment, the strong union culture in Tunisia, and the …

De Jure Separate And Unequal Treatment Of The People Of Puerto Rico And The U.S. Territories, Natalie Gomez-Velez

Fordham Law Review

Current efforts to dismantle systemic racism in the United States are often met with the argument that legally sanctioned inequality is a thing of the past. Yet despite progress toward formal legal equality, racism and discrimination in the United States exist not only as the effects of past laws and systems—they exist presently in current laws and systems as well. Current U.S. law discriminates against U.S. territories and their residents with respect to citizenship status, voting rights and representation, and equal access to benefits, among other things.

This Essay examines such separate and unequal treatment using the recent case, United …

Put Your Money Where Their Mouths Are: A Case For State-Based Investment In Anti-Shaming Policies For School Lunch Programs, Shayna Roth

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

Despite its goals for feeding hungry students, the federal government’s National School Lunch Program falls short due to a lack of guidance and resources. One consequence of these circumstances is shaming practices where schools use fear, punishment, and socioeconomic segregation tactics to mitigate meal price deficits. The federal government and several state governments attempt, and sometimes succeed, to enact legislation to improve school lunch programs, but efforts are few and far between. This Note draws on effective state laws to advocate for increased legislative action on school meals across all states, specifically addressing and prohibiting shaming practices. Eliminating this barrier …