Legal History Commons^™

The Territorial Continuum: American Samoa, Criminal Adjudication, And Territorial Administration, Emmanuel Hiram Arnaud

Cardozo Law Review

The standard account of American territorial expansion posits that territorial acquisition moved along a spectrum of sovereignty. The federal government acquired new inhabited land through conquest or purchase, and the Constitution tasked Congress with organizing and administering the new territories until they were ready to become states. That pattern came to an abrupt halt in 1898 when, at the conclusion of the Spanish-American War, the Supreme Court, fearing the extension of citizenship to and the permanent integration of non-White populations into the American polity, suddenly pronounced that the Constitution authorized the holding of colonies. The Court thus sentenced new territories, …

The U Visa: A Remedy For Vulnerable Immigrants Scammed By Unscrupulous Attorneys, Jennifer Piñeros

Cardozo Law Review

As of 2018, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) estimates that there are eleven million unauthorized immigrants† living in the United States. Due to limited resources, DHS has taken the position that it “cannot respond to all immigration violations or remove all persons unlawfully [residing] in the United States.” Congress has failed to enact comprehensive immigration reform, despite numerous attempts, since the Reagan administration. This leaves the unauthorized population in a limbo often characterized as “living in the shadows”—relegated to fading into the background so as to not draw the attention of immigration enforcement authorities. Immigration status impacts many …

Navigating Campaign Finance Reform Through Publicly Funded Elections On The Local Level, Emily Bernstein

Cardozo Law Review

Despite the Constitution’s silence on the issue of campaign finance, the Supreme Court has had a considerable hand in shaping the campaign finance regulatory structure of the United States. There are countless criticisms of the campaign finance system the Court has constructed. On the one hand, some scholars stipulate that, though they are critical of the system, it is an intelligible “product” of the Constitution. On the other hand, others argue that the “vision of democracy” portrayed in money-in-politics decisions is not faithful to the Constitution.

The Future Of Property, Yael R. Lifshitz, Maytal Gilboa, Yotam Kaplan

Cardozo Law Review

Property law focuses predominantly on spatial conflicts of interest between neighbors but neglects temporal conflicts between generations. This lack of attention to the temporal dimension leads to a troubling mismatch in property law: while property rights last forever, the corresponding duties that require property holders to respect the interests of others are remarkably short lived. The result is that property law currently does not adequately protect the rights of future generations. In this Article, we offer a blueprint for correcting this anomaly. We advocate a change in the current conception of property and propose that property law focus more on …

“That Little Girl Was Me”: Kamala Harris And The Civil Whites Of 1964 And Beyond, Maureen Johnson

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Why Do You Care About My Hair? A Proposal For Remedying Hair Discrimination In The Workplace On A Federal Level, Grayson Moronta

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Court Packing As An Antidote, Rivka Weill

Cardozo Law Review

Court packing is considered the nuclear weapon that may unleash total chaos on the American constitutional system. Even in the face of a highly controversial appointment process to the U.S. Supreme Court during the 2020 presidential election season, scholars caution against the wisdom and utility of resorting to court packing. This Essay makes three bold arguments: First, a President may nominate a candidate to the Supreme Court at any time, including their last year in office; this is true both empirically and normatively. It is the Senate’s responsibility to ensure the people’s will is not frustrated. Second, never since the …

Court Packing Is A Chimera, Brian L. Frye

Cardozo Law Review

The dream of the 1930s is alive in Washington. Democrats see Republicans hemorrhaging voters as Trump struggles with the economy and the pandemic and are salivating at the prospect of retaking not only the White House, but also the Senate. Of course, you should never sell a bearskin until you’ve caught the bear. But even a blowout victory can’t get Democrats the prize they really want, a Supreme Court majority. So, in back-to-the-future fashion, many progressives are pushing the idea of court packing. After all, in politics, rules are made to be broken.

Against Court Packing, Or A Plea To Formally Amend The Constitution, Jill M. Fraley

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

“An Outrage Upon Our Feelings”: The Role Of Local Governments In Resistance Movements, Daniel Farbman

Cardozo Law Review

After the election of 2016, many who opposed President Trump and his policies argued that local governments and local power would be the best tools to resist those policies and strengthen democracy. Among the most prominent acts of local resistance in the last decade have been resolutions that declare a town or a city a “Sanctuary” and refuse to cooperate with federal authorities in the deportation of undocumented immigrants. This Article situates these resolutions in a long tradition of local opposition to state and federal laws that towns and cities deem unjust by examining local opposition to the Fugitive Slave …

Contract's Revenge: The Waiver Society And The Death Of Tort, Ryan Martins, Shannon Price, John Fabian Witt

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Putting The "Notice" Back Into Pleading, Robin J. Effron

Cardozo Law Review

In the wake of Twombly and Iqbal, courts and commentators have questioned whether notice pleading died with those cases. But what exactly was notice pleading? In this Essay, I argue that the question of whether the Court had "really" abandoned notice pleading in Twombly and Iqbal was a distraction from the fact that a full-bodied doctrine of notice pleading had never really existed in the first place. It had little separate existence from general theories of openness and liberalism, yet the name provided some rhetorical cover by insinuating that the standard was doing some sort of work aside from …

Policing The Painted And Powdered, Anthony Michael Kreis

Cardozo Law Review

Is homophobia also sexism?

This question was the focus ofpioneering scholarship nearly three decades ago and has been the subject ofreignited controversy because of litigation over marriage rights, employment discrimination, educational opportunities, fair housing, religious exemptions, and military service. Even though some courts, federal agencies, and state employment commissions have recognized that sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination are subsets ofsex discrimination, including the landmark Title VII decisions Hively v. Ivy Tech Community College and Zarda v. Altitude Express, academics, judges, andpublic administrators have been unable to articulate a plain theory ofsexual orientation discrimination as sexism. Without a straightforward theory …

Modern Waste Law, Bankruptcy, And Residential Mortgages, Jill M. Fraley

Cardozo Law Review

Around the time of the subprime mortgage collapse, lenders began in earnest to sue borrowers by adapting the traditional law of waste. Today, these claims continue to rise in frequency and to expand to more jurisdictions. Lender waste claims provide a "work around" for state mortgage laws that prohibit personal deficiency judgments after foreclosure and are potentially non-dischargeable in bankruptcy.

While a recent wave of scholarship has addressed the problems of how the bankruptcy system handles mortgages, scholars have not yet explored the use of waste actions by lenders and how waste judgments intersect with bankruptcy and foreclosure. Using new …

A Second Step Act For The States (And Counties, And Cities), John F. Pfaff

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

The First Step Is Actually The ‘Next Step’ After Fifteen Years Of Successful Reforms To The Federal Criminal Justice System, Jesselyn Mccurdy

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Special Norms Thesis: Why Congress's Constitutional Decisionmaking Should Be Disciplined By More Than The Usual Norms Of Politics, Mark D. Rosen

Cardozo Law Review

Even if we accept that the most basic rules of fair play do not apply to our nation's political representatives when they battle one another in the ordinary lawmaking process, we should demand more when they engage in constitutional decision-making. This Article explains why our constitutional system demands different rules of engagement when constitutional questions are at issue, and exactly what we should expect of members of Congress in these situations.

The Dark Side Of Reputation, Emily Kadens

Cardozo Law Review

This Article seeks to contribute to the literature challenging the role of reputation in disciplining commerce. The historical disputes discussed here, which arose in the supposedly privately-ordered zone of the premodern merchant, add nuance to our understanding of how commerce works in the real world. Part I briefly reviews some of the problems the economic and network theory literature has identified with reputation. Part II turns to the history and demonstrates how trust could be cheaply manufactured due in part to potential partners' failure to look beyond superficial indicia of reputation. Part III then considers why reputation might have been …

Civil Rico: An Effective Deterrent To Fraudulent Asbestos Litigation?, Lester Brickman

Cardozo Law Review

In January 2014, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge George Hodges, presiding over the asbestos-related bankruptcy of Garlock Sealing Technologies, LLC, a manufacturer of gaskets containing asbestos, issued an order estimating Garlock's liability for pending and future mesothelioma cases. Judge Hodges, after hearing evidence discovered by Garlock in a sampling of settled cases, rejected using the usual bankruptcy court recourse to the debtor's historic settlement values as a valid basis for estimating Garlock's total future liability for asbestos-related injuries. He found that Garlock's prior mesothelioma settlements were not a reliable predictor of Garlock's liability because those settlements had been infected by misrepresentations by …

The Fair Housing Act: Enacted Despite The Mainstream Media, Neutered By The Federal Government's Unwillingness To Enforce It, Craig Flournoy

Cardozo Law Review

This Article examines the 1968 Fair Housing Act from two perspectives. The first Part discusses the urban riots of the mid-1960s; the failure of the white press to examine the connection between the riots and systemic social problems, particularly segregation; and the Kerner Commission's devastating indictment of mainstream media coverage of the riots, the Black ghetto, and African Americans. I argue the mainstream media's poor coverage of the problems caused by inner-city ghettos made it more difficult to win popular and political support for the Fair Housing Act. The second Part examines the creation of a separate and unequal system …

The Fair Housing Act At Fifty: Time For A Change, Elizabeth Julian

Cardozo Law Review

In order to put my views in this Article in context, I am going to briefly reference the experience upon which I base my comments. I am a civil rights lawyer. I filed my first systemic housing discrimination lawsuit in 1980 and litigated cases against HUD, cities, and local housing agencies through the 1980s up until I left private practice in 1993 to join the Clinton administration at HUD. For the next seven years, I looked at things from the inside, first as Deputy General Counsel for HUD's Civil Rights and Litigation office, and then as Assistant Secretary for its …

Second Class Citizenship? The Plight Of Naturalized Special Immigrant Juveniles, Irene Scharf

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Prosecuting Chinese "Spies": An Empirical Analysis Of The Economic Espionage Act, Andrew Chongseh Kim

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Framed By Forensics: Fulfilling Daubert's Gatekeeping Function By Segregating Science From The Adversarial Model, Kayla Marie Mannucci

Cardozo Law Review

The note argues that flawed forensic expert testimony significantly contributes to wrongful convictions, undermining the criminal justice system's objective to acquit the innocent. It highlights how partisan bias, lack of scientific validation, and inadequate judicial gatekeeping under Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. have led to the admission of unreliable forensic evidence. The note proposes a reform: requiring neutral, court-appointed experts in high-stakes forensic cases to ensure objective testimony and prevent partisan bias.

Love For Sale: Book Review Of Marcia A. Zug, Buying A Bride: An Engaging History Of Mail-Order Matches, Jeanne L. Schroeder

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Echoes Of The Past: The 1975 Eec Referendum Forty Years On, Warren Swain

Cardozo Law Review

The article examines the 1975 referendum on Britain's continued membership in the European Economic Community (EEC), highlighting the political, economic, and social dynamics that shaped the campaign and its outcome. It draws parallels with the 2016 Brexit referendum, emphasizing the role of the political establishment, public opinion, and sovereignty concerns. The 1975 referendum resulted in a decisive vote to remain in the EEC, but the article suggests that the underlying issues, such as concerns over sovereignty and economic impact, persisted and ultimately contributed to the 2016 decision to leave the EU.

Disability, Universalism, Social Rights, And Citizenship, Samuel R. Bagenstos

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Law And Legislation In Municipal Bankruptcy, Vincent S.J. Buccola

Cardozo Law Review

Corporate and consumer bankruptcy are defined by two principal features: a compulsory process and an identifiable set of priorities to debtor property. These "rule of law"features reduce borrowing costs ex ante by, among other things, discouraging rent-seeking ex post. Municipal bankruptcy, by contrast, despite apparent similarities, embodies a radically different vision of debt adjustment. Substantive priorities in Chapter 9 are riddled with uncertainty, and the very invocation of bankruptcy is subject to veto by multiple actors. Consequently, this Article contends that familiar models of bankruptcy are inadequate to explain the existing regime of municipal debt adjustment. What Chapter 9 creates …

3d Printing The Road Ahead: The Digitization Of Products When Public Safety Meets Intellectual Property Rights-A New Model, Shlomit Yanisky-Ravid, Kenneth S. Kwan

Cardozo Law Review

This Article addresses the threats of 3D printing to both the physical and legal world. Not only does 3D printing impact products protected by intellectual property rights, it also poses risk, threats, and challenges to many other regimes, including products governed by product liability and criminal laws, which consequently threatens public safety. 3D printing virtually possesses threats to medical devices and products, threats to legal and illegal drugs, threats to human organs, threats to the food industry, and to the transportation industry, including cars, trains, and aircrafts. Ultimately, 3D printing also threatens environmental protection, workplace protections, households, and even the …

The Promise Of America, Joseph A. Greenaway Jr.

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.