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Articles 1 - 10 of 10
Full-Text Articles in Legal Profession
Regulating The Public Defender Identity, Irene Oritseweyinmi Joe
Regulating The Public Defender Identity, Irene Oritseweyinmi Joe
Fordham Law Review
The public defender institution has trouble meeting its mission. This is partly because, despite the specific and clear purpose of representing indigent defendants in criminal proceedings, public defender offices rely on various centering principles to meet this objective. The institution falters if it chooses a centering principle that unwittingly complicates its ability to meet the institution’s central mission. For public defender leaders tasked with developing and maintaining an institutional identity for a particular office, neither legal nor professional regulations supply the type of considerations that guarantee that an adopted identity will comply with core institutional responsibilities. This project seeks to …
Progressive Prosecutors Are Not Trying To Dismantle The Master’S House, And The Master Wouldn’T Let Them Anyway, Paul Butler
Progressive Prosecutors Are Not Trying To Dismantle The Master’S House, And The Master Wouldn’T Let Them Anyway, Paul Butler
Fordham Law Review
The first thing to note about Audre Lorde’s famous phrase “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” is that it cannot literally be true. If tools can dismantle the master’s house, the master’s own tools would be good as anyone’s. The main problem would not be that the tools don’t work, but rather how to get them to the people who most need the master’s house dismantled—the enslaved ones. But the considerable work that the phrase does in social justice movements and critical theory is figurative rather than literal. It is usually intended as a rebuke of liberal …
No Justice, No Pleas: Subverting Mass Incarceration Through Defendant Collective Action, Andrew Manuel Crespo
No Justice, No Pleas: Subverting Mass Incarceration Through Defendant Collective Action, Andrew Manuel Crespo
Fordham Law Review
The American penal system is a system of massive, racially unjust incarceration. It is also, to quote the U.S. Supreme Court, a “system of pleas.” The latter drives the former, as coercive plea bargaining makes it possible for the state to do two things that are otherwise hard to pull off at once: increase convictions and sentence lengths. Mass incarceration is a predictable result. But while plea bargaining is intensely coercive when leveraged against individuals, the system of pleas has a structural weak point. That Achilles’ heel is exposed once we see people facing prosecution not as isolated individuals but …
Bargaining For Abolition, Zohra Ahmed
Bargaining For Abolition, Zohra Ahmed
Fordham Law Review
What if instead of seeing criminal court as an institution driven by the operation of rules, we saw it as a workplace where people labor to criminalize those with the misfortune to be prosecuted? Early observers of twentieth century urban criminal courts likened them to factories. Since then, commentators often deploy the pejorative epithet “assembly line justice” to describe criminal court’s processes. The term conveys the criticism of a mechanical system delivering a form of justice that is impersonal and fallible. Perhaps unintentionally, the epithet reveals another truth: criminal court is also a workplace, and it takes labor to keep …
A Legal And Ethical Puzzle: Defense Counsel As Quasi Witness, Elizabeth Slater
A Legal And Ethical Puzzle: Defense Counsel As Quasi Witness, Elizabeth Slater
Fordham Law Review
The U.S. criminal justice system is built on the concept of an adversarial trial. The defense and prosecution present competing narratives to a neutral audience that judges whether the prosecution has proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt. In this context, defense counsel is expected to be a zealous advocate for the defendant, providing the most effective representation possible in light of the evidence presented by the government. However, there are occasions outside of trial where defense counsel’s traditional role changes and she is asked to disclose, not to the jury, but to the court, personal opinions and knowledge about …
Foreword: Critical Race Theory And Empirical Methods Conference, Kimani Paul-Emile
Foreword: Critical Race Theory And Empirical Methods Conference, Kimani Paul-Emile
Fordham Law Review
Everyone seems to be talking about race. From the protests that erupted in cities across the country over the failure of grand juries in Missouri and New York to indict police officers in the killing of two unarmed black men, to the racially charged statements made by the owners of professional sports teams; and the college fraternity members captured on film singing a racist lynching song; race exploded into the nation’s collective consciousness. Even the Starbucks Coffee chain’s recent “Race Together” campaign, intended to promote discussion about race, sparked a controversy and was quickly withdrawn. These and other events have …
Police Racial Violence: Lessons From Social Psychology, L. Song Richardson
Police Racial Violence: Lessons From Social Psychology, L. Song Richardson
Fordham Law Review
The recent rash of police killing unarmed black men has brought national attention to the persistent problem of policing and racial violence. These cases include the well-known and highly controversial death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, as well as the deaths of twelve-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Ohio; Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York; John Crawford III in Beavercreek, Ohio; Ezell Ford in Los Angeles, California; Dante Parker in San Bernardino County, California; and Vonderrit D. Myers Jr. in St. Louis, Missouri. Data reported to the FBI indicate that white police officers killed black citizens almost twice a …
When Is Fear For One's Life Race-Gendered? An Intersectional Analysis Of The Bureau Of Immigration Appeals's In Re A-R-C-G- Decision, Ange-Marie Hancock
When Is Fear For One's Life Race-Gendered? An Intersectional Analysis Of The Bureau Of Immigration Appeals's In Re A-R-C-G- Decision, Ange-Marie Hancock
Fordham Law Review
In August 2014, the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) handed down a breakthrough decision, In re A-R-C-G-, permitting courts to consider domestic violence as a gendered form of persecution in a home country and thus grounds for asylum in the United States. Along with two other 2014 decisions, In re W-G-R- and In re M-E-V-G-, this case represented a marked shift from prior BIA decisions, which for fifteen years had interpreted sections 208(a) and 241(b)(3) of the Immigration and Naturalization Act more narrowly, thus excluding claims of home country abuse as reasonable grounds to grant asylum. Specifically, …
When Theory Met Practice: Distributional Analysis In Critical Criminal Law Theorizing, Aya Gruber
When Theory Met Practice: Distributional Analysis In Critical Criminal Law Theorizing, Aya Gruber
Fordham Law Review
Focusing on criminal law and procedure in particular, this Article seeks to expose various tensions in critical race theorizing and progressive theorizing more broadly, offer some suggestions for a unifying methodology of critical criminal law analysis, and discuss where empirical study might fit into this new program. Progressive (critical race and feminist) theorizing on criminal law is not only subject to the competing frames of critique and formalism, it also exists within an overarching American criminal law culture that can eclipse both concerns over rights violations and structural injustice. The U.S. penal system has become a “peculiar institution” and a …
Taking A Stand?: An Initial Assessment Of The Social And Racial Effects Of Recent Innovation In Self-Defense Laws, Mario L. Barnes
Taking A Stand?: An Initial Assessment Of The Social And Racial Effects Of Recent Innovation In Self-Defense Laws, Mario L. Barnes
Fordham Law Review
Perhaps, not surprisingly, the controversy over the rise of self-defense reforms in the United States that have come to be known as ―Stand Your Ground‖ (SYG) laws, began with a story about colors. This Article principally applies an empirical method and critical race theory (eCRT) lens to explore whether these reformed statutes, which generally have authorized greater use of force within the context of self-defense, deter crime and differentially affect Whites, Blacks, and other racial groups.