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Cultivating Sense: Cultural Change In The Prosecutor’S Office, Shih-Chun Steven Chien 2023 Cleveland State University College of Law

Cultivating Sense: Cultural Change In The Prosecutor’S Office, Shih-Chun Steven Chien

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Prosecutors exercise broad discretion. They are widely viewed as the gatekeepers of the criminal justice system. To date, studies on prosecutors in different jurisdictions have largely focused on how to conceptualize, manage, and eventually control the exercise of prosecutorial discretion. Scholars have recently turned their attention to the importance of internal organizational management and leadership’s role in changing office culture as a means to regulate prosecutorial discretion. But we have limited empirical evidence as to how changes occur within a prosecutor’s office and what precise role organizational leaders play during this process.

This Article constructs a new paradigm for the …


The Kinder, Gentler Irs? Where?, Harvey Gilmore 2023 University of Hartford

The Kinder, Gentler Irs? Where?, Harvey Gilmore

DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal

No abstract provided.


The Lawyer's Duty Of Tech Competence Post-Covid: Why Georgia Needs A New Professional Rule Now—More Than Ever, Julia Webb 2023 Georgia State University College of Law

The Lawyer's Duty Of Tech Competence Post-Covid: Why Georgia Needs A New Professional Rule Now—More Than Ever, Julia Webb

Georgia State University Law Review

The American Bar Association (ABA) promulgates the Model Rules for Professional Conduct (Model Rules), which prescribe the behavior with which lawyers must comply in demonstrating competency to practice law. In 2012, the ABA updated Comment 8 to Model Rule 1.1 to require maintaining competence in the “benefits and risks associated with relevant technology,” also known as a lawyer’s “duty of technological competence.” A decade later, the majority of state bar associations have adopted and implemented this language. Georgia, however, remains among the last ten states that have not yet formally adopted the duty of technological competence. The COVID-19 pandemic forced …


Law School As Straight Space, Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen 2023 University of California, Irvine School of Law

Law School As Straight Space, Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen

Fordham Law Review

In honoring Professor Deborah L. Rhode’s commitment to making space for the marginal in legal education and clarifying the “no-problem” problems in our midst, Professor Ballakrishnen’s Essay focuses on one strain of nonnormative experience—that of genderqueer persons—to clarify the ways in which law schools reinforce linear hierarchies of identity and performance. Professor Ballakrishnen catalogues ethnographic student interview data to highlight perspectives of genderqueer law students, the result of which suggests that “normal” professional practices in law school reinforce the rigidity of the gender binary. They conclude by suggesting that paying attention to these student subpopulations is crucial to reform legal …


Deborah L. Rhode In Memoriam: Three Stories And Ten Life Lessons, Benjamin H. Barton 2023 University of Tennessee College of Law

Deborah L. Rhode In Memoriam: Three Stories And Ten Life Lessons, Benjamin H. Barton

Fordham Law Review

In this Essay, Professor Benjamin H. Barton offers a heartfelt tribute to the late legal scholar, Professor Deborah L. Rhode. Professor Barton reflects on Rhode’s prolific career, which spanned areas including legal ethics, feminism and women in the law, and lawyers as leaders. He also examines Rhode’s later works, which delved into more personal topics such as character, ambition, and legacy. Through personal anecdotes and life lessons, Professor Barton honors Rhode’s legacy as a model academic, mentor, and transformative force in the legal profession.


Why The 30 Percent Mansfield Rule Can't Work: A Supply-Demand Empirical Analysis Of Leadership In The Legal Profession, Paola Cecchi-Dimeglio 2023 Harvard Law School

Why The 30 Percent Mansfield Rule Can't Work: A Supply-Demand Empirical Analysis Of Leadership In The Legal Profession, Paola Cecchi-Dimeglio

Fordham Law Review

The Mansfield Rule proposes that if 30 percent of the candidate pool is drawn from underrepresented groups, then a legal workplace will become more diverse and inclusive as a result. However, across the legal profession, statistics related to the numbers of women and other underrepresented groups in leadership roles continue to paint a bleak picture of diversity and inclusion. Professor Cecchi-Dimeglio’s Essay presents a supply-demand empirical analysis of the legal profession at the leadership level, and argues that the 30 percent Mansfield Rule ultimately does not enhance diversity in the legal profession, especially in leadership positions.


An Ode To Rhode: In Principle And In Practice, Scott L. Cummings 2023 UCLA School of Law

An Ode To Rhode: In Principle And In Practice, Scott L. Cummings

Fordham Law Review

This Essay is a tribute to Professor Deborah L. Rhode by Professor Scott L. Cummings and discusses her legacy through the impact of her scholarship and leadership on both legal ethics and the community of legal ethics scholars. It reviews Deborah’s findings on pro bono in principle and in practice, revealing a Janus face—one that is built on altruism but used to benefit individual interests. This Essay shares Professor Cummings’s own experiences with Deborah as an inspirational and courageous individual who spoke truth to power to elevate the interests of those with less power and the ideal of lawyers as …


Mentored: On Leaders, Legacies, And Legal Ethics, Renee Knake Jefferson 2023 University of Houston Law Center

Mentored: On Leaders, Legacies, And Legal Ethics, Renee Knake Jefferson

Fordham Law Review

Professor Renee Knake Jefferson shares insights on mentorship and legal ethics gleaned from her relationship with Professor Deborah Rhode. The Essay, written as part of the Fordham Law Review colloquium in Professor Rhode’s memory, argues that the stories of women and minority lawyers—regardless of whether one had a personal relationship with them—are an unrealized, valuable source of informal mentorship. It lays the groundwork for formalizing mentorship as an ethical obligation of leaders in the legal profession and beyond.


Rhode Was Right (About Character And Fitness), Leslie C. Levin 2023 University of Connecticut School of Law

Rhode Was Right (About Character And Fitness), Leslie C. Levin

Fordham Law Review

In this Essay, Professor Leslie C. Levin revives Professor Deborah L. Rhode’s forty-year-old critique of the character and fitness process and shows that not much has changed. Levin exposes the process’s core problems, including the lack of public information available about character and fitness decisions, the process’s subjectivity, the disconnect between information sought and future lawyer misconduct, and the deterrent effect on individuals considering a legal career. Levin proposes that task forces reexamine problematic application questions, such as those targeting decriminalized conduct and mental health, and push for more transparency and disclosure.


The Shape Of A Life: Deborah L. Rhode In Memoriam, David Luban 2023 Georgetown University Law Center

The Shape Of A Life: Deborah L. Rhode In Memoriam, David Luban

Fordham Law Review

In this Essay honoring the life and work of Professor Deborah Rhode, Professor David Luban examines Professor Rhode's moral sensibility, which runs through all her writings, and situates this sensibility on a map of moral theories.


John Osborn's Enduring Words On Law & Learning, Walter Effross 2023 American University Washington College of Law

John Osborn's Enduring Words On Law & Learning, Walter Effross

Popular Media

When I started my first year at Harvard Law School, 17 years after Osborn did, I wasn’t looking for enlightenment. But I expected to be — and was — intimidated by Socratic taskmasters who, like the movie version of Osborn’s Professor Kingsfield (a role for which John Houseman won an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award in 1973), were ready with “always another question, another question to follow your answer.”


What A Waste! An Evaluation Of Federal And State Medical And Biohazard Waste Regulations During The Covid-19 Pandemic And Their Impact On Environmental Justice, Samantha Newman 2023 Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law

What A Waste! An Evaluation Of Federal And State Medical And Biohazard Waste Regulations During The Covid-19 Pandemic And Their Impact On Environmental Justice, Samantha Newman

Villanova Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.


The Evolution Of Chapter 11: How Corporate Restructuring Has Evolved And Its Important Role In The Recovery Of A Struggling Economy, Eduardo Cervantes 2023 DePaul University

The Evolution Of Chapter 11: How Corporate Restructuring Has Evolved And Its Important Role In The Recovery Of A Struggling Economy, Eduardo Cervantes

DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal

No abstract provided.


Covid-19 Vs. Constitution; Limited Government's Unlimited Response, John A. Losurdo 2023 DePaul University

Covid-19 Vs. Constitution; Limited Government's Unlimited Response, John A. Losurdo

DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal

No abstract provided.


The "No License, No Chips" Policy: When A Refusal To Deal Becomes Reasonable, Sheng Tong 2023 DePaul University

The "No License, No Chips" Policy: When A Refusal To Deal Becomes Reasonable, Sheng Tong

DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal

No abstract provided.


The Dark Triad: Private Benefits Of Control, Voting Caps And The Mandatory Takeover Rule, Jorge Brito Pereira 2023 DePaul University

The Dark Triad: Private Benefits Of Control, Voting Caps And The Mandatory Takeover Rule, Jorge Brito Pereira

DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal

No abstract provided.


Repugnant Precedents And The Court Of History, Daniel B. Rice 2023 University of Arkansas School of Law

Repugnant Precedents And The Court Of History, Daniel B. Rice

Michigan Law Review

Aged Supreme Court precedents continue to tolerate many practices that would shock modern sensibilities. Yet the Court lacks standard tools for phasing out decisions that offend our national character. The very cultural shifts that have reoriented our normative universe have also insulated most repugnant precedents from direct attack. And the familiar stare decisis factors cannot genuinely explain what ails societally outmoded decisions. Even for justices inclined to condemn these embarrassments in less clinical terms, it is unclear what qualifies courts to make universalist claims about contemporary American values.

The Court recently sidestepped these difficulties by insisting that one of its …


Beavor V. Tomsheck, 138 Nev. Adv. Op. 71 (Nov. 10, 2022), Genell Maggiacomo 2023 University of Nevada, Las Vegas -- William S. Boyd School of Law

Beavor V. Tomsheck, 138 Nev. Adv. Op. 71 (Nov. 10, 2022), Genell Maggiacomo

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

In an opinion written by Justice Hardesty, the Nevada Supreme Court evaluated whether assignment of proceeds towards an opponent in the same litigation where the legal malpractice arose is valid. The Nevada Supreme Court held that it is invalid because of the violation of public policy. The Court followed the precedent set out in Tower Homes, LLC v. Heaton, which held that assignments for legal malpractice claims prohibited public policy. The Court held that the district court ruled correctly by invalidating the assignment. However, an invalid assignment would not preclude an injured client from pursuing a legal malpractice claim where …


The Murder Of George Floyd: A Case Study Examining How The Policing Of Black Men And Grassroots Activism Influence The Will Of Black Women To Lead, Ella Gates-Mahmoud 2023 Concordia University St. Paul

The Murder Of George Floyd: A Case Study Examining How The Policing Of Black Men And Grassroots Activism Influence The Will Of Black Women To Lead, Ella Gates-Mahmoud

Doctorate in Education

This study's objective investigates the viewpoints held by Black women in two urban areas of Minnesota about the social upheaval that followed the murder of George Floyd in 2020 for using a counterfeit $20 bill. In the last decade, police killings of innocent Black people in the United States have received more attention, and Floyd's death is only one example of this phenomenon. In the U.S., the likelihood of a police officer taking the life of a Black man is higher than that of a White man. Between 2013-2019 there have been 1,641 fatal shootings of defenseless Black men by …


Human Rights And Lawyer’S Oaths, Lauren E. Bartlett 2023 Saint Louis University School of Law

Human Rights And Lawyer’S Oaths, Lauren E. Bartlett

All Faculty Scholarship

Each lawyer in the United States must take an oath to be licensed to practice law. The first time a lawyer takes this oath is usually a momentous occasion in their career, marked by ceremony and celebration. Yet, many lawyer’s oaths today are unremarkable and irrelevant to modern law practice at best, and at worst, inappropriate, discriminatory, and obsolete. Drawing on a fifty-state survey of lawyer’s oaths in the United States, this article argues that it is past time to update lawyer’s oaths in the United States and suggests drawing on human rights to make lawyer’s oaths more accessible and …


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