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Birthright Citizenship: Its History and Continued Relevance in Modern America
No full textIn light of recent efforts by the Trump administration to challenge birthright citizenship, this article addresses the history of the principle of jus soli in the United States and the reasoning behind its incorporation in the U.S. Constitution. The article also explores existing debates surrounding this principle, including those stemming from historical distortions and misconceptions about U.S.-born children of noncitizen parents, and ultimately highlights the importance of its preservation
Why Academic Law Librarians Quit: Results of the Law Librarian Exit Survey
No full textThe pandemic exposed the struggles of workers everywhere. The complexity of handling family, work, illness, and a host of other issues led many to reconsider their employment. The phrase “The Great Resignation” summed up the zeitgeist of the early pandemic. Concurrently, open positions for academic law librarians were increasing. I sought to unravel the apparent surge in open positions by surveying academic law librarians to discover why they resigned from their positions or considered leaving them during the period of January 2020 through June 2023.
These findings were evaluated within the context of a high volume of job postings in an otherwise stable field. This paper presents the quantitative survey results, revealing the complex reasons academic law librarians quit, including career advancement, low salaries, unbalanced workloads, and lack of respect
Thou Shalt Not Castrate: The Conflict Between Louisiana’s Surgical Castration Law and The Principles of Medical Ethics
No full textIn 2024, Louisiana became the first state to permit courtordered surgical castration for sex offenders who have been convicted of certain sex crimes against children. Under the law, an offender who refuses to submit to the procedure will face an additional three to five years in prison without the possibility of parole, probation, or suspension of sentence. The court’s order is contingent on confirmation by a court-appointed expert that the offender is an “appropriate candidate for surgery.” However, the statutory language is vague and does not clearly define who can serve as an expert nor does it define the scope of the expert’s determinations. These gaps in the law, as well as the informed consent issues associated with court-initiated treatments, could raise ethical concerns for physicians tasked with performing the procedure. Above all, physicians have a duty to uphold the ethics and integrity of the medical profession, which supersedes any civic duties imposed by a court. According to the American Medical Association (AMA), physicians may only participate in court-ordered medical treatment in limited circumstances when they can conform to the requirements of the AMA’s Code of Medical Ethics. This Comment seeks to identify conflicts between Louisiana’s court-ordered surgical castration law and the Code of Medical Ethics and develop ways that the law may be amended to allow for ethical physician participation
Birth On Mother Earth: Mitigating The Maternal Health Crisis
No full textMaternal health outcomes in the U.S. are remarkably poor, especially when compared to those in other industrialized countries. For example, our maternal death rate is more than twice that of Canada’s. Women of color in the U.S. suffer maternal morbidity and mortality at rates considerably higher than white women. Indigenous women experience the worst maternal health outcomes of all. Yet, most maternal deaths and injuries are preventable. Furthermore, rates of maternal harm, including death, are lower when midwives and similar birthing attendants are involved. This Article is the first to fully explore the unique skillset of traditional birth attendants (TBAs). TBAs are midwives trained in their Indigenous or other traditional cultures to assist with childbirth. This Article argues that state and local midwifery laws should include recognition of TBAs, as a few state regulations have recently done. It details the maternal health crisis, and it explains the correlations between that crisis and the climate crisis. It also describes the data showing maternal health problems are exacerbated by systemic racism and colonialism. Legally recognizing TBAs disrupts these inequities and improves maternal health. This Article is the first to make these connections and to argue specifically for legal integration of TBAs, rather than midwives more broadly. TBAs operate with deep respect for the interconnectedness of people and of the environment in the birthing process, which is a unique skillset. The environmental justice and reproductive justice movements offer critical insights in this regard, as does the emerging “birthing justice” movement. Those legal movements demonstrate the ways that principles of interconnectedness and empathy can be leveraged for positive legal change. This Article invites legal advocates to build on those foundations, reflected in many existing laws, to cultivate reparative strategies for maternal health. State and local governments can mitigate the maternal health crisis disproportionately experienced by women of color in the U.S. by integrating TBAs into midwifery laws
Discord and the Pentagon\u27s Watchdog: Countering Extremism in the U.S. Military
No full textIn his 2022 book, Ward Farnsworth crafts a metaphor from the lead-pipe theory for the fall of Rome to consider how rage and misinformation traveling through today’s technology-enabled pipes are poisoning our civic engagement and threatening our governmental structures: “We have built networks for the delivery of information––the internet, and especially social media. These networks too, are a marvel. But they also carry a kind of poison with them. The mind fed from those sources learns to subsist happily on quick reactions, easy certainties, one-liners, and rage.”1 This Article carries the metaphor into a new context and considers what should be done when the poison being transported through the digital pipes is directed at members of the U.S. military. While extremism in the U.S. military is not a new threat, the events of January 6, 2021, brought the threat into much sharper focus. It exposed three preexisting trends, each sitting in plain sight but not yet woven together. These trends include a growing acceptance of extremist views and ideologies in U.S. military and veteran communities, an increase in violent extremist acts committed by individuals with military backgrounds, and the enhanced use of digital platforms by extremist groups to target their messaging to and strengthen their recruitment of individuals with military experience. To return to the metaphor, the extremist poison is teeming through the pipes at an alarming rate, and the number of pipes has increased to include social media platforms, encrypted chat tools, gaming platforms, podcasts, and music streaming apps, including YouTube, Discord, Gab, Telegram, and WhatsApp, among many others. In offering these observations, the author is mindful of not overstating the threat and takes seriously warnings as to the adverse consequences that follow from hyperbole and exaggeration. Indeed, a fundamental difficulty is the lack of understanding as to scope and scale of the extremism threat in the U.S. military. This Article attempts to draw the contours of that threat, exposes the structural and legal obstacles that make countering extremism in the military such a fraught exercise, and identifies actors, tools, and mechanisms—beyond the conventional options––able to overcome these long-standing structural and institutional obstacles
