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New Hampshire
Get PDFIn New Hampshire the differences between police and non-police bargaining are minor. There are no statutory differences in impasse procedures nor scope of bargaining. The only difference may be in oversight/evaluations. In the non-police context, PELRB found that the procedures for evaluations were a mandatory subject of bargaining. However, in a police case, the process for investigating employee conduct and oversight was held to be a permissive subject of bargaining
Development and Practice of Tribal Community Planning: Ensuring Indigeneity in the Planning Process
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Memorandum of Amicus Curiae Center for Civil Rights and Critical Justice In Support of Review
Get PDFThe Race to Erase: Destruction of Government Documents Undermines Freedom-of-Information Laws
Get PDFIn August 2019, reporters with Chattanooga’s daily newspaper, the Times Free Press, filed what seemed to be a routine request for access to emails and other public records held by their local county government. The seemingly unremarkable request set the newspaper’s staff on a months-long journey of unpleasant surprises. The first was a demand to pay the county $717 in advance before being allowed to inspect the documents. The second was that—during prolonged haggling over the fee assessment— the county attorney’s office simply destroyed almost all of the disputed records. Third, and most glaringly, the journalists discovered that Tennessee law did nothing to require agencies to retain public records after receiving a request to produce them, exposing a gaping hole in right-to- know laws that goes well beyond one state.
This Article looks at the state of records-retention law in the United States and how the lack of forceful and well-enforced retention requirements can frustrate the good-government objectives of FOI laws. Part I lays out the animating principles behind right-to-know laws, how they operate, and how requesters have productively used public records to uncover government secrets. Part II examines the state of records-retention laws and regulations, and how their lack of clarity—particularly when it comes to emails, texts and other twenty-first-century electronic communication methods—has led to frustrating results for requesters. Part III looks at the meager remedies under federal and state law to enforce records retention requirements; paradoxically, these remedies provide hidebound government officials with an incentive to destroy, rather than just withhold, embarrassing records. Part IV focuses on the special case of police personnel files and body-cam videos, which hold promise as tools of accountability if the public can actually obtain them. This Part uses a recent California dispute—in which a municipal police department destroyed video footage of officers removing homeless people’s campsites while a requester was still fighting to obtain the footage16—to exemplify the larger problem of inadequately rigorous retention laws. Finally, the Conclusion discusses what a legislative remedy to patch this hole in the public’s information safety net might look like, returning to the example of the Chattanooga Times Free Press’ unfulfilled request and the legislative response it inspired
Alt-Legal Services: Re-Visioning Lawyers’ Role in the Fight for Worker Power
No full textCan litigation build worker power? This question is the subject of a long-running debate about lawyers’ roles in the labor movement as a whole, and particularly within the community-based worker advocacy and service organizations known as worker centers. On one side, scholars argue that legal services undermine worker power, “atomizing” workers by encouraging them to focus on individual solutions. But others respond that legal services – especially recovering workers’ unpaid wages through wage-and-hour litigation – is essential to improving workers’ material conditions and demonstrating status quo vulnerability. While many organizations have worked hard to harmonize these two perspectives, the argument has served as stumbling block, stoking internal conflict between organizers and lawyers and in the worst case undermining the organization itself. In this article, I argue that the two sides of this debate are talking past each other because they are assuming different understandings of worker power. Thus, the article first develops a taxonomy of worker power, focusing on countervailing power (power over) and community organizing power (power with). Building on this more precise understanding of worker power, I argue that it is possible to construct a worker-center affiliated law office that both exerts power over employers to force them to stop stealing workers’ wages and builds individual and collective power within communities of workers. Far from rejecting individual representation, I argue that worker centers and other community-based organization can strategically embrace this work through a function I call “Alt-Legal Services.” An Alt-Legal Services office is a law office dedicated to ending wage theft by using legal tools to impose countervailing power on employers and by supporting community campaigns that elevate workers’ collective agency. Finally, I provide some concrete approaches to representation and funding that an Alt Legal Services operation can take
Good Newsletter March 28, 2025
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2024 Seattle University School of Law Holiday Card
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