LARC Cardoso Law (Yeshida Univ)
Not a member yet
9951 research outputs found
Sort by
The Court We Need: Why the Supreme Court is Worth Saving—Especially from Itself with Professor Steven I. Vladeck
Get PDFFor all of the ink that has been spilled over the Supreme Court in recent years, no one has been able to bridge the growing divide between those who think we should bury the Court and those who think we should praise it. Meanwhile, public faith in the Court continues to decline. The result has been an erosion of the Court’s moral authority and an impasse about how to restore it at the exact moment when we most need it—with the other institutions of government increasingly unable or unwilling to check each other. Now, more than ever, we need a Supreme Court that has, and that has earned, widespread popular support. For two centuries, that was the Supreme Court we had. It’s no longer the Supreme Court we have. But it is very much the Supreme Court we need, and this talk will explain how we get there from here.https://larc.cardozo.yu.edu/event-invitations-2025/1003/thumbnail.jp
California Judges Can Now Defend Criticisms of Their Rulings If the Digs Are Campaign-Related
No full textA recent California judicial ethics opinion allows judges to speak out publicly during an election or recall campaign as long as their comments do not affect the outcome or fairness of a case
Daniel J. Dominguez ’05 Honored and 3 Students Receive Awards at the 15th Annual BALLSA Celebration
Get PDFThe 15th Annual BALLSA Celebration honored Daniel J. Dominguez ’05 for his leadership and commitment to equity, while awarding scholarships to students Stacy Moses ’25, Andrea Mendoza Diaz ’25, and Elisa Davila ’26 to support diversity and inclusion at Cardozo Law
Cardozo Celebrates Pride with 10th Annual Pride Brunch
No full textCardozo celebrated the 10th Annual Pride Brunch on June 29, bringing together students and alumni in the Ruth & H. Bert Mack Pavilion to watch the NYC Pride March. Hosted by the Alumni Association and OUTlaw Alumni Group, the event honored the school’s vibrant LGBTQ+ community and marked the 10th anniversary of Obergefell v. Hodges. Proceeds supported the Paris Baldacci Scholarship, which benefits students advancing LGBTQ+ rights through clinics, externships, or activism, honoring the legacy of the late professor and his groundbreaking advocacy
Cardozo Welcomes Three New Members to Board of Overseers
No full textCardozo recently welcomed three new members to its Board of Overseers: Parvin Aminolroaya ’08, John Elefterakis ’09, and Stephanie Knepper Basman ’08. Each brings extensive professional expertise and a strong commitment to advancing Cardozo’s mission of legal excellence, leadership, and service. Aminolroaya is a partner at Seeger Weiss LLP with major experience in mass tort and class action litigation. Elefterakis, founding partner of Elefterakis, Elefterakis & Panek, is a nationally recognized litigator and civil rights advocate. Knepper Basman, counsel and principal at SKA Marin, is a leader in affordable housing development and active in civic and community organizations
The Class of 2025’s Achievements Celebrated at Pre-Commencement Awards Ceremony
No full textThe Class of 2025 was honored at Cardozo’s annual Pre-Commencement Awards Ceremony, celebrating student excellence both in and beyond the classroom. Highlights included the Cardozo Service and Achievement Awards, the Professor John Appel Award for exemplary service, and recognition of outstanding written work across civil advocacy, criminal justice, and publication. Numerous students received distinctions such as the Jacob Burns Medals for editorial leadership, the Stanley H. Beckerman Public Interest Award, and honors in fields like constitutional law, intellectual property, ethics, and public interest. The ceremony showcased the exceptional achievements and dedication of Cardozo’s graduating clas
An Alternate History of \u3ci\u3eChevron\u3c/i\u3e, With a Lesson for Today
No full textIt is a banal truism that judicial deference to agency decisionmaking enables the executive branch to pursue its agenda, whatever that agenda may be. That was obvious to all in the early years of the Chevron decision, which was greeted enthusiastically on the right and skeptically on the left. In Chevron itself, and for a while thereafter, deference advanced the Reagan deregulatory program. Over the years, a subtler conclusion gained consensus: overall and in the long haul, judicial deference is likely to have a net pro-regulatory impact. Hence the right’s hardened opposition to Chevron leading up to its demise. But the banal truism is often correct. It is a nice irony that the Supreme Court abandoned Chevron just in time to make it harder (though obviously not impossible) for the Trump administration to unravel existing regulatory regimes.
This Article reviews these dynamics through a thought experiment. It imagines a world in which the deference-denying Bumpers Amendment had been enacted. That would have meant that Chevron came out the other way, with significant regulatory consequences. It is an interesting alternative history because it resembles the current day. While 2025 is like 1981 in many ways, one major difference is that the Reagan administration was deregulating against the background of the rejection of the Bumpers Amendment and the newly minted pro-deference Chevron doctrine. The Trump administration is deregulating against the background of Loper Bright Enterprises, Inc. v. Raimondo and the Supreme Court’s insistence that judges read statutes for themselves. It would be naïve to predict that this means the Trump project is in trouble; it may make little difference. But it will make some
Presenting the Jacob Burns Center Award for Professional Courage to Elizabeth (Liz) Oyer
No full textLiz Oyer served in the Department of Justice as United States Pardon Attorney from April 2022 to March 2025, overseeing the Office of the Pardon Attorney. In that role, she was responsible for reviewing applications from individuals across the country seeking pardons and commutations of sentence and preparing recommendations for the President concerning the exercise of his constitutional clemency power. The Pardon Attorney is a career-reserved position in the Senior Executive Service; it is not a political appointment.https://larc.cardozo.yu.edu/event-invitations-2025/1004/thumbnail.jp
The Violence of Bright Lines
Get PDFThe U.S. Supreme Court interprets the Eighth Amendment to prohibit members of certain groups from serving extreme punishments, such as the death penalty and life without parole. For example, the Court has long banned death sentences for people with intellectual disability and for those who were under eighteen years old at the time of their crime. More recently, in Graham v. Florida and Miller v. Alabama, the Court extended this reasoning to sentences of life without parole for those under eighteen—prohibiting the sentence altogether for nonhomicide crimes and barring its mandatory imposition for homicides.
Many scholars and advocates have applauded these decisions as necessary to constrain judges and juries from imposing such punishments on members of vulnerable, less culpable groups. They have argued that, for the members of these groups, traditional aims of punishment, such as deterrence and retribution, are less applicable. Although we agree with this underlying logic, we write to raise questions about the potential costs of these “categorical bars,” which draw bright lines to separate those who are constitutionally deserving of mercy and redemption from those who are not. We have found that, although the Court may have sought to make extreme punishment less arbitrary, such stark demarcation often contributes to arbitrariness by tying punishment more to birth date than to culpability. These bright lines favor blunt administrability at the cost of nuanced, individualized sentencing determinations.
In drawing these conclusions, we rely not only on research but on lived experience. One of us, Terrell (“Rell”) Woolfolk, was sentenced to life without parole for a crime committed as a young man in his twenties. Following Graham and Miller, Rell was initially buoyed by the Court’s recognition that brain development impacted both crime and culpability. However, he grew disenchanted with the decision to draw a hard line at eighteen—an age not supported by the very same neuroscience that the Court’s opinion appeared to rest on. Rell saw firsthand how the Court’s jurisprudence resulted in arbitrary outcomes: relief bestowed on people who had committed intentional murder at age seventeen but denied from those only a few months older, whose killings were unintentional. The other of us, Kathryn Miller, experienced the Graham and Miller decisions from a more privileged position. As a criminal defense attorney, she attempted to seek relief for qualifying individuals. Although she interviewed potential clients at the same facility at which Rell was incarcerated, their paths never crossed because Rell’s age categorically barred him from consideration as a potential client.
Through a critical inventory of Eighth Amendment jurisprudence, scholarship, and experience, we argue for state solutions to this constitutional myopia. States should blur the lines associated with sentencing relief. Rather than focus on a person’s age, they should create individualized sentencing opportunities for anyone facing sentences of death by incarceration whose stories exhibit the characteristics underlying the reasoning of Graham and Miller. Individuals who can demonstrate that they possessed the immaturity, impulsivity, or vulnerability that the Court recognized reduces culpability, along with the changeability that demonstrates their redemption, should qualify for sentencing relief
Cardozo Law News Brief: January 17, 2025
No full textHighlights from the January 17, 2025 Cardozo Law News Brief include:
Professor Saurabh Vishnubhakat spoke to Law360, USA Today, The Verge, Politico, and ABC News about legal challenges surrounding the U.S. TikTok ban.
Professor David Rudenstine published an op-ed in The Hill urging the Supreme Court to adopt a formal code of ethics.
Professor Matthew Wansley was quoted in The Washington Post on privacy concerns related to Elon Musk\u27s involvement in a Cybertruck explosion investigation.
Assistant Professor Emmanuel Hiram Arnaud’s article “Colonizing by Contract” was published in the Columbia Law Review.https://larc.cardozo.yu.edu/news-brief-2025/1012/thumbnail.jp