Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute
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Considering Rehabilitation of Minors Sentenced in Juvenile Military Courts - Initial Proposals and Thoughts for the Future
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James Gardner reflects on the question Is Democracy Possible Here?”
Get PDFIt has often been said of socialism that we don’t really know whether it works because it has never been tried, and because regimes that have called themselves socialist have in fact fallen far short of its ideals. Much the same might be said of democracy
Tenants without Rights: Immigrants’ Experiences in the U.S. Low-Income Housing Market
Get PDFImmigrants who recently arrived in the United States generally are not able to exclusively possess rental properties in the formal market because they lack a steady source of income and credit history. Instead, they rent shared bedrooms, basements, attics, garages, and illegally converted units that violate housing codes and regulations. Their situations highlight the disconnect between tenant rights law and the deleterious conditions of informal residential tenancies. Tenant rights law confers a variety of rights and remedies to a residential tenant if the renter has exclusive possession of the premises. If the renter lacks exclusive possession, courts typically characterize the occupancy as a license, treating the renter as a transient occupant with contractual rights and remedies. Situating the experiences of new immigrants within the low-income housing affordability crisis, this Article proposes that courts should steer away from considering tenant status and its associated rights and remedies as a function of exclusive control of the premises. Instead, they should enforce informal tenants’ legitimate interests, impose duties on those who rent out substandard units, and award damages when the rent paid is disproportionately high relative to the condition of the premises
The Constitutionalization of Parole: Fulfilling the Promise of Meaningful Review
Get PDFAlmost 12,000 people in the United States are serving life sentences for crimes that occurred when they were children. For most of these people, a parole board will determine how long they will actually spend in prison. Recent Supreme Court decisions have endorsed parole as a mechanism to ensure that people who committed crimes as children are serving constitutionally proportionate sentences with a meaningful opportunity for release. Yet, in many states across the country, parole is an opaque process with few guarantees. Parole decisions are considered “acts of grace” often left to the unreviewable discretion of the parole board.
This Article suggests a way to bring the current reality of parole closer to the Court’s promise that parole can render life sentences constitutional. This Article considers how the Supreme Court’s decisions in Graham, Miller, and Montgomery work to constitutionalize parole and change the conventional understanding of the board’s determination. The Article also details the current standards of judicial review of parole board decisions. Because parole is now operating to make constitutional the sentences of people who were children at the time of the offense, the Eighth Amendment task placed on parole boards’ shoulders necessitates substantive standards for the parole board, as well as judicial scrutiny of the board’s determinations.
The Article proposes two essential reforms: first, a presumption of release on parole for people who were children at the time of the crime, absent a determination by clear and convincing evidence that they have not rehabilitated; and second, independent judicial review of the parole board decision to determine if the evidence supports defeating the presumption that life in prison is disproportionate for the vast majority of people who committed crimes as children
Copyright and the Creative Process
Get PDFCopyright is typically described as a mechanism for encouraging the production of creative works. On this view, copyright protection should be granted to genuinely creative works but denied to non-creative ones. Yet that is not how the law works. Instead, almost anything—from test answer sheets to instruction manuals to replicas of items in the public domain—is deemed creative and therefore eligible for copyright protection. This is the consequence of a century of copyright doctrine assuming that artistic creativity is incapable of measurement, unaffected by personal motivation, and incomprehensible to novices and experts alike. Recent neuroscientific research contradicts these assumptions. It turns out that creativity can be partially measured, that authorial intent is critical to creative production, and that expertise and creative output are highly correlated. If copyright law’s goal is truly to promote creativity, it should define that foundational concept to accord with scientific fact
Integrating Social Justice Theory into Engineering Practice
Get PDFEngineering education has historically been limited in developing students’ awareness of social justice issues, even though research tells us that students who are underrepresented (by class, race, gender, etc.) can be empowered and retained when participating in social justice projects related to engineering (Lucena & Leydens, 2015; Mejia, 2017). My goal is to integrate social justice theory into engineering practice, to empower UB students to make a lasting, collective impact in their community. I want students to study and learn social justice themes while becoming more socially and critically conscious about their own influence, as creators of technology
