Touro College: Digital Commons @ Touro Law Center
Not a member yet
3484 research outputs found
Sort by
Limiting Limited Liability: Requiring More Than Mere Subsequence Under Federal Rule of Evidence 407
Get PDFRule 407 of the Federal Rules of Evidence, the “Subsequent Remedial Measures” Rule, is troubling. This exclusionary rule of evidence prohibits using subsequent remedial measures to demonstrate negligence, culpable conduct, or product defect. But, other than in the title of the rule, the phrase “subsequent remedial measures” does not appear anywhere in the rule’s text and the rule itself does not expressly define what measures fall within its purview. This omission creates space for different judicial interpretations of the rule’s language and ultimately disparate judicial outcomes. Although the Federal Rules of Evidence lend themselves to fact-specific inquiries that can lead to varying interpretations, disparities in interpreting the same evidentiary rule undermine the explicit purpose and uniformity sought by Congress and the Advisory Committee when the Federal Rules of Evidence were enacted. There must be a consistent interpretive approach to Federal Rule of Evidence (“FRE”) 407 to ensure equity among litigants and maintain judicial integrity. A purposivist interpretation of FRE 407 requires courts to find a nexus between the subsequent remedial measure and the alleged injury before excluding such evidence under the rule. This approach prevents FRE 407 from becoming a rule of unlimited exclusion while also encouraging public safety and remaining true to the ideals behind the Federal Rules of Evidence intended by Congress. Adopting this approach does not leave parties that object to such evidence without recourse because FRE 407 is merely one part of a court’s multilayered approach to determining the admissibility of evidence. All evidence remains subject to FRE 401’s relevance standard and FRE 403’s protection against unfair prejudice. Therefore, any concerns related to the relevance or unfair prejudice of subsequent remedial measures may be addressed by those rules
Banning Abortions Based on a Prenatal Diagnosis of Down Syndrome: The Future of Abortion Regulation
Get PDFSince the infamous Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade, the United States has remained divided, each side unyielding to the other regarding the legal and moral issues surrounding abortion. The issues surrounding abortion have become progressively more politicized, thus threatening a woman’s right to a safe and healthy termination of her pregnancy. Restrictions on a woman’s ability to terminate a child with a genetic disorder, such as Down syndrome, highlight this concern. State restrictions on abortion that prohibit abortions based on a diagnosis of Down syndrome seek to prevent the stigmatization of the Down syndrome community. Regulations, such as these, that prevent a woman from electing a medically sound procedure based solely on her reason for doing so are unconstitutional.
This Note explains the history of abortion jurisprudence and genetic abnormalities generally. Further, it discusses abortion law as it pertains to the exceedingly political regulation of abortions that follow a Down Syndrome diagnosis. Lastly, this Note addresses the released early draft opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito that expressed the Court’s intention to overturn Roe v. Wade
The Lawyers Justice Corps: A Licensing Pathway to Enhance Access to Justice
Get PDFThe idea for establishing a Lawyers Justice Corps emerged out of efforts to solve a problem: how to license lawyers at a time when COVID-19 had expanded the need for new lawyers while also making an in-person bar exam dangerous, if not impossible. We-the Collaboratory on Legal Education and Licensing for Practice\u27-proposed the Lawyers Justice Corps to provide a different and better way of certifying minimum competence for new attorneys while at the same time helping to create a new generation of lawyers equipped to address a wide range of social justice, racial justice, and criminal justice issues. When implemented, the Lawyers Justice Corps will accomplish two critical and related goals: enhancing access to justice and creating an effective and equitable method of licensing lawyers.
This essay begins by outlining the general contours of the Lawyers Justice Corps. It then explains how the Corps will enhance access to justice for the many underserved clients in our society. In a third section, the essay describes the racial injustice perpetuated by the traditional bar exam, as well as the exam’s failure to adequately measure lawyer competence. A final section shows how the Lawyers Justice Corps would provide a licensing path that both trains for and better assesses competencies required for law practice. The essay concludes that the time is ripe for multiple alternative licensing paths, including the Lawyers Justice Corps
Is Extraterritoriality the Golden Ticket Out of Corporate Liability? How the Modern-Day Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory Evaded Liability Under the Alien Tort Statute in Nestlé v. Doe
Get PDFThe Alien Tort Statute (“ATS”) was drafted as part of the Judiciary Act of 1789. It was intended to provide federal courts with the jurisdiction to hear civil actions brought by foreign plaintiffs for torts committed in violation of the law of nations or other United States treaty. After a two-hundred-year dormancy period, the Statute has since been revived and become a vehicle by which foreign plaintiffs seek redress for environmental and human rights offenses carried out on foreign soil, often at the hands of United States corporations. However, the Supreme Court continues to limit the reach of the Statute, imposing a hurdle of extraterritoriality, which prevents the Court from offering relief when the harms alleged have not touched or concerned U.S. soil. Regardless of whether these harms were orchestrated on U.S. soil and carried out by U.S. corporations, so long as the harms occurred on foreign soil, U.S. law cannot be invoked. This application is antithetical to the statutory intent of the ATS and the modern practice of international law. It has resulted in decisions that favor corporate defendants, allowing them to bypass liability for even the most egregious rights violations. In contrast, the United Kingdom has circumvented this hurdle by focusing not on sufficient proximity, but on general impositions of tort law, particularly in evaluating whether parent corporations breached a duty of care rightfully owed to claimants. This Note analyzes the UK Supreme Court approach as a means of overcoming the extraterritoriality limitation of the ATS. Among other advantages, this approach will fulfill the Statute’s intent, enabling plaintiffs to obtain redress and allowing federal courts the jurisdiction to condemn corporate defendants for atrocities carried out on foreign soil at the expense of foreign nationals and their land
Roadmap to Reconciliation II: Ruminations on the Need for Integrity in Intellectual Interfaith Engagement
Get PDFThis article builds on the framework for a law school-based academic center for Jewish-Muslim engagement laid out in our previous work, Roadmap to Reconciliation. In this follow-up essay, we outline standards, or ground-rules, for the individuals and institutions engaged in academic interfaith discussions of the kind that would occur in our proposed Center. Chief among these considerations is the need to respect the integrity of each respective faith tradition involved in such conversations. We argue for an interfaith dialogic modeled on the insights of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, and discuss how his reflections on the potentials and risks of interfaith engagement can be helpful in setting standards for our proposed Center for Jewish-Muslim Engagement. By offering examples of integrity-rooted interfaith approaches to practical issues in the field of Jewish-Muslim engagement, and by providing a fresh look at new frontiers for intellectual collaboration between Jewish and Muslim scholarship, we further extol the virtues and the need for a path-breaking and principled research initiative in this field
