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Immigration Enforcement Creep in Immigrant & Employee Rights
No full textAs the only agency charged with enforcing the Immigration Reform and Control Act’s antidiscrimination provisions, the Immigrant and Employee Rights (“IER”) section of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division plays an important role in protecting worker rights. Yet over the past decade, IER has moved from worker protection to immigration enforcement: a phenomenon this Article terms “immigration enforcement creep.”
This observation is based on ten years of data collected from IER’s settlement agreements, complaints filed, and telephone interventions. The data show that rather than protect noncitizen workers from unlawful discrimination, IER has moved its focus to enforcing immigration laws against employers who hire workers on temporary work visas. IER’s enforcement choices lead to underenforcement of the antidiscrimination provisions Congress charged it with enforcing. This Article ultimately concludes that this immigration enforcement creep goes against IER’s role as a worker protection agency and suggests principles of equitable enforcement that should guide its exercise of authority instead
The Politics of Possession and Gun Violence: The Bruen Decision\u27s Impact on Firearm Regulation
No full textStates struggle to implement new firearms policies because they are
limited by two major forces: the political feasibility of passing new firearms
legislation and an increasingly broad and individualized Second Amendment
right. Due to this conflict, states continually return to one of few
constitutional yet politically popular methods of gun control: enacting
possession-based firearms laws. These laws are largely ineffective at
reducing gun violence.
In the 2022 Supreme Court decision New York Rifle and Pistol
Association v. Bruen, the Court further expanded the scope of the Second
Amendment to protect the individual’s right to bear arms outside of the home.
Justice Clarence Thomas’s majority established a new, historically focused
test to evaluate government restrictions on the right to purchase and carry a
firearm in public. This new test expanded the scope of the Second Amendment
right to limit the ways a government can burden the right of a citizen to carry
a firearm in public for self-defense. Bruen was a notable expansion of the
Second Amendment right first framed in District of Columbia v. Heller.
This Comment critiques the most common method used by lawmakers
to regulate firearms—criminalizing the possession of a firearm without a
license. These laws are based on the idea that by imposing harsh penalties
for those who possess a firearm without a license, potential wrongdoers will
be deterred from possessing or utilizing a gun in the commission of a crime.
Unfortunately, these possession-based deterrence laws have repeatedly been
shown to have little to no meaningful reduction in crime or gun violence.
Rather, they marginalize minorities, increase disparate sentencing for
victimless crimes, and justify increasingly interventionist policing tactics
without corresponding reductions in crimes involving firearms.
Despite these shortcomings, legislatures continually return to
possession-based deterrence laws because they remain constitutional in the
wake of rapidly evolving Second Amendment law. For example, the Heller
and Bruen decisions endorsed licensing schemes which utilize objective
criteria to determine eligibility to possess or carry a gun for self-defense.
Possession-based deterrence laws are also utilized because they are largely
bipartisan: it is one of the few areas of gun control popular on both sides of
the aisle. As a result, lawmakers may feel like these laws are the only action
available in response to their constituents’ very real worries about rising gun
violence. This legislative tension has only been exacerbated after Bruen, due
in large part to Bruen’s more expansive view of the Second Amendment.
After the Bruen decision, California and New York implemented
progressive and novel approaches to reducing gun violence, such as their
“good moral character” standards required to obtain a concealed carry
permit and their significant expansion of background checks. Though meant
to utilize an objective standard, these approaches will likely fail as they
cannot escape the high constitutional bar set by Bruen. To combat an
ineffective yet likely return to possession-based deterrence laws, state and
federal lawmakers should be freed to experiment with such novel and
innovative ways of combatting firearms violence. This can only happen if the
Supreme Court clarifies or reevaluates the contours of the Second
Amendment in its future decisions
The Supreme Court has Granted Review for Arbitration Stays in Employment Cases: Smith v. Spizzirri
No full textThe Supreme Court has granted review to address a circuit split on whether cases should be paused or thrown out after they are moved to arbitration. The courts are split six to four, four allowing lawsuits to be dismissed when underlying allegations must go through mandatory arbitration. The case is from the Ninth Circuit, on the allowance side of the split, Smith v. Spizzirri, with the petition granted 1/12/24. It addresses the language in a section of the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”). The section of the Act under review states: “If any suit or proceeding be brought in any of the courts of the United States upon any issue referable to arbitration under an agreement in writing for such arbitration, the court in which such suit is pending, upon being satisfied that the issue involved in such suit or proceeding is preferable to arbitration under such an agreement, shall on application of one of the parties stay the trial of the action until such arbitration has been had in accordance with the terms of the agreement, providing the applicant for the stay is not in default in proceeding with such arbitration.”
This post was originally published on the Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution website on March 13, 2024. The original post can be accessed via the Archived Link button above
Elastic Batch and Bellwether Proceedings in Mass Arbitration
No full textThis Note will first succinctly review the history of aggregative litigation, including the decline of traditional Rule 23 class actions, the proliferation of arbitration agreements, and both the legislative and judicial support for this change. Next, it will examine plaintiffs’ response to the rise of arbitration with the creation of mass arbitration networks and explain why some companies started to move away from arbitration. Then it will consider the defense bar’s response to mass arbitration with batch and bellwether proceedings, examine the current bellwether arbitration cases moving through the courts, and introduce the latest arbitral institution making headways with its rules and procedures: New Era ADR. Finally, it will identify the additional needs of batch and bellwether arbitration, advance the elastic bellwether model, and demonstrate the theory’s ability to remedy the current issues plaguing mass arbitrations
Clifford Boynes v. Limetree Bay Ventures LLC
No full textUSDC for the District Court of the Virgin Island