16885 research outputs found
Sort by
The Costs of Dissent: Protest and Civil Liabilities
Get PDFThis Article examines the civil costs and liabilities that apply to individuals who organize, participate in, and support protest activities. Costs ranging from permit fees to punitive damages significantly affect First Amendment speech, assembly, and petition rights. A variety of common law and statutory civil claims also apply to protest activities. Plaintiffs have recently filed a number of new civil actions negatively affecting protest, including negligent protest, aiding and abetting defamation, riot boosting, conspiracy to protest, and tortious petitioning. The labels are suggestive of the threats these suits pose to First Amendment rights. All of these costs and liabilities add to an already challenging and burdensome protest environment, which includes regulatory and other restrictions on speech and assembly. Owing to their chilling effect on First Amendment rights, courts have a special obligation to review both traditional costs and new civil actions skeptically, to require clarity and precision in terms of liability standards, and to allow civil liability only in very narrow circumstances. Applying these guidelines, the Article urges courts to reject a number of civil costs and claims as inconsistent with First Amendment precedents and doctrines, and to review other costs and liabilities in light of the First Amendment values protest activity serves. Beyond the courts, officials and administrators should more carefully consider the First Amendment implications of the cumulative-and rising-costs of dissent
Digital Urban Agriculture as Disparate Development: The Future of Food in Three U.S. Cities Through the Lens of Stakeholder Perceptions, Networks, and Resource Flows
Get PDFUrban agriculture takes many forms. Often, the term elicits images of raised beds, hoop houses, and, in those instances where topsoil is both present and non-contaminated, in-ground gardens—what I call traditional urban agriculture (“TUA”). But that imagery is changing, especially in some parts of the country where vacant space is scarce and land prices dear. In those instances, cities are seeing growth in digital urban agriculture (“DUA”). DUA, as defined here, refers to farming within urban and peri-urban areas that incorporates elements of automation, software, and/or silicon-based hardware into their operations. While this definition is not meant to draw a solid line between particular practices, allowing for a clean categorization across these two types, it does help distinguish between those systems that are more labor-intensive/less capital-intensive and those in possession of the opposite characteristics, namely, lower labor requirements but higher levels of capital investments, energy throughputs, etc. Although DUA often takes “vertical” forms, I prefer the modifier “digital” for analytic emphasis, noting that a farm operation’s height is a less significant independent variable than processes related to its silicon-based, data-intense, sunk-capital attributes.
Scholarship looking at farming within urban and peri-urban spaces presents a mix of outcomes. On the one hand, examples can be pointed to showing its links to empowerment, food sovereignty, public health, improved educational and vocational outcomes, reductions in crime, and community nutrition. On the other hand, farming in the city has been associated with gentrification, as well as to the amplification of cultural, racial, and class distinctions within a community. The latter have been repeatedly linked to a phenomena known as the “growth machine,” which speaks to initiatives tied to an elite-driven coalition set on maximizing the city’s tax revenues whilst reinforcing the group’s privilege and status.
Not surprising, then, in light of these varied outcomes, peoples’ perceptions of agriculture within urban and peri-urban spaces is equally mixed. Many view TUA as a productive, multifunctional use of vacant land in inner cities on the losing end of global macroeconomic structural change and demographic abandonment; this is a dynamic option to the decays associated with global flows. The sticking point, where there is one, tends to be on the temporality of these urban and peri-urban forms. Namely, is urban farming a viable long-term solution or just a temporary fix until something better presents itself? As farmers struggle to gain long-term, secure access to land in many cities, they are facing considerable resistance from many, often situated in influential positions of power. Those in these roles of authority and situated within organizations with access to capital and credit tend to view TUA as a temporary use of vacant land—a placeholder until an investment opportunity arises. A common tension then lies between those who view TUA as an important longterm solution for many inner-city problems and others who might value it in the immediate term but only until large transformational investments can be made upon those vacant pieces of land.
I interrogate this tension and what it means for future community dynamics by drawing from eighty-two semi-structured interviews with community partners, investors, local food power brokers (e.g., chefs, politicians, developers), planners, and engineers involved in facilitating farming within their respective cities, which includes both TUA and DUA. Respondents were located in Denver (CO), New York (NY), and San Francisco (CA). I further supplement these data with notes taken during public forums and by analyzing the websites of organizations and business that respondents work for.
Not all urban agriculture is equal, as we might guess, in terms of attachments to networks and resources. For instance, while those connected closely to organizations linked to economic development frequently view TUA as a temporary fix to the city’s ills, they alternatively view DUA quite differently, in some cases going so far as to refer to these platforms as the “ideal, long-term best use of currently vacant urban space,” to quote a developer from the below study. Alternatively, those linked with community organizations and with a history of social activism are shown to cast TUA as a long-term fix to many inner-city problems, whereas DUA risks making those problems worse.
The Article begins by reviewing the literature as to the costs and benefits of urban agriculture. I then pivot to a discussion of methods where I provide an overview of the sample population as well as a description of the socio-organizational network analyses, which was conducted in parallel with the qualitative, face-to-face interviews. The findings are organized around the themes of perceptions, networks, and resources. I interrogate, in other words, respondents’ views toward various urban farming forms (Theme #1), their respective social networks (Theme #2), and what resources flow through these social groupings (Theme #3). These data paint a picture of a contentious future, as urban economic growth interests are shown to play a central role in urban food politics, perhaps even more so thanks to DUA
Not Approved for Human Consumption: A Study of the Denmark Water Crisis, a Call for Reforming the SWDA, and a Demand for Community Lawyering in Rural America
Get PDFOver the past four decades, nine million Americans have ingested dangerous drinking water from a trusted source: their own taps. Each year, “an estimated 16.4 million cases of acute gastroenteritis” are linked to public drinking water. For many Americans, drinking water—perhaps the most important cornerstone of human health—has become cause for concern.
In Flint, Michigan, this concern turned to panic. In 2014, after toddlers began developing painful skin conditions, children fell seriously ill, and tap water emerged in the form of thick, orange-brown sludge, the people of Flint began to wonder: is there something in the water? What soon became known as the Flint Water Crisis drew new attention to the pitfalls of water system mismanagement. More recently, Newark, New Jersey, has endured its own water crisis, with levels of lead in the city’s drinking water among “the highest recently recorded by a large water system in the United States.” As in Flint, the response of Newark city authorities has only compounded the problem, with some residents drinking the tainted water for twenty-one months before receiving a water filter.
Water issues in places like Flint and Newark have drawn deserved media attention and sparked a discussion of health, equity, and access in America’s cities. Missing from this discussion about America’s water management, however, are the nearly twenty percent of Americans that live in rural areas. In real numbers, this translates to roughly 60 million people who, like most other Americans, depend on public water supplies for survival.
While Flint, Newark, and other big-city water crises may have justifiably increased awareness, the reality is stark: drinking water problems disproportionately affect rural areas over urban or suburban areas. Furthermore, research shows that within these disproportionately affected rural areas, it is specifically low-income communities which suffer from the greatest risk of ingesting unsafe water. The designation of “low-income, rural area” includes millions of people, making the problem of clean drinking water in these areas a profoundly impactful one.
Through an analysis of ongoing drinking water issues in the rural community of Denmark, South Carolina, this Note presents a discussion of the hurdles America’s low-income, rural communities face in the fight for clean drinking water. Part I of this Note places Denmark and its water issues in context. Part II provides an overview of specifically low-income, rural challenges, arguing that a combination of ineffective enforcement under the Safe Drinking Water Act (“SDWA”) and inadequate responses to water issues have resulted in a uniquely rural water crisis nationwide. Part III documents these structural causes and responses to the water crisis in Denmark. Finally, Part IV advocates reforms to the SDWA and a strategy of community inclusion to secure clean water in Denmark and across rural America
Law Schools, Law Firms Must Share Responsibility for Diversity
Get PDFLaw schools and law firms must partner to ensure that a pipeline of underrepresented students apply to law school and receive the professional development support they need to remain and advance at firms, William & Mary Law School Dean A. Benjamin Spencer says. Those who make, interpret, and apply the law must reflect the full range of human experiences, thought, and insight into the human condition, he says
ERISA Defined Benefit Plans Are Not Trust worthy
Get PDFWhat role does the common law of trusts play in policing investment decisions made in the context of a defined-benefit retirement plan governed by ERISA? That issue, among others, divided the Supreme Court this past term in Thole v. U.S. Bank N.A. The Court’s majority decided the case by holding that plan beneficiaries had no Article III standing to challenge allegedly self-interested investment decisions made by the plan’s sponsor and administrator. Because the Court grounded its decision in constitutional standing, Congress would be powerless to confer standing on plan beneficiaries without also amending the substantive rights accorded those beneficiaries. This Article has two objectives. The first is to examine the consequences that might have followed if the Court had decided that the plan beneficiaries did have standing. Applying the substantive law of trusts, together with the remedies afforded by trust law, would have done little good for the plan beneficiaries and would not serve as a deterrent for questionable behavior by the plan’s trustee. ERISA is a regulatory statute, and potential abuses call for a regulatory solution. This Article’s second objective is to examine the potential impact of the Court’s analysis of Article III standing. Although trust law is a poor fit for regulating investment decisions by defined benefit plans, the Court’s standing decision has the potential to cripple more productive regulatory efforts. To the extent that the Court’s opinion holds that plan beneficiaries lack constitutional standing unless their benefits are in jeopardy, the opinion may limit the ability of Congress to use the private right of action as a tool for enforcing ERISA mandates
Absurd Overlap: Snap Removal and the Rule of Unanimity
Get PDFSnap removal employs “a literalist approach” to the statute governing the procedural mechanism for removing cases from state court to federal court. In a typical removal scenario, defendants sued in state court would have the option to be heard in federal court instead, given that certain conditions are satisfied. [S]nap removal essentially allows the defendants to forego a condition that would bar removal if they can file before the plaintiff formally notifies them of the lawsuit. This practice of removing a case before being served with formal process—essentially an act of gamesmanship of the civil procedure system—has gained appellate support over the past two years, making its application valid and uniform across three circuits. Now that the practice has garnered traction, federal courts moving forward will not only have to adopt it as a valid rule, but also grapple with its application when it inevitably collides with other laws and procedures. In particular, the rule of unanimity, requiring that all codefendants consent to a removal, could present a unique challenge in snap removal cases.
This Note argues that, when applied in conjunction with the rule of unanimity, the reasoning underlying snap removal’s approval will present a contradictory and ultimately absurd result in certain factual scenarios
Beijing Children\u27s Legal Aid and Research Center in Beijing, China
No full textThis summer, I will conduct comparative research in Chinese and foreign legal systems on issues concerning the protection of children’s rights. The Beijing Children\u27s Legal Aid and Research Center is the largest public interest legal service organization in China and China’s first NGO to specialize in children’s rights
Pinkcollar Employment Agency in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
No full textThis summer, I will contribute to Pinkcollar’s efforts to improve conditions for the migrant domestic worker sector in Malaysia, ensuring ethical hiring free of labor trafficking. I will also assist in placing members of indigenous communities in appropriate employment