Digital Commons @ UDC Law (University of the District of Columbia Law Library)
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Identity Property: Protecting the New IP in a Race-Relevant World
No full textThis Article explores the relatively new idea in American legal thought that people of color are human beings whose dignity and selfhood are worthy of legal protection. While the value and protection of whiteness throughout American legal history is undeniable, non-whiteness\u27 has had a more turbulent history. For most of American history, the concept of non-whiteness was constructed by white society and reinforced by law-i.e., through a process of socio-legal construction-in a way that excluded its possessor from the fruits of citizenship. However, people of color have resisted this negative construction of selfhood. This resistance led to the development of a number of empowered racial minority identities 2 that were created through labor and affirmatively claimed by people of color. I analyze in this Article the concept of racial minority identity as a form of identity property and utilize examples from intellectual property and defamation law to illustrate some of the nuances of such a concept. This Article proceeds in three parts. Part I begins by exploring the socio-legal construction of race and explains Cheryl Harris\u27s idea that whiteness has been a form of property. Part II sets forth the argument that people of color have constructed empowering racial identities in resistance to the socio-legal construction of negative racial meaning that has been imposed on them. Finally, Part III explores the idea of identity property and provides examples of how intellectual property and reputational harm concepts can elucidate ways in which identity property can be expressed and protecte
En La Encrucijada: Pensamientos y Reflexiones
No full textEncrucijada es un concepto idóneo para describir la situación actual de Puerto Rico. Rafael Cox Alomar demuestra en este provocador libro ser un observador muy atento del devenir político del País, a la vez que puede darle a estos eventos un significado más amplio al ubicarlos en una comprensión de la realidad caribeña y de los procesos de descolonización. El autor integra un compromiso político incuestionable con una sólida formación intelectual, lo cual le imprime profundidad analítica a sus planteamientos. También nos convoca a pensar al País en su inquietante situación contemporánea, no para lamentarnos por los complejos retos que enfrentamos, sino para poder avizorar el rumbo político que será necesario tomar para enfrentar esos retos. Rafael Cox Alomar hace patente a la vez su vocación de servicio al País y su gran capacidad analítica.
English Translation:
Encrucijada is an ideal concept to describe the current situation in Puerto Rico. Rafael Cox Alomar demonstrates in this provocative book that he is a very attentive observer of the country\u27s political evolution, at the same time that he can give these events a broader meaning by locating them in an understanding of the Caribbean reality and the processes of decolonization. The author integrates an unquestionable political commitment with a solid intellectual formation, which gives analytical depth to his approaches. It also calls us to think about the country in its disturbing contemporary situation, not to lament the complex challenges we face, but to be able to envision the political course that will be necessary to take to face those challenges. Rafael Cox Alomar shows both his vocation to serve the Country and his great analytical capacity.https://digitalcommons.law.udc.edu/fac_books/1003/thumbnail.jp
Evaluating The Impact Of The Home Affordable Modification Program In Response To The Foreclosure Crisis: Why Real Estate Securitization Demands A New Approach
No full textThis case presents an unfortunate, but all too common set of circumstances in the world today. Plaintiff is a homeowner in financial distress who seeks a loan modification from an unresponsive bank relying on an ineffectual federal program. This statement, by Magistrate Lois Bloom in Rivera v. Bank of America, best captures the utter frustration felt by financially distressed homeowners and sympathetic judges regarding the government\u27s failed efforts to stem the foreclosure crisis. Heard countless times in thousands of courtrooms across the country in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial meltdown, Magistrate Bloom expressed what seemed deliberate efforts by banks and government officials to impede implementation of the federal Home Affordable Mortgage Program ( HAMP ).2 The United States Treasury Department\u27s ( Treasury ) HAMP program, created pursuant to the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act ( EESA ) of 2008, encourages banks to make monthly mortgage payments more affordable for homeowners at possible risk of foreclosure.
Immigration is Different: Why Congress Should Guarantee Access to Counsel In All Immigration Matters
No full textThis article represents a pipe dream. It envisions an America where no one would be detained, deported, and exiled without the opportunity to meaningfully challenge the grounds for such drastic action against them. Specifically, it envisions an America in which Congress would act in the interest of justice to ensure that foreign nationals held in immigration detention-no, let\u27s call it what it is: prison-while awaiting the opportunity to challenge removability before an Immigration Judge were guaranteed the right to counsel. Similarly, it imagines that even in a time of fiscal crisis and political dysfunction, a Congress that enacts some type of comprehensive immigration reform extending a path to lawful status or citizenship for an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants\u27 would not allow short-term budgetary savings and short-sighted political gains to get in the way of ensuring that low-cost, high quality legal counsel or other qualified assistance is within reach of the next generation of first-generation Americans as they attempt to navigate what is likely to be a complex process to obtain lawful immigration status and, eventually, U.S. citizenship
The Case of Dixon v. Alabama: From Civil Rights to Students\u27 Rights and Back Again
No full textOn February 25, 1960, African American students from Alabama State College participated in a sit-in at a segregated lunch grill at the Montgomery County Courthouse. The lunch grill refused to serve the students and ordered them to leave. The students left and went to the courthouse corridor, where they remained for an hour before going back to campus.
When Alabama State College learned of the students’ actions, it summarily expelled them without notice or hearing. In expelling the students, the college relied on Alabama State Board of Education regulations that allowed it to expel students for “conduct unbecoming a student or future teacher in the schools of Alabama.” Six students challenged their expulsions in court for being in violation of their due process rights. They lost at trial and then won on appeal.
The case was Dixon v. Alabama State Board of Education (1961). It was the first time that any American court recognized that students at a state university have due process protection under the Fourteenth Amendment. Instead of allowing state universities to discipline their students without regard to their constitutional rights as they were permitted to do under the in loco parentis era, the Fifth Circuit mandated that state universities had to abide by constitutional restrictions. Specifically, it held that state universities must provide notice and some opportunity to be heard before they could expel their students for misconduct.
Dixon, by recognizing due process rights for students, marked the death of in loco parentis. University students were no longer viewed as mere children in the eyes of the law. This national transformation in the legal relationship between state universities and their students began with local student activism — namely, African American students protesting segregation policies at a lunch grill near their home campus. It ended with a Fifth Circuit case that ushered in a new era of constitutionally based students’ rights.
In this article, I move away from the typical due process analysis of this case and instead explore how the students’ civil rights activism was transformed into a fight for students’ rights, and I analyze the interplay of this transformation with future civil rights work. Specifically, I acknowledge that students’ rights, in general, benefited from the Dixon precedent. But I ask how the student activists who brought the case personally benefited. None were able to tell their stories in court in a way that challenged separate but equal laws. None of them took advantage of the due process that the Fifth Circuit ruled that Alabama State College must provide. None re-enrolled at the college after the case was over. And segregation was still alive and well in Alabama after Dixon was decided. So what did they win?
Using archival materials obtained from Alabama State University, documents contained in the Dixon case file, an autobiography of the attorney for the students, and legal texts on education law, I show how the motivations of the students to engage in their protest diverged from the legal significance of Dixon.
I conclude by arguing that despite the divergence of interests between the student activists and the lawyers, both the sit-in and the litigation empowered students all over the country to engage in the civil rights struggle. I provide examples of these student activists being afforded unprecedented levels of constitutional protection by courts that specifically rely on Dixon. Even though the Dixon plaintiffs’ original motivation to challenge Jim Crow diverged from the due process expansion that resulted from the case, these students’ goals were nonetheless furthered when other student activists for racial justice across the country were afforded constitutional due process protections during the height of the civil rights movement
Gideon Is My Co-Pilot: The Promise Of Civil Right To Counsel Pilot Programs
No full textIn recent years, access to justice and civil right to counsel advocates have taken a strong interest in pilot programs to test the cost and effectiveness of increasing the availability of counsel to low-income civil litigants. An eighteen-month privately-funded housing counsel pilot in two Boston courts has recently concluded and a new housing pilot is about to begin in three different Massachusetts courts. Pilots are also ongoing or in late stages of development in several other states. The most ambitious pilot program to date is the multi-year, multi-county pilot project underway in California pursuant to the Sargent Shriver Civil Counsel Act of 2009.1 A national civil right to counsel pilot project conference was held in Chicago in November 2012, and a manual on developing civil right to counsel pilot projects was created the same year by the Washington Appleseed organization in conjunction with the National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel.2 This article discusses the recent interest in civil right to counsel pilot programs and examines the California Sargent Shriver Civil Counsel Act pilots in detail, assessing their unique mix of court-based innovations and newly-funded counsel