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The Ruckus In The Caucasus: A Case Against Mikheil Saakashvili For Crimes Against Humanity In The August War
No full textWhile the world\u27s attention was focused on the fireworks display of the 2008 Olympic Games in China, the citizens of South Ossetia were watching the sky too. Only their sky was being lit up by warfare. At 7:30 p.m. on August 7, 2008, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, held a televised speech promising the Ossetians a ceasefire and unlimited autonomy.\u27 At 11:00 p.m., Saakashvili ordered the Georgian Army to launch an offensive on Tskhinvalli, the capital of South Ossetia. Over the next five days, the civilians of South Ossetia and Abkhazia would be directly targeted by the Georgian forces and forcibly displaced from their homes.
Narrative Implications of Evidentiary Rules
No full textAdvocates are increasingly conscious of courtroom disputes as forms of story-battles, in which the parties present competing narratives. But the rules of evidence -- determining which facts can be incorporated into the presentation of the parties\u27 stories -- can also often best be understood from a narrative point of view. This paper examines narrative features underlying evidentiary rules dealing with leading questions, speaking objections, and hearsay
The Road to S.B. 1070: How Arizona Became Ground Zero for the Immigrants\u27 Rights Movement and the Continuing Struggle for Latino Civil Rights in America
No full textWhen Arizona Governor Janice K. Brewer signed the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act - better known as SB 1070 - into law in April 2010, the world was taken aback not only by the State of Arizona’s brazen attempt to regulate immigration at the state level, but by the manner in which it pledged to do so. By giving state and local law enforcement officials the responsibility to detain persons that they have “reasonable suspicion” to believe are unlawfully present, the Arizona immigration law was not only branded “the toughest immigration law in the country,” but it was also heavily criticized as a law which premised its enforcement on racial profiling of Latinos and other racial minorities and which would require anyone to produce proof of citizenship to law enforcement on demand.
Although SB 1070 seemed to have come out of nowhere to many persons, residents of the State of Arizona and other observers of Arizona state politics are keenly aware that its passage by the Arizona legislature and its signing by Governor Brewer were in the making for the better part of the last decade. Beginning with the approval of Proposition 200 in 2004 - a ballot initiative formally known as the Arizona Taxpayer and Citizen and Protection Act that prohibited undocumented persons from voting and from receiving access to state and local public benefits - a concerted effort by Arizona state legislators and anti-immigrant groups led to the enactment of no less than a half-dozen laws designed to regulate immigration and punish undocumented immigrants in the State of Arizona. While the anti-immigrant fervor in Arizona would reach a crescendo with the enactment of SB 1070, the truth is that its passage merely represents the codification of a scheme designed to ensure “attrition by enforcement” of undocumented immigrants in the State of Arizona that had been building for quite some time, particularly in Phoenix, the state capitol and the county seat of Maricopa County, which is home to more than 3/5 of the state’s population and is under the jurisdiction of the notorious Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
This Article examines the road leading up to the passage of SB 1070 in early 2010, and attempts to demonstrate how it and other state immigration laws that purport to be a legitimate exercise of governmental authority are, in fact, tools of oppression, racism, and xenophobia, particularly against Latinos. In looking back on the state laws regulating immigration that preceded SB 1070, this Article argues that by using alienage as a proxy for race, color, and national origin, Arizona’s attempt to regulate immigration at the state level is a form of legitimized vigilantism designed to purge the State of Arizona not only of undocumented persons, but of all persons who are or appear to be of Latino heritage, through racial profiling by state and local law enforcement.
Part I provides an overview of the pre-SB 1070 immigration regulations enacted in Arizona during the 2000s, either by the Arizona legislature or through the approval of ballot initiatives by Arizona voters. Part II discusses how this assault on the rights of Latino immigrants and citizens in the State of Arizona has given rise to a powerful grassroots response, in which Latinos and their allies have fought back against the civil and human rights abuses that have resulted in the wake of various state and local anti-immigrant laws and demanded ¡ya basta! In light of this response, I examine how Arizona has transformed from a place where immigrants and Latinos suffered in relative silence to become the home of a vocal, passionate group of advocates whose activism has made Phoenix the modern-day Selma in the struggle for immigrant and Latino civil rights in America. Finally, in Part III, I examine the landscape for state and local anti-immigrant regulations in the United States post-SB 1070, and offer a prognostication as to what the battle over immigrants’ and Latino rights in Arizona means for the struggle for federal comprehensive immigration reform going forward
What Would It Look Like If We Cared About Narcotics Trafficking? An Argument To Attack Narcotics Capital Rather Than Labor
No full textLaw enforcement actions should be judged by a simple measure: are they solving a problem? After all, we Americans loathe the loss of freedom and the spending of tax dollars, and we should never take away citizens\u27 freedom and money unless there actually is a problem being solved. Illegal narcotics are a problem, but we aren\u27t solving it. Narcotics trafficking and use lead to violence, undermine productivity,\u27 and rip apart the social fabric of families and communities. Despite much attention to these issues, drug use in this country continues at high levels, even among children.2 We have failed, and it is time to try something new, radical, and rooted in two conservative ideals: a belief in the power of markets, and the desire for a smaller and less intrusive federal government. This article argues that the failure of law enforcement to solve the problem of narcotics trafficking is rooted in a failure to discern the basic nature of drug trafficking. Drug trafficking is a business.
A Discussion On The District Of Columbia\u27s Procurement Law And The Spark That Led To Renewed Reform Efforts
No full textThis note explores the premise that the Council contract review process applies to all non-exempt agency contracts which meet the $1 million or multiyear thresholds. The first section explores the history of procurement law in the District of Columbia. The second section discusses procurement reform efforts. The third section provides an overview of the parks and recreation contracts controversy. Finally, the fourth section analyzes the procurement authority of exempt and non-exempt District agencies with respect to the legislative powers granted to the Council of the District of Columbia
Revising The Analysis of Personal Jurisdiction To Accommodate Internet-Based Personal Contacts
No full textFrom online banking, to cyber-shopping, to the growth of social-networking websites, the Internet is a medium for human interaction as much as it is a part of modern commerce and business, and now encompasses nearly every facet of American life. By all indications, use will become more widespread and complex over time. The Internet now facilitates the modern functional equivalent of human interaction, and provides worldwide access to users with the mere click of a button. For these reasons, examining the role of the Internet in the law is critical. Particularly, it is necessary to consider whether and to what extent Internet users are subject to personal jurisdiction as a result of their online activities
Feminizing Courts: Lay Volunteers and the Integration of Social work in Progressive Reform
No full textThis essay, appearing as a chapter in FEMINIST LEGAL HISTORY: ESSAYS ON WOMEN (N.Y.U. PRESS 2011), uncovers groundbreaking court innovations employed by Judge Anna Moscowitz Kross. To date, Kross\u27s work has gone largely unexamined by legal historians and court reformers. This essay describes how Kross, one of the nation\u27s first women judges, sought to rethink the role and goals of criminal courts in order to meet and address social realities. Beginning in the 1930\u27s she expanded the boundaries of criminal courts to permit female volunteer caseworkers and lay probation officers, as representatives of the larger community, to play a role in court operations. Her lay volunteer armies, which were seen as controversial and at times came under official scrutiny, continued their efforts over the course of several decades. What is more, many courts across the country replicated Kross\u27s experiment without crediting her for her ideas. While this essay celebrates this largely forgotten historical figure and her work as an early judicial innovator, it also warns that social engineering efforts in criminal courts at the hands of lay counselors, both then and now, raise important questions that are worthy of further exploration. This essay, therefore, concludes by suggesting that today\u27s criminal justice reformers might learn important lessons from Kross\u27s attempts at judicial creativity that relied on private funding and private citizen participation in criminal court proceedings