Digital Commons @ UDC Law (University of the District of Columbia Law Library)
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The Nation\u27s Urban Land Grant Law School: Ensuring Justice in the 21st Century
No full textFOR ten years I have had the honor and the privilege to serve as dean of the University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law (UDC-DCSL), a diverse and progressive law school bent on training advocates for justice. I was delighted to accept when Dean Douglas Ray of the University of Toledo College of Law invited me to write about our unique mission and curriculum and our extraordinary cadre of social justice-driven faculty, staff, and administrators who have stayed the course through a stormy history to deliver a very different law school experience to a very different group of students. UDC-DCSL’s mission has remained fundamentally the same even as historical and statutory requirements have evolved over twenty-six years. In 1972, Edgar S. and Jean Camper Cahn1 established the Antioch School of Law, “dedicated to opening the legal profession to women, minorities, and others from groups traditionally under represented at the bar.”2 Antioch trained public interest lawyers by immersing law students in a pioneering and comprehensive program of clinical legal education based on the medical school model, in which students learn through supervised practice in UDC-DCSL’s legal clinics throughout each year of law school
A Tale Of Two Cities: Lessons Learned From New Orleans To The District Of Columbia For The Protection Of Vulnerable Populations From The Consequences Of Disaster
No full textLike Paris before the French Revolution, New Orleans is a city of extremes. Visitors from around the world visit the Big Easy to sip chicory coffee and eat beignets in the French Quarter, listen to some of the country\u27s best music at the jazz festival, and join one of the world\u27s most famous parties during Mardi Gras. When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in August 2005, it exposed the soft underbelly of New Orleans-the other side of the city where thousands of people, mostly African Americans, live in pockets of concentrated poverty unable to escape the consequences of decades of neglect, segregation, and lack of economic opportunity
The False Claims Act: How Vigilantes Find Justice Fighting Government Fraud And Corruption
No full textThis comment focuses on the False Claims Act and its increasing potential to bring greater accountability to government programs designed to serve disadvantaged opulations. Citizen avengers play an increasing role in seeking retribution against grafters because existing safeguards built into government contracting and procurement often fail to ensure that taxpayer dollars are spent efficiently. The False Claims Act, the citizens\u27 tool against fraud, is contrasted with the Inspectors General, the federal government\u27s principle means of investigating, auditing, and prosecuting fraud in federal agencies and programs
Priam\u27s Lament: The Intersection Of Law And Morality In The Right To Burial And Its Need For Recognition In Post-Katrina New Orleans
No full textPriam\u27s lament might resound with those of us who saw certain images after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans three short years ago: bodies of beloved mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers dangling from house rafters and left to rot on street corners and in basements for months. The remaining unidentified victims were interred last summer at a new memorial, after spending the three years since Hurricane Katrina in a storage facility.3 How could this happen? In America, we might not expect the intercession of gods, but we do expect our government to set reasonable limits on human suffering. Were there just too many bodies? There were over fifteen hundred.4 Were they the wrong bodies? Over sixty percent of the victims of the storm were African American. Since the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, these and many other hypotheses have been proposed to explain the neglect of Katrina\u27s victims. However, none of these explanations address the question of why Katrina was so different from other national tragedies
The Modern Problem-Solving Court Movement: Domination Of Discourse And Untold Stories Of Criminal Justice Reform
No full textThere is a chasm between the rhetoric about and the reality of modern court reform movements. It is a deeply troubling divide. This Article, responding to the work of Professor Jane Spinak, is not concerned with innovations within the family court system. Rather, it examines modern criminal justice reforms.1 It focuses on the claims of the contemporary ―problem-solving court‖ movement—a movement that has resulted in the development of thousands of specialized criminal courts across the country over the last two decades.
