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The Role of Qualified Immunity in Police Accountability
No full textOn February 19, 2021, the Black Law Students Association (BLSA), Criminal Law Society (CLS), Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Council, Federalist Society, and Street Law jointly presented a program on “The Role of Qualified Immunity in Police Accountability. Denise Isaac (3L) welcomed the group, outlining the importance of events like this in discussing the role of qualified immunity and its legal and practical ties to the topic of police accountability. Isaac thanked the student organizations and their executive boards for bringing the topic to the Catholic Law community, and for their shared belief that “qualified immunity transcends the issues of political discourse.
Air Aware: Crimes in the Air and the Circuit Split That Could Change How and Where Air Crimes are Prosecuted
No full textOn February 24, 2021, Catholic Law community members gathered for a lunchtime Student Scholar Series presentation. Third-year law student Aimee Solano presented her research, “Air Aware: Crimes in the Air and the Circuit Split That Could Change How and Where Air Crimes are Prosecuted,” which explores a circuit split that was created by a 9th Circuit panel decision regarding the criminal prosecution of crimes committed on commercial flights
Legislative Effects of Graham
No full textThe second panel turned the focus towards the legislative effects post-Graham. While major cases, like Graham v. Florida, have been instrumental in changing juvenile sentencing, there are many legal issues that the court decisions failed to answer. The panel discussed the importance of advocacy and litigation in the post-Graham world in continuing to affect change
The War on Kids: Progress and the Path forward on Juvenile Justice
No full textContemporary Challenges in American & Global Law hosted another successful event with its eleventh webinar in the series. In the March 2 program, guest speakers discussed, “The War on Kids: Progress and the Path forward on Juvenile Justice.” Cara H. Drinan, Professor and Director of Faculty Research at Catholic Law, led the discussion with comments on the topic provided by prof. dr hab. Wlodzimierz Wróbel, Chair of Criminal Law, Jagiellonian University, and Polish Supreme Court Justice in Kraków, Poland
To Innovate or Regulate: How to Regulate Cloud Service Providers Within Financial Institutions
Get PDFThe purpose of this article is to analyze whether cloud service providers should be considered Systemically Important Financial Market Utilities (SIFMU), subjecting them to increased oversight. It also considers the risks and benefits associated with the use of the technology by financial institutions, as well as potential alternatives. Overall, this article argues that cloud service providers do not fall under the current SIFMU framework, and any regulation of the technology should strive to strike a balance between innovation and safe regulation
The Use of Tax Policy to Promote Justice and Human Dignity
No full textOn the evening of November 4, Regina T. Jefferson, Professor of Law at Catholic Law, delivered the 2021 Mirror of Justice Lecture entitled, “The Use of Tax Policy to Promote Justice and Human Dignity.”
The audience was welcomed to the Walter A. Slowinski Courtroom with opening remarks from Henry Urban, (3L), Vice President of Events of the Saint John Paul II Guild of Catholic Lawyers. Urban outlined Professor Jefferson’s career as a professor at Catholic Law and a sought-after expert in employee benefits, pension law, and tax law. He then welcomed her to the podium.
Jefferson thanked the Guild for the honor of speaking and began her address on justice in regard to tax policy and human dignity. Jefferson shared, “Being a lawyer is a noble profession. It presents tremendous opportunities as well as responsibilities—to serve society and humanity on many different levels. Regardless of the specialty one selects, or the sector one chooses to practice, lawyers are able to use their training to promote justice and human dignity in a variety of ways. In some areas of the law, the connection to human rights is obvious, in others, this connection may not be as apparent.” In her work surrounding tax policy, Jefferson has often been asked to explain the connection between tax law and human dignity. Over the course of her lecture, she provided an overview of the important role of taxation and tax policy in society and explain how that role relates to considerations outside traditional economic theory such as income equality, justice, and human dignity. In the latter portion of her remarks, Jefferson also highlighted how she has used her own teaching, scholarship, and service to promote justice and human dignity.
Jefferson concluded by saying, “The effective use of tax policies is one of the many ways where just distribution of the goods of this world can be achieved. Taxation is about much more than raising revenue. The tax rules and their underlying policies can be designed to serve the common good. They also can be used very effectively in support of behavior and activities that promote justice and human dignity.
Police Using Photoshop to Alter a Suspect\u27s Photo in Lineup and Courts Allowing It: Does it Violate Due Process?
Get PDFEyewitness identification remains one of the most popular pieces of evidence in criminal trials despite the decades of research supporting this evidence unreliability. In August 2019, the federal case United State v. Allen became nationwide news when it was revealed that police used Photoshop to remove Allen’s facial tattoo before using the altered-photo in a photo array. None of the eyewitnesses described the culprit as having a facial tattoo, though they identified Allen from the array. Allen is not the only case to have police use Photoshop to edit photos used in arrays. This has been a common practice used by many law enforcement departments in an effort to create fairer identification procedures. Despite this intention, the use of Photoshop raises questions about the reliability of the identifications, and whether this practice supports the Supreme Court’s Manson v. Braithwaite standard. This Comment examines how police use digital editing programs to alter photos in arrays, and then discusses the different scenarios when this practice would be appropriate, and how, when inappropriately done, such photos will negatively impact criminal defendant’s due process rights
Whose Choice?: The Future of Construction (and Maybe All) Labor Law
Get PDFThe current National Labor Relations Board ( Board\u27) since 2018 has indicated an interest in changing the law on employee representation by unions in the construction industry, culminating in a final rule issued on April 1, 2020. As the article discusses, this proposal is likely to have effects in many industries other than construction, because many other industries in the U.S. are becoming more like the construction industry has long been. The Board’s rule has changed what\u27s required for a construction union to remain the representative of a construction employer\u27s employees, which the Board justified as serving employee choice about union representation. In the construction industry, as the article explains, the employer can choose whether to fill its workforce by hiring from a union hiring hall/other union referral or to hire non-union employees from another source or individually. Consequently, as the article shows, the most likely effect of the Board\u27s new rule will not be to improve employee choice, but to greatly increase the opportunities of employers to choose whether their employees will be represented by a union. The article further explains why the Board\u27s rule wrongly departs from decades of labor law and very likely from Congressional intent. No matter what the current Board does next, it can expand the consequences of its rule in case decisions, and also these decisions and the Board’s new rule itself likely will be challenged in federal court
Cruel and Unusual: Closing the Door on Juvenile \u3ci\u3eDe Facto\u3c/i\u3e Life Sentences
Get PDFThere currently exists a split amongst the Federal Circuit Courts that stands ripe for review. The Supreme Court laid down clear precedent in its landmark decisions of Roper v. Simmons, Graham v. Florida, and Miller v. Alabama that capital punishment and life without parole are cruel and unusual as applied to juvenile non-homicidal offenders categorically and as applied to juvenile homicidal offenders without consideration of youth as a mitigating factor. There, however, was a door left open by these cases that allowed for judges to side-step the Court’s mandate. Using excessively long term-of-years sentences—longer than the most hopeful of estimates of the life expectancy of those being sentenced—courts are handing down de facto life sentences upon juvenile offenders and claiming that this technicality serves as an exception to the Supreme Court’s precedent. This Comment examines the current split amongst the circuits and presents a solution to the split based upon concerns of practicality, consistency, and closure of a loophole, arguing for the majority approach—that de facto life sentences are cruel and unusual as applied to non-homicidal juvenile offenders