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Keynote Address—The Empire Strikes Back?: Bitcoin, Libra, COVID-19, and Central Bank Digital Currencies
Get PDFMilitarized Picnics: A Comparative Analysis of Peace Parks at the U.S.-Mexico and U.S.-Canadian Borders
Get PDFAmending a Racist Constitution
Get PDFOurs is a racist Constitution. Despite its soaring language, it was founded on slavery and a commitment to racial inequality. This vision is etched in the constitutional text, from the notorious Three-Fifths Clause to the equally repugnant Fugitive Slave Clause. And despite the Civil War and the Reconstruction Amendments, the Constitution retains these vestiges of slavery in its fabric. After 230 years, it is time to remove these troubling provisions from the Constitution. This Essay offers a radical departure from prior constitutional practice. Instead of appending yet another amendment that would simply require readers to ignore the offending language, this Essay proposes a constitutional amendment that excises these words from the text. While this amendment would not abridge, enlarge, or modify any substantive rights, it would generate a document that further distances the United States from its racist past and better reflects this present moment in the journey to form a more perfect Union
American Punishment and Pandemic
Get PDFMany of the sites of the worst outbreaks of the disease caused by the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) are America’s prisons and jails. As of March 2021, the virus has infected hundreds of thousands of incarcerated people and well over two thousand have died as a result contracting the disease caused by the virus. Prisons and jails have been on perpetual lockdowns since the onset of the pandemic, with family visits suspended and some facilities resorting to solitary confinement to mitigate the virus’s spread, thereby exacerbating the punitiveness and harmfulness of incarceration. With the majority of the 2.3 million people incarcerated in the United States being people who identify as people of color, the virus’s tear through prisons and jails multiplies the burden of the pandemic on underrepresented communities, which the pandemic has already disproportionately impacted among the general population.
Since the pandemic began, incarcerated people and advocates have attempted to wield the law to protect prison and jail populations from the virus’s spread. Many have raised the issue in criminal law proceedings. For others, civil lawsuits have sought prisoner releases and the implementation in facilities of mitigation measures known to slow the virus’s spread. Most of these civil justice efforts have thus far been unsuccessful, as courts have concluded the plaintiffs sought relief under the improper legal mechanism, were procedurally barred from the relief they sought, or were unlikely to succeed on the merits of their claims as the law is interpreted.
The U.S. Constitution purports to protect incarcerated people from “cruel and unusual punishments” but has largely failed to offer protection during one of the most exceptional—indeed, unusual—moments in modern history. This Essay observes the impact of the first year of the pandemic on prisons and jails and the civil justice system’s failure to account for the deeply unusual environment the virus has created. Indeed, as the virus spreads at elevated rates in carceral settings, courts have effectively told us that this is, simply, punishment as usual
International Human Rights Law and the Tyranny of Harmful Customary and Traditional Practices on Women in Africa
Get PDFReflections on Legal Education in the Aftermath of a Pandemic
Get PDFThis essay considers two significant changes to legal education in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. First, on-line programs will expand, based on the largely successful experiment in delivering legal education on-line during the pandemic. But this expansion must be thoughtful and deliberate. The legal education curriculum could include more on-line courses, but only if the learning outcomes and the pedagogy are aligned with on-line education. Experiential courses may not be the best fit for on-line given the specific learning outcomes and the benefits of in-person instruction in those courses. Second, student well-being will receive more attention in legal education. Our experience with the pandemic reinforced the critical importance of well-being, not only for our students, but also for our profession. Student wellbeing should be integrated into the legal education curriculum
Immigration Detention As An Obstacle To Decarceration
Get PDFCriminal legal reform and measures to reduce carceral populations have received increasing media and public policy attention nationwide. These efforts have mainly ignored a parallel development: the consistent rise in the use of immigration detention over the last decade. This Article bridges that gap by arguing that ongoing efforts to decarcerate states and localities may be foiled by immigration detention. This argument relies on three different descriptive claims. First, much scholarly work has shown the extent to which vested interests have hampered criminal legal reform; these same interests could look to immigration detention as an alternative protection. Second, the extent to which both the criminal and immigration systems have intertwined has primed us for expanding the use of jails and prisons as tools of immigration control. Third, there is empirical evidence showing a causal connection between empty jail bed space and rising immigration detention at the local level. The Article then argues that if decarceration efforts are premised on the condemnation of the extensive use of carceral institutions, they are incomplete without including measures to address immigration detention. In addition, scholars interested in the effects of incarceration need to account for immigration detention and incarceration together as confinement, because not doing so will skew studies on the impact of decarceration
The Othering of the AAPI Community in America
No full textOn April 9th, 2021, the Society of American Law Teacher (SALT) webinar explored the long, contested relationship of the Asian, Asian American, and Pacific Islander communities in America from both an historical and contemporary lens.
Features a moderated discussion with Dean Sean M. Scott, Professor Vinay Harpalani and Professor Rose Cuison-Villazor. Professor Harpalani’s scholarship focuses on the intersections between race, education, and law, as he explores the nuances of racial diversity and identity from various disciplinary perspectives. Professor Rose Cuison-Villazor is an expert in immigration, citizenship, property law and race and the law
