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Therapeutic Jurisprudence: Foundations, Expansion, and Assessment
Get PDFTherapeutic Jurisprudence: Foundations, Expansion, and Assessment Founded in 1987 by law professors David Wexler and the late Bruce Winick, therapeutic jurisprudence (“TJ”) is a multidisciplinary school of legal theory and practice that examines the therapeutic and anti-therapeutic properties of law, policy, and legal institutions. In legal events and transactions, TJ inherently favors outcomes that advance human dignity and psychological well-being. Starting with original groundings in mental health and mental disability law, criminal law, and problem-solving courts, and with a geographic focus on the United States, TJ now embraces many aspects of law and policy and presents a strong international orientation. This Article provides a meta-level examination of the field, including its origins, core doctrinal and theoretical foundations, critical reviews, expansion into many areas of law, procedure, and legal institutions, and connections with other modalities of legal theory and practice. Furthermore, it assesses TJ’s standing and considers opportunities and challenges for the field’s expansion and growth. The intended purpose of this Article is two-fold: first, to spur discussions within the TJ community about the past, present, and future of the field and, second, to provide a substantive, yet accessible introduction to TJ for those who wish to learn more about it
Muzzling Anti-Vaxxer FEAR Speech: Overcoming Free Speech Obstacles with Compelled Speech
Get PDFAs the anti-vax industry continues to stoke fear and incite vaccine resistance, some means must be found to detoxify their false messages. Counterspeech, the preferred mode to deal with unfortunate rhetoric, is both ineffective and counter-effective when addressing factual “scientific speech” addressing health, I show here that many instances of the most potent anti-vax speech arise in the context of arguably commercial speech. I therefore investigate other free speech protections available to shield factually false anti-vax speech used in this context, concluding that while complete First Amendment protection may exist in the context of political speech (without proof of fraud), protections are more limited in the context of commercial speech. I then investigate the commercial ties of anti-vax groups and their mechanisms used in their strikingly effective outreach targeting insular audiences: the conference and pamphlet vehicles Research indicates that these anti-vax vehicles incorporate fingerprints of commercial enterprise, thereby making them eligible for regulation under the doctrine of compelled speech. I conclude by proposing that this approach allows for requiring imposition of warning labels on pamphlets as well as conference advertising and marketing. This novel approach may provide the salutary benefit not obtainable by counterspeech
A Call for an Intersectional Feminist Restorative Justice Approach to Addressing the Criminalization of Black Girls
Get PDFOne Vote, Two Winners: Team-Ticket Gubernatorial Elections and the Need for Further Reform
Get PDFHistorically, governors and lieutenant governors were elected in separate elections. This frequently meant that governors and lieutenant governors of different parties were elected, undermining the democratic legitimacy of gubernatorial succession. But when New York adopted team tickets in 1953, it ignited a flurry of similar changes nationwide. Today, most states with lieutenant governors elect them on a team ticket with governors. And, since the initial adoption of team tickets, several other trends—specifically, trends away from separate primaries and toward post-primary selection—have emerged in how lieutenant governors are elected. Despite the significance of these changes, however, they remain largely unexplored by the academic literature. Accordingly, this Article sets out to remedy that omission. It addresses the move to team tickets—including explaining why the move occurred when it did, the chronology, and the legislative history—and the subsequent adoption of specific lieutenant-gubernatorial election procedures. It explores both trends and ultimately argues for the adoption of an election procedure that maximizes democratic legitimacy
SLAPPing Back in Federal Court: Florida’s anti-SLAPP Statute
Get PDFStrategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, or “SLAPPs,” are frivolous lawsuits used to silence and harass critics by forcing them to spend money on legal fees. An overwhelming majority of states have enacted anti-SLAPP statutes to shield against these lawsuits, recognizing their potential to chill free speech and healthy debate. Though anti-SLAPP statutes come in different shapes and sizes, they commonly employ procedural mechanisms such as expedited dismissal procedures, heightened standards at the pleading and summary judgment stages, and fee-shifting provisions. The unintended consequence of these features is that SLAPP filers can often elude the protections of anti-SLAPP statutes by filing suit in federal court, where Federal Rules of Procedure displace conflicting state law. Unlike other states’ anti-SLAPP statutes, however, Florida’s version—when read properly—does not conflict with the Federal Rules of Procedur
Legal Education Reform in Africa: Time to Revisit the Two-tier Legal Education System
Get PDFThe two-tier legal education system has become increasingly ineffective by virtue of the evolution of changes in legal practice and Africa’s unique conditions and circumstances. The problem is rooted in the fact that some African countries adopted the two-tier legal education system on the assumption that what worked in Britain offered a prescription for success in Africa. However, the two-tier legal education system has been ineffective in Africa because the infrastructure—pupilage, apprenticeship, continuing legal education—that complements and anneals it is not widely available in Africa. Where these elements exist, they tend to be frail and unreliable. Africa’s urgent challenge is to design an appropriate legal education structure that helps lawyers develop the highest possible degree of capability to respond effectively and resourcefully to Africa’s problems. It is time for Africa to address a fundamental question well phrased by Samuel Manteaw, a Ghanaian scholar: “What type of lawyer does Africa need? And do these [educational] institutions produce the type of lawyer Africa needs?”1 Using Nigeria as a case study, this paper examines the two-tier system of legal education in Africa. It examines the implications and assumptions of the two-tier system and its negative effects on legal education. It proposes a constructive alternative that abolishes the two-tier system and vests the teaching of doctrinal and skill courses in the law faculties of universities. This paper argues that the two-tier legal education system imperils legal training by the arbitrary division between doctrinal and skills courses and teaching them separately at different institutions. As it presently exists in Nigeria, the two-tier system requires fundamental structural and institutional reform to create a better pathway to producing competent lawyers who can respond responsibly and effectively to society’s needs and challenges. A comprehensive legal education offered through law faculties will powerfully enrich legal education and improve the caliber of training received by lawyers in Nigeria
The Flag Can Travel but the Constitution Must Ask Permission: How the First Circuit and the District for Puerto Rico Commit to Equal Protection Without Abandoning the \u3cem\u3eInsular Cases\u3c/em\u3e Doctrine
Get PDFFor American citizens, one of the most important safeguards guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States is the equal protection of the law. The United States prides itself on the doctrine and jurisprudence of equal protection because of the social progression achieved since the end of the Civil War. The Reconstruction Amendments to the Constitution eliminated the institution of slavery and were supposed to guarantee equal civil and legal status to all citizens. The Constitution, however, has not been consistently interpreted in this way since the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898. The nation emerged from this conflict with a renewed colonial prerogative and with newly acquired territories overseas: Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. The acquisition of new territory, populated by peoples of wholly different cultures to those of the Anglo-Saxon, European-American political elites of Washington, D.C., necessitated an approach to government that was politically and legally rejected since the founding of the nation: colonialism. In Puerto Rico and later unincorporated territories—those not intended for eventual statehood—colonial governance meant political and social subjugation. The Supreme Court legitimized the federal government’s colonial plans in a series of decisions beginning in the late 19th century, known as the Insular Cases. These decisions influence the legal status of American citizens residing in the unincorporated territories and allow the federal government to evade the constitutional mandate of equal protection of the law. This Note discusses the racist logic of the Insular Cases and the vestiges of colonial appropriation of the unincorporated territories, reflected in the exclusion of Puerto Ricans from the Supplemental Security Income program. In United States v. Vaello-Madero, the District Court for the District of Puerto Rico and the First Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the federal government’s exclusion of Puerto Ricans from that program, arguing that equal protection of the law, embodied in the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, does not allow the federal government to abuse its constitutional power under the Territory Clause to regulate the unincorporated territories. This Note concludes, however, that Vaello-Madero is not a vehement rejection of the Insular Cases and their jurisprudential progeny and that it remains unlikely for the Supreme Court to undo its labor from the late 19th and early 20th century, when its opinions treating the subject of the territories were heavily marked by notions of Social Darwinism and racism. Nonetheless, Vaello-Madero is a promising hint that the federal judiciary is sensitive to the inconsistent application of the guarantee of equal protection throughout the U.S. territories overseas and is willing to resist the Insular Cases doctrine