Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University
Florida Agricultural & Mechanical University College of LawNot a member yet
884 research outputs found
Sort by
One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: Everett et al v. Pitt County School (Everett I and II) and the Ominous Future of Federal Court Desegregation Orders
Get PDFDuring the brief zenith of school desegregation litigation in the late 1960s and early 1970s, hundreds of school districts across the nation, and particularly across the South, were found liable for intentional racial discrimination and became subject to federal court supervision of approved plans to achieve integration. The period of aggressive enforcement was short-lived however, and by the mid-1970s, and accelerating through the 1980s and 1990s, an increasingly conservative Supreme Court and presidential administrations first slowed the scope and intensity of school integration, and then actively pushed to end judicial enforcement and oversight of existing desegregation cases. This was true even in school districts that remained racially segregated or that had achieved some measure of integration, but had since-and while still under court order become resegregated. Despite the passage of time since these desegregation orders were entered and it is estimated that there remain over 100 school districts still subject to such orders- their legal significance in potentially achieving integration should have increased, especially in the face of Court decisions deifying intent in proving discrimination and severely limiting the role of race in student assignment for districts not subject to desegregation orders. This is because of the unique procedural posture of such cases. Under well established school desegregation jurisprudence, once a court finds the school district constitutionally liable for racial discrimination in violation of the 14th Amendment (i.e. that is has operated a racially dual system) and a desegregation order is entered, the district has an affirmative duty to remedy the segregation by taking all steps necessary to eliminate the vestiges of the unconstitutional de jure system. The legal presumption for a school district subject to such an order is that any current racial imbalances within the school system are vestiges of past discrimination. In order to be declared unitary and relieved of further court oversight, the evidentiary burden rests with the school board to rebut this presumption and prove that it has remedied the impacts of past segregation to the extent practicable, and to demonstrate that any remaining racial disparities are the result of independent factors unrelated to the board\u27s actions (or inactions). Thus, the distinction between a district still subject to court order and one that has been declared unitary (or was never subject to order) is significant. A district under court order to desegregate may and often must use race-based policies and practices as necessary to fulfill its affirmative remedial obligations under the order, while the much more restrictive and limited consideration of race in schools, as proscribed in Parents Involved, applies only to districts that have never been under court order or that were at one time but have since achieved unitary status. The continuing viability of the bright-line legal distinction between districts under court order with the concomitant burdens of proof and remedial obligations to address the continuing vestiges of racial discrimination-and those that are not was the focus of two recent decisions by the Fourth Circuit in a case that began in the 1960s. In its first opinion, the Court issued a ruling that resoundingly reaffirmed the progressive jurisprudence that helped the nation begin to achieve the promise of Brown and attain a significant measure of school integration. In a subsequent decision in the same case just three years later however, the Court retreated from its earlier holding, blurred the clear line it had previously recognized, and added another substantial setback to the legal struggle to end racial isolation in public schools
From Paris to Orlando: Achieving Climate Justice in Our Communities
Get PDFFlorida A & M University College of Law, in collaboration with the City of Orlando and a host of community organizations and members, presents a panel discussion about climate justice and sustainability in our communities.https://commons.law.famu.edu/env-anim/1004/thumbnail.jp
Experience, Not Logic: Adapting Spoliation Doctrine to the Brave New World of Digital Documents
Get PDFThe adversarial system requires full discovery as an essential element of a fair and accurate litigation process. Not surprisingly, spoliation—the destruction of evidence with a culpable state of mind—is an anathema to the most fundamental principles governing litigation procedure and in turn may warrant harsh sanctions.
The doctrines governing how courts respond to spoliation are well established. But these venerable rules were mostly devised for a discovery process that involved the production of paper documents. The information revolution that accompanied the dramatic expansion of computers to produce and store every kind of document forever transformed the discovery process. As computer use increased, the volume of information produced, stored, and made readily available in discovery has improved exponentially. Part of the information revolution also included the development of systems for the routine destruction of stored data. As data destruction became a necessary part of managing any form of digitized information, the rules governing spoliation had to change. This Article examines the continuing effort by the drafters of the Federal Rules and the courts to determine how to regulate document destruction in the digital age
Guardian Ad Litem Brochure, page 2
No full textGuardian Ad Litem Brochure, page 2https://commons.law.famu.edu/brochure-photos/1007/thumbnail.jp
Running Past Landmines--The Estate Attorney\u27s Dilemma: Ethically Counseling the Client With Alzheimer\u27s Disease
Get PDFThis Article examines the ethical dilemmas faced by attorneys who represent clients suffering from Alzheimer\u27s disease. To do so, this Article raises three (3) hypothetical case studies,and applies the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct, and the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel ( ACTEC ) Commentaries, where appropriate, to those hypothetical case studies. Additionally, this Article proposes initiatives to ameliorate the lack of awareness and discussion of Alzheimer\u27s disease in the law school curriculum, and finally, modest initiatives that the practicing bar can embrace to further a discussion and awareness among practicing attorneys about the ethical dilemma attorneys face in their daily interaction with actual and potential clients suffering from Alzheimer\u27s disease.
This article\u27s objectives are twofold. First, the intention is to use this Article as a vehicle to expose law students, legal educators, practicing attorneys, policymakers, and layperson observers to the impact, medical symptoms and manifestations of Alzheimer\u27s disease in accessible and easy to understand terms. Second, to use this Article as a tool for teaching, raising understanding, and providing guidance on a multitude of ethical considerations that law students (who will soon be lawyers) and practicing members of the bar should consider while being exposed to actual or potential clients who suffer from Alzheimer\u27s disease
Sinclair\u27s Nightmare: SLAPP-ing Down Ag-Gag Legislation as Content-based Restrictions Chilling Protected Free Speech
Get PDFOver a century after its publication, Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel, The Jungle, remains one of the most impactful pieces of investigative literature ever published. During 1904, in an effort to expose the heinous working conditions of Chicago’s meat packing industry, Sinclair went under disguise as a factory worker for seven weeks. While Sinclair’s purpose for The Jungle was to propel federal reform against inhumane work conditions, it was the first-hand depiction of the callous slaughtering and unsanitary processing of meat products which led to national uproar. Gaining the attention of national political leaders, including President Theodore Roosevelt, The Jungle influenced Congress to pass The Meat Inspection Act of 1906.
Sinclair’s “guerilla” journalism method has influenced generations of social activists and more animal protection groups are turning to undercover video investigations to expose criminal and inhumane practices on factory farms that would otherwise go unnoticed by the public. Sadly, however, this type of activism is now being criminalized throughout the United States. “Ag-Gag” laws, a term first coined by New York Times food journalist Mark Bittman in 2011, are laws currently valid in six states which criminalize acts related to undercover investigations of daily agricultural activities. While the United States Constitution bars federal and state laws which abridge the freedom of speech, Ag-Gag laws not only have the purpose and effect of chilling free speech, but they also impede the public enlightenment of critical social issues including animal welfare, food safety, workers’ rights, and environmental safety. The purpose of this article is to investigate and analyze various legal frameworks to attack Ag-Gag laws on multiple fronts
Ocean Iron Fertilization and Indigenous Peoples\u27 Right to Food: Leveraging International and Domestic Law Protections to Enhance Access to Salmon in the Pacific Northwest
Get PDFOcean iron fertilization (OIF) is a new and controversial climate change mitigation strategy that seeks to increase the carbon-absorbing capacity of ocean waters by depositing significant quantities of iron dust into the marine environment to stimulate the growth of phytoplankton blooms. The photosynthetic processes of these blooms absorb carbon from the atmosphere and sequester it to the ocean floor. OIF has been criticized on several grounds. including the foreseeable and unforeseeable adverse consequences it may cause to the marine environment, as well as the daunting challenge of reconciling several potentially overlapping sources of international and domestic environmental law, which may lead to difficulties in regulating OIF effectively. Notwithstanding these challenges, OIF recently has produced a valuable benefit unrelated to its carbon sequestration purpose. In 2012, the Haida indigenous community in Canada conducted an OIF experiment that sought to restore its decimated supply of Pacific Northwest salmon stocks, upon which the Haida community relies for subsistence and self- determination. The experiment significantly increased salmon stocks within the span of one year.
This Article addresses whether indigenous communities like the Haida in the U.S. Pacific Northwest region could assert a legal right to employ such a strategy in the future to help restore and maintain a cultural food source that has been depleted in part due to climate change impacts. The Article confirms that international environmental law, international human rights law, and federal Indian Law in the United Stales provide a firm foundation for enshrining a legal right to food for federally recognized U.S. tribes in this region. It proposes a potential exception to a future international environmental law treaty framework governing OIF experiments that would protect indigenous communities\u27 rights to enhanced access to salmon as a subsistence and cultural food resource that is essential to self-determination
Climate Justice: Case Studies in Global and Regional Governance Challenges
Get PDFClimate change is one of the most complex political, social, and environmental issues of this century, and climate change adaptation has become an increasingly large focus of global efforts. The international community’s attention on adaptation has been primarily focused on developing countries’ needs, with consensus that the world’s most vulnerable communities—the urban and rural poor, low-lying island nations, and indigenous peoples—require additional protection. It was in response to this need for equity that “climate justice” emerged.
Climate justice can be defined generally as addressing the disproportionate burden of climate change impacts on poor and marginalized communities. It seeks to promote more equitable allocation of the burdens of these impacts at the local, national, and global levels through proactive regulatory initiatives and reactive judicial remedies that draw on international human rights and domestic environmental justice theories. Yet, efforts to define climate justice as a field of inquiry can be elusive and underinclusive because the concept is so vast in scope.Climate Justice: Case Studies in Global and Regional Governance Challenges seeks to fill that void, providing an overview of the landscape of climate justice from a variety of legal and geographic perspectives in a case study format. Drawing on the expertise of 29 contributors from 16 countries, the book analyzes climate justice from an international law perspective and from the perspectives of legal responses to promote climate justice in several regions of the world, including Pacific island nations, South Asia, North America, Africa, and the Middle East. It addresses proposed solutions to a range of regulatory obstacles under international law, U.S. law, and foreign domestic law in seeking to promote climate justice on a global scale.https://commons.law.famu.edu/faculty-books/1023/thumbnail.jp
Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Opinions of the United States Supreme Court
No full textWhat would United States Supreme Court opinions look like if key decisions on gender issues were written with a feminist perspective? Feminist Judgments brings together a group of scholars and lawyers to rewrite, using feminist reasoning, the most significant US Supreme Court cases on gender from the 1800s to the present day. The twenty-five opinions in this volume demonstrate that judges with feminist viewpoints could have changed the course of the law. The rewritten decisions reveal that previously accepted judicial outcomes were not necessary or inevitable and demonstrate that feminist reasoning increases the judicial capacity for justice. Feminist Judgments opens a path for a long overdue discussion of the real impact of judicial diversity on the law as well as the influence of perspective on judging.https://commons.law.famu.edu/faculty-books/1028/thumbnail.jp
The Injustice of Sea Level Rise: Ethics and Evidence, Lies and Liability--Slides and Data Presentation
Get PDFThe Center for International Law & Justice (CILJ) and the Environment, Development & Justice Program (EDJP) present the Second Annual Climate and Energy Justice Lecture by Professor Keith Rizzardi. Professor Rizzardi, an experienced government lawyer and litigator, teaches at St. Thomas University School of Law.https://commons.law.famu.edu/cilj-lectures-pres/1007/thumbnail.jp