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Repair Versus Rejuvenation: The Condition of Vaginas as a Proxy for the Societal Status of Women
Get PDFDemands of the Marketplace Require Practical Skills: A Necessity for Emerging Practicioners, and Its Clinical Impact on Society--A Paradigm for Change
Get PDFMany articles have been written focusing on the benefits that the law students receive from participating in a rigorous program of clinical study early on in their careers. However, little focus has been given to the clients who participate in law school clinics. Most of the time these clients are poor and minorities with few, if any, options for legal representation. In general, law student clinical work has been confined to local clients with local issues. Even law schools that handle national issues have clients that are local and the issues that give rise to the national representation occur locally. This article poses two questions (1) what if student participation in law school clinical programs was made mandatory, thus expanding the number of law students available to offer legal assistance to the underrepresented; and (2) what if law school clinics unite with one another to form an alliance to take on cases, thereby creating a broader impact on a national level. Specifically, if law school clinics decided to unite and share information, data, briefs, and forms, they would have the concentrated power of a nationwide public interest law firm to address issues that are below the economic radar screen of for-profit lawyers and law firms. For example, the housing crisis is both local and national and has a disproportionate impact on the poor. The nature of this crisis calls for a global solution rather than a local approach. Therefore, in a nationwide effort to positively impact the housing crisis, law school clinics forming an alliance could set a standard for practical training and potential resolution while impacting history in ways that were never envisioned by the doctrinal curriculum. The clinic thus becomes a \u27case book\u27 - not, however, of dead letters descriptive of past controversies, but always of living issues in the throbbing life of the day, the life the student is now living.
Beware of Wooden Nickels: The Paradox of Florida\u27s Legislative Overreaction in the Wake of Kelo
Get PDFThis article addresses Florida\u27s reaction to the United States Supreme Court decision in Kelo v. City of New London. In Kelo, the Court provided a more expansive view of the public use of the Fifth Amendment Takings Clause to include taking property from one private owner and transferring it to a corporation or non-private citizen when the transfer is deemed by the lawmakers to be in the public good or for a public purpose. Florida, together with several other states, concluded that such eminent domain takings, while constitutionally permissible, offend the states\u27 sense of fair play as it relates to private homeowners\u27 property rights. Several states sought legislative solutions to ameliorate the Court\u27s decision. The most reactive solution to date was enacted by the Florida legislature. The Florida statutory amendments cured the pernicious act of governmental taking of private property from one citizen and conveying it to another who promises to make better use of the property by specifically prohibiting it; however, this flat prohibition on economic development or blight condemnation eliminated a legitimate municipal tool serving all residents, albeit at the expense of a few affected homeowners.
Consequently, the amendments may have unintended side effects which are worse than the ill they purported to cure. This article also examines the negative impact of these amendments on counties, towns, and municipalities which have traditionally relied on lawful takings to modernize their urban areas, attract financing and industry, and increase their tax bases. After Kelo, Florida hoped to be a model of legislative responsibility; however, upon further analysis, Florida\u27s reaction might prove to be premature and counterproductive. In short, the rush to enact laws to protect homeowners from the holding in Kelo has resulted in potentially more harm than intended and is a Pyrrhic victory at best
Benevolent Assistance or Bureaucratic Burden?: Promoting Effective Haitian Reconstruction, Self-Governance, and Human Rights Under the Right to Development
Get PDFThis Article examines the capacity of regional organizations to coordinate foreign assistance and development programs in underdeveloped states, and in doing so, to promote the transformation of the Right to Development (RTD) - which stresses the right of nations and their people to progress in a manner that insures their ability to meet basic material, security and social needs -from conceptual template to a binding normative framework under international law. As the poorest state in the western hemisphere, but also the recipient of significant influxes of foreign aid, Haiti exemplifies the underdevelopment dilemma. For despite the large sums of aid allocated toward her reconstruction, there is mounting evidence that the current foreign assistance architecture as structured cannot ensure either long-term sustainable development nor promote the growth of democratic institutions in Haiti.
Ironically, the reasons behind this failure - donor/stakeholder bias, donor fatigue and recipient government incapacity - also explain the failure of the RTD, at least as it stands thus far, to facilitate the reconstruction and development of post-earthquake Haiti. In this sense, Haiti represents an important test case for states, and international and regional organizations, an opportunity to articulate precise, unambiguous doctrinal guidelines under the RTD, and to back up doctrine with solid, consistent practice. Because of their geographic proximity to Haiti and joint membership in the organization, the OAS member states enjoy a shared interest in the former\u27s reconstruction especially as it relates to broader regional security and economic integration issues, the very hallmarks of the OAS\u27 existence. The OAS itself possesses the institutional means to overcome the donor/stakeholder bias and donor fatigue problems through its ability to coordinate the actions of its member states in support of the RTD in Haiti (called integral development under the OAS Charter). What the organization has lacked is the imagination and institutional will to fulfill this mandate. Drawing from the growing normative recognition of the important coordinative role regional organizations can play in responding to global crises, this Article sketches a human rights-based model of foreign assistance coordination centered on the activities of the Organization of American States to ensure long-term sustainable development and democratic consolidation in post-earthquake Haiti
FAMU Lawyer Annual Newsletter Summer 2011 Vol. 8, No. 1
Get PDFhttps://commons.law.famu.edu/lawyernewsletter/1012/thumbnail.jp