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Category: Print Volume 107

Article

Perceptions of Justice in Multidistrict Litigation: Voices from the Crowd

Elizabeth Chamblee Burch, Fuller E. Callaway Chair of Law, University of Georgia School of Law & Margaret S. Williams, Adjunct Faculty, Johns Hopkins University

With all eyes on criminal justice reform, multidistrict litigation (MDL) has quietly reshaped civil justice, undermining fundamental tenets of due process, procedural justice, attorney ethics, and tort law along the way.  In 2020, the MDL caseload tripled that of the federal criminal caseload, one out of every two cases filed in federal civil court was…

Nov 2022

Article

Remote Work and the Future of Disability Accommodations

Arlene S. Kanter, Laura J. and L. Douglas Meredith Professor of Teaching Excellence (2005–07), Syracuse University; Bond, Schoeneck and King Distinguished Professor of Law (2011–13); Director, Disability Law and Policy Program; Director, International Programs, Syracuse University College of Law

When the Americans with Disabilities Act was originally enacted in 1990, and later amended in 2008, technology had not yet advanced to where it is today. In the past decade, sophisticated computer applications and programs have become commonplace. These advances in technology, have enabled millions of employees to work from home since the onset of…

Nov 2022

Article

Discredited Data

Ngozi Okidegbe, Associate Professor of Law & Assistant Professor of Computing and Data Science, Boston University

Jurisdictions are increasingly employing pretrial algorithms as a solution to the racial and socioeconomic inequities in the bail system. But in practice, pretrial algorithms have reproduced the very inequities they were intended to correct. Scholars have diagnosed this problem as the biased data problem: pretrial algorithms generate racially and socioeconomically biased predictions because they are…

Nov 2022

Note

Websites, Wellness, and Winn-Dixie: Telehealth Accessibility During COVID-19 and Beyond

Peyton B. Brooks, J.D., Cornell Law School, 2023

During the COVID-19 pandemic, people with disabilities struggled to find proper access to health care. According to a report by the disability services organization Easterseals, approximately forty-six percent of those who had used Easterseals services lost access to health care between the beginning of the public health emergency in March 2020 and April 2021. Furthermore,…

Nov 2022

Note

Judicial Discretion Across Jurisdictions: McGirt’s Effects on Indian Offenders in Oklahoma

Emily N. Harwell, J.D., Cornell Law School, Class of 2022

Oklahoma’s exercise of criminal jurisdiction over crime committed on tribal reservations remained unchecked until 2020. In McGirt v. Oklahoma, the Supreme Court held that the Muscogee Creek Nation’s reservation had in fact never been disestablished and remains in existence today. In doing so, the Court restored criminal prosecution authority to tribal and federal courts. McGirt…

Nov 2022

Article

Has the Alien Tort Statute Made a Difference?: A Historical, Empirical, and Normative Assessment

Christopher Ewell, J.D., Yale Law School (2022); Oona A. Hathaway, Gerard C. and Bernice Latrobe Smith Professor of Law, Yale Law School & Ellen Nohle, J.S.D. Candidate, Yale Law School (2023)

The Alien Tort Statute (ATS), which allows aliens to file civil suit in U.S. courts for violations of the law of nations, has been considered by many to be one of the most important legal tools for human rights litigation in the United States and perhaps even the world. The effectiveness of this tool, however,…

Oct 2022

Article

Antidiscrimination and Tax Exemption

Alex Zhang, Law Clerk, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. J.D., Yale Law School; Ph.D., Yale University

“The Supreme Court held, in Bob Jones University v. United States, that violations of fundamental public policy—including race discrimination in education—disqualify an entity for tax exemption. The holding of the case was broad, and its results cohered with the ideals of progressive society: the government ought not to subsidize discrimination, particularly of marginalized groups. But…

Oct 2022

Note

A Response-Dependent Perspective on the Theory of Insanity

Bruno Patrick Babij, B.A., Stanford University, 2018; M.Phil., University of Cambridge, 2019;
J.D., Cornell Law School, 2022

“This Note has three parts. The first introduces the idea of response-dependent responsibility in more detail. The second part argues that the traditional tests for insanity assume the view of responsibility the response-dependent account sought to correct and that the failure of these tests to provide satisfactory results follows from that assumption. The third part…

Oct 2022

Note

“F*ck School”? Reconceptualizing Student Speech Rights in the Digital Age

Hannah Middlebrooks, J.D., Cornell Law School, 2022; B.A. in English, French, and Women’s Studies, University of Georgia, 2017

“This Note will examine the impact that the nationwide shift to online distance learning due to the pandemic has had on K12 public school students’ First Amendment speech rights. I will begin with the four foundational Supreme Court cases about on-campus student speech. Next, I will briefly examine the federal circuit split regarding off-campus student…

Oct 2022

Article

Resurrecting Arbitrariness

Kathryn E. Miller, Clinical Assistant Professor of Law, Cardozo Law School. Staff Attorney, Equal Justice Initiative, 2012–2015

What allows judges to sentence a child to die in prison? For years, they did so without constitutional restriction. That all changed in 2012’s Miller v. Alabama, which banned mandatory sentences of life without parole for children convicted of homicide crimes. Miller held that this extreme sentence was constitutional only for the worst offenders—the “permanently…

Sep 2022