Statement in Solidarity with Columbia Law Review and Rabea Eghbariah

We, the 2024-2025 CUNY Law Review Editorial Board, stand in solidarity with the Editorial Board of the Columbia Law Review, in their publication of novel legal scholarship by Palestinian lawyer, Rabea Eghbariah. Eghbariah’s article, Toward Nakba as a Legal Concept, offers a legal analysis of “Nakba” and directly addresses the horrific history of the Nakba and the plight of the Palestinian people. We commend the student editors at Columbia for their editing and publication of a work that centers the Palestinian experience and the violence Palestinians have suffered under Zionist colonization.The article importantly speaks to the genocide that has been unfolding before our very eyes.

Given CUNY Law Review’s explicit social justice mission, it is our moral obligation to stand in solidarity with oppressed people and speak up when efforts to bring visibility to that oppression are met with censorship. Legal scholarship has historically silenced the most vulnerable and marginalized people. Censoring writers like Eghbariah is reflective of that system of oppression. We condemn the actions of Columbia Law Review’s Board of Directors in censoring and silencing the Editorial Board and Eghbariah.We also condemn the Board of Directors’ disclaimer statement and support the strike of their student editors. Shutting down the website in response to the publication of Eghbariah’s article was not only contrary to principles of academic freedom and free speech, but also contributes to the erasure of Palestinian voices amidst the genocide of their people and destruction of their land. 

Censorship is a hallmark of oppression and cowardice, and it will not stifle the movement for Palestinian liberation. We acknowledge the courage of Columbia Law Review as we move forward and continue our mission of centering voices which propel social justice. Palestinian voices matter and have the right to be published. 
Please read the article here.

Special Edition: Attacks on the Administrative State

Rebecca A. Delfino, Silencing the Administrative State: A Critique of Missouri v. Biden

Ally Coll and Astrid Aune, Farmworkers on the Frontline: The Ongoing Attack Against the Administrative State’s Authority to Protect Workers’ Rights

Matthew Amani Glover and Joshua Laurick Ingram, The Pitfalls of Liberalism at Large: Democracy, the (Administrative) State, & Liberalism’s Undying Support of the United States Political Economy

Silencing the Administrative State: A Critique of Missouri v. Biden

Rebecca A. Delfino

Special Edition: Attacks on the Administrative State

(Download PDF)

Rebecca-A.-Delfino-Silencing-the-Administrative-State-A-Critique-of-Missouri-v.-Biden

 

Farmworkers on the Frontline: The Ongoing Attack Against the Administrative State’s Authority to Protect Workers’ Rights

Ally Coll and Astrid Aune

Special Edition: Attacks on the Administrative State

(Download PDF)

Ally-Coll-and-Astrid-Aune-Farmworkers-on-the-Frontline

 

The Pitfalls of Liberalism at Large: Democracy, the (Administrative) State, & Liberalism’s Undying Support of the United States Political Economy

Matthew Amani Glover and Joshua Laurick Ingram

Special Edition: Attacks on the Administrative State

(Download PDF)

Matthew-Amani-Glover-and-Joshua-Laurick-Ingram-The-Pitfalls-of-Liberalism-at-Large

 

Editors’ Note

Leora Johnson and Salimah Khoja, Editors-in-Chief

Volume 27.1 (download PDF)

Editors-Note-27-CUNY-L.-Rev.-2024

 

Adjusting the Focus: Addressing Privacy Concerns Raised by Police Body-Camera Footage

Dalton Primeaux

Volume 27.1 (download PDF)

Abstract

Many public safety advocates have called for the use of police body cameras to document the interactions between officers and the public. In light of the documented incidents of police violence and misconduct, some advocates and policy experts have urged law enforcement to use body cameras to discourage future wrongdoing and create a record of when such incidents do happen. In some states, body camera footage is considered public record and can be obtained upon request. Most policies concerning requests for the release of body camera footage require the chief of police to grant permission for sharing the video with parties outside of the police department, but there is little guidance regarding if and when distribution should be allowed. As a result, victims are at risk of complete exposure during incredibly vulnerable moments in their lives. Protecting the privacy of victims and others captured in footage is one concern undergirding resistance to expanding such programs.

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Compensatory Preliminary Damages: Access to Justice as Corrective Justice

Sayid R. Bnefsi

Volume 27.1 (download PDF)

Abstract

The access to justice movement broadly concerns people’s ability to resolve legally actionable problems. To the extent that individuals seek resolution through civil litigation, they can be disadvantaged by their unmet need for legal services, particularly in high-stakes cases and complicated areas of law. In part, this is because legal services and litigation are cost-prohibitive, especially for indigent plaintiffs. As a result, these individuals are priced out of litigation and, by extension, unable to use law to seek justice.

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Access to Injustice: How Legal Reforms Reinforce Marginalization

Roni Amit

Volume 27.1 (download PDF)

Abstract

Marginalized individuals are largely excluded from making rights claims in the courts because their stories of rights violations fall outside of prescribed legal categories. Framing this exclusion as a lack of knowledge and access, proponents of the access to justice movement have sought to improve outcomes for unrepresented and marginalized litigants through measures that help them understand and navigate the system. The access to justice movement seeks to make the justice system more accessible to these litigants by focusing on procedural fairness. This Article draws on empirical data and observations from Tulsa’s eviction court to consider the limits of access to justice measures focused on process, including representation. It calls for an expanded understanding of access to justice that incorporates the rights claims of marginalized individuals. Asking how lawyers representing marginalized clients can best advocate for their clients’ rights and achieve social change, it draws on the law and social change literature around legal mobilization.

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Character and Fitness in America’s Neo-Redemptive Era

Tolu Lawal and Al Brooks

Volume 27.1 (download PDF)

Abstract

The Character and Fitness process is the last major institutional hurdle that aspiring attorneys must overcome to gain licensure to the legal profession. A process held out to determine “moral” character, the Character and Fitness often goes uninterrogated, instead flattened into just a quotidian and inconvenient aspect of the profession’s admission procedures. However, the normalization of both the process and existence of the Character and Fitness obscures the reality that this unscientific process neither has particularized, inherent value to the profession nor is an accurate tool of determining the moral or ethical principles of potential attorneys. Instead, the advocacy of racial justice organizers and the scholarship of critical legal theorists in recent years have exposed the true nature of the Character and Fitness as a tool of exclusion, which molds the legal field and law in the White man’s image.

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