Ally Coll and Astrid Aune
Special Edition: Attacks on the Administrative State
Ally-Coll-and-Astrid-Aune-Farmworkers-on-the-FrontlineThe 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
Matthew-Amani-Glover-and-Joshua-Laurick-Ingram-The-Pitfalls-of-Liberalism-at-LargeEditors’ Note
Leora Johnson and Salimah Khoja, Editors-in-Chief
Volume 27.1 (download PDF)
Editors-Note-27-CUNY-L.-Rev.-2024Adjusting 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.
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.
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.
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.
On the Road to Nowhere: The Unique Challenges Stateless People Face in Removal Proceedings and the Untenable Legal Limbo Following Final Orders of Removal
Rachel Marandett
Volume 27.1 (download PDF)
Abstract
Under a world order defined by nation-states, having one’s rights and dignity protected is inexorably tied to being a citizen of somewhere. Stateless people, who are citizens of nowhere, are thus left without the safeguards of a nation responsible for them. Today, there are over 200,000 stateless people living in the United States. Because the American immigration system is built upon the premise that everyone is a citizen of somewhere, stateless people are consistently trapped in a ceaseless legal limbo. In fact, the majority of stateless people in the United States have already gone through removal proceedings and have final orders of removal. These orders, however, cannot realistically be executed as most states will not accept stateless people. Thus, most stateless people are forced to live out their lives in the United States under Orders of Supervision. Trapped in this legal limbo, stateless peoples must perpetually endure limitations on their movement, persistent surveillance, no pathway to citizenship, and an ever-looming risk of prolonged detention or deportation to somewhere entirely unfamiliar. This ineffective system is as inhumane as it is unsustainable.
A Triptych on Law
Juliet Romeo, Esq.*
Your Honor
I hate it when you ask me
whether this argument holds water
The ocean has no container
and it is the truest thing I have ever seen
Idea Bank for New York City’s Chief Public Realm Officer: Imagining a Broad, Equity-Enhancing Role for Creating Access to Public Space
Reply
Tara Eisenberg, Althea Lamel, Lindsay Matheos, Carolyn Weldy, and Andrea McArdle
Volume 27.1 (download PDF)
Abstract
By executive order on February 16, 2023, New York City Mayor Eric Adams created the position of the City’s Chief Public Realm Officer to promote a more centralized and coordinated approach to public realm policy, and appointed a chief strategy officer from his own staff, Ya-Ting Liu, to fill this position. This Article argues that the City should view the role of the Public Realm Office expansively and proactively to help achieve meaningful, equity-enhancing progress in stewarding public space. The authors, former students and a faculty member of CUNY School of Law’s Land Use and Community Lawyering seminar, offer a constellation of ideas for consideration. These include opening up and greening vacant spaces, even for temporary use, while simultaneously urging approaches to address the paradox that adding green infrastructure to environmentally degraded areas often imposes the side effects of gentrifying them, elevating land values, drawing in new residents, and driving out the very community members who should have benefited from the initial improvements. The ideas developed here also discuss the benefit of enhancing support—both financial and logistical, including through the donation of public land—for the expansion of community land trusts (“CLTs”) that function outside of the speculative market. Lastly, this idea bank offers proposals for using the public realm to enhance digital equity.