Abstract Ilanoli isht unowa. We tell our own stories. A single historical event has many stories. Although this nation’s official chronicle expected and even hoped for Indigenous peoples to fade away, we are still here. Our histories are marked by resistance, survival, sovereignty, and renaissance. Only now, in the later stages of the American experiment, do our histories have the chance to...
Demand for Compensation and Call for Solidarity
Expedited Expungement and Its Limits: AB 2147 as a Peak of Progress
Abstract In September 2020, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill (AB) 2147, a bill creating an expedited expungement process for prisoners in California’s Conservation Camp Program. This bill purportedly removed a barrier that kept formerly incarcerated firefighters locked out of postrelease employment as professional firefighters. Experts and fire camp workers alike praised the...
Free Speech Versus the First Amendment
Free Speech Versus the First Amendment The digital age has widened the gap between the judge-made doctrines of the First Amendment and the practical exercise of free speech. Today, speech is regulated not only by territorial governments but also by the owners of digital infrastructure. This has made First Amendment law less central and the private governance of speech more central. When the free...
Abolish Gang Statutes With the Power of the Thirteenth Amendment: Reparations for the People
Abstract The abolitionist movement seeks to fundamentally dismantle the prison industrial complex. Modern abolitionists recognize that mass incarceration of Black and Brown people is twenty-first century slavery. True abolition, they note, cannot be realized by merely tinkering with the carceral state. Instead, the complete elimination of modern-day badges and incidents of slavery must occur. The...
Designing a Latter-Day Freedmen's Bureau
Abstract This Essay, based on written and oral testimony before the California Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans, addresses how best to translate substantive reparations proposals into durable, legible, legitimate, and democratically accessible programs. Specifically, this Essay evaluates institutional design choices, makes recommendations regarding...
Captive Without Counsel: The Erosion of Attorney-Client Privilege for Incarcerated Individuals
Abstract To be incarcerated is to be deprived of the choices available to those in the free world. In the absence of those choices, carceral facilities dictate the ways that individuals may engage. If an incarcerated person wants to communicate with someone who is not in their facility, they have very limited options. Because of the extended erosion of attorney-client privilege, for years...
Warrantying Health Equity
Abstract The United States is experiencing a significant rise in the prevalence of asthma and other debilitating respiratory and cardiovascular ailments that disproportionately burden low income and marginalized Americans. This is due in large measure to climate change, which is responsible for increasingly devastating air quality events—including wildfires and drought—that trigger these serious...