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Senate Bill 54 (2017): California Versus the Law Enforcement Lobby

ABSTRACT Before calls to abolish Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) became a progressive rallying cry throughout the United States, the California Values Act of 2017 (SB 54) promised to freeze ICE out of California. The goal behind SB 54 was to restrict state and local law enforcement entanglement with ICE in the state with the most immigrants in the country. In fact, most deportations...

Bail Reform and the (False) Racial Promise of Algorithmic Risk Assessment

ABSTRACT Pretrial risk assessment instruments (PRAIs) have captured national attention in recent years. These instruments utilize computer algorithms to aid judges in making two predictions: whether a person will return to court while on pretrial release and whether a person will pose a danger to the public while on pretrial release. This Article contends that PRAI advocates have been inattentive...

State Constitutions and Summary Judgment

ABSTRACT Is summary judgment constitutional? Scholars have passionately debated the question in recent years. But they have made an important oversight. Ironically, the issue surrounding summary judgment’s constitutionality that is the most important—whether it violates state constitutions— has received the least scholarly attention. This Article is the first to consider whether summary judgment...

The End of Deportation

ABSTRACT This Article introduces to legal scholarship a new horizon for pro-immigrant scholarship and advocacy: deportation abolition. The ever-present threat of deportation shapes the daily lives of noncitizens. Instead of aiming for a pathway to citizenship, most noncitizens must now contend with dodging the many pathways to banishment. Despite growing threats to immigrant survival, most pro...

“Settling” Brown’s Promise: Seeking More Equal Access to Quality Education Through Settlement

Abstract Education is universally acknowledged as fundamentally important. Yet, education advocates have long struggled to bring about effective school reform through both legislative and judicial avenues for a myriad of reasons including budgetary constraints, a lack of consensus regarding what reforms are most effective, and racist perceptions of reform. In recent years, school reform...

Race as Unintellectual

ABSTRACT For the past forty years, efforts to racially integrate the nation’s most selective universities have coalesced around a central idea: underrepresented racial minorities have unique perspectives, and universities are unable to provide the highest quality of education without incorporating those perspectives into their campus community. When specifying the unique contributions that...

“Obvious Injustice” and Qualified Immunity: The Legacy of Hope v. Pelzer

ABSTRACT Qualified immunity has captured popular attention in the wake of multiple high-profile killings of civilians by police due to its role in shielding officers and other public officials from legal accountability for constitutional rights violations if the specific conduct at issue has not previously been held unconstitutional. Since creating the doctrine in 1982, the U.S. Supreme Court has...

The Gender Panopticon: AI, Gender, and Design Justice

ABSTRACT Using recent research from data scientists and technologists, this Article argues that we are at a contradictory moment in history regarding the intersection of gender and technology, particularly as it affects lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) communities. At the very same moment that we see the law embracing more and more visibility regarding gender identities and...

Stealing Education

ABSTRACT While most state constitutions include provisions that indicate a commitment to equal access to education within one state, that commitment remains unfulfilled. This Article shines a light on a practice that has been overlooked by those concerned about school district inequality, but that contributes to this incongruity: a phenomenon I call “stealing education.” A parent “steals”...

Choosing Life Over Liberty and Property: Environmental Justice in a World Ravaged by Climate Change

ABSTRACT Harms to communities of color and poor communities are set to increase in light of climate change. These communities are vulnerable to climate-induced disasters largely because of historical, social and economic inequities. While this is generally true for vulnerable communities throughout the world, the scope of this Comment is limited to vulnerable communities within the United States...

From Academic Freedom to Cancel Culture: Silencing Black Women in the Legal Academy

ABSTRACT In 1988, Black women law professors formed the Northeast Corridor Collective of Black Women Law Professors, a network of Black women in the legal academy. They supported one another’s scholarship, shared personal experiences of systemic gendered racism, and helped one another navigate the law school white space. A few years later, their stories were transformed into articles that...

Children as Bargaining Chips

ABSTRACT The parent-child relationship is one of the most valued and protected relationships in constitutional and family law. At the same time, the state has custodial power over children: a power that is necessary in some cases to protect vulnerable children from danger, neglect, and abandonment. But because the parent-child bond is so powerful, state actors can be tempted to exploit it for...

Business Secrecy Expansion and FOIA

ABSTRACT Expansive trade secrecy claims (such as those regarding voting machine software and government contractor pricing) can negatively impact government transparency and democratic accountability. In one important context—Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) cases—courts have addressed these concerns by imposing constraints on the definition of “trade secrets” and “confidential” commercial...

Alaska Native Hunting and Fishing Rights in a Changing Climate: Katie John, Sturgeon, and a Path Forward

Abstract Climate change creates a worldwide threat that is distributed unequally across the globe. Alaska Natives are uniquely vulnerable to climate change, both because it is impacting the Arctic more than other regions and because of the importance of traditional hunting and fishing practices to Alaska Native culture. The fact that climate change is impacting them so severely, however, is not...

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