Over the last twenty years, domestic sexual trafficking of children has received increased attention from state and national policymakers and advocates. Indeed, states across the country have enacted laws establishing harsh new penalties for individuals convicted of domestic sexual trafficking. At the same time, arrest and conviction rates for Black girls within the juvenile justice system are...
Black Girls and the (Im)Possibilities of a Victim Trope: The Intersectional Failures of Legal and Advocacy Interventions in the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Minors in the United States
The Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) considers all youth less than eighteen years of age trafficking victims without a showing of force, fraud, or coercion. The presumption is that minors cannot legally consent to sex and thus are always victims. Being characterized as a victim helps youth access support services and avoid prosecution in certain circumstances. However, local and state...
Deferred Action, Supervised Enforcement Discretion, and the Rule of Law Basis for Executive Action on Immigration
In November 2014, the Obama administration announced the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA) initiative, which built upon a program instituted two years earlier, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) initiative. As mechanisms to channel the government’s scarce resources toward its enforcement priorities more efficiently and effectively, both...
Congratulations to the New UCLA Law Review Staff for Volume 63!
Those of us on the board would like to extend a hearty congratulations to those joining the Law Review staff! We look forward to working with you over the course of the next year.
Showing Up
Each year, the UCLA School of Law presents the Rutter Award for Excellence in Teaching to an outstanding law professor. On March 31, 2015, this honor was given to Professor Clyde Spillenger. UCLA Law Review Discourse is proud to continue its tradition of publishing a modified version of the ceremony speech delivered by the award recipient.
A Critique of the Secular Exceptions Approach to Religious Exemptions
Many scholars, some lower courts, and at least one Supreme Court justice support the idea that if a law contains secular exceptions, the Free Exercise Clause compels similar religious exemptions from the law. They argue, for instance, that if a police department with a no-beards policy allows exceptions for medical reasons, it must also allow those who wish to grow their beards for religious...
Faith-Based Intellectual Property
The traditional justification for intellectual property (IP) rights has been utilitarian. We grant exclusive rights because we think the world will be a better place as a result. But what evidence we have doesn’t fully justify IP rights in their current form. Rather than following the evidence and questioning strong IP rights, more and more scholars have begun to retreat from evidence toward what...
Wills Law on the Ground
Traditional wills doctrine was notorious for its formalism. Courts insisted that testators strictly comply with the Wills Act and refused to consider extrinsic evidence to construe instruments. Yet the 1990 Uniform Probate Code revisions and the Restatement (Third) of Property: Wills and Donative Transfers replaced these venerable bright-line rules with fact-sensitive standards in an effort to...