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Luz Estella Nagle et al., Russian Oligarchs Using Colombian Bank Accounts to Avoid Sanctions, 38 Int'l Enforcement L. Reporter 145 (2022)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
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Robyn Powell, Beyond Disability Rights: A Way Forward After the 2020 Election, 15 Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Pol'y 391 (2022)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
Throughout Donald Trump’s presidency, people with disabilities and other historically marginalized communities experienced incessant attacks on their rights. From continuous attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, to decreased enforcement of federal disability rights laws, to reductions to social safety net programs, to the intentional disregard of the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump’s presidency threatened nearly every facet of disabled people’s lives. However, even before the Trump administration, people with disabilities experienced a range of pervasive and persistent social, economic, and health inequities. Moreover, many of these injustices endure today—nearly two years since President Trump left office.
The disability rights movement originated in the 1970s with the aim of securing civil rights protections for disabled people. Unfortunately, notwithstanding the disability rights movement’s many achievements, people with disabilities—especially those who live at the intersection of disability and other historically marginalized identities—continue to experience widespread and assiduous injustices. Consequently, elucidating the root causes of these pervasive and persevering inequities is essential to finally confronting them. Importantly, the Trump presidency’s further marginalization of people with disabilities illustrates the fragility of disability rights in the United States and underscores the urgent need to reimagine a more equitable approach to disability rights.
This Article critically examines the panoply of injustices experienced by people with disabilities and demonstrates why the prevailing approach to disability rights is insufficient for challenging the long-lasting and deeply entrenched subjugation of people with disabilities. Then, drawing from the tenets of disability justice, this Article proposes a vision to help activists, legal professionals, scholars, and policymakers conceive of and articulate the basic contours of a paradigm shift that supports reimagining the fight for justice for disabled people in a way that finally disrupts the widespread oppression experienced by disabled people. In particular, the Article suggests normative and transformative legal and policy solutions necessary for achieving and delivering justice for all people with disabilities. In light of the 2020 election and President Joe Biden’s professed commitment to people with disabilities, this Article offers essential and timely insights for reimagining the fight for justice for all people with disabilities by moving beyond the prevailing approach to disability rights and instead adopting disability justice.
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Robyn Powell, Achieving Justice for Disabled Parents and Their Children: An Abolitionist Approach, 33 Yale J.L. & Feminism 37 (2022)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
The social uprisings following the police killings of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and many other people of color elevated the concept of abolition to the forefront of people’s consciousness. Concurrently, there is a burgeoning body of legal scholarship calling for the abolition of the carceral regime. Some scholars also recognize that abolition efforts must include the child welfare system, more accurately termed the family policing system, noting the interdependent relationship between the family policing system and other parts of the carceral regime. Yet, despite the nascent legal scholarship calling for family policing system abolition, parents with disabilities and their children have been mostly disregarded. This Article responds to that scholarly void.
In this Article, I situate the family policing system within the contemporary struggle for the abolition of the carceral regime. My overarching argument is that the family policing system is an unjust social institution for disabled parents and their children. As such, we must work towards abolishing it and replacing it with non-punitive supports and resources for families. First, the Article describes the family policing system and its legal obligations to disabled parents and their children. Drawing on legal scholarship and social science research, it then elucidates the scope of the problem, detailing the injustices and harms that disabled parents and their children experience because of the family policing system. Next, the Article argues that reforms are not sufficient because the family policing system inflicts injustices and harms on disabled parents and their children by design. Thereafter, it limns the tenets of both abolition and disability justice and the ways in which these interconnecting movements, theories, and praxes could advance justice for parents with disabilities through the abolition of the family policing system. Finally, it proposes a novel anti-ableist legal and policy agenda for abolishing the family policing system that is responsive to disabled parents and their children.
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Jaclyn Lopez, Enforcement of Clean Water Act Could Clean Up Water, Save Florida Manatees, 53 Trends 27 (2022)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
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Ashley Krenelka Chase, Exploiting Prisoners: Precedent, Technology, and the Promise of Access to Justice, 12 Wake Forest J.L. & Pol'y 103 (2022)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
This article examines the legal evolution of access to information for incarcerated litigants and the role that access to the internet, libraries, and “ownership” of the law play in providing access to the Courts under decades of precedent. It then discusses the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence regarding the way technology has changed American behavior, including access to the internet, and how that significant shift in behavior is impacting incarcerated litigants. It concludes by offering a hopeful – and significantly more fair – approach to providing inmates access the courts and, therefore, true access to justice, without exploiting them in the process.
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Jaclyn Lopez, EPA’s Opportunity to Reverse the Fertilizer Industry’s Environmental Injustices, 52 Envtl. L. Reporter 10125 (2022)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
Seventy phosphogypsum stacks are scattered throughout the United States, concentrated in low-wealth and Black, indigenous, and people of color communities. These radioactive waste heaps have a long history of failures, and present a substantial hazard and unreasonable risk of harm. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should swiftly move to regulate these environmental and public health hazards. This Article examines the regulatory failures that have given rise to the proliferation of phosphogypsum stacks in vulnerable communities and sensitive environments in the United States. It argues that EPA has the authority, and with President Joseph Biden's Executive Orders, the mandate to take corrective action to remedy these environmental injustices.
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Robyn Powell et al., Becoming a Disabled Parent: Eliminating Access Barriers to Health Care Before, During, and After Pregnancy, 96 Tul. L. Rev. 369 (2022)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
The desire to become a parent transcends all identities—including disability. Despite federal disability rights laws, a nascent body of scholarship indicates that parents with disabilities experience substantial and pervasive inequities. Although legal scholars have extensively examined the discrimination that disabled people encounter while parents, there is scant legal scholarship critically evaluating, or even acknowledging, the impediments that people with disabilities experience throughout the process of becoming parents. In particular, legal scholarship has not adequately examined legal and policy barriers that may hinder people with disabilities’ access to health care before, during, and after pregnancy.
This study, conducted in accordance with established methodological practices from the social sciences, responds to this scholarly void and is the first to provide concrete data about the barriers that parents with disabilities experience when accessing health care before, during, and after pregnancy. This study draws original empirical data from qualitative interviews with thirty-eight parents with disabilities. Three themes emerged from the data indicating barriers to health care. First, physical barriers, specifically architectural barriers and inaccessible medical diagnostic equipment, impede parents with disabilities’ access to health care. Second, communication barriers contribute to inaccessible health care for parents with disabilities. Third, programmatic barriers, namely a paucity of policies and procedures about caring for parents with disabilities, negative attitudes, and lack of knowledge among health care providers’, result in health inequities for disabled parents. The Article concludes by discussing potential legal and policy implications of the findings and identifies critical areas for future research.
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Rebecca C. Morgan and Ed Boyer, Maximizing Autonomy and Ensuring Accountability Rights-Based Post-Appointment Issues In The “New Normal”, 72 Syracuse L. Rev. 41 (2022)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
Post-appointment rights for an adult under guardianship allow the adult to exercise as much autonomy and independence as possible, while providing the adult with dignity. Although all post-appointment rights are important, this article focuses on four: (1) listing the rights and notifying the adult and their surrogates of these post-appointment rights; (2) the post-appointment rights of the adult to marry and to obtain a divorce; (3) the adult’s right of visitation with others; and (4) the adult’s right to seek termination of a guardianship. Recommendations from the authors focus on increasing the protections for adults with these post-appointment rights
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Theresa J. Pulley Radwan, When is a Debt “Obtained By” Fraud?: Reconsideration of the Fraud Nondischargeability Exception under Section 523(a)(2) of the Bankruptcy Code, 124 West Va. L. Rev. 385 (2022)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
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Louis J. Virelli, Recusal in Administrative Adjudication, 64 Ariz. L. Rev. 135 (2022)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
The challenges facing agency adjudication are a microcosm of those facing modern American government. Limited resources, shifting priorities, and overt politicization all contribute to perhaps the gravest threat to the longevity of our public institutions—diminished confidence in the integrity of agency action.
Recusal—the removal of an adjudicator from a particular case—is a time-honored way of safeguarding the integrity of adjudicative proceedings, from traditional judicial proceedings to agency adjudications. Yet unlike judicial proceedings, there is no set standard for determining when an agency adjudicator must recuse.
Agencies have been left to design their own recusal regimes for the dual purpose of promoting fairness to litigants and, just as importantly, public confidence in their proceedings. Until now, the nature and scope of agency recusal practices were largely a mystery. This Article, which is derived substantially from a recent report for the Administrative Conference of the United States, is the first to develop a comprehensive accounting and taxonomy of agency recusal standards. As such, it is also the first to offer a normative analysis of administrative recusal across all federal agencies. The result is a series of recommendations for how
agencies can best develop their recusal practices to combat the ongoing cynicism and suspicion that threatens the efficacy of American government.