Keeping Current – Property Article
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Darryl Wilson, Keeping Current – Property, 38 Probate and Property 12 (2024)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
Articles
Fairness as Balance: Investor Obligations and Investment Treaty Reform Article
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Klara Van der Ploeg, Fairness as Balance: Investor Obligations and Investment Treaty Reform, 4 International Investment Law Journal 184 (2024)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
The normative asymmetry between the rights and obligations of investors and host states under investment treaties has been a key reason for the treaties' common characterization as "unbalanced". While initially a description of a justified treaty design, imbalance has since become a central component of the legitimacy challenges to the investment treaty regime: a normative demand of the treaties' realignment. Identifying the imbalance critiques of investment treaties as fairness-based critiques concerning the distributive implications of investment treaties, the article considers to what extent including provisions on investor conduct in investment treaties may address the concerns about potential unfairness in the allocation of rights
and obligations under these treaties. In particular, the article argues that understanding the imbalance critiques as concerns of distributive justice enables the assessment of investment treaty design innovations and the alternative ways in which these instruments could be structured to produce different distributive outcomes.
Supreme Court News Article
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Louis J. Virelli and Richard W. Murphy, Supreme Court News, 49 Administrative & Regulatory Law News 18 (2024)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
How Traditional Legal Rhetoric’s Myth of Neutrality Sustains Capitalism Article
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Elizabeth Berenguer, How Traditional Legal Rhetoric’s Myth of Neutrality Sustains Capitalism, 101 Denv. L. Rev. 721 (2024)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
Through the lens of critical and comparative rhetoric, this Article examines how traditional legal rhetoric-the dominant analytical framework employed in the United States legal system-sustains capitalism and preserves inequities, such as financial precarity. This Article identifies the features that traditional legal rhetoric shares with the free capitalist market and then uses those features as an analytical framework to examine two cases that align with the theme of this Symposium on financial precarity and late capitalism: Bank of America v. Caulkett and Citizens United v. FEC. Comparing these two cases, the Court uses the same analytical tools of traditional legal rhetoric, albeit in contradictory ways, to reach outcomes that align with market values at the expense of the individual. More importantly, in both cases, the Court presents traditional legal reasoning as an objective, rational, unbiased, and neutral analytical framework, even though it is not actually objective, rational, unbiased, or neutral.
This myth that traditional legal reasoning is objective, rational, unbiased, and neutral aligns with the near-identical myth that the market is an objective, rational, unbiased, and neutral place where ransactions occur between individuals and entities who share similar bargaining power and play on a level field. Through these aligned myths, traditional legal rhetoric is essential to sustaining the free-market capitalism experiment. More importantly, traditional legal rhetoric cannot ever satisfactorily address the
inequities of the marketplace like financial precarity because traditional legal rhetoric was never intended to be egalitarian. Thus, in order to truly begin solving the problems of capitalism, advocates must understand how traditional legal rhetoric creates inequities and challenge the form and substance
of traditional legal rhetoric using other rhetorics, such as African Diasporic, Asian Diasporic, Indigenous, and Latine rhetorics. These insurrectionary
rhetorics establish frameworks for challenging dominant imperialist/colonialist power, centering community, and solving the real problems of inequity created by traditional legal rhetoric.
Investor Obligations: Transformative and Regressive Impacts of the Business and Human Rights Framework Article
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Klara Van der Ploeg, Investor Obligations: Transformative and Regressive Impacts of the Business and Human Rights Framework, 9 Business and Human Rights Journal 221 (2024)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
The business and human rights (BHR) framework has regularly been considered the superior legal regime of corporate accountability for business-related human rights abuses, which must be both protected from and incorporated into investment treaties. However, investment treaties have surpassed the BHR framework in an important respect: certain investment treaties impose strict international legal obligations, including human rights-related obligations, directly on investors, thereby going beyond the normatively ambiguous corporate responsibility to respect. Investment treaty reform initiatives, including those seeking to align investment treaties with the BHR agenda, should therefore take care to avoid inadvertently undoing this advance towards investors’ legal accountability.
Bias in the Cathedral Article
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Marco Jimenez, Bias in the Cathedral, 2024 Jotwell: The Journal of Things We Like (Lots) 1 (2024)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
Experiences with and Perceptions of the Child Welfare System During the Perinatal Period of Mothers with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Article
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Robyn Powell et al., Experiences with and Perceptions of the Child Welfare System During the Perinatal Period of Mothers with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, 19 Journal of Public Child Welfare 751 (2024)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
This qualitative study explored the perceptions and experiences of 16 mothers with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) regarding their interactions with the child welfare system during the perinatal period. Adverse themes included fear of child removal, wariness of the healthcare system, insufficient assistance, and trauma and stress. Positive themes included support from others and believing in one’s self. Findings underscore the need for disability cultural competence, non-discrimination, family preservation, enhanced support, self-advocacy, and family-centered care across perinatal and child welfare systems to improve equity for mothers with IDD and their children. Further research is warranted.
Aren’t We Exhausted Always Rooting for the Anti-Hero? Publishers, Prisons, and the Practicing Bar Article
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Ashley Krenelka Chase, Aren’t We Exhausted Always Rooting for the Anti-Hero? Publishers, Prisons, and the Practicing Bar, 56 Tex. Tech L. Rev. 525 (2024)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
Legal research companies are no more novel than the other platforms we use to navigate our daily lives, and they operate similarly to other information access giants like Amazon and Ticketmaster. Academics are quick to decry the cost of course materials and attorneys are quick to complain about their monthly research bills, but year after year, academics assign course materials through Lexis and Westlaw, and attorneys rely on those products to perform the research necessary to quickly move cases through the system. Similarly, there is ample information available about the problems associated with prison services monopolies and attorneys have been quick to denounce those predatory practices and the harm they place on incarcerated people. Some attorneys have gone so far as to attack some technologies that may benefit litigants as unauthorized practice of law, while also suggesting a change in entry requirements for practicing law for the benefit of indigent criminal litigants, so a law-school-to-public-defender pipeline can be created for the benefit of those individuals. But where is the outcry surrounding legal information access, access which could immediately and significantly impact the ability of incarcerated litigants to understand their cases, themselves?
This article will discuss the history of access to legal information in American prisons, and the history of legal information ownership and the myriad ways in which these ownership schemes negatively impact all Americans, but acutely impact incarcerated litigants. It describes the advocacy work of attorneys surrounding the use of technology by non-lawyers, ability to practice law and, yes, Taylor Swift tickets. The Article concludes with suggestions for how this kind of advocacy can be mobilized to fight back against predatory publishers for the benefit of all those currently in the justice system, but especially those fighting for their freedom behind bars.
Keeping Current – Property Article
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Darryl Wilson, Keeping Current – Property, 38 Probate and Property 18 (2024)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
Forced to Bear, Denied to Rear: The Cruelty of Dobbs for Disabled People Article
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Robyn Powell, Forced to Bear, Denied to Rear: The Cruelty of Dobbs for Disabled People, 112 Geo. L.J. 1095 (2024)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
The history of the United States is marred by a shameful record of using reproduction to oppress disabled people through state-sanctioned legislation, policies, and programs that deprive them of their bodily autonomy and self-determination. Disabled people face structural, legal, and institutional barriers to accessing reproductive health services and information, including contraception and abortion care. They also experience high rates of violence and reproductive coercion, as well as stigma and discrimination from health providers. Consequently, people with disabilities are more likely to experience maternal morbidity and mortality, rendering pregnancy particularly dangerous for some.
The Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision exacerbates this complex and challenging situation. Mounting abortion restrictions, coupled with the myriad barriers and challenges that people with disabilities already face, will result in some being forced to carry pregnancies to term even if they pose serious health risks or go against their wishes. Subsequently, should they choose to raise their children after childbirth, they will likely encounter ongoing threats to their parental rights due to pervasive assumptions of incompetence, inadequate family support, constant surveillance and scrutiny, and ableism within the family policing system’s laws, policies, and practices. Thus, the ruling creates a paradox for disabled people, where they may be forced to bear children but subsequently denied the opportunity to rear them, perpetuating a historical pattern of exploitation and subjugation.
In response, this Article presents a nuanced and novel analysis of the Dobbs decision and its implications for people with disabilities. To do so, first, the Article examines the profound impact of forced pregnancy on disabled people, delving into the underlying reasons for high rates of unintended pregnancies among this group. It also highlights the dangers and violations of bodily autonomy and self-determination that forced pregnancy entails for disabled people. Next, the Article’s focus shifts to the denial of parenting rights for people with disabilities, even after being compelled to bear children, exploring the societal, legal, and institutional obstacles that hinder their ability to parent, such as assumptions of incompetence, inadequate family support, constant surveillance and scrutiny, and ableism within the family policing system. Thereafter, it introduces the concept of disability reproductive justice and its relevance to these complex issues, providing a framework based on the principles of disability justice and reproductive justice to transform society into one that respects and supports disabled people’s reproductive freedom. Finally, the Article proposes legal and policy solutions guided by the principles of disability reproductive justice to address the reproductive needs of disabled people and dismantle the systemic causes of reproductive oppression, emphasizing the necessity of a comprehensive approach considering the rising threat to reproductive freedom.