The Problem of Wage Theft

Wage theft inflicts serious harm on America\u27s working poor but has received little attention from policymakers seeking to address income inequality in the United States. This Article provides a comprehensive analysis of the causes of the wage theft crisis and the failure of the current enforcement regime to address it. It argues that existing policy reforms will fail, because they misunderstand the nature of the crisis and the incentives that employers face when deciding to steal workers\u27 wages. It then proposes series of reforms that could work, while arguing that changing the economic calculus alone will be unlikely to solve the problem if social norms remain unchanged

The Use and Abuse of Domestic National Security Detention

Are people convicted of terrorism-related offenses so dangerous that we must bend the Constitution to keep the public safe? Or should we treat them like people who commit other crimes—by prosecuting, convicting, sentencing, and then releasing them after they have served their criminal sentences? Can we trust the government to use the power to detain people without criminal charge without abusing it? The case of Adham Amin Hassoun raises these questions. Prosecuted after 9/11 for providing support to Muslims abroad in the 1990s, and sentenced under the United States’ expansive material support laws, Hassoun avoided a life sentence only to find that the government never planned to release him regardless of the sentence he was given. Instead, he became the first person held under Section 412 of the USA PATRIOT Act, which purports to give the government broad authority to detain non-citizens whom the government certifies are national security risks. The government abused that authority in Hassoun’s case. But perhaps more importantly than what happened to Hassoun himself, his case illustrates the ease with which domestic national security detention can be abused by government actors with perverse political incentives. Above all, Hassoun’s case should cause us to reexamine the traditional deference given to the government in national security matters, particularly when the government’s targets are from disfavored groups such as Muslims or other religious and racial minorities. More than twenty years after 9/11, it is time to interrogate the national security legal apparatus that rose up in the aftermath of the attacks and which ensnared Hassoun in a legal battle that only ended after the government was forced to justify its actions and failed

The Border’s Migration

The border has never played a larger role in the American psyche than it does today, and yet it has never been less legally significant. Today, a noncitizen’s place of residence tells you less about what rights and privileges they enjoy than it ever has in the past. The border has migrated inward, affecting many aspects of non-citizens’ lives in the United States. The divergence between the physical and legal border is no accident. Instead, it is a policy response to the perceived loss of control over the physical border. But the physical border remains porous despite these legal changes. People keep migrating even as we continue to draw boundaries within communities, homes, and workplaces far away from the border. This paper explores how U.S. law has evolved to render the border superfluous, even as its symbolic importance has grown, and how it might further evolve in the future

The Problem of Wage Theft

Wage theft inflicts serious harm on America\u27s working poor but has received little attention from policymakers seeking to address income inequality in the United States. This Article provides a comprehensive analysis of the causes of the wage theft crisis and the failure of the current enforcement regime to address it. It argues that existing policy reforms will fail, because they misunderstand the nature of the crisis and the incentives that employers face when deciding to steal workers\u27 wages. It then proposes series of reforms that could work, while arguing that changing the economic calculus alone will be unlikely to solve the problem if social norms remain unchanged

Strengthening knowledge and awareness in family services of domestic abuse (SKAFADA)

This rapid scoping study, conducted by researchers from the University of Central Lancashire and King’s College London, provides evidence on the knowledge, understanding, and skills of the Early Help and Family Support workforces in England with regard to domestic abuse. Early Help (EH) is designed to intervene before challenges in families reach the threshold where statutory safeguarding services are required, whereas Family Support (FS) provides services and interventions for vulnerable families and where children are defined as ‘in need’. These local authority (LA) workforces often collaborate with other partners to work with adults to develop parenting skills as well as in direct work with children. Early Help/Family Support practitioners have high levels of contact with families experiencing domestic abuse, and so it is important that the training and development they receive equips them with the tools they need to identify and deal with situations of domestic abuse