Alternative choices for the deaf high school student

As teachers of the Deaf, it is our responsibility to ensure that our students can succeed in their lives after high school. Today\u27s world revolves around having a college education. But what happens to those who decide not to go down that path? They need to know what their alternatives are should they not attend college. To address those needs, a workshop will be developed to educate deaf high school students about what kinds of jobs are popular and what skills are needed to do those jobs. The workshop will take place once a week for five weeks. The workshop will empower the students by giving them the tools needed to find out more about themselves so when they search for a job, they know it will be a good match. Students will leave the workshop with a portfolio of materials that they will be able to refer back to when actually seeking employment

Considering a Domestic Terror Statute and Its Alternatives

Recent years have seen an increase in right-wing extremist violence within the United States, which has highlighted the disparities in law enforcement’s handling of “international” as opposed to “domestic” terrorism. Public, legal, and law enforcement commenters have begun calling for a “domestic terrorism statute,” arguing that the lack of such a statute is the largest hurdle in prosecuting domestic terrorists. This Essay explains that the primary cause of the disparity in prosecutions between domestic and international terrorists is not a lack of a domestic terrorism statute but rather the lack of a generalized terrorism statute and the failure to designate right-wing organizations as “terrorists.” Law enforcement pursuing international terrorists rely on these designations and material support statutes far more than on any statutes prohibiting terrorist acts, largely because the acts prohibited are so limited that they are rarely useful, even in the international context. But the two options of designating domestic terrorist organizations or creating a broad terrorism statute are highly problematic. This Essay discusses the barriers to prosecuting domestic terrorists as terrorists, including the problems with current terrorism statutes in responding to modern, small scale attacks and the tactics used to prosecute international terrorists. It then explores the problems with broad, generalized terrorism statutes that have been passed at the state level and drafted in Congress, and the problems with simply applying the international framework for terrorist designations to domestic terrorists. Finally, it suggests several alternative options to lessen the disparity between the handling of right-wing and other domestic terrorists, and international terrorists

Enforcing the Fair Housing Act: Can Agency Interpretations Override Congressional Intent in Anti-Discrimination Legislation?

On October 12, 2005, the Southern District of New York ruled that the New York State Attorney General was enjoined from enforcing state laws prohibiting discriminatory lending against national banks.1 The court found in favor of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the federal regulator of national banks. The OCC claimed that while state fair lending laws had not been preempted, the New York State Attorney General’s (OAG) authority to enforce those laws had been preempted by a series of federal statutes and OCC-written regulations that give the OCC exclusive authority to bring any enforcement action against national banks.2 In other words, the OCC, a federal agency, claimed that authority to enforce non-pre- emptied state fair lending laws against national banks rested exclusively within its office. Such enforcement preemption is otherwise unheard of in United States law3 and raises serious federalism questions as well as concerns regarding the relationship between agency regulations and federal statutes

Considering a Domestic Terrorism Statute and Its Alternatives

Recent years have seen an increase in right-wing extremist violence within the United States, which has highlighted the disparities in law enforcement’s handling of “international” as opposed to “domestic” terrorism. Public, legal, and law enforcement commenters have begun calling for a “domestic terrorism statute,” arguing that the lack of such a statute is the largest hurdle in prosecuting domestic terrorists. This Essay explains that the primary cause of the disparity in prosecutions between domestic and international terrorists is not a lack of a domestic terrorism statute but rather the lack of a generalized terrorism statute and the failure to designate right-wing organizations as “terrorists.” Law enforcement pursuing international terrorists rely on these designations and material support statutes far more than on any statutes prohibiting terrorist acts, largely because the acts prohibited are so limited that they are rarely useful, even in the international context. But the two options of designating domestic terrorist organizations or creating a broad terrorism statute are highly problematic. This Essay discusses the barriers to prosecuting domestic terrorists as terrorists, including the problems with current terrorism statutes in responding to modern, small scale attacks and the tactics used to prosecute international terrorists. It then explores the problems with broad, generalized terrorism statutes that have been passed at the state level and drafted in Congress, and the problems with simply applying the international framework for terrorist designations to domestic terrorists. Finally, it suggests several alternative options to lessen the disparity between the handling of right-wing and other domestic terrorists, and international terrorists

Imagining the Unimaginable: Torture and the Criminal Law

This article examines the use of torture by the U.S. government in the context of the late 20th-century preventive turn in criminal justice. Challenging the assumption that the use of “enhanced interrogation tactics” in the war on terror was an exceptional deviation from accepted norms, this article suggests that this deviation began decades before the terror attacks, in the context of conventional criminal procedure. I point to the use of the “ticking time bomb hypothetical,” and its connection to criminal procedure’s “kidnapping hypothetical.” Using case law and criminal procedure textbooks I trace the employment of that narrative over several decades, prior to 2001, including growing support for the use of physical brutality in obtaining information from criminal suspects. Far from “unimaginable,” I argue that the use of torture had been imagined, and gained increasing acceptance, in the increasingly preventive focus of these standard criminal procedural debates