ADR and Litigation Involving Social Problems

This Article addresses remarks of the Corporation Counsel of the City of New York, Michael Cardozo, regarding the use of ADR in legal disputes involving municipal government. It also highlights the special responsibilities of class counsel in the ADR context in class action litigation on behalf of vulnerable families and individuals. Specifically, the Article addresses ADR resolutions in Sheppard v. Phoenix, No. 91 Civ. 4148(RPP), 1998 WL 397846 (S.D.N.Y. July 16, 1998), Marisol v. Giuliani, 185 F.R.D. 152 (S.D.N.Y. 1992), and McCain v. Dinkins, 84 N.Y.2d 216 (1994). The Article concludes with a discussion of ADR in the context of litigation on behalf of homeless New Yorkers. ADR can simultaneously prevent harm to vulnerable populations and keep parties out of court when the government falls out of compliance with legal rights and protections. ADR should not be used to wipe away fundamental legal rights protecting homeless families

Gubernatorial Power and the Nationalization of State Politics

Reviewing Saladin M. Ambar, How Governors Built the Modern American Presidency (2012) and Thad Kousser & Justin H. Phillips, The Power of American Governors: Winning on Budgets and Losing on Policy

Reputation Management: A Qualitative Analysis of the Effective Use of Reputation Management Techniques Applied to Personal Reputations during a Crisis

Understanding the concept of image has been a cornerstone of public relations since its professional beginnings in the early 20th century. However, practitioners and scholars have introduced crisis management and reputation management techniques into the repertoire of public relations relatively recently. This research study analyzes the concepts of reputation management and image and their applications in respect to people during a crisis. It uses content analysis to examine John Edwards and Eliot Spitzer; and the resultant tone of media coverage to ascertain the effectiveness of their reputation management strategies

Do You See What I See - Reflections on How Bias Infiltrates the New York City Family Court - The Case of the Court Ordered Investigation

That the Family Court is ill-equipped to address the needs of the hundreds of thousands of cases handled therein is not news. Exploding caseloads, complex problems, and minimal resources are just a few of the ingredients that combine to undermine the Court\u27s ability to fulfill its promise. What has been given less attention until very recently is the extent to which the Family Court\u27s failures disproportionately impact low-income families of color. Any analysis of the Court\u27s impact or efficacy must consider the context I have described in my observations of the Court- the images of black and brown litigants hurrying through courtrooms where they are often disrespected. These images raise questions about the role of bias in the Court and the extent to which the Court\u27s failings disproportionately impact people of color. The historic failure to consider the disproportionate impact of Family Court\u27s ills upon black and brown litigants may have set the groundwork for practices that unwittingly perpetuate bias. In the midst of the hurried pace, huge caseloads, and inadequate resources that define Family Court, a number of quick fixes and shortcut practices have emerged. These practices include officially sanctioned shortcuts like the ever-expanding use of court attorney referees to preside over cases, and unofficially sanctioned practices like ex parte communications between certain judges and some institutional providers. While the failures of Family Court create myriad problems for parties who seek justice there, I limit my focus here to examining the officially sanctioned practice of using New York City Administration for Children\u27s Services (ACS) caseworkers to conduct court-ordered investigations in private child custody proceedings as one example of how a seemingly innocuous practice might countenance bias. In many ways, a telling representation of how the norms of practice in Family Court deviate from accepted norms of practice and how that deviation is not just tolerated, but embraced. The standard explanations advanced to justify these deviations focus on the nature of the cases and the enormity of the docket in Family Court - the cases do not lend themselves to traditional adversarial processing; the dockets are crushing and these practices are stop gap measures. I posit an additional explanation: these deviations represent a not-so-subtle case of the kind of differential treatment that gets institutionalized when the consumer is poor and of color, and, as a consequence, disenfranchised

Introduction

The idea for this Special Issue began with a conversation between me and Mr. Sam Reilly, the then Editor-in-Chief of the Emory Law Journal. Mr. Reilly and I go way back—all the way to his first semester in law school when he was a student in my Legislation and Regulation class. I subsequently selected him to become one of my research assistants later that summer. Mr. Reilly wanted to discuss what more the Emory Law Journal should be thinking about doing given the moment of racial reckoning the country found itself in. We discussed the Journal putting together a special issue dedicated to addressing systemic racism and the law. He brought the idea to the Executive Board, and they enthusiastically agreed. The Journal issued a call for proposals for a forthcoming Special Issue: Systemic Racism in the Law & Anti-Racist Solutions. The Journal received ninety-four abstracts and, from an embarrassment of riches, selected the seven Essays published on these pages

Justice Denied: The Case Against Gun Industry Immunity

This report exposes the unprecedented legal protections provided to the gun industry by the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, a law enacted in 2005 at the behest of the NRA

Commonsense Solutions: State Gun Laws to Protect Kids from Unintended Shootings

This report provides a series of proposals that state legislators should enact in their states to help protect children from improperly stored firearms. These proposals include:Requiring adults to keep guns properly locked up or under their immediate control, whenever they have a reason to know a child is present or might have access to the area;Requiring gun dealers to ensure that all gun buyers, including buyers of rifles or shotguns, are provided with a gun lock or other safety device;Ensuring that appropriate safety information accompanies the sale or transfer of every gun by a licensed gun dealer;Prohibiting adults from allowing children to handle machine guns, even if they are supervised, due to the unusually dangerous nature of these weapons.This report provides arguments in support of these proposals, along with the legal and factual background for each proposal. It also provides a list of the features that make up a strong law on each topic. Too many families have needlessly suffered the horrific loss of a child due to an unsecured gun. It is our hope that this report will provide a "toolkit" for legislators and advocates who want to move forward to help prevent unintended gun deaths of children

Updating Disclosure for the New Era of Independent Spending

One of the most striking developments in recent elections has been the upsurge in spending by independent committees, particularly Super PACs and 501(c) nonprofit corporations, that are not technically affiliated with specific candidates or parties but that frequently work to promote or oppose specific candidates or parties. In many elections, these committees are de facto surrogates for the candidates they are aiding. Although our disclosure laws are reasonably effective at obtaining the disclosure of the identities of donors to candidates and parties, they fail to provide effective disclosure of the identities of the donors to independent committees. The Citizens United decision indicates that expanding disclosure to address the surge is independent is primarily a technical and political one, not a constitutional one, as the Court has strongly endorsed the disclosure laws and their application to independent committees. This article lays out a reform agenda for adapting our disclosure laws to this new era of independent spending. It addresses four issues: how to obtain the identities of the donors who contribute to organizations that engage in independent spending; how to define the election-related activity that triggers the duty to disclose; how to obtain the identities of the natural persons behind corporate contributions and expenditures; and how to assure that disclosure is made in a timely fashion. In earlier work, I have suggested that we require too much disclosure of personal information concerning relatively small donors. However, we currently provide too little information about the donors who are financing the independent committees that loom increasingly large over our elections. Rightsizing disclosure to enable voters to understand the financial forces behind our candidates requires that we both raise the monetary thresholds for disclosure and extend the ambit of disclosure to include the donors who are paying for independent spending