All posts filed under: Faculty Commentary

Swann Fountain in the Snow

Beware the Ides of February: Feeling Spectacular During the Nadir of Morale for the Year

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Yesterday, I made a spectacle of myself, and I am trying to decide if I need to teach my students to do the same. I didn’t set out to do it, but I was just so down. I always am this time of year, but this year seems worse. It’s been in the 20’s and 30’s the last few days, after a snowstorm blanketed the area a few weeks ago. I come to work in the dark or at daybreak and leaving in the dark. It feels like there is no life. It was time for some self-care. My students are experiencing the same blah feelings now, too. It is not uncommon in the legal and academic world for people to feel low this time of year. The holidays are done, and there is little else exciting on the horizon until graduation day for some and Memorial Day for others. Students and teachers are in a rut, repeating for the next several months the patterns into which they have fallen this year—1L’s know how to …

Passports

Stuck With Two Passports

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As it is wont to every few years, dual citizenship has become a contentious issue in contemporary politics. In the wake of the November 2015 attacks in Paris, French President François Hollande is pressing for a constitutional amendment that would allow convicted terrorists with dual nationality to be stripped of their French citizenship. Political elites on the French left have attacked the proposal as violating principles of equality, as it does not apply to citizens of only France; the move, they argue, would signify that dual nationals are somehow less French and that their French identity is more expendable than those who don’t have another citizenship. In December the U.S. Congress barred dual nationals of Iran, Syria, Iraq and Sudan from visa exemptions that they would otherwise enjoy as citizens of European Union nations and certain other countries. The measure — which a group of senators is now proposing to alter — also restricts the visa-free movement of individuals who have recently traveled to these countries, on the theory that it would prevent potential jihadists from re-entering the …

Microscope

When Must Lawyers Learn Science?

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How should judges evaluate lawyers’ alleged mishandling of forensic science evidence when the challenge is brought years after the trial? One recent United States Supreme Court decision grapples with this; and this article contextualizes that holding, analyzes its weaknesses, and suggests some factors for judges to weigh. In criminal cases, the importance of science (and understanding the limits of science) cannot be gainsaid. The statistics are clear: in a review of homicide cases in Cleveland, Ohio, the clearance rate was higher [63.1%] for cases with probative results — either matches or exclusions — than in cases without such evidence [56.3%], and the average sentence imposed was higher in the former category. Yet there is a confounding problem – the consumers of forensic evidence have little or no scientific training, either at the college level or ‘on the job.’ Perhaps 5% of lawyers [and judges] studied science, a number presented in research papers and confirmed repeatedly by polling attendees at legal education conferences. And the consequences are severe. The scientific illiteracy of lawyers was highlighted in …

commuter on phone

Your Kindle Dims My and My Students’ Empathy

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I am the commuter many of you hate. Maybe I see you alone at the bus stop reading a book that looks interesting and ask you about it. Perhaps I see you looking a little confused on the train platform and ask if you need help figuring out where you are going. Or maybe I see you wearing that Phillies shirt on the train after the game and ask you the score, why you aren’t a Cubs fan like you should be, and how the Phillies will ever improve. In short, I am the overly interested in you transplanted Midwestern type that you may be trying to avoid, trying to draw you into a longer conversation to learn about you. You will succeed in chasing me away with a one-word answer—I am also Midwestern enough to know to leave you alone based on your response—but we’ll miss something. We’ll miss the chance to get to learn a little more about the world and each other together, to possibly become friends (it happens this way!), to …

Public Health Consequences of Islamophobia

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Donald Trump has built his presidential campaign on demonizing immigrant and religious minorities without regard for the damage he instills. At Tuesday night’s Republican presidential debate it was more of the same. In the wake of Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric, there have been a record number of threats, harassment and vandalism to mosques, as well as attacks on individuals perceived to be Muslim. Muslim-Americans report feeling fearful, and anxious for themselves and their families. It is a difficult time for law-abiding Muslims in America. Two decades of public health scholarship confirms that this type of hatred directed at one group of people, along with the harassment, discrimination and segregation that follow, has a pernicious impact on health. Hatred stigmatizes and marginalizes its targets, limits access to life’s opportunities and reduces the freedom to freely partake in life’s enjoyments. It can incite threats and violence and internalized self-hatred. The constant stress of being targeted risks cardiovascular disease, hypertension, anxiety and depression.  As the nation aspires to achieve health equity, the impact of Trump’s disparaging divisive rhetoric will …

LGBTQ Flag

In the Movement for LGBTQ Equality, the Mission Isn’t Even Close to Accomplished

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Something happened earlier this week that stunned many longtime LGBTQ advocates. On Dec. 12, Empire State Pride Agenda, New York state’s leading LGBTQ policy advocacy group, announced that it was winding down operations. An advocacy organization closing up shop isn’t in itself all that surprising. Nonprofits frequently fold, often due to lack of funds or instability in leadership. What was surprising was the spin the organization chose to put on the announcement. According to the group’s press release, its leadership “determined that the Pride Agenda has achieved its top policy goals, and are proud that the organization’s achievements in the last quarter century have profoundly changed the lives of more than 1.5 million LGBT New Yorkers and their families, and set an example for the entire nation.” Wait. What? Although it’s true that Empire State Pride Agenda, the state of New York, and the LGBTQ movement as a whole have come a very long way, we’re frankly shocked by the organization’s declaration of “mission accomplished.” This announcement exacerbates the perception that once same-sex marriage became legal …

Donald Trump

Court Rulings Support Trump’s Muslim Immigration Plan

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The hysterical response to Donald Trump’s proposal to restrict Muslim immigration is unwarranted. Contrary to the claims of Trump’s critics, the power to suspend the admission of “any aliens or any class of aliens into the United States” is expressly reserved by statute to the president whenever the president finds that such admission “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.” Candidate Trump is telling us that President Obama should use this power, and that a President Trump would. Despite vigorous assertions by talking heads that suspending the admission of Muslim immigrants would be unconstitutional, prior Supreme Court opinions clearly suggest that courts would reject constitutional challenges to any president’s proposed suspension of Muslim admission into the United States in accordance with U.S. law. In the leading case of Fiallo v. Bell, the Supreme Court in 1977 noted, “Our cases ‘have long recognized the power to expel or exclude aliens as a fundamental sovereign attribute exercised by the government’s political departments largely immune from judicial control.’” In upholding the authority of the government …

PA Debates: Is a [Gruesome] Picture Worth 1,000 Words?

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When is a photograph more disturbing than useful, particularly in an emotionally-charged trial such as a homicide case (and, more particularly, in a homicide trial where the victim is a young child)? At once a seemingly narrow inquiry, how this question is answered resonates in all sorts of cases, particularly criminal and personal injury, where a photograph or video showing severe injuries is offered as evidence. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court debated this in Commonwealth v. Woodard, 2015 Pa. LEXIS 2786 (decided December 3, 2015). The views of both the majority and dissent warrant discussion, as they frame the issue radically differently and in so doing invite further and science-informed litigation on this issue. Woodard was accused of killing the two-year-old child of his one-time paramour when the child was left in his custody. The injuries were “blunt trauma,” i.e., injuries caused by blows from a fist or other hard object.  “Following a hearing where expert medical testimony was presented, the trial court granted the Commonwealth’s motion and ruled that thirteen autopsy photos (twelve color and …

Donald Trump

Trump’s Anti-Muslim Plan Is Awful. And Constitutional.

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Donald J. Trump’s reprehensible call to bar Muslim immigrants from entering the United States tracks an exam question I’ve been giving my immigration law students since Sept. 11. Would such a proposal be constitutional? The answer is not what you might think — but it also raises the issue of what, exactly, we mean when we say something is “constitutional” in the first place. In the ordinary, non-immigration world of constitutional law, the Trump scheme would be blatantly unconstitutional, a clear violation of both equal protection and religious freedom (he had originally called for barring American Muslims living abroad from re-entering the country as well; he has since dropped that clearly unconstitutional notion). But under a line of rulings from the Supreme Court dating back more than a century, that’s irrelevant. As the court observed in its 1977 decision in Fiallo v. Bell, “In the exercise of its broad power over immigration and naturalization, Congress regularly makes rules that would be unacceptable if applied to citizens.” The court has given the political branches the judicial …