The First Toast is a celebration to honor the work of the
Law Review. The outgoing Board toasts to a successful
upcoming year, and the incoming Board toasts to the old
Board‘s hard work and achievements throughout the past
year.
The First Toast is OPEN to the entire CUNY community, so
please attend, even if you are not on Law Review! The
event is a special time to recognize and celebrate each
other.
Thomas J. Keary*
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More than twenty years after the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) and forty years after the passage of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (Section 504), a recent study of physicians’ offices in five major metropolitan areas reveals that patients with mobility impairment are being turned away in disturbingly high numbers. This trend is due to physical barriers to routine medical care posed by inaccessible medical and diagnostic equipment, such as examining tables, rather than by building accessibility. The results indicate that there is a continuing need for education of health care providers and patients, as well as enforcement of these laws by the government and by consumers of health care.
Researchers at the Center for Quality of Care Research at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Massachusetts, telephoned 256 specialty medical and surgical practices seeking an appointment for a fictional, obese wheelchair user, who could not self-transfer to an examining table.[1] Of this number, 22% reported that the patient could not be seen because, in most instances, they were unable to transfer the patient from a wheelchair to the examination table (18%) and to a lesser extent because the building where the practice was located was inaccessible for people in wheelchairs (4%).[2] Practices in eight medical subspecialties, such as endocrinology, gynecology and orthopedic surgery, were tested. Of these subspecialties, gynecologists had the highest rate of inaccessible practices, with 44% of the gynecological offices called informing the tester that she needed to go elsewhere, usually because the provider lacked a table that could be raised and lowered, or a lift to transfer the patient out of a wheelchair.[3]
Congratulations to the 2014-2015 CUNY Law Review Board!
Violeta Arciniega & Chelsea Breakstone
Digital Articles Editors
Catalina Delohoz & James King
Executive Articles Editors
Rebecca Arian & Li Litombe
Notes & Comments Editors
Emily Farrell & Tana Forrester
Public Interest Practitioner Section Editors
Rachel Nager & Syeda Tasnim
Special Events Editors
Julie Pennington
Managing Articles Editor
Nabila Taj & Patrick Tyrell
Managing Editors
Elizabeth Koo
Editor-in-Chief
Join Law Review for a panel representing grassroots organizers, legal workers, prison psychologists, and policy makers for an informed discussion on the conditions and effects of the American prison system and what we, as a community, can do about it.
MODERATOR:
Professor Ann Cammett received her J.D. from CUNY School of Law where she currently teaches the third-year Family Law Concentration. Prior to joining CUNY, Professor Cammett was awarded Law Professor of the Year at the William S. Boyd School of Law in 2011. From 2004 to 2006 she served as the Reentry Policy Analyst for the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, working to develop programs and advocacy materials to improve prisoner reentry outcomes. In 2000 she was a recipient of the Skadden Fellowship at the New York Legal Aid Society, where she represented formerly incarcerated women facing civil sanctions arising from criminal convictions. Professor Cammett’s scholarship explores intersectional legal issues of race, gender, poverty, mass criminalization and the family. She is a recognized expert on the policy implications of incarcerated parents with child support arrears and other collateral consequences of criminal convictions. Her work in this area has been cited in two amicus briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Turner v. Rogers, and excerpted for family law casebooks and other treatises.
SPEAKERS:
Five Omar Mualimm-Ak is a former inmate turned activist who advocates for prison reform. He spent more than 5 of his 2. 12 year prison sentence in solitary and other forms of isolated confinement. He works tirelessly to raise awareness and fights to reform the use of solitary confinement across the state. He is the founder and Executive Director of The Incarcerated Nation Campaign (INC), which is a grassroots movement made up of formerly incarcerated persons, family members of those currently incarcerated, activists, students, and advocacy organizations, all working together to educate the community on issues of mass incarceration, improve conditions for the incarcerated and their families, and create a support base of re-entry for those returning back to our communities. Mr. Mualimm-Ak also works as an activist and organizer for the American Friends Service Committee and Campaign to End the New Jim Crow, Solitary Watch, and the New York Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement. Remarks he made at Cardozo Law can be seen here.
Ruthann Robson[1]
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Justice Antonin Scalia is well known not only for his conservative views, but also his literary language. So perhaps he might appreciate how the Shakespearean phrase, “hoist with his own petard,”[2] could describe how his dissents are being used to support the very outcome he derided: the constitutional recognition of same-sex marriage.
In United States v. Windsor decided in June 2013, the Court, by a bare majority, declared unconstitutional section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) which prohibited federal recognition of same-sex marriages even if the marriages were recognized by state law.[3] As in two other important cases involving lesbian and gay rights, Romer v. Evans (1996)[4] and Lawrence v. Texas (2003),[5] Justice Kennedy wrote an opinion for the majority longer on rhetoric than on analysis and Justice Scalia wrote a dissent guaranteed to be called “scathing.” In these dissents, Justice Scalia not only criticized the majority opinion’s lack of rigor and exercise of judicial supremacy, but he warned of the consequences of the Court’s decision.
Special thanks to our new staff members for contributing to a solid start this semester:
Sara Bovill
Jean Fischman
John Paul Guyette
Sana Khashang
Rachel Nager
Brendan Rush
Steve Succop
Mclee Kerolle*
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Introduction
On April 10, 2013, the Obama Administration released its proposed budget for 2014 with initial reviews showing that there would be a $200 million cut for NASA’s planetary exploration program.[1] Critics against the cut, such as Planetary Society CEO Bill Nye, have spoken out about the crippling effect the cuts will have on future missions and the cuts potential to reverse a decade’s worth of investment building the world’s premier exploration program.[2] On the other hand, proponents of the budget have praised it for its approval of $105 million for a mission to capture an asteroid so that it can be explored by 2015, as well as its funding for ongoing human spaceflight and support for private space taxis that could launch astronauts to and from the International Space Station.[3] Irrespective of the divisions the budget proposal has caused among those in the space industry, one thing is for certain: the space industry is going through a resurgence. Not since the Space Race has there been more of a reason for people to be excited about what lies ahead. Rightfully so, considering that despite budget cuts and perceived setbacks from the public (such as the retirement of NASA’s space shuttle program in 2011) the space industry is now a $250 billion per year global market.[4]
Our latest Footnote Forum installation comes from Professors Janet M. Calvo, Shirley Lung, and Alizabeth Newman.*
Janet M. Calvo, Shirley Lung, Alizabeth Newman†
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Non-citizens who are afforded Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) qualify for New York State bar membership. Over four hundred thousand young people in the United States have been approved for DACA, a program for non-citizens who came to the United States as children.[1] Approximately one percent of DACA-eligible non-citizens have pursued graduate education,[2] including law school. The admission of those approved for DACA to the bar is supported by New York statutes and the constitutional jurisprudence of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and the New York Court of Appeals. The New York Judiciary Law explicitly precludes alienage as a basis for denial of bar admission. New York has a history of routinely admitting non-citizens to the bar; there is no categorical exclusion from bar admission of any particular category of law graduates based on immigration status. An individual’s immigration category does not determine whether he or she possesses the skills, competence, and moral character to serve as an advocate in the courts of New York and to ethically represent the best interests of clients.
Caitlin E. Borgmann[1]
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Introduction
One might expect that a Supreme Court decision addressing the constitutionality of a citizen initiative that bars marriage between same-sex couples would yield a predictable political division among both the Justices and Court commentators. Liberal Justices and commentators, one might conjecture, would want the Court to recognize a fundamental constitutional right to marriage equality, while conservative Justices and commentators would prefer the issue be left to the political process. The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Hollingsworth v. Perry reflected no such tidy outcome, however. The majority opinion addressing California’s Proposition 8 (“Prop 8”), which amended the state’s constitution to exclude same-sex couples from legally recognized marriage, sidestepped the substantive issue through a procedural maneuver. Rather than reach the merits, the Court held that the official proponents of Prop 8, who had defended its constitutionality both in the district court and on appeal, lacked standing to appeal the district court’s opinion invalidating the initiative. The Court’s decision left marriage equality as the rule in California (although not elsewhere). Liberal Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, and Kagan joined Chief Justice Roberts’s majority opinion, as did Justice Scalia, while conservative Justices Thomas and Alito, and liberal Justice Sotomayor, joined Justice Kennedy’s vigorous dissent. Some liberal commentators who favor marriage equality applauded the Court’s decision.[2]
It is of course not possible to know exactly what motivated each of the Justices in Hollingsworth. But standing is a doctrine that the Court has notoriously manipulated to reach desired results on the merits.[3] Commentators have widely speculated that the liberal Justices who sided with the majority preferred not to reach the merits either because they believed there were insufficient votes to find Prop 8 unconstitutional,[4] or because they believed such a decision might be politically premature and therefore counterproductive, as it might prompt a backlash.[5] Some proponents of marriage equality were quietly relieved by the Court’s refusal to address the merits, since it allowed the district court’s invalidation of Prop 8 to stand without risking an adverse Supreme Court decision that would be binding on all states.[6]