Category Archives: Blog

How ‘Human Rights Mechanic’ John Boston Empowers Incarcerated Individuals

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Nick Leiber



John Boston is one of America’s leading prisoners’ rights litigators and co-author of the bestselling Prisoners’ Self-Help Litigation Manual, which has aided countless incarcerated individuals and attorneys navigating the U.S. civil litigation system. As the former director of the Prisoners’ Rights Project of the Legal Aid Society of New York City, Boston helped bring landmark cases against officials who violated the rights of incarcerated people in New York State’s jails and prisons. Boston’s other book, PLRA Handbook: Law and Practice Under the Prison Litigation Reform Act, helps incarcerated litigants avoid pitfalls imposed by the federal statute. He is working on a fifth edition of the Prisoners’ Self-Help Litigation Manual with co-author Dan Manville. Boston, who joined Legal Aid in 1976, retired in 2016, and continues as a volunteer, spoke with CUNY Law Review Digital Editor Nick Leiber about his life’s work, strategies for obtaining justice for incarcerated individuals, and what brings him hope. This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
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A Statement of Reflection and Solidarity with Palestinian Liberation 

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Leora Johnson and Salimah Khoja*
Editors-in-Chief, CUNY Law Review

It has been a devastating few months for all human beings invested in collective justice, liberation, and freedom–from Palestine and Israel, to our very own neighborhoods across the U.S. and the world.  

These moments simultaneously prompt our sustained solidarity with Palestinian life and liberation in the face of occupation, distinct from any endorsement of Hamas’s attacks on October 7, 2023; grief and outrage over the killing of more than 1,200 people in Israel and kidnapping of 240 more in those attacks; further grief and outrage over Israel’s military assault in Gaza and recently in the West Bank, killing more than 23,000 Palestinian people, with many more presumed dead, injuring over 59,000 more, and displacing over 90% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million at grave risk of genocide; grief and outrage at the upsurge of antisemitic and Islamophobic violence and rhetoric across the world; and grief through a continued reckoning with more than 75 years of historical and political context.

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Demand for Compensation and Call for Solidarity

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The editors of this journal have come together with the editors of journals across the country to demand compensation for the work we do to publish legal scholarship. Our demand rests on one fundamental principle: Uncompensated labor is wrong. In the below, Journal Work Essay, we expand on this argument and present other important supporting principles.

We are all students at institutions that purport to educate in the furtherance of justice. Our journals believe compensated labor is a core tenet of justice, and we hope our schools share this belief. Despite the American Bar Association’s urging for journal members to receive credit or compensation, and despite a growing list of schools who have done so in recent years, many of our institutions remain woefully behind.

We publish this editorial to shed light on how uncompensated labor affects students, journals, the legal industry, and academia. We want to highlight the profound contradictions between the beliefs law schools espouse with respect to justice and diversity and the academic world they have created. At its core, this statement is a call for solidarity and action—from universities, journals, and others. 

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Human Rights Attorneys Grapple with the Law’s Promises and Failures Amid Calls to Prevent Genocide in Gaza: A Reading List

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Nick Leiber

The current situation in Gaza is horrifying and dire, even more so than it has been over the last several decades. Following Hamas militants killing over 1,200 people in Israel and taking roughly 240 people hostage on Oct. 7, Israel’s military has killed more than 12,000 Palestinians, NPR reported. United Nations experts are warning of “a genocide in the making.” The history of Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank adds crucial context.

CUNY Law Review’s central mission is to publish legal scholarship to “address the consequences of structural oppression, and to challenge these structures.” As a CUNY Law Review editor helping to realize this mission, I see it as aligning with Palestinian self-determination and opposition to the occupation and Israel’s warfare. With this in mind, and to help me understand the promises and the failures of domestic and international law in addressing the atrocities and their aftermath, the work of legal scholars and practitioners has been helpful.

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Lessons from The Revolution Will Not Be Litigated

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Nick Leiber

How can attorneys, activists, and others work together to fight more effectively for social justice? An upcoming panel discussion at CUNY Law School seeks to answer this question as the realities of potential genocide in Gaza, climate crisis disasters around the world, and the gun violence epidemic in the U.S. spark despair, anger, and action. Panelists will share examples of collaboration that made a difference against seemingly intractable problems.

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Ghost Guns Are Fueling the Gun Violence Epidemic. After Bruen, Can Our Laws Keep Up?

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Photo credit: Adam Schultz Creative Commons/Flickr

Nick Leiber

As we are reminded by headlines such as “A School Bus Crosses U.S., Linking Families of Mass Shooting Victims” and “Teens buying ‘ghost guns’ online, with deadly consequences,” our gun violence nightmare doesn’t seem to be ending. More Americans died of gun-related injuries in 2021 than in any other year on record, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Perhaps most disturbingly, firearms are now the number one cause of death for children in the U.S., surpassing motor vehicle deaths and those caused by any type of injuries or illness.
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Trans Youth Athletes Are Under Attack. It’s Time to Push Back

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Hirsha Venkataraman 

It’s 2023, and here in the United States, we–or at least some of us–still can’t decide whether or not we want to be on the right side of history. The Supreme Court has gutted abortion rights that existed for decades and allowed a business owner to discriminate against a homosexual couple due to “free exercise of religion.” Will the Court soon be allowing far-right religious zealots to dictate how we treat some of our most vulnerable and marginalized? I am talking about the proliferation of anti-trans legislation sweeping our nation, particularly against transgender athletes and, even more specifically, youth transgender female athletes.

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The First Amendment’s True Threats Doctrine Needs Updating. Counterman Ain’t It

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Annie Seifullah and Jillian Bowen

The First Amendment of the United States Constitution protects freedom of speech, but this protection is not absolute. True threats, which our courts have identified as statements that frighten or intimidate someone into believing that they will be harmed, are an example of speech that is not constitutionally protected. Because social media, tech platforms, and smart devices are so embedded in the ways humans communicate and connect, what actually constitutes a true threat has become not only a more prevalent inquiry in our courts–but also a more difficult question to answer. 

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Free Speech, Bullying, and a CUNY Law Grad Who Dared to Criticize Power

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Nick Leiber

On May 12, CUNY Law School graduate Fatima Mohammed gave a roughly 13-minute commencement speech to her graduating class as a student-selected speaker at CUNY Law’s graduation ceremony. In it, she shared reflections, offered gratitude, and criticized Israel, the New York Police Department, and the legal system itself. Despite her words clearly meeting First Amendment speech protections, a bullying campaign led to a torrent of negative coverage in right-wing media characterizing her words as antisemitic, calls for depriving CUNY Law of public funding, and public concerns for her safety.

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CUNY Law Review Statement on Last Week’s Supreme Court Rulings

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Last week, the United States Supreme Court released a series of critical decisions on ending affirmative action in higher education programs—other than military academies—, blocked student loan forgiveness, and expanded a business owner’s right to refuse services to same-sex couples. Continue reading →