Interviews

20 Years On: Why Congress Should Repeal the Post 9/11 AUMFs

(Source) I. Introduction Three days after the September 11 attacks, the 107th Congress passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force (“2001 AUMF”). Section 2 of the 2001 AUMF authorized the President of the United States (“President”) to “use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United Stated by such nations, organizations or persons.” This sixty-word broad authorization served as a blank check for the U.S. to conduct military operations in Afghanistan. The counterpart of the 2001 AUMF was the 2002 AUMF, which authorized military force against Iraq. While the initial focus of the 2002 AUMF was to address the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s regime, the U.S. used it for the “dual purposes of helping to establish a stable, democratic Iraq and of addressing terrorist threats emanating from Iraq.” For example, President Obama used the 2002 AUMF to conduct the counter-ISIS military campaign in 2014. Similarly, in January 2020, after invoking both the Article II powers and the 2002 AUMF, President [read more]

Expanding the Courts to Reduce Case Backlogs

(Source) Case backlogs significantly impact the judicial system. By delaying the proceedings, case backlogs increase the cost of litigation. When a case is backlogged, parties—especially those that cannot afford to wait or pay for protracted litigation—are incentivized to accept less than optimal settlements. Backlogs also force criminal defendants, who cannot afford bail, to spend a greater amount of time in jail before a determination of their guilt can occur. Moreover, backlogs can stymie justice by delaying trials until after witnesses or even parties have passed away. Courts across the United States have experienced backlogs for quite some time. Between 2000 and 2014, thousands of civil cases were backlogged in U.S. District Courts each year, and this trend has only continued into the 2020s. For example, as of 2020, the number of backlogged cases in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey sat at a staggering 39,000, up over 230% since 2016. In the administrative law courts of the Department of Health and Human Services, hundreds of thousands of Medicare appeals were backlogged during the 2010s. Similarly, the nation’s immigration court has faced severe backlogs for more than a decade. Concerningly, the immigration court’s backlog has grown at [read more]

Fashion (Law) Forward: An Interview with Professor Susan Scafidi

(Source) Fashion (Law) Forward: An Interview with Professor Susan Scafidi This podcast transcript has been edited for concision and clarity. Christina Lee Hello, my name is Christina Lee, and today I am happy to have you on The Issue Spotter Podcast. Today, our Online Associate Jamie Smith will be interviewing Professor Susan Scafidi, and we are super excited to welcome both of them to the podcast. So, thank you so much and looking forward to hearing this.   Jamie Smith Thanks, Christina. And hello, Professor Scafidi, thank you so much for joining me today. I’m so glad we can finally meet each other. For those who don’t know you, I’d like to give a brief introduction before we get into what I’m sure will be a scintillating discussion. Professor Susan Scafidi is the founder and academic director of the Fashion Law Institute at Fordham Law School. As the first professor to offer a course on fashion law, Professor Scafidi is an internationally recognized expert in the field. A frequent commentator on fashion and fashion law, Professor Scafidi has been featured in publications from The New York Times to Women’s Wear Daily and NPR. Professor Scafidi’s advocacy work ranges from support [read more]

Increased Tuition for an Inferior Product: The University’s Guide to Not Caring

(Source) Imagine you decided to go to the dealership to buy yourself a brand-new car. After carefully researching the model and make of car and shopping around for a good deal, you finally decide to make the purchase. When the car gets delivered, you are excited to take it out for a drive, only to realize that the dealer has sent you a Vespa (an electric scooter). You complain to the dealer and they tell you to “make the best” out of a bad situation. You might think this is ridiculous, but it is in fact the experience of almost every university-enrolled student during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is a poorly-kept secret that tuition rates in the United States have risen at an alarming pace. In 1963, the average cost of attending college was $9,918 (adjusted for inflation), while in 2017, the average cost was $23,091. This precipitous increase has led students to borrow alarmingly high amounts and at increasing rates, resulting in a cumulative student loan debt teetering over $1.5 trillion. Today, students are leaving universities crippled by student loans and, in many cases, unable to pay them back. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 10.8% of [read more]

The Issue Spotter Podcast, Episode 1: An Interview with Ankush Khardori

http://jlpp.org/blogzine/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Interview-with-Ankush-Khardori-Final.mp3   (Image Source) Please Note: The following transcript has been edited for clarity and concision.  Christina Lee : Hello and welcome to The Issue Spotter podcast. My name is Christina Lee and I am the Senior Online Editor for the Journal of Law and Public Policy at Cornell. Today, we are really excited to welcome you to our first podcast ever, so welcome and thank you so much for tuning in. I’m going to turn it over to our Online Associate, Trevor Thompson, who will introduce our first guest. Thanks again. Trevor Thompson: Thanks, Christina. So, yeah, my name is Trevor Thompson and I’m a 2L here at Cornell Law and I’m very excited to get the podcast rolling for the Issue Spotter. Our guest today, who we’re very excited to have on, is Ankush Khardori. Ankush is an attorney and former federal prosecutor based in Washington, D.C. Until January of this year, he specialized in financial fraud and white-collar crime in the Fraud Section of the Criminal Division of the Justice Department. Before that, he worked at a law firm in New York City and clerked for a judge in the Southern District of New York. He has written on [read more]

Constitutionality of DACA Rescission

On September 5, the current administration rescinded the guarantee to many young people currently in America illegally that the government would not interfere with their work or studies. This program, known as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (or DACA) was designed to allow young undocumented immigrants, brought to America illegally, work permits and safety from deportation. This group of young people, colloquially known as “Dreamers,” is a group of high-functioning, well-educated young men and women that are arguably aiding the United States economy. This rescission is extremely unpopular, with 73 percent of Americans wanting legislation that protects Dreamers from deportation. President Trump has come out in support of protecting the group, and claims that he hopes “Congress will be able to help them out and do it properly.” So if the president and the American people are in support of DACA, why get rid of it? Part of that answer stems from a 2015 case, Texas v. United States, in which 26 states challenged the lawfulness of Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (“DAPA”) and the expansion of DACA. DAPA was similar to DACA, but it applied to the parents of children with permanent legal [read more]

Le Questionnaire

Questions for the outgoing JLPP Editor-in-Chief Daniel Guzmán adapted by Sarah Hack from Marcel Proust, Inside the Actors Studio, and the Vanity Fair Magazine back page. What is your current state of mind? Anxious. What is your idea of perfect happiness? Waking up in the morning and thinking that I can’t wait to get to work. What is your greatest fear about the future of law & legal writing online? That some will use the medium as an excuse to reduce the excellence we demand in legal writing, with respect to argumentation, analysis, and form.  Also, that some will mistakenly presume that our discipline is less rigorous as a result of its transmission through the internet. What is your favorite blog? This one.  Seriously, because I know what goes into it.  With respect to other legal blogs, I really don’t follow many of them because I find them fundamentally uninteresting, except perhaps Dorf on Law. (http://www.dorfonlaw.org/) Which historical or living lawyer/judge/legal academic/legal person do you most admire? Historical: Justice Thurgood Marshal; he was a trailblazer.  Living: Justice Sonia Sotomayor.  She’s also a trailblazer, and I met her once, and she’s very kind and always willing to give of her time. [read more]