Open Access Publisher and Free Library
HUMAN RIGHTS.jpeg

HUMAN RIGHTS

Human Rights-Migration-Trafficking-Slavery-History-Memoirs-Philosophy

Posts tagged legal system
Our Judicial Oligarchy

By Gilbert E. Roe

The judiciary alone, of all our institutions of government, has enjoyed for many years almost complete freedom from hostile criticism. Until very recently, this branch of our government stood above the legislative and executive departments in popular esteem. Unresponsive, and unresponsible to the public the courts dwelt in almost sacred isolation. Within the last two or three years the public has begun to turn a critical eye upon the work of the judges. The people in their struggle to destroy special privilege and to open the way for human rights through truly representative government, found barrier after barrier placed across the way of progress by the courts. Gradually the judiciary began to loom up as the one formidable obstacle which must be overcome before anything substantial could be accomplished to free the public from the exactions of oppressive monoplies and from the domination of property interests.

B.W. Huebsch, 1912, 253 pages

Legal Limbo as Subordination: Immigrants, Caste, and the Precarity of Liminal Status in the Trump Era

By Nina Rabin

This Article describes the ways in which prolonged states of legal limbo have grown more precarious, and thereby subordinating, under the Trump administration. Liminal forms of status have long been a feature of U.S. immigration law. But under the Trump administration, legal limbo grew both in prevalence and precarity. Due to Trump’s pursuit of an aggressive enforcement agenda, the legal system has become so overwhelmed that non-detained immigrants find themselves in protracted removal proceedings that routinely last for years. During this time, immigrants are consigned to a marginalized existence that harms their long-term ability to achieve social and economic mobility and integration. In this way, legal limbo has become increasingly tied to the creation and maintenance of a caste system in U.S. society. This Article offers a new conceptual framework, the “spectrum of precarity,” to analyze how and to what extent various types of liminal legal status in immigration law marginalize immigrants. Application of this spectrum to the states of limbo experienced by immigrants under the Obama and Trump administrations reveals very different approaches and outcomes. President Obama created liminal forms of legal status through specific policies and programs: administrative closure and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA). These efforts were explicitly designed to provide immigrants with a measure of social integration, along with protection from deportation. In contrast, immigrants in the Trump Era found themselves in limbo due to ballooning backlogs in the over-burdened legal immigration system. As a result, at the close of the Trump administration, immigrants with pending visas and asylum-seekers live in a state of prolonged uncertainty and fear that forces them into a marginalized existence in the shadows. This state of affairs poses a challenge for removal defense attorneys of non-detained immigrants, and calls into question the due process framework that often serves as a guiding structure for advocates in the immigration system. Due process, with its focus on discrete legal events and its failure to pay sufficient attention to the passage of time, risks causing attorneys to become accomplices in the creation of caste. Instead, in the current dysfunctional and disempowering legal immigration system, removal defense attorneys must seek to counterbalance the marginalizing effects of legal limbo on their clients’ daily lives and future trajectories through multi-faceted, interdisciplinary, and community-based models of lawyering.

35 Geo. Immigr. L.J. 567,569. 2021.

FRANK & FEARLESS

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

By NICHOLAS COWDERY, with RACHAEL JANE CHIN

"FRANK & FEARLESS" by Nicholas Cowdery and Rachael Jane Chin is a riveting exploration of the intersection between honesty and courage in the realms of justice and law. With unparalleled insight, the authors delve into the complexities of navigating truth in a world where fear often clouds the path to justice. Through a series of compelling anecdotes and thought-provoking analyses, Cowdery and Chin shed light on the significance of being unapologetically honest and fearlessly bold in pursuit of integrity and fairness. This book is a powerful testament to the enduring impact of embracing authenticity and bravery in confronting the challenges of our time.

NewSouth Publishing, 2019, 261 pages

From Wall Street to Newgate

By George Bidwell.

Bidwell’s Travels: Forging his own chains. “Freed a human wreck, a wonderful survival and a more wonderful rise in the world. To-day he has a national reputation as a writer, speaker and is considered an authority on all social problems. He was tried at the Old Bailey and sentenced for life. charged with the £1,000,000 forgery on the bank of England. This story shows that the events of his life surpass the imaginations of our famous novelists, its thrilling scenes, hair-breadth escapes and marvelous adventures are not a record of crime, but are proofs of that in the world of wrongdoing success is failure.

Bidwell publishing Hartford (1897) 295 pages.

Life of Judge Jeffreys

By H. B. Irving.

This is an exhaustive account of the infamous Judge , “1st Baron… (15 May 1645 – 18 April 1689), also known as "the Hanging Judge", was a Welsh judge. He became notable during the reign of King James II, rising to the position of Lord Chancellor (and serving as Lord High Steward in certain instances). His conduct as a judge was to enforce royal policy, resulting in an historical reputation for severity and bias.”

London William Heinemann (ca. 1898) 383 pages.