NEW JERSEY DOGFIGHTING LAW IS NOT ALL BARK: RICO AMENDMENT GIVES TOOLS TO REDUCE CRIME IN THE REGION

Author: Rachel Lamb On April 18, 2014, twenty-one dogs were rescued from a dog fighting ring after officers raided a home in Paterson, New Jersey. Officers entered the residence to find the walls splashed with dog blood. They found various dog-fighting contraband including: steroids, needles, electronic collars, and bloodstained sticks that were used to pry open the… continue reading

LAW, CONTINUITY AND CHANGE: REVISITING THE REASONABLE PERSON WITHIN THE DEMOGRAPHIC, SOCIOCULTURAL AND POLITICAL REALITIES OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

Authors: Marvin L. Astrada & Scott B. Astrada This article examines the tensions that exist between legal constructs (as traditionally conceived and practiced) and present society. More specifically, this article delves into and revisits one of law’s most enduring legal fictions: The legal concept of the Reasonable Person. The central question this article addresses is:… continue reading

BLACK RETIREMENT SECURITY IN THE ERA OF DEFINED CONTRIBUTION PLANS: WHY AFRICAN AMERICANS NEED TO INVEST MORE IN STOCKS TO GENERATE THE SAVINGS THEY NEED FOR A COMFORTABLE RETIREMENT

Authors: Philip C. Aka and Chidera Oku Retirement security is financial readiness for a worker after a lifetime of work. There was a time in the United States’ labor history when responsibility for that readiness lay mainly with employers who competed among themselves to retain the loyalty of their workforces by offering generous benefit packages to… continue reading

DISPARATE IMPACT REGULATIONS AND SECTION 1983 IN THE COURTS

Who will protect minority residents suffering from disparate legal and environmental treatment? Minority citizens have historically been able to enforce their constitutional rights against discriminatory industrial placement through a private right of action under 42 U.S.C. §2000d-1. The Supreme Court decision in Alexander v. Sandoval, 532 U.S. 275 (2001), however, eliminated that private right of… continue reading

BIVALENT ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE AND THE CULTURE OF POVERTY

Can a single analytical theory reconcile environmental justices’ conflicting paradigms of redistribution, which focuses on socio-economic status, and recognition, which focuses on historical and present institutional racial discrimination? Robert Melchior Figueroa argues that a bivalent conception of environmental justice can unify these two the two conflicting paradigms. This new conception of environmental justice allows us… continue reading

IT IS TIME FOR A CHANGE

Minority and low-income communities are unable to protect their neighborhoods from disproportionate pollution and industrial sitting under the present environmental justice system based upon the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Environmental Protection Agency’s (“EPA”) civil rights regulations. Strict adherence to the EPA’s civil rights guidelines has resulted in a backlog of complaints that… continue reading

WHY A SENSIBLE EMPLOYMENT POLICY IS UNATTAINABLE IN AUSTRALIA

As World War II headed towards a close, Prime Minister John Curtin was concerned that returning soldiers, with memories of the 1930s Depression and the inadequacies of various “Susso” schemes, might decide to use their recently acquired lethal skills and start culling surplus politicians (Kewley 1973, Wilson, Thomson and McMahon 1996, Higgins 1982). H.C. “Nugget”… continue reading

BASIC INCOME AS A SOCIALIST PROJECT

Most discussions of basic income revolve around two clusters of issues: first, the normative implications of basic income for various conceptions of justice, and second, the pragmatic problems of the sustainability of basic income given a range of economic considerations including such things as effects on tax rates, incentives, labor markets, and so on. These… continue reading

BASIC INCOME AND JOB GUARANTEES: ALTERNATIVES OR COMPLEMENTS?

Any reader of papers online, or any auditor of earlier panels on this topic cannot have failed to notice a perplexing rancor surfacing from time to time – unusual for a group that broadly shares a commitment to equality, individual freedom and opportunity, and recognizing the importance of self-realization through work. In my effort to… continue reading

BASIC INCOME AND EMPIRICAL RESEARCH – A LOTTERY FINANCED SOCIAL EXPERIMENT: AN ALTERNATIVE PROPOSAL FOR A BASIC INCOME SOCIAL EXPERIMENT

What will happen after the introduction of a Basic Income? Will the labor supply diminish? What will be the effect on families, and dependency relationships within families? And what about volunteering, health and education? Will people, being freed from the time-constraining regimes of modern labor markets, eventually find the right balance between work, family and… continue reading