As the country’s most populous state and the world’s fifth largest economy, California has often been characterized as a “nation-state,” historically independent in its governing priorities. Yet even as the state’s political identity coalesces in favor of recognizing greater social welfare provisions for its inhabitants, formal enactment in policy often falls short. This hesitancy persists […]
Addressing the United States Climate Crisis and Climate Displacement: A Transition from the “Otherization” of Climate Change to a Focus on Domestic Solutions
In the United States, climate change discourse often focuses on international communities, island nations, and poor global citizens. While the focus on international communities is important, it places the impact of climate change in remote and distant locations. This Note argues that associating climate change with people outside the United States creates an “otherization” of climate change and evades the responsibility to look internally and address domestic climate impact. Addressing climate change is particularly important given that the effects of climate change in the United States often disproportionately harm poor, rural, and immigrant communities, as well as communities of color.
Virtual Reality Data and Its Privacy Regulatory Challenges: A Call to Move Beyond Text-Based Informed Consent
Oculus, a virtual reality company, recently announced that it will require all its users to have a personal Facebook account to access its full service. The announcement infuriated users around the world, who feared increased privacy risks from virtual reality, a computer-generated technology that creates a simulated world. The goal of virtual reality is to offer an immersive experience that appears as real as possible to its users. Providing such an experience necessitates collection, processing, and use of extensive user data, which begets corresponding privacy risks. But how extensive are the risks?
People over Profit: The Case for Abolishing the Prison Financial System
California Law Review · People Over Profit: The Case for Abolishing the Prison Financial System The term “mass incarceration” is used to describe a crisis that, to many, is both abstract and distant. But for Black, Latinx, Indigenous, low-income, and other communities whose lives are disproportionately affected by the criminal legal system, the reality of […]
Education Federalism in Action: English Learner Education Policy
Author’s Note: my interest in this topic is intensely personal. After college and before law school, I taught fourth grade at a public elementary school in Oakland, California. Over three-quarters of my students spoke a language other than English at home. Though the plurality spoke Spanish at home, my students collectively spoke over a dozen […]
An Environmental FOIA: Balancing Trade Secrecy with the Public’s Right to Know
This Note discusses the growing use of trade secrecy to withhold critical environmental information from the public. Over the last decade, trade secrecy has moved to the forefront of intellectual property law as an effective method for protecting valuable business information. Trade secrecy grants individuals and businesses the sole right to information they have obtained […]
The California Act to Save [Black] Lives? Race, Policing, and the Interest-Convergence Dilemma in the State of California
In January 2020, the California Act to Save Lives became law, raising the state’s standard for justifiable police homicide to cover only those police homicides that were “necessary in defense of human life.” Although the Act was introduced in the wake of protests against officer-involved shootings of Black and Latinx people, the Act itself does […]
The “Judicial Power” and Contempt of Court: A Historical Analysis of the Contempt Power as Understood by the Founders
This Note focuses on the power of the federal judiciary to hold litigants in contempt of court. In particular, this Note analyzes whether the contempt power of the federal judiciary stems from an inherent grant of power in the Constitution or whether it is derived purely from acts of Congress. The extent to which Congress […]
Internet.gov: Tech Companies as Government Agents and the Future of the Fight Against Child Sexual Abuse
The online proliferation of child sexual abuse material (CSAM), commonly referred to as child pornography, is a problem of massive scale. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), a private nonprofit specially authorized by Congress to serve as the nation’s clearinghouse for reports of CSAM imagery, works with law enforcement to locate perpetrators […]
Settling for Silence: How Police Exploit Protective Orders
The national outcry and months of Black Lives Matter protests against police brutality that followed the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor are a resounding demonstration of the public’s interest in combatting police violence, particularly excess force used on Black Americans. While media attention on police killings increased after Ferguson Officer Darren Wilson […]