New Film Highlights Need for Sentencing, Self-Defense Reform

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Anna Bninski ‘23
Features Editor

Pictured: Film by Directors Natalie Pattillo and Daniel A. Nelson

[Content warning: discussion of abuse and interpersonal/sexual violence]

On April 6, the Domestic Violence Project at UVA Law hosted a screening of the new documentary And So I Stayed, which looks at the passage of New York State’s Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act (DVSJA) through the lives of three women who were, or are, incarcerated for the homicides of physically abusive partners. 

As folks may remember from 1L Crim, the self-defense doctrine typically requires that a party respond with reasonable force—and get out of a dangerous situation if possible. This structure tends to be weaponized against survivors of domestic abuse, as people ask them, “Why didn’t you just leave?” while disregarding the factors that keep victims in abusive relationships. Factors include financial control, isolation, emotional manipulation, difficulty bringing up or providing for children, and immigration status issues—not to mention the fact that leaving is the most dangerous time in an abusive relationship.

The DVSJA was introduced in the New York State Legislature in 2011 and finally signed into law in 2019. It allows judges to deviate from the regular sentencing scheme when they find that domestic abuse was a “significant contributing factor” to a crime committed by a survivor. Under the DVSJA, a judge can impose a shorter term of incarceration or, if appropriate, an alternative-to-incarceration program. The statute disqualifies third-time felony offenders and second-time violent felony offenders, as well as those convicted of first-degree murder and a few other serious crimes, such as terrorism. (The documentary doesn’t get into the statutory weeds, but these exclusions do a fair amount to undermine the opposition to the statute, depicted in the film, that characterizes the statute as a soft-on-crime, get-out-of-jail-free card).

The film traces the statute’s path to passage, and its high stakes for survivors, through personal stories. 

Kim Dadou Brown, a central figure in the documentary, served seventeen years for shooting a partner with a history of physical abuse who was attempting to smother her. After her release, Brown became an advocate for the DVSJA and spent years collecting signatures and lobbying the state legislature while also struggling to maintain employment with a felony record. 

Tanisha Davis was sentenced to fourteen years for the death of her child’s father, whom she stabbed once when he was attempting to choke her. The film includes her frantic 911 call, in which she begged the dispatcher to send help immediately and follows the dispatcher’s directions about how to stanch the blood flow. Under the DVSJA’s retrospective clause, which allows for re-evaluation of cases prior to 2019, Davis’s sentence was reduced to eight years—time served, essentially—and she was released to reunite with her son and the rest of her family, coming home in the midst of the COVID pandemic. 

Nikki Addimando was sentenced to nineteen years to life for shooting her longtime boyfriend and the father of her children. Addimando had documented years of horrifying physical and sexual abuse, including medical records, and had tried to leave her abuser before. Her case, coming after the 2019 passage of the DVSJA, seemed like exactly the type of situation that the bill was written for. However, the judge in her case determined that there was no reason to believe that her partner was the one committing the abuse—this after the judge excluded evidence that the abuser had filmed his rape of Addimando and uploaded it to a porn site—and that Addimando was not eligible for a reduced sentence under the DVSJA.[1]

Mercifully, a pro bono appeal overturned this misreading both of the evidence and of the statute.[2] But Addimando remains imprisoned, and New York remains one of few states to have a statute equivalent to the DVSJA. 

And So I Stayed is not a cheerful viewing experience. But, it’s a moving, educational look at the importance of legislation in real lives. Given the sad prevalence of domestic violence in our society, the film provides a beneficial perspective to anyone with the privilege to advocate for legislative change—and DVP plans to hold a second screening next October, during Domestic Violence Awareness Month. 

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amb6ag@virginia.edu

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[1] During her sentencing hearing, the judge told Addimando that it seemed like she didn’t want people to know that she “reluctantly consented” to sexual acts she was uncomfortable with…and maybe that was why she killed her partner and needed to spend two decades in prison? I guess it made sense to him. 

[2] Coverage from the Poughkeepsie Journal quotes the prosecutor in the case as stating that, “It appears the court simply believed everything the defendant said at trial about the abuse she claims came from her victim,” whom he described as “by all accounts [] a loving father, son and brother, an eternally patient domestic partner — and the one who was really the abused in this case.” Given the extensive documentation of Addimando’s physical injuries, the prosecutor’s statement is a sad commentary on the continued need to educate about, and move away from, the default of disbelieving victims of abuse.  (https://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/story/news/local/2021/07/14/murderer-nicole-addimando-sentence-reduced-domestic-violence-act/7967311002/)

The Title IX 50th Anniversary Symposium

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Holly Chaisson ‘23
Guest Writer

Pictured, from left to right: Dean Goluboff, Professor Kimberley Robinson, Deputy Assistant Secretary Goldberg, Professor Emily Suski

Friday’s symposium was the result of five months of planning by student organizations to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Title IX. Prior to the opening remarks, the law student organizers set the mood with a curated Spotify playlist, kicking things off with Ariana Grande’s “God is a Woman.” Dean Goluboff then welcomed attendees and spoke of her personal connections to Title IX—first, her breaking of gender barriers in becoming the first female dean of the Law School, and second, her participation on the boys’ wrestling team in junior high—feats Title IX paved the way for in her own life. The dean concluded her remarks by highlighting the theme of the symposium: though Title IX has done tremendous work in the fifty years since its enactment, its work is far from over. As many of the panelists would later explain, it is not the case that Title IX’s regulations have benefited equally those it aims to protect. 

Professor Kimberley Robinson took the podium next and, like Dean Goluboff, acknowledged that she herself was a product of Title IX and would not be here at the Law School without it. Tracing the progress of Title IX, Professor Robinson reminded attendees that in public school, prior to Title IX, women and girls were taught how to be in the home and presented with essentially three career options: teacher, nurse, or secretary (a position notably not open to Professor Robinson’s own mother due to segregation). Today, this is no longer the case, and while data from a Stanford study shows that Title IX has closed the gender achievement gap in many ways in K-12 schools, there are still gender differences that endure and disadvantage girls.[1] Data tracing teachers’ attitudes show that they believe girls need to work harder in math to achieve, an attitude that affects how they treat girls in the classroom despite the data also showing there is no gender achievement gap in math for students in 3rd–8th grade math. Parents’ attitudes have an impact as well, and data reveal they think of boys as more likely to be gifted than girls. And while Title IX has greatly expanded access to higher education for women, gender disparities still persist, especially in the STEM fields and in attainment of post-graduate degrees. Professor Robinson concluded her remarks by noting improvement is still much needed in the area of high school sports, pointing out that the number of girls participating in sports has still not caught up to the number of boys in high school sports as it existed in 1972. And women are still fairly underrepresented in college sports based on how much of the student body they make up.

The first panel of the day was on the topic of sexual violence and abuses of power in higher education. The panelists discussed factors contributing to gender-based violence on campuses and how Title IX combats this, highlighting the major roles that a lack of comprehensive sex education (including education with respect to the concept of consent) and the pervasive culture of victim-blaming play. A recurring theme during the panel was the disproportionate impacts Title IX had based on factors including race, gender, social status (e.g., member of a fraternity, athlete), and socio-economic status. Unsurprisingly, students who are members of marginalized communities often are most impacted, with complainants finding less success or even being discouraged from bringing their claims in the first place and marginalized perpetrators being found guilty and punished more harshly than their privileged counterparts. When asked how to reform the Title IX adjudicative process to address these disparities, the panelists focused on the role of transformative justice. Lexi Weyrick, a law clerk at Van Dermyden Makus Law Corporation, spoke about how transformative justice would remove the institutional actor and put power back in the hands of the complainants, allowing them to guide the process and address the root of the harm in an effort to prevent future harm from occurring. Her co-panelist Dena Robinson, a trial attorney with the DOJ’s Civil Rights and Employment Discrimination Division, agreed, highlighting the need to ask survivors in particular what they want from the process and the importance of making it so the perpetrator recognizes the harm they’ve caused to prevent future harm, something punishment alone can’t always accomplish.

The second panel focused on access to sports for transgender students, a particularly salient topic for the symposium given that this is a time when transgender and gender non-conforming students are being attacked across the country via state legislative efforts.[2] The panel featured Lindsay Hecox, a student at Boise State University who, alongside the ACLU, is currently challenging a law in Idaho (HB 500) which bans women and girls who are transgender and many who are intersex from participating in sports. The panelists discussed how access to sports for transgender students has indeed made progress in recent decades and that having the friendly Biden administration in office is facilitating more inclusive paths to sports for transgender students. Speaking about the recent bans on transgender students in sports, Ritchie Eppink, a lawyer for the ACLU of Idaho, said these cases are furthering the medicalization of who gets dignity and humanity and that lawyers and advocates fighting these cases need to include the people who don’t have “off-switches” (i.e., trans and gender non-conforming people) in the room when deciding tactics to educate and fight back. 

The panel also highlighted the particular issues that arise for K-12 transgender students under Title IX. According to Emily Suski, a professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law, K-12 students suffer more sexual harassment than students in higher education, yet courts do not treat their claims commensurate with the problem and give the latter more protection than the former. Further, the majority of sexual harassment in K-12 public schools is directed toward the LGBTQIA+ community. Lindsay herself testified that the thought of facing potential discrimination in high school led her to make the decision to present as her gender assigned at birth until she reached college. The panel touched briefly on the current debate surrounding the participation of transgender women in sports as it relates back to Title IX. Civil rights attorney Ezra Young pointed out that the higher purpose behind Title IX is achieving gender equality in sports and closing any gaps and that those who are hung up on whether or not trans women are winning more medals than cis women are missing the point if these funding and opportunity disparities still exist. And Professor Erin Buzuvis noted that the argument that the exclusion of trans girls is to protect them fails because it actually harms them by reinforcing the false trope that women are categorically athletically inferior—it is simply not the case that all boys are better than all girls at sports. Lindsay closed out these remarks by reflecting on her personal experience as a trans athlete and made the point that most politicians in these arguments forget that most athletes—in her experience—are not comparing themselves to others, but are focused on doing the best they can for themselves, a truth bolstered by her experience coaching high school track and watching the athletes be focused simply on enjoying the sport and the journey.

The third panel focused on the intersection between access to contraception and gender equality. Both panelists emphasized that while Title IX and reproductive rights don’t always work together, access to contraception is required for true gender equality. Maha Ibrahim emphasized that it is a legal fiction that everyone enters into their educations equal to begin with, because a lack of access to contraception and abortion services on campus is part of the embedded inequity that exists for those assigned female at birth. The bodily autonomy facilitated by access to contraception is also an issue not just for people who can get pregnant, but for anyone engaging in sexual activity (noting that access to contraception includes access to condoms, vasectomies, etc.). Given the myriad barriers posed to access to contraception on campuses, reform in this area is crucial to further the purpose of Title IX in higher education.

The final panel concerned the intersectional failings of Title IX throughout its fifty-year life span thus far. The panelists acknowledged Title IX’s failings with respect to race and suggested turning to critical race feminism as a starting point in moving toward racial justice in this arena. One step schools could take, according to panelists, would be to offer intersectional resources and processes that took into account the multifaceted-ness of student identities rather than ignoring the role identities play in these processes. In implementing Title IX, schools need to examine their processes and ask probing questions like, “Who is it that the school has in mind when they are thinking of a complainant/survivor?” to get at potential issues. For example, if a Title IX office is located in a school’s “Women’s Center,” it indicates a school may be expecting only complainants/survivors who are women, and may unconsciously alienate cisgender men and transgender and gender non-conforming individuals as a result. And because Title IX’s mandate against harassment based on sex includes sexual orientation and gender identity, schools are going to need to continually reevaluate their procedures as the enforcers of Title IX to ensure this mandate is carried out. 

Finally, Suzanne Goldberg’s keynote address took the audience on a tour through Title IX’s history and what she imagines as its future. She emphasized that Title IX has gained significant meaning over time as the case law and regulations interpreting it have grown, shaping Title IX throughout its lifetime. Social movements, especially those driven by students, can have a significant impact on the shape of Title IX in the future, and Goldberg urged the students in attendance to reflect on the ways they advocate in relation to Title IX and what they may go on to do in that respect in their careers. Goldberg also highlighted the progress made by the Biden administration (of which she is a part as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Strategic Operations and Outreach at the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights). Recent executive orders are examples of efforts to employ Title IX to address racial injustice in an effort to achieve broader equity and to combat discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, a critical step forward in a post-Bostock world.

While the symposium clearly highlighted the failings of Title IX over its half-century existence, it equally showcased its successes and carved out ways for its purpose to be advanced further, a task well-suited for the Law School’s graduates.

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hmc5wn@virginia.edu

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[1] Professor Robinson acknowledged that she was using a binary concept of gender because the data was in these terms and that, as later panels would discuss, gender is a fluid concept rather than a strict binary.

[2] It’s worth noting that the fact that there is no gender-neutral restroom anywhere near Caplin Auditorium resulted in this author (and potentially any of the other transgender and gender non-conforming attendees) missing chunks of this packed symposium in order to access one of the very few gender-neutral restrooms inconveniently located halfway across the law school.

Narcan Training

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Darius Adel ‘24
Staff Editor

I had the pleasure of attending the Narcan training event at the Law School last week. The staff from the Virginia Department of Health did a great job. Seeing so many other students spend their valuable time on a Friday afternoon sitting through Narcan instruction was pretty moving. I’ve lost more than a few friends to opioid addiction. The training session brought up a lot of those old memories.

The staff started by giving a short overview of Narcan and what it’s used for. Narcan temporarily treats those who are experiencing an opioid overdose. It literally blocks the opioid receptors in your brain and stops the drug from taking effect for about thirty minutes. During that time, you’ll want to monitor their vitals, call 911, lay them on their side, and apply a second dose if needed.

The best part of the training was that we all received two doses of Narcan. Curiosity had me wanting to try a dose, but, without opioids in my system, I doubt it would do anything besides make me sneeze. Sadly, heroin isn’t my thing.

Seeing so many of my classmates take the time to sit through and learn about this life-saving medicine made me feel positive about the future. Overdoses kill because users are either alone, or because no one around knows how to help. The more people who know how to deal with overdoses, the more lives that will be saved. It’s that simple.

The whole event was strangely emotional for me. Before it, I already had a working knowledge of Narcan. On a few occasions, I even got to apply those skills to help those experiencing a life-threatening overdose. Some have been friends and others total strangers. I had heard that helping a stranger through an overdose is easier because you can work unemotionally. For me, that was not true at all. At the end of the day, that’s still a person in front of you, and that person might die if they don’t get proper help.

Learning to properly apply Narcan is pretty easy. Honestly, even without the training, you could probably just read the directions on the packaging and apply it correctly. The Department of Health staff gave us a ton of detailed guidance. But, basically, you just stick the applicator deep up the person’s nose and spray that puppy in there. After you apply the spray, you want to back off quickly because that person just went from having the best/worst high of their life to a sudden withdrawal. They might flail around, or be pissed at you, or throw up. It’s really a mixed bag with these sorts of things. 

My sincere wish is that more people learn about the effects of opioid overdose and how to counteract it. Many of the people I applied Narcan to were unhoused, but they are far from the only ones who use opioids. Just because we are in the UVA Law bubble doesn’t mean that overdoses aren’t a problem. Many of our friends and classmates deal with drug addiction, and the stressful environment we’ve put ourselves in does nothing to help. 

If you are interested in learning more about Narcan or want to get some for yourself, you can go to the local Virginia Department of Health building at 1138 Rose Hill Dr., Charlottesville, VA 22903, and they will hook you up.Keep a dose at your desk at home or in your locker. Better yet, bring it to parties! Trust me, you’ll look way cooler than the kid with the half-empty box of White Claws.

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dsa7st@virginia.edu

April Fools Disclaimer

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Dana Lake ’23
Editor-in-Chief

Well, it’s that time of the year. April means the 3Ls are truly on their way out, and finals really are on their way in. Flowers are blooming, masks are off, and the temperature is oscillating wildly between the high twenties and low seventies. The gunner pit sees new 1L additions every day, while 3Ls wonder if they should begin doing class readings now or give it another week. Here in the springtime of our youth, the Law Weekly brings you the April Fools edition. April Fools is the edition our editors look forward to above all others (excluding the final edition of the semester, of course) and every article herein is a labor of love with absolutely no factual basis at all. 

An astute reader or administrator might wonder how this differs from a regular Law Weekly edition. While our editors usually channel their natural wit and sarcasm into investigative pieces and classic beat reporting—rooted, believe it or not, in real world events—April Fools is the time for cutting loose and pushing editorial bounds to their limit. No quotes in any article herein are collected from a real source; no eyewitnesses bore witness to any events described here with any eyes. Think of it as a funnier, cheaper Libel without the surprise professor cameos or aluminum cans rolling around on the floor. 

The April Fools edition has run for the last few years and will hopefully continue for many more. Collegiality is something we malign as much as we brag about it, but traditions like this don’t happen without a level of basic respect. The Law Weekly may poke fun at Student Affairs, FedSoccers, OPP, gunners, the business school, basically every dean, people going into public service, and anyone who doesn’t play softball—but we also hope to contribute to a more open and friendly Law School. Don’t @ us on Reddit, but please do send in a Letter to the Editor. As the highly personal and mean-spirited dissents in our COPAs demonstrate, we can take it as well as we give it.

Enjoy this brief break from class reading and outlining if you’re a gunner, or from Bar Review if you’re riding that curve. Either way, we only have a few weeks left. With special thanks to all our editors, who managed to submit their pieces only slightly later than usual while working Libel.

Read our April Fools articles here.

Looking to History for Truth and Reconciliation

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Anna Bninski ‘23
Features Editor

Pictured (left to right): Dr. Selena Cozart, UVA School of Architecture and Professor Bertrall Ross

On March 15, the UVA Law chapters of the American Constitution Society (ACS) and the National Black Law School Students Association (BLSA) hosted Dr. Selena Cozart in a conversation with Professor Bertrall Ross, the Law School’s Justice Thurgood Marshall Distinguished Professor of Law.

            The well-attended event focused on questions surrounding Truth & Reconciliation Commissions, a model of restoration and justice-seeking that is most well-known in relation to post-apartheid South Africa. The publicity for the event posed these questions: What role does confronting the truth of racial injustice have in helping build a more just world? Are we able to break down oppressive structures without first understanding how they were built and maintained?

The conversation brought those questions close to home; Dr. Cozart has for years been an active participant in the University and Community Action for Racial Equity (UCARE) program at UVA, which has been instrumental in UVA’s recognition and accountability in relation to its unpaid, underpaid, and enslaved laborers. Dr. Cozart’s wide-ranging knowledge of and engagement with the Charlottesville community includes work with Cultivate Charlottesville, an organization that engages youth in building a healthy and just food system, Piedmont Environmental Council, the City of Charlottesville, and the University of Virginia. 

            The movement toward a potential Truth & Reconciliation body in Charlottesville, Dr. Cozart explained, was “birthed out of community members going to other sites, places and spaces of civil rights battles” in the wake of the events of August 11 and 12, 2017. Some of these communities had gone through Truth & Reconciliation processes, and the pilgrims from Charlottesville were especially impressed by efforts in Greensboro, N.C., to get to the truth of the city’s history during the mid-1970s. So in 2018, some people found themselves asking, “Is there something we can do locally here in Charlottesville?” Dr. Cozart noted that while Charlottesville is far from having its own Truth & Reconciliation Commission, community members are looking to South Africa and to Greensboro for models of how the process has worked.

            Movement toward truth and reconciliation, Dr. Cozart emphasized, doesn’t come from an “external evaluation that says ‘You need a Truth & Reconciliation process,’” but instead comes from within the community. “Any community can be that community, but you need people who will get at the truth from a variety of perspectives.” Accordingly, the conversation in Charlottesville has open invitations to those who are not necessarily sympathetic to the goal of assessing the impact of the institution of slavery on American history, government, and society.

            Professor Ross made an appearance via Zoom. His remarks and ability to really get into dialogue with Dr. Cozart were sadly truncated by technical difficulties. (He was speaking from Germany, and was hampered both by Europe’s refusal to adopt Daylight Savings Time and by unreliable train Wi-Fi.) However, in the short time that he was able to speak to the gathering. Professor Ross also emphasized the truth aspect: “Truth & Reconciliation requires engagement with inequality, the sources of it, the conditions that have led to current racial inequities, which has been called critical race theory … but it’s about understanding our history.” Education should include this aspect of history from early stages up through law school, Professor Ross stated, but noted that how it is taught is important. “Teachers need training to do it effectively.”

            Dr. Cozart agreed about the need to educate educators. “Having expertise in the ability to teach is really important . . . I have seen conversations that lean toward creating a sense of guilt and shame, rather than creating understanding” of the history.

            In response to an audience question about tension between truth-focused justice and a “right to be forgotten,” Dr. Cozart observed that she wouldn’t like to have a record of everything she thought at age fifteen. More seriously, she spoke to the importance of having some record of the past, and non-idealized assessment of historical figures, without moving into the nuance-free realm of “cancel culture.” 

            She also spoke to the use of historical records in the Charlottesville community’s efforts to document the effects of slavery. “We do not have the people who initially experienced the harm, but we do have their descendants,” and records that indicate the impact act of slavery on a wider level. This includes looking at the history of redlining in Charlottesville and looking at the work performed by enslaved people. “If that had been wage labor, how much would they have been owed?”

            The conversation covered many more topics than this article cannot adequately convey, including the arc of history, local vs. national Truth & Reconciliation efforts, the necessity of facing “icky stuff,” the recent removal of Confederate statues in Charlottesville, and more. 

“We wanted people to learn more about their local community: Charlottesville has been our host for three years,” said Tommy Cerja ’24, Social Action Chair for BLSA. The event certainly checked that box.

“The goal of the event was to think critically about our privilege and the conversations that aren’t happening,” added outgoing ACS president Max Larson ’23 (who had dealt heroically with the worst Zoom could throw at her). “We hope to hear more from Professor Ross next time. His work really is profound regarding race, democracy, and marginalized communities.” 

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amb6ag@virginia.edu

UVA Hosts 2022 FedSoc National Symposium

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Jacob Smith ‘23
Professor Liason Editor

The weekend before spring break saw large numbers of formally-dressed students roaming the halls of the Law School—an unprecedented event for current students. These sharply dressed individuals were attendees at the 2022 Federalist Society National Student Symposium, titled “The Federalists vs. The Anti-Federalists: Revisiting the Founding Debates.” For those students unable to attend, this article offers a brief summary of some of the symposium’s events. Recordings are available at the Federalist Society’s website.

Pictured: Governor Glen Youngkin. Photo by Julia Davis.

Keynote address

Governor Glenn Youngkin’s keynote address opened the symposium on Friday night. Governor Youngkin was introduced by Dean Risa Goluboff to a standing ovation from a packed Purcell Auditorium. The keynote addressed three constitutional issues. Governor Youngkin emphasized the importance of free expression, telling the crowd that intolerance, the “growing tendency to loathe rather than listen,” was a greater threat to American democracy than the “tyrant” Russian President Vladimir Putin. He also emphasized the importance of the rule of law and praised the Federalist Society for helping to support and develop good judges.
            But the bulk of the keynote, like much of the symposium, had to do with federalism. Governor Youngkin contrasted the gridlock in Congress with the productivity of the Virginia General Assembly. While Congress only passed 89 bills in a recent year-long session, the General Assembly might send its governor 3,500 to 4,000 bills in a four-year term, each bill addressing a single subject. As further proof that state legislatures get things done, Governor Youngkin pointed to a recent bipartisan bill that gave Virginia parents the power to decide whether their children would wear masks in school. Governor Youngkin invited law students to find work at their state capitals, where the government is “working hard,” not “barely working.”

Populism and the Anti-Federalists

In a Saturday panel discussing populism and the Anti-Federalists, UVA Professor G.E. White offered perhaps the boldest response to the topic, arguing that the colonial era—as well as the current day—was just too different from the late-nineteenth-century period when “populism” was coined for the label to be used intelligently. Old Dominion Professor Michelle Kundmueller thought the Anti-Federalists would have been concerned about populism, fearing that it would erode individual rights and pave the way for tyranny, while Yale Professor Akhil Reed Amar saw their key contribution to popular control of government as the jury, which has lost influence over time.

Modern federalism

Later on Saturday, a judge-heavy panel took up the topic of federalism in the twenty-first century. Sixth Circuit Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton emphasized the importance of state courts, given the sheer number of cases handled in them, and described state constitutions as making possible a bottom-up way of developing constitutional law. California Supreme Court Justice Goodwin H. Liu brought up the “federalism discount,” the watering-down effect that occurs when a legal reform is enacted at the federal level, while UVA Professor Julia Mahoney identified takings, eminent domain, and economic liberties as areas where the interplay between state and federal government was especially interesting and increasingly important.

Plenary federal power

In the symposium’s only debate, Georgetown Professor John Mikhail faced off against Stanford Professor Michael McConnell. Professor Mikhail took the position that the Constitution vested the federal government with broad implied powers. He pointed to the fears of the Anti-Federalists and the practices of the early federal government as positive support for broad implied powers, and explained the Federalists’ silence regarding them as calculated to secure support for the proposed Constitution. 

Professor McConnell attached more weight to the Federalists’ stance in arguing that the Constitution did not originally establish a powerful, consolidated federal government. According to him, the modern federal leviathan was more a function of intervening historical and constitutional changes, such as the Civil War, which transformed how Americans viewed the United States; the Fourteenth Amendment, which nationalized individual rights; the Sixteenth Amendment, which gave the federal government access to the nation’s wealth;  the Seventeenth Amendment, which removed a state check on the federal government; the Eighteenth Amendment, which led to the creation of a national police force; and the modern integrated economy, which vastly expanded the reach of interstate commerce.

Space does not allow for full treatment of the symposium’s two other panels, which addressed Federalist and Anti-Federalist perspectives on executive power and originalism. For those who attended, the symposium offered the chance to hear from nationally recognized legal scholars as well as an opportunity to rub shoulders with students from other law schools. But the symposium had independent significance in the fight against COVID: as the first in-person convening of the National Student Symposium since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic—and what I would guess was the largest public-facing event at the law school since then as well—it represented a milestone in the Law School’s slow journey toward post-pandemic normalcy. 

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js3hp@virginia.edu

Op Ed: Democracy Won - Together Change is Possible

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Christopher Benos ’22
Guest Writer

When institutions fail, citizens must act. University of Virginia students answered a call to action by voting – for the first time ever – to reform the Single Sanction of expulsion. This year’s election required us all to work together. This reform is a victory for students, for restorative justice, and for democracy everywhere.

For nearly 180 years, University of Virginia students found guilty of an Honor offense were expelled. Never again. Students made their voices heard, overwhelmingly voting to reduce the Single Sanction from expulsion to a two-semester leave of absence. This vote is historic for so many reasons. Most obviously, this vote ushers in the first change to the Single Sanction in University history. It confirms that institutions can change for the better to address concerns about bias, racism, unaccountability, and inequity. It confirms that every person is worthy of redemption and a second chance. And it confirms that further change is possible if we all work together towards common goals.

The referendum campaign itself was also historic. It brought together, for the first time, a near supermajority of an Honor Committee with a diverse coalition of student leaders, a unified Student Council, and countless community members. It overcame significant obstacles. And it required utilizing every democratic tool available, from a grassroots signature campaign to a specialized working group, to achieve success.

Above all, this reform proves that stories matter. Expulsion inflicts suffering on students and families. It isolates. It ruins financial stability. It reduces students to statistics. And it strips students of their dignity, stigmatizing accused and guilty students as people without the potential to contribute to the University or to civic life. Institutions must acknowledge and address the very real, very human costs of the policies they defend. When those costs are too great, those institutions must change.

This campaign teaches us important lessons. First, change is a collective enterprise. Only together, by leveraging diverse perspectives, compromising on policy decisions, organizing, and voting can real change ever succeed. Second, reform requires action. Doing nothing is a privilege of those with means, power and status. Third, democracy should not be taken for granted. Standing up for meaningful change is essential to preserving the health of our institutions — and by extension, our republic.

Change also carries responsibility – our work does not end here. To all students: demand the best from your elected leaders, on and beyond Grounds. You deserve representatives who listen, who build consensus, who uplift, and who lead with dignity.

Democracy is in danger, both at home and abroad. This campaign is proof that the future – in our hands – is bright. Democracy takes work, but it can – and must – survive. We all are stewards of the future before us. We must listen to and lift up others. We must respect a diversity of ideas, backgrounds, and viewpoints. We must fight for the causes and communities we care about. The fights ahead of us require that we all work together. Only then can we achieve a fairer, more equitable, more peaceful world.

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Christopher Benos is a third-year law student. He authored the 2022 Honor Sanctioning Referendum and led the campaign which secured its historic ratification.
christopherbenos@virginia.edu

Op Ed: When Arguing for Free Speech is Really Arguing Against It

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Trevor Floyd ’23
Guest Writer

On Monday, March 7th, the New York Times published an op-ed from UVA fourth year Emma Camp[1] entitled “I Came to College Eager to Debate. I Found Self-Censorship Instead.”[2] Camp’s thesis is a familiar one, essentially that free speech is stifled in favor of groupthink at UVA and college campuses across the country. She supports her thesis with a few anecdotes, choice quotes from sympathetic professors, and misleading statistics.

Camp’s piece comes on the heels of the Federalist Society’s National Student Symposium held at UVA Law with a keynote address delivered by Gov. Glenn Youngkin. That speech similarly bemoaned the supposed stifling of free speech on campus, including the suggestion that “cancel culture” happening on campuses and elsewhere is the greatest threat to democracy.[3] The irony was not lost on me that this claim was made at a summit of conservative law students which was given free reign of the school for two days, was opened with remarks from the Dean, and whose organizers and attendees openly and without consequence ignored the university’s indoor mask policy[4] otherwise used as a cudgel against regular students for nearly two full school years.

Camp cites a statistic that, on its face, seems stunning – 80% of students admit to “self-censorship.” Peel back just a single layer, however, and that statistic quickly falls apart. The study she cites asked students if they censor their viewpoints “at least some of the time” and only 21% report censoring themselves “often.”[5] It does not take much more interrogation to realize the flaw. Some level of moderate self-censorship is a natural and frequently necessary part of interacting with others. I don’t tell dirty jokes in class. I hold back half-baked thoughts in academic environments so that I am not taking up space which might otherwise be filled with actual learning. Beyond that, when self-censorship at UVA is done for purposes of conformity, I would wager that it is predominantly done by students with marginalized identities. Being gay at UVA means engaging in some level of self-censorship in virtually every space I enter, out of both self-protection and an instinct to conform with the dominant culture. I have also, at times, spoken up in ways that make some within that culture uncomfortable and have felt some amount of ostracization for it. None of this means that my free speech rights are being violated by my peers. Quite the opposite.

The truth is that when people like Camp and Youngkin argue for more free speech on college campuses by citing to the reactions and consequences of unpopular statements, they are actually arguing against free speech. Camp at one point cites an experience where she expressed a point of view that made her classmates upset, obtusely writing that she “can tell” when a discussion “goes poorly” for her. Camp also references a Republican peer who chooses not to talk about his politics openly because he does not want his classmates to react poorly. According to Camp’s essay, these and other similar stories amount to an assault on free speech and debate. But what Camp seems to want is speech at any time without consequence. Perhaps students in class don’t engage in “debate” in the way Camp desires because they recognize they are there to learn, not to be the loudest person in the room. Perhaps students react poorly to a peer trumpeting conservative politics because they find those politics harmful. Nobody has threatened to imprison or harm Camp for exercising her speech, but she seems to believe that a reciprocation of that exercise is essentially the same thing.

One final point. The header image of the piece is Camp standing in front of the rotunda, with a statue of Thomas Jefferson in the background. Yes, that statue – the one that white supremacists encircled while holding tiki torches in August 2017. Camp rather audaciously calls herself “brave” for the act of, among other things, putting a sign on her dorm room door that was larger than university guidelines permitted in protest of the policy. The people at UVA who are actually brave are the ones who put standing up for what is right over their own comfort. Heather Heyer was brave. Against this backdrop, and the backdrop of UVA’s long and complicated history, we should acknowledge what it looks like when speech actually costs something real.

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tsf7n@virginia.edu

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[1] This op-ed addresses Camp’s claims directly and as her own since she is the author of this NYT essay. I do want to note that her essay very quickly became a wide topic of conversation on Twitter, primarily criticism of Camp and the piece. Some have expressed discomfort with Camp being the target of Twitter’s ire since she is just a college student who, prior to this essay, had very little online presence or following. I do not know her, but I would argue that she is still an adult who invested serious time and energy into producing a piece for one of the world’s biggest news platforms and therefore she ought to be (and probably is) prepared for the criticism coming her way. Nevertheless, I will also take a second to say shame on the New York Times for laundering this overcooked take through a college student who doesn’t have the resources (or piles of cash) of your average Thomas Friedman to weather the storm, so to speak.

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/07/opinion/campus-speech-cancel-culture.html?smid=tw-share

[3] https://www.nbc29.com/2022/03/05/virginia-gov-youngkin-gives-speech-uva-law-critizing-washington-politics-colleges/

[4] I mean we all saw this, right? At least all of us who showed up to our Friday classes because we were on call did.

[5] https://reports.collegepulse.com/college-free-speech-rankings-2021

SBA Candidates 2022

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Heeth Varnedoe ‘23

Heeth Varnedoe ’23
Presidential Candidate

My name is Heeth Varnedoe, and I am running to be your SBA President.
As SBA president, I will embody the values of diligence, humility, and servant leadership to ensure that all student experiences are enhanced. UVA Law is comprised of a diverse array of backgrounds and perspectives, and I will fight to be a unifying force within our community. I promise to be a bridge builder that brings people together and lifts people up. My platform is based on three bedrock principles: Your Home, Your Voice, Your Year.

Your Home:
I want every student to walk through the doors of the law school and feel a profound sense of belonging. My first semester, I struggled with anxiety and feelings of inadequacy. Now, I look forward to going to school every day, because I was blessed with a community of friends. My hope is to coordinate University resources as well as social opportunities to ensure that every student can find their home at UVA.

Your Voice:
Throughout my undergraduate career, I served in student government and am adept at dealingwith administrators, particularly when their perspective and that of the students are not aligned. I want to amplify student voices to the administration and provide more forums for students to be heard. I plan to host town hall meetings with university leaders that allow for students to voice their concerns directly to decision makers about any issue.

Your Year:
In my experience, the best way to facilitate belonging is to provide people with mediums to cultivate relationships. I will invest SBA resources in a way that promotes those mediums. I will approach the role of president as a servant leader whose sole goal is to facilitate each of you having the year you want to have next year.

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Juhi Desai ‘23

Juhi Desai '23
Presidential Candidate

Hi! My name is Juhi Desai and I am running on a ticket for SBA President with Shivani Arimilli for SBA Vice President. Our platform is based on five central pillars; we’d like to increase communication between the SBA and the student body, heighten community engagement by keeping old traditions and building new ones, increase inclusivity by working closely with affinity groups (including, but not limited to, racial and ethnic minorities, queer students, students with disabilities, religious minorities & first generation students), push the school to be more transparent about how decisions are made and increase access to mental health resources as well as destigmatize conversations surrounding mental health.  

We’d really like for the SBA to be responsive. While we have several concrete ideas that we’d like to implement next year, we also want to remain flexible and make sure there are opportunities for students to have their voices heard. A big part of our platform is making sure that we are plugged into the student body and are actively listening to student input. We’d also like to use the power of SBA to bring students from different backgrounds together. We have found that, for the most part, most students want the same things. We think that we will be much more successful in our advocacy to administration if we are able to collectivize the student body.  

We are so grateful you are considering voting for us! If you are interested in seeing more detailed specifics about our platform, please visit our website at juhishivani2022.com. We welcome any thoughts, questions or concerns! Thank you so much for your time and consideration and we hope you vote for Juhi and Shivani for SBA President and VP on March 2-4.  

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Paige Kennett ‘23

Paige Kennett '23
Vice Presidential Candidate

As your Vice President, I promise to represent you as individuals and as a collective. I see law school as a communal space and experience; you all deserve to be heard and I will amplify your voices. This campaign is about each of you, separately and together.

I have experience in student government, serving as the co-chair of two SBA committees—Barrister’s Ball and Health & Wellness. Furthermore, I am a passionate and exuberant person who will work tirelessly for each and every student. My platform is based on three bedrock principles: Your Home, Your Voice, Your Year.

Your Home:

As Vice President, I hope to remove barriers that prevent students from studying and socializing. First, I want to make sure that mental health issues at this school are properly addressed. Second, I want to create an inclusive space for each individual to feel welcome and comfortable. UVA Law must be a place and a community where we all feel at home.

Your Voice:

We are a great community because of our diverse backgrounds and opinions; each voice deserves to be heard and considered. Many students have been frustrated with policies implemented by the administration without student input. I will push for more transparency with the administration and more direct communication between the students and the administration. As Vice President, I will make your voices heard.

Your Year:

While we are all here to get an education, we are also here to have fun. I plan to make the most of this upcoming year by ensuring that we have a wide variety of social opportunities that appeal to everyone. I hope to create a space in which every student is able to engage in UVA’s famed social scene. This year is for all of us.

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Shivani Arimilli ‘23

Shivani Arimilli '23
Vice Presidential Candidate

My name is Shivani, and I am running for SBA Vice President! I am proud to be running on a ticket with Juhi, and I believe we can make meaningful, positive changes within the Law School community. As Juhi mentioned, we are running on five main pillars, but I wanted to focus on the two that are central to my potential role as VP. 

First, community building. One of the VP’s primary roles is to serve as the chief programming coordinator. I hope to continue existing successful events while creating new events to make up for lost time, better incorporate feedback, and increase inclusivity. This includes:

-Class-wide bonding activities. (e.g., field day, camping trip, wine tour, ski weekend)

-Reimagined SBA socials (e.g., cooking classes, outdoor events like hiking and camping, paint and sips) to complement traditional events.

-Culturally inclusive events.

-New graduation events/traditions, possibly including a class-wide yearbook.

Apart from event programming, we hope to strengthen the community by investing in Spies Garden. This would look like installing tents, lights, and maybe even space heaters, making Spikeball nets and picnic blankets accessible to borrow, and perhaps even starting a community garden. 

Second, improving communications. Working with the SBA Secretary, I hope to create a one-stop-shop platform for all SBA programming to streamline communications from SBA to students. That platform would also include various feedback forms (generalized, event-specific, monthly temperature checks) to increase communication from students back to SBA. We hope to put on events that better align with the preferences of the community, so feedback is an integral part of our platform. That said, please tell us about your thoughts on our platform, either using our website (juhishivani2022.com) feedback form, DMing our campaign Instagram (@juhishivani2022), or reaching out directly!

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Phoebe Sam ‘24

Phoebe Sam '24
Candidate for UJC

The University Judiciary Committee (UJC) is comprised of twenty-seven elected representatives (two from the law school), from each undergraduate and graduate school of the University. The UJC investigates and adjudicates alleged violations of the University’s Standards of Conduct. They hold trials and are empowered to impose sanctions.

I want to serve on this committee to contribute to the stated purpose of promoting a community of respect, safety, and freedom. If elected, my primary goal will be to bring to the committee a fair, skilled and objective assessment of the matters that we hear. Before law school, I worked for five years in labor relations. My position required me to interpret labor agreements, adjudicate grievances filed against the company, and investigate employee complaints. Additionally, I was responsible for deciding disciplinary actions, ranging from a warning to termination. Over time, this developed my ability to analyze complex cases and weigh several factors in reaching a fair and sound decision. The UJC does similar work - assessing the facts of a case to impose guilt, weighing multiple factors in deciding appropriate sanctions and ensuring fair committee policy and procedure. If elected, I would bring many of these skills to bear in my work on the UJC.

Beyond that, I hope my diverse professional and personal experiences will contribute to making the committee's work as thorough and well-informed as possible. Self-governance is strengthened when all aspects of student government, including the composition of the UJC, reflect the diversity of the student body. 

I would be honored to serve as one of your representatives on the UJC.

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Casey Schmidt ‘24

Casey Schmidt '24
Candidate for UJC

My name is Casey Schmidt and I’m running for reelection as University Judiciary Committee Representative. On the UJC, I currently serve as the Vice Chair for Graduate Students, where I preside over misconduct trials and act as a liaison to all graduate schools at the University.

Additionally, I previously served on the UJC for all four years that I was an undergraduate at UVA. My experience has given me an understanding of the mission and inner workings of the organization. It also has provided me with an appreciation for how law students can provide a unique perspective on this student-run judicial system.

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Robert McLeod '23
Candidate for Honor Committee

Our shared commitment to Honor is a defining feature of this university. If elected to the Honor Committee, I will work to see that this essential character remains, while also exploring reforms that will allow the Committee to achieve lasting stability. In that spirit, I will attempt to introduce new means to preliminarily dismiss charges which lack sufficient significance, and seek ways to make the Contributory Health Impairment process more efficient. I will also strive to make the Committee more transparent, and seek to closely study sources of recurring violations to provide more targeted community engagement. 

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Daniel Elliot ‘24

Daniel Elliot '24
Candidate for Honor Committee

As a member of the Honor Committee's support officer pool and as a counsel/investigator, I have undergone months of training with the Honor System here at UVA and desire to make sure the Law School's voices are heard as Honor grows to meet the challenges of our current educational, social, and communal landscape. I hope to continue the tradition of Law School representatives to the Honor Committee, challenging systems of inequality and areas of inefficiency by proposing new structures for the Honor Committee hearing process. I’d be honored to have your vote!

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Cassidy Cox ‘23

Cassidy Cox '23
Candidate for 3L Senator

I’m running for 3L Senator because I believe the position is best accomplished by doing what I already hope my 3L year will consist of: spending time with you all, getting to know you, and listening to you. I have enjoyed serving on SBA for the past two years, amplifying your ideas. Next year, I plan to bring attention to the new SBA VP position, garner student input through tabling in Spies, and organize 3L events. I hope to receive your vote for 3L Senator. Regardless, I’m excited to make the most of our final year as a class together.

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Mita Ramani ‘23

Mita Ramani '23
Candidate for 3L Senator

Hi UVA Law! My name is Mita Ramani, and I am running for 3L Senator. Over the past 2 years, I have had the honor of serving as your 2L Senator and 1L Senator! Our class has finally gotten the chance to experience some of the signature UVA Law events. As a 3L Senator, I hope to plan more events that give us a chance to have more fun (3L Bonfire anyone?!). Additionally, I hope to work closely with the new Vice President of DEI on SBA to push forward new initiatives to make UVA Law a more inclusive community.

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Holly Bard ‘23

Holly Bard ‘23
Candidate for 3L Senator

I'm looking forward to serving as Senator again to make 3L the best year we've had yet. In the meantime, please feel free to reach out to me with any questions, concerns, or suggestions.

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Grace Allaman ‘24

Grace Allaman '24
Candidate for 2L Senator

If elected as a 2L Senator, I will be a reliable voice for positive change. I want UVA Law to live up to its reputation for community by pursuing active inclusion in everything we do. To build a strong community, we have to work together. I hope to be an engaged representative who continually listens and learns from everyone in our class. I currently serve on SBA’s Health and Wellness Committee and look forward to helping continue its mission of keeping students happy, healthy, and safe as we navigate the year ahead. Thank you for your vote!

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Rowan Adams ‘24

Rowan Adams ‘24
Candidate for Treasurer and 2L Senator

SBA Secretary Statement: 

Hello, my name is Rowan Adams and I am running for SBA Secretary. I am qualified for this position due to my experience with student government in undergrad as Vice President and in law school as FYC President. 

As FYC President, I have helped SBA organize events off campus, such as Foxfield, and planned events on campus, such as FYC’s Halloween Carnival. I am also a 1L Senator for SBA and a member of the Diversity Advisory Council. In these roles, I have come to learn more about life at UVA Law, particularly the challenges students face. I hope to become Secretary in order to work with Exec to address these challenges head on. I also want to make SBA’s communication to the school more clear and concise. I will do this by revamping SBA’s email format and supporting the VP of DEI's efforts to create  a campus-wide calendar that will include every event so that students do not miss out on programming. 

In addition to my position’s responsibilities, I will pursue a few action items. First, I want to organize an effort next September that ensures that every student, particularly the new 1Ls, has a professional headshot photograph. Second, I will bring back a Student Affairs program where students can sign up to go on a free “blind (friend) coffee date” to get to know another student at UVA Law. Third, in my weekly SBA emails, I will include a “UVA CompLAWments” section where every week there will be anonymous compliments about UVA students that another student has submitted. Fourth, create a communal fund at the ScoCo cafe where students can donate money so that others can get a free coffee or meal. 

Given my past experience, passion, and plans for student government, I sincerely hope that you will vote for me for SBA Secretary! 

 2L Senator Statement: 

I am running for 2L Senator, as well as SBA Secretary. In SBA, I will help plan events for our class and continue serving on the Diversity Advisory Council. Additionally, I will ensure that diverse students' voices are heard in SBA. As a non-binary student, I bring a unique voice to the table. I hope to use my voice and meet with other students on campus to ensure their voices are heard too. I hope to remain a part of SBA next year to continue my passion for student government and make this school as fun and inclusive as possible

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Grace Stevens ‘24

Grace Stevens ‘24
Candidate for Treasurer and 2L Senator

Secretary Statement:

As SBA Secretary, my goal is to use existing channels like the Law Street Journal to bring a heightened sense of transparency to SBA and develop new channels to reach and recognize more community members.

While the Law Street Journal conveys important information about upcoming events and the previous meeting’s minutes, I can create a more effective email format that highlights, rather than hides, information about SBA and its initiatives so everyone feels more connected to our governing body. Additionally, I would like to build an SBA presence on social media platforms to provide another outlet to uplift the events, activities, and people of our community. SBA’s primary touchpoint with the student body does not need to be email — SBA can, and should, to a better job of facing the UVA Law Community by connect with the student body through other mediums.

While at Virginia Tech, I fulfilled roles that lend me the skills required to accomplish my goals. I served as a voice for my classmates as the Vice President of the Class of 2021, I experimented with weekly email formats to find the best way to convey information as an executive board member of an organization, and I built social media accounts as a Homecoming Court candidate. I’ve continued to seek out leadership opportunities here at UVA Law. As the FYC Vice President, I organize and publicize weekly Bar Reviews. I also serve as a 1L Senator, which has allowed me to understand where SBA can improve and brainstorm ways each position can mold the organization to the needs of the UVA Law community. While some may see the Secretary role as nothing more than weekly emails, I see opportunities to bring greater transparency to SBA and highlight the organizations and individuals that make our experience unique. 

2L Senator Statement: 

As 2Ls, we will define what our community becomes without the institutional knowledge of the current 3Ls. My strengths lie in community building and event organization. I believe I can use my strengths, coupled with the input of members of our class, to accomplish my goal of refreshing community by adapting the framework of the events SBA historically held to the changing priorities of the student body. To help with these efforts, I would also like to use this position to allow 2Ls to voice their feedback, questions, and concerns through rotating office hours hosted by all 2L Senators.

Welcome New EIC

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Dana Lake ’23
Editor-in-Chief

Much like becoming the bearer of a cursed amulet, one does not choose to become Editor in Chief of the Law Weekly. It’s something that happens to you. One moment you’re an enthusiastic 1L, eating pizza and writing funny articles with your pals—the next moment, you’re somehow in charge of a Law School tradition that will be turning 75 under your tenure. There’s a bank account you suddenly have the credentials to, pizza you have to order, and there are emails. There is just an unbelievable amount of emails.

It’s not all bad, as long as you’re into the idea of unlimited power. The EIC is also Chief Justice of the most powerful court in the land: the Court of Petty Appeals. There will be no coalition-building during my term—you’re looking at a pure, unadulterated dictatorship, where 1Ls have no rights and the administration is always wrong.

I’m fortunate to be inheriting the gavel from known pushover Phil Tonseth ’22, who made the mistake of telling me I can always ask him for help even after graduation. This letter serves as written notice that I will be taking you up on that offer—keep your phone on.

I’m even more fortunate to be able to continue working with the crackerjack team of writers and reviewers that make the Law Weekly possible. Without staff editors going to events with free food, eavesdropping on hot goss, and oversharing personal anecdotes, we’d have no idea what went on around here. Who would sue Student Affairs over even the most minor of inconveniences? Who would record even the most obscure professor quotes? I ask you, dear reader, who would keep track of ANG? There is no group of folks I would rather have strenuously avoid eye contact with me during article assignments.

Joining me on the Editorial Board are Managing Editor Nikolai Morse ’24, Executive Editors Jon Peterson ’23 and Monica Sandu ’24, Production Editor Sai Kulkarni ’23, and Features Editor Anna Bninski ’23. Some have said this is the single greatest collection of talent ever assembled by a law school newspaper, but I’ll just say I’m looking forward to working with some good friends for another year.

That’s all the emotional stuff out of the way. Don’t expect that too often—I’ve worked in publishing long enough to know you’ve got to keep your soft spots covered. Before law school I was the managing editor of a publishing department that specialized in nonfiction books, and I made the mistake of disclosing my InDesign experience to my PA and former EIC Christina “Tuna” Luk ’21. My fate was sealed from there. On an unrelated note, if any of you know of an incoming 1L that has even heard of InDesign before, send me their number ASAP so I can poach them during Admitted Student Weekend. A reward may be arranged.

My goals for this next year are pretty simple. I want to continue the collegial atmosphere and offbeat articles Phil encouraged. I want to keep the Law Weekly from going bankrupt so I’ll have something to pass on when I graduate. I want to encourage more women to join the paper and share their perspectives. I want Dominos to continue catering our meetings (Domino’s: The Pizza Delivery Experts). More than anything, I want to contribute to the organization that has made law school so fun for me.

The Law Weekly is always recruiting. If you’re looking for a creative outlet, if you are passionate about a topic and want to share it, or if you’re just looking for an easy-going group to kill time with once a week, come check us out. We’re in Slaughter 274 on Mondays at 5:30.

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dl9uh@virginia.edu

Op Ed: Vote Yes for a Fairer Honor System

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Christopher Benos '22
Guest Writer

Everyone deserves a second chance—this week, vote “Yes” for a fairer Honor System.

UVA’s Honor Code has remained largely unchanged for most of the University’s history. It is time for a change. On your ballot, beginning today, you will see a referendum that proposes to reduce the honor sanction from expulsion to a two-semester leave of absence. As the reform’s sponsor and campaign chair, I write to advocate for its merits and seek your support.

Expulsion comes at too great a cost[1] to students. It affects their health. It can be financially ruinous. And it strips students of their dignity, their community, and the chance at redemption. An expelled student is a friend, a neighbor, a colleague. Every person is worthy of a second chance.

Expulsion is plagued by broad concerns about equity and justice. There are legitimate, longstanding concerns about whether our Honor System is tainted by racism and other forms of bias. Though more work is desperately needed to address disparities, we can no longer support a sanction which allows the most severe outcome to fall disproportionately on some communities more than others.

Expulsion also fails the practical needs of our community by disincentivizing reporting and affecting juries. Nearly five percent of students—or roughly 1,250 students—admitted[2] in one survey to committing an honor offense. But Honor only receives[3] 40 to 60 cases a year, in part because expulsion strongly disincentivizes[4] reporting. In a recent report, nearly half[5] of students surveyed indicated that expulsion deterred them from reporting. Some suggest that one in five[6] faculty feels the same way. Underreporting means that the reality of expulsion, rather than holding students accountable, is a statistical game of chance rather than anything resembling an effective policy. Similarly, some jurors are hesitant to impose expulsion because of its severity. Juries may thus “nullify” verdicts, meaning that they acquit based on their views of expulsion rather than on the evidence, despite believing in a student’s guilt. Though data is not reliably available on the reasoning of Honor juries, nullification is a well-studied phenomenon. Some scholars note that jury nullification plays a particularly substantial role where punishment is especially severe, such as in capital punishment cases.[7] Lowering the penalty will eliminate many of the disincentives to reporting and allow juries to more fairly weigh evidence, two critical steps towards transforming the system from a hollow branding tool to a functional institution.

Doing nothing is not the answer—inaction is a privilege of those with means, power and status. Institutionalist critics claim[8] that they support alternative solutions because repealing expulsion destroys Honor by lowering our standards of conduct. Yet they fail to assemble a truly viable alternative. This reform is not a perfect proposal. No reform is. This reform does not solve every single serious challenge that Honor faces. No reform can. But doing nothing hurts students. Expulsion benefits no one.[9] Future students can and should pursue further reforms in the years to come. This reform must be a realistic first step.

A near supermajority of the current Honor Committee has publicly endorsed this reform and called on students to vote in favor. Your elected SBA also endorsed, nearly unanimously, the reform last fall. SBA President Niko Orfanedes expressed support, emphasizing that it favors students. “SBA supports student self-governance and initiatives aimed at improving the community. This proposal strongly favors students’ rights, allowing them to learn from their mistakes. Further, the severity of the current single-sanction system disincentivizes reporting honor violations and thereby hinders the system from fairly regulating student conduct as intended.”

We are all stewards of this University. As the Honor Committee’s own statements[10] note, students “are not passive recipients of culture, but rather are active agents in creating and maintaining the ideals of our community.” To change is not to destroy. Many of us have spent countless years fighting from within the Honor System. We care about this University and want to see it improve. But internal solutions and inaction have failed. It is time for a transformational change.

Our Community of Trust must be about so much more than expulsion. It must call on us to act with integrity while also asking us to show compassion and empathy for students who make mistakes. Students who commit honor offenses should face consequences. But expulsion is not the answer. We all must meet the moment. I hope you will join us in this fight for a fairer system by voting “Yes” on the referendum.

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christopherbenos@virginia. edu

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[1] ​​https://report.honor.virginia.edu/succisa-virescit

[2] http://honor.virginia.edu/sites/honor.virginia.edu/files/2012-Student-Survey.pdf

[3] https://report.honor.virginia.edu/sites/report.honor/files/honor-bicentennial-analysis.pdf

[4]https://report.honor.virginia.edu/sites/report.honor/files/styles/2018_%20Honor%20Audit%20Commission%20Report_1.18.pdf

[5] Id.

[6] https://www.c-ville.com/honor-crimes-is-it-time-for-the-single-sanction-to-go

[7] https://www.yalelawjournal.org/forum/capital-jurors-in-an-era-of-death-penalty-decline

[8] https://www.lawweekly.org/front-page/2022/1/26/letter-to-the-editor-honor-committee-changes

[9] https://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2022/01/editorial-honor-enough-is-enough-its-time-to-act

[10] https://honor.virginia.edu/overview

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Symposium Speakers Consign Cold-Calling to Dustbin of History

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Anna Bninski ‘23
Features Editor

There are few things I enjoy more than a good, productive griping session. Legal education is one of my favorite topics to kvetch about, and so prior to the Virginia Law Review’s February 18 symposium, “Interrogating Legal Pedagogy and Imagining a Better Way to Train Lawyers,” I asked Professor J.H. “Rip” Verkerke[1] for a comment on what is changing—and should change—in legal education.

From that conversation, I can report that the symposium took place in the context of developments in learning theory (and an accumulation of evidence) indicating that straight lecture is not the most effective way to teach—nor is the somewhat adversarial structure of a traditional cold call. According to Professor Verkerke, acceptance of more evidence-based, interactive pedagogy has grown in the last decade, as both students and professors internalize that law school “doesn’t have to look like The Paper Chase.” Moreover, the practice of adversarial questioning is meant to mimic being put on the spot in court… but in most courtrooms, Professor Verkerke noted, “most people think it’s dysfunctional if you’re that hostile.” What’s more, courtroom drama makes up a tiny slice of legal practice, which has much larger components of “talking on the phone and teamwork.” Hence Professor Verkerke’s goal of creating a “harmonious and collaborative environment” in the classroom.

But making dramatic shifts in pedagogy “is really hard! None of us [professors] experienced those kinds of teaching methods in law school.”

Logging into the symposium, I tried to keep that perspective in mind: that however frustrating the student experience of law school may be at times, educators on the other side are doing their best to move into new territory.

Law School Dean Risa Goluboff, in her opening remarks, noted that an increasing number of law faculty have “cross-training” in other fields, leading to interdisciplinary education, and that, in the wake of the ABA’s reinstatement of skills requirements, law schools offer many more experiential classes. These changes, she posited, form an improved training ground for the increasingly diverse cadre of lawyers.

Professor Molly Shadel presented the first paper, with backup from her fellow researchers Professor Verkerke and Professor Sophie Trawalter of the Batten School. Using recordings of first-year-classes, the team had discovered that, undeniably, men talk more in class than women—but not more accurately. Student surveys showed a fear of backlash for being too vocal. “Gender gaps in participation are not inevitable,” Professor Shadel explained, because in smaller classes, and when students are called upon rather than volunteer, the difference in airtime evaporates.[2]

Following this, Professor Anne Coughlin spoke about what not to take away from the prior presentation. Her primary point was that classic, adversarial cold-calling is not the solution to the airtime equality gap. The practice arose, she pointed out, in the late nineteenth century as a gatekeeping practice “right when women, immigrants, and people of color [were] seeking access to the bar,” and it continues to unfairly affect people who have traumatic experiences related to material covered in class. Professor Coughlin agreed with the prior presenters that legal education would benefit from increased pedagogical training that expands the range of teaching techniques,[3] and mentioned that when she began teaching, she and female colleagues were told that they would have to cold-call ruthlessly and “could not appear to be kind or nice … or the students would not respect me.”

Does this article cover all of the good points raised in these presentations? No. Were there many more talks on other meritorious topics? Yes. Did I attend all of them? Lamentably, no—but I will blame that on my professors for assigning me (pedagogically sound) work to complete over the weekend.[4] For anyone interested in the process of the education we’re in the midst of, though, it was a terrific event.

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amb6ag@virginia.edu

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[1] The Law Weekly style guide demands that Professor Verkerke be referred to as “Professor Verkerke.” (Sorry, Rip!)

[2] Among the many interesting details of the presentation was the fact that the recordings used in the research, which were from classes conducted about ten years ago, did not have a sufficiently large number of female professors to study the effect of the instructor’s gender on class participation. The percentage of female faculty has increased since then, happily, but the research question remains.

[3] Alternative methods mentioned include panels to give people a heads up that they will be on call, giving students the “job” of volunteering during a certain period, calling on students repeatedly throughout the semester to lower the stakes of each interaction, establishing equal participation as a goal of the class, and “warm-calling,” which is basically cold-calling but done very kindly.

[4] And I also wanted time to do things like grocery shop and hang out with my nieces. Sue me.

The Future of Foreign Commercial Lawmaking

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Raneen Farooq ‘22
Guest Writer

Donna Faye Imadi ‘22
Staff Editor

This past Thursday, the Virginia Journal of International Law, in conjunction with the John Bassett Moore Society of International Law, hosted the 71st Annual International Law Symposium. The forum, split into several panels, focused on the topography of foreign commerce, the ways in which international lawmaking is changing in response to technological and cultural developments, labor standards and issues in the supply chain in response to the COVID pandemic, and the ways in which we can expect these issues to evolve over the near future.

The first topic of discussion was the future of trade agreements—how do we think about and conceptualize our economic relationships with other nations, and in what ways are those relationships likely to evolve? Digital trade, especially through internationally available internet platforms, is a particularly salient medium for the exchange and commoditization of data, though not all countries treat this in the same way. While data is an increasingly important commodity, and the digitization of trade has facilitated its growth, monitoring and controlling this kind of market presents unique challenges for each country’s national security departments. In particular, the European Union has developed especially stringent regulations around the regulation of information technology and dissemination, which will also impact the trade of physical goods that rely on those markets.

The next few decades are also likely to present problems outside the scope of individual countries or regions—namely, automation. There is not yet a consensus on how to deal with the decreased demand for labor as automation steadily increases in efficiency. It provides benefits (in freeing up individual actors to form closer relationships across international borders), but it can also exacerbate social problems like class and wealth disparities, particularly as countries are incentivized to join a sort of “race to the bottom” to be the most competitive in an international trade space, where each entity is essentially playing by its own labor practices and rules. Trade relationships with countries whose labor standards vary greatly from the U.S. must be carefully managed and will necessarily impact conversations about domestic trade. If we want our domestic trade policy to be influential, we must have conversations about international trade standards—to do so without that is to lose a key part of the competitive picture. This competition across countries with differing levels of labor regulation is not unique to a single country. This is all the more reason to be having these kinds of discussions and examining our relationships with international trade partners, since these problems are likely to only increase in scope if we do nothing about them.

A later panel included discussions of supply chain management, particularly amidst the disruptions it has suffered during the last few years of a global pandemic. When President Biden took office, almost ten million workers had lost their jobs due to COVID, and about four million were still out of work a year later. This hollowing-out of domestic manufacturing severely weakened the U.S.’s ability to contribute to the global supply chain and created interesting questions for essential product and material sourcing that expand beyond the reaches of this particular global health crisis.

The discussion then turned to the role of private industry in combating these problems. Private companies, on a large scale, tend to work with and mirror government entities in the sense that both have an aligned interest in creating an efficient, resilient, and reliable international supply chain. In the present day, sourcing all materials domestically tends to be neither the most efficient nor the most productive option, but favoring domestic supply sources is often required for entities that receive government funds. While it may be considered a laudable goal, it is prudent to recognize the role of international trade in supplementing and improving domestic manufacturing in the areas where it is most needed—where domestic supply simply cannot compensate for materials obtained abroad. It is also important to note that a preference for domestic goods does not indicate an attempt to eliminate foreign trade. Internal resilience does not translate to “closing off” the country—rather, the focus should be on promoting those individual industries where foreign or domestic sourcing makes the most sense, increasing sustainability of the whole system by doing so.

In finding solutions to these problems, governments must be careful to tackle these issues not with a single tool, but by combining all available resources into a concerted effort to correct supply chain issues. If there were a clearly superior single strategy, the private sector would likely already be employing it. Since that is not the case, we must be ready to tolerate failure and experimentation as we attempt to work with international allies and domestic companies alike to find a blended solution to the next generation’s international trade dilemmas.

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dfi3un@virginia.edu
raf8er@virginia.edu

The Future of Finance

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Nathan Wunderli ‘23
Sports Editor

My first foray into the world of finance began several months ago. I opened a brokerage account, put some dollars in it, and have since watched the market swing wildly, but overall trend downward, as my precious few dollars have tragically turned into even fewer dollars. Of course, I made a day trade once about a week ago and made like $60 I wouldn’t have made otherwise, so basically I’m a financial genius.

            This week, the Virginia Law and Business Review hosted several high-profile speakers on the topic of decentralized finance (a.k.a. DeFi). The panel consisted of CEOs, attorneys, and an SEC regulator. Decentralized finance, put simply, is finance that utilizes open-source software and blockchain to make financial deals instead of having large banks control everything from loans to contracts and other deals. So, anyone can control the way they give and receive money, the transaction is open for everyone to see because it’s posted on a ledger, and it doesn’t have to go through several large financial institutions first.

Pictured: Event panelists and VLBR president. Photo Courtesy of Lauren Johnson, '22.

            There are several potential advantages to decentralized finance. First, a system where anyone can create financial tools the way they want can lead to more innovation and eventually lead to widespread adoption of the best practices. Second, it makes supply chains more efficient, by making it possible for all the parties in a supply chain to be on the same system. Next, depending on your views on algorithms, it can cut out a lot of the human biases in today’s system that can often lead to disparate outcomes. Of course, algorithms can lead to disparate outcomes as well, but at least an algorithm can be fixed–unlike a biased human being. Finally, transactions are far simpler with decentralized finance. While something like a Venmo transfer may look simple from the outside, it actually is a complicated, multi-step process. When a bitcoin is transferred, on the other hand, it is just A to B and posted neatly on a blockchain ledger.

            Decentralized finance has been growing rapidly. DeFi coins have grown from ten billion in January of 2020 to eighty-eight billion in January 2022. Countries in Africa have been quick to adopt its principles, allowing for access to loans and the transfer of capital on more informal channels. Other countries with relatively open economies, such as Singapore, have also shown signs of adopting DeFi. The U.S. as a country is at an inflection point, where it can take advantage of the benefits of DeFi, or smother it through regulations. The panel was in favor of less regulation, but saw DeFi moving forward regardless of what the country does. The panelists compared this new way of finance to the progression of the internet. At one point, the internet was just for reading documents on a screen. Now you can edit it yourself, make webpages, blogs, and interact with it rather than just passively viewing it. However, that change almost didn’t happen. Regulators were close to stifling the progress of the internet, putting regulation over growth. Fortunately, this did not happen and the internet is the way it is today. The panelists posed the question: What if we are at a similar point today, where we can choose growth over regulation and move DeFi along, or keep the system as it is today? How would life be different in 20 years if we went one way or the other? The panelists seem to agree that the benefits of democratizing finance outweigh the risks and it should be regulated in ways that promote it rather than stifle it.

            One way to regulate it positively is to provide a safe harbor rule for those creating a DeFi system. Because even a DeFi system has to be created, coded and controlled on the backend at the beginning by a few people, it can’t actually start out decentralized. It is later on that the creators back off and leave it to the people. A safe harbor rule will allow a certain amount of time to transition to decentralization. If it becomes decentralized in time, it would not be classified as a security and will avoid a lot of regulations it otherwise would have to deal with.

            Fortunately for lawyers such as us, there will be plenty of room for our services; as there are in the current system. There is a big question about how to assign liability if something is programmed poorly in a decentralized system. Unlike now where we can just blame the bank where the transaction originated, a decentralized system is more difficult to assign blame. A new set of rules will have to emerge to deal with this problem. As for hackers disrupting the system, the panelists did not seem to think that is an issue. Or rather, it is an issue, but not any more of an issue than we would have without a DeFi system. If anything, it is easier to find the perpetrators on a DeFi system because everything is open source.

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nw7cz@virginia.edu

A Private Conversation

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Anna Bninski ‘23
Executive Editor

Content warning: discussion of sexual assault

“The details of whatever happened were gone from her mind, but present all over her body.” The opening scene of Julia Dahl’s novel The Missing Hours doesn’t pull any punches, depicting a college freshman as she wakes up and faces the aftermath of a sexual assault. The novel, and its genesis in Dahl’s past as a crime reporter, provided the topic for a Zoom discussion between Dahl and Professor Danielle Citron, titled “Intimate Privacy Violations and the Law.” Sponsored by the LawTech Center; Law, Innovation, Security, & Technology (LIST); and the Virginia Journal of Law & Technology, the discussion focused particularly on the aftermath of a sexual assault and how, as Dahl put it, “there’s not really any good choices when this happens to you.”

I logged onto this Zoom with a certain disadvantage: I hadn’t yet read The Missing Hours. Although the UVA Library System is very, very good, it takes a few days to turn around a book request, and I failed to plan sufficiently far in advance. But the discussion only confirmed that I would be reading this novel as soon as possible—and once I did get my hands on the book, I finished it within 24 hours. It’s both quite dark and hard to put down.

Ms. Dahl began her career as a journalist, with a focus on sex crimes against women; she described a piece that she wrote years ago for Seventeen magazine, detailing the experience of a young woman who suffered sexual abuse by a relative. The young woman’s family didn’t believe her; neither did law enforcement. As Dahl covered similar crime stories, the pain—and seeming inevitability—of being disbelieved kept appearing. So did the inefficacy of turning to law enforcement in the wake of sexual assault; while working for a nonprofit that focused on criminal justice news, Dahl wrote a major piece on rape kits “languishing, going bad in freezers across America.” Some may yield a conviction decades after the assault, but most do not.

In the wake of the infamous 2012 Steubenville High School case, which introduced much of America to the upsetting fact that perpetrators of sexual assault could document that assault, and distribute that documentation with seeming impunity,[1] Dahl could not stop thinking about the experience of the victim and her family. Since the assault took place in a fairly small community, Dahl imagined how every time you meet someone, “you would have no idea if they’d seen these pictures of you, in that traumatic, humiliating moment…I couldn’t get that out of my head.”

During her time writing about this kind of crime, Dahl reached out to Professor Citron,[2] trying to get a handle on why, in cases where intimate photos or videos were shared without the subject’s consent, law enforcement claimed there was nothing they could do. The conclusion: “The law had not caught up to what the crimes were.” While that has changed to some degree—Professor Citron mentioned New York’s 2019 criminalization of revenge porn—neither law enforcement nor lawyers come out of The Missing Hours looking great.[3]  Professor Citron noted that Dahl’s work serves as education on the failures of the legal system and can spur change. “But it’s bleak!” she exclaimed. “Did you think about having the police maybe help a little?”

Claudia, the protagonist of The Missing Hours, discovers that the perpetrators documented their assault on her. Characters variously attempt to contain, weaponize, and repurpose the video. Partially due to a prior less-than-flattering appearance on a reality TV show and partially because of society’s generally terrible treatment of sexual assault victims, Claudia knows that her obvious incapacitation during the assault won’t save her from being painted as a party girl who invited the violation, rather than as the victim of a crime. Ultimately, she turns to extra-legal means to exact a measure of revenge. Dahl explained that while she does not endorse her character’s decisions, and doesn’t think they’ll make her happy, the system she’s facing does not allow her any good choices.

Dahl expressed hope that someday we’ll reach a change in the legal system, where the default is for police and prosecutors to believe victims—and for prosecutors, when deciding whether to bring a case, to expect the same of the jury. 

During the Q&A portion of the event, Professor Cathy Hwang noted that Claudia was a semi-public figure, and that the novel could encourage people to feel comfortable asserting boundaries in the parts of their life that are documented and disseminated.  Dahl added that privacy is not an all-or-nothing proposition: “Just because you’re an influencer, a movie star, a public person, doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to have privacy.”[4]

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amb6ag@virginia.edu

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[1] After public outcry two juveniles were eventually convicted of rape; multiple adults were indicted for behavior that included obstructing justice, tampering with evidence, and making false statements.

[2] Ms. Dahl and Professor Citron are clearly huge fans of each other, which gave the conversation a really good dynamic despite its difficult subject matter.

[3] It’s probably good for law students to periodically read books where at least one villain is a lawyer, to keep things in perspective.

[4] For those interested:  Throughout the discussion, Dahl recommended further reading, including Know My Name by Chanel Miller, Is Rape a Crime? by Michelle Bowdler, and The Damage by Caitlin Wahrer.

Op-Ed: Afghanistan on Edge

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Mason Pazhwak ‘23
Events Editor

Twenty-three million people in Afghanistan, more than half of its population, are facing “extreme levels of hunger” according to the World Food Program, while 98 percent lack enough food to eat.[1] These alarming numbers represent another dark chapter for a country that has already been devastated by decades of war and instability, stunting the ability of many to meet their most basic needs.[2] Now people are being pushed from deep vulnerability to the brink of calamity as they try to survive the country’s brutally cold winter weather.[3] Desperation comes with this kind of extreme poverty, with some families selling what little material wealth they have accumulated at a deep discount, if they are lucky enough to have any at all, while others have been put at the mercy of predatory individuals who seek to take advantage of the misery by purchasing brides.[4] Millions have already begun to flee in search of a chance to survive, sparking another vast migration crisis, the effects of which will reverberate far beyond Afghanistan’s borders.[5] Millions more will face the effects of extreme hunger, with countless children, who are particularly vulnerable, facing the emotional and developmental consequences of  malnutrition.[6] Finally, millions may die as a direct or indirect result of this catastrophe, representing one of the greatest humanitarian disasters of our time.[7]

            Several factors have contributed to this crisis, with the disruption of war, destruction of infrastructure, systematic corruption, a protracted drought, and long-term poor economic conditions all playing roles in the current predicament.[8] However, perhaps the most significant factor has been the nature of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and policy decisions made in the immediate aftermath. The completely unexpected, rapid collapse of the U.S.-backed Afghan government at the hands of the Taliban, as the U.S. withdrew, saw the long-time U.S. enemy assert unilateral control over the country.[9] This led policymakers to apply longstanding sanctions against the Taliban to large parts of the Afghan economy, with Afghanistan’s banking system losing access to $7 billion in foreign government reserves needed to maintain currency liquidity and many international banks ceasing any interactions due to the stiff consequences of a violation.[10] This caused the banking system to seize up, depriving millions of their deposits and bringing economic activity to a halt.[11] This was combined with the almost instantaneous cutoff of the substantial foreign aid that was a cornerstone of the Afghan economy that funded the vast majority of public expenditures, including the country’s healthcare system.[12] This one-two punch had completely foreseeable, far-reaching consequences, with the economy now teetering on the brink of collapse.[13] The U.S. has since tried to make humanitarian sanction exemptions to ease the flow of relief into the country, as well as commit some funds to help with the aid, but much broader action is needed to avert a disaster.[14]

            I understand the difficulty faced by U.S. policymakers in approaching the issue of the Taliban gaining access to resources and legitimacy if sanctions were eased and aid was increased. The group was warned of the consequences of seizing unilateral control, including a cutoff of aid, yet did so anyway, showing a disregard for the impact it would have on the Afghan people.[15] They also remain a deeply uncompromising group that behaves in ways that violate international norms in areas such as women’s rights, and they should rightly be challenged for their abuses.[16] However, U.S. sanctions as they are applied now are a wrecking ball to Afghan society, punishing so many more people than the Taliban that they have become unduly cruel and harmful. In addition, the Taliban is a group which withstood twenty years of concerted effort by the international community, led by the most powerful military in the world, to destroy them. I find it highly unlikely that economic sanctions, which generally tend to have uneven effects everywhere they are applied, will impact their decision-making in a significant way.[17] Instead, the outcome we are seeing is mass starvation for the civilian population with few indications of concession. In addition, the U.S. has a special duty to the Afghan people irrespective of the government in power. The Afghan people were made to rely on the aid we provided, and many believed in the stability of the system we built there. I am sure that if they had understood it would collapse so quickly, they would have taken steps to prepare themselves for the transition. Instead, they had faith in the competence of an American foreign policy and that the U.S. would not pull the rug out from under them. But instead, they have been rewarded by being literally and figuratively left out in the cold. A responsible U.S. drawdown, if it expected an eventual Taliban victory, would have slowly weaned the people off aid, created a banking system not so tied to ours so as to be completely debilitated by sanctions, and occurred in the spring so that people might have had a growing season to prepare for winter. Even if U.S. policymakers did not anticipate a Taliban victory that would necessitate building in an adjustment period, they nevertheless should have used targeted (as opposed to broad) sanctions and maintained public sector aid at least through the winter. Yes, the Taliban may have benefited from this, and it would have rewarded their bad behavior to some extent, but there would have been ample time to increase pressure later. The immediate goal of preservation of life would have been worth the cost.

            President Biden ran on a platform of empathy and good judgment in American foreign relations, yet Afghanistan seems to be worthy of little compassion from his administration.[18] It is not too late, however, and U.S. investment could still help stabilize and preserve innocent Afghan lives.[19] Whatever our future engagement with the country, our legacy, after twenty years of sacrifice by countless American Soldiers, diplomats, and civilians, cannot be the disaster that is occurring. To allow that would be morally damaging and would plant the seeds of future instability in Afghanistan that, based on our recent history, we should well understand the danger of.

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mwp8kk@virginia.edu

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[1] Hannah Bloch, For Many Afghans, Winter is Forcing a Cruel Choice of Whether to Eat or Stay Warm, NPR (Jan. 6, 2022), https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/01/06/1069872384/for-many-afghans-winter-is-forcing-a-cruel-choice-of-whether-to-eat-or-stay-warm.

[2] Id.

[3] Id.

[4] See Christina Goldbaum, Afghan Economy Nears Collapse as Pressure Builds to Ease U.S. Sanctions, N.Y. Times (Nov. 27, 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/27/world/asia/afghanistan-economy-collapse-sanctions.html. Associated Press, Parents selling children shows desperation in Afghanistan, NPR (Dec. 31, 2021), https://www.npr.org/2021/12/31/1069428211/parents-selling-children-shows-desperation-in-afghanistan.

[5]  Christina Goldbaum & Yaqoob Akbary, Over a Million Flee as Afghanistan’s Economy Collapses, N.Y. Times (Feb. 2, 2022), https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/02/world/asia/afghanistan-migration-refugees.html.

[6] Murteza Khaliqi, Afghan children face death from malnutrition without intervention, advocates warn, NBC News (Oct. 15, 2021), https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/afghan-children-face-death-malnutrition-intervention-advocates-warn-rcna3069.

[7] Id.

[8] Goldbaum, supra note 4.

[9] See Amanda Macias, Secretary of State Blinken calls Taliban ‘the de facto government of Afghanistan’, CNBC (Sept. 13, 2021), https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/13/secretary-of-state-blinken-calls-taliban-the-de-facto-government-of-afghanistan.html.

[10] Explaining US Sanctions Against Taliban, VOA (Feb. 5, 2022), https://www.voanews.com/a/ready-explaining-us-sanctions-against-taliban-/6427771.html; Ellen Ioanes, US policy is fueling Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis, Vox (Jan. 22, 2022), https://www.vox.com/2022/1/22/22896235/afghanistan-poverty-famine-winter-humanitarian-crisis-sanctions.

[11] Id.

[12] Id.

[13] Id.

[14] Id.

[15] Jabob Knutson, U.S. envoy warns Taliban of global cutoff if Afghanistan taken by force, Axios (Aug. 10, 2021), https://www.axios.com/afghanistan-taliban-global-cutoff-afghanistan-force-6bbb638b-d7d0-45d4-a8d6-8e569f7182c9.html.

[16] See Lindsay Maizland, The Taliban in Afghanistan, CFR (Sept. 15, 2021), https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/taliban-afghanistan.

[17] See Jonathan Marcus, Analysis: Do economic sanctions work?, BBC News (July 26, 2010), https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-10742109.

[18] See Peter Baker, Biden Ran on Competence and Empathy. Afghanistan Is Testing That., N.Y Times (Aug. 20, 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/21/us/politics/biden-afghanistan-withdrawal.html.

[19] See Ruby Mellen & Julia Ledur, Afghanistan faces widespread hunger amid worsening humanitarian crisis, Wash. Post (Jan. 24, 2022), https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/01/24/afghanistan-humanitarian-crisis-hunger/.

Professor Frampton Wins First Stage of Court Battle

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Jacob Smith ‘23
Professor Liaison Editor

It took a few months, but the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana ruled in Professor Thomas Frampton’s favor. Judge John W. deGravelles released a long, careful opinion that largely agreed with Professor Frampton’s arguments and granted the preliminary injunction his First Amendment retaliation suit requested. The case is still going forward, and will continue to do so unless the defendants agree to settle. But the court’s receptiveness to Professor Frampton’s position suggests that he has a good chance of prevailing on the merits.

Pictured: Professor Frampton winning a Louisiana client their freedom in a seperate case. Photo from UVA Today, https://news.virginia.edu/content.

Professor Frampton filed the suit in federal court back in June 2021. It arose out of a Louisiana pro bono case. After Baton Rouge police officers stopped a car, strip-searched two of its passengers, and then searched their home, Professor Frampton agreed to represent the passengers (who were brothers) in a civil rights lawsuit. The lawsuit was settled in May 2021. But the Baton Rouge Police Department did not discipline officers or even open an investigation in the aftermath. Hoping to “get some accountability,” Professor Frampton and the plaintiffs’ family decided to put out a press release that linked to a video of the brothers’ search and arrest.

            The next day, on May 28, 2021, the East Baton Rouge Parish Attorney’s Office served Professor Frampton with a show cause motion seeking to hold him in contempt for releasing the video footage. One of the brothers was a juvenile, and the accusation was that Professor Frampton had violated a statute requiring records of juvenile court proceedings to be kept confidential. Alarmed, Professor Frampton put together a legal team and filed a suit in federal court alleging that the Parish and two individual defendants were retaliating against him for exercising his First Amendment rights.

            As law students might expect, Professor Frampton moved for a preliminary injunction and the defendants moved to dismiss. Motions to dismiss are normally considered solely by reference to the pleadings, but the court elected to rule on the motion to dismiss and the motion for a preliminary injunction together. Evidentiary hearings were held via Zoom, and by early October the parties were submitting their final briefs.
            But the issues were complicated, and Judge deGravelles had trials to attend to, so the parties then had to wait several months for a ruling, instead of the usual matter of weeks or days. As he waited, Professor Frampton described himself as optimistic, or at least “not super worried.” It helped that the delay had no adverse effects. Judge deGravelles made it clear that the state court should put off hearing the case, so in effect, Professor Frampton had a kind of informal interim preliminary injunction.

            When the opinion was handed down on January 7th, it was worth the wait. In a scrupulously careful ninety-two-page opinion, Judge deGravelles decided that Professor Frampton “ha[d] clearly met his burden to show Defendant’s bad faith.” Significantly, the defendants had only taken action against Professor Frampton, even though others had committed “identical violations” of the statute. The court also found it noteworthy that the contempt motion was filed immediately after the press release, and that the defendants did not drop the charge even after finding out that Professor Frampton had the permission of the brothers shown in the video, one of whom was the juvenile in question.

            The finding of bad faith meant that an exception to Younger abstention, which generally requires federal courts to stay out of ongoing state proceedings, applied.[1] In addition, it meant that the first element necessary for granting a preliminary injunction, likelihood of success on the merits, was satisfied. The other elements were found present in a straightforward fashion: Professor Frampton had already suffered irreparable harm, a chilling effect on his free speech. He faced potential jail time, which tilted the balance of hardships in his favor. And there was no reason to think that granting an injunction would harm the public interest.

            So what happens next? My (in)experience led me to think that parties often start settlement talks when a preliminary injunction is handed down. But the Parish is not backing down yet. On January 20, the defendants filed an answer, the next step required after a motion to dismiss is denied. But at least Professor Frampton is safe from being held in contempt for now. And even though Professor Frampton would much prefer to have the case over with, he has found it a valuable experience being on the other side of the lawyer-client relationship. Obviously, being a plaintiff/defendant is quite different from being the lawyer representing a party, particularly in the increased impatience you feel as a client. So despite its inconvenience and stress, the ordeal should ultimately benefit the lucky students and clients who get to work with Professor Frampton this semester and beyond.

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js3hp@virginia.edu

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[1] Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S. 37 (1971).

Celebrating Lunar New Year

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Christina Park ‘23
Guest Writer

Happy Lunar New Year! This year, Lunar New Year falls on Tuesday, February 1, although the celebration often extends for multiple days.[1] Lunar New Year, which is also known as the “Spring Festival” and by various other names around the world, is an incredibly important celebration in many East Asian and Southeast Asian cultures.[2]

The holiday is rich with traditions, which vary across cultures—from vibrant red envelopes filled with money, to lantern festivals, dragon dances, and traditional foods, the Lunar New Year is celebrated and enjoyed in many ways around the world. As a Korean-American, whenever I think of the New Year, I think about eating my dad’s homemade tteokguk, which is a traditional Korean rice cake soup associated with the Lunar New Year. Every year, my mom also always reminds us to eat noodles, which are meant to symbolize long life.[3] Beyond my own experience, food seems to be a universally central part of celebrating the Lunar New Year. For example, in many Asian cultures, eating and sharing certain fruits, such as kumquats, pomelos, and other golden colored fruits, are critical components of the Lunar New Year celebration.[4]

In addition to the food and festivities, the Lunar New Year is also widely associated with the twelve zodiac animals (the rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog, and pig) and five elements (earth, water, fire, wood, and metal).[5] Each year in the Lunar calendar is associated with one of the zodiac animals and one of the elements.[6] This year is the Year of the Water Tiger, which symbolizes strength, bravery, and taking action.[7] I know I could certainly use a little bit of that this year, and I am hopeful that the Year of the Water Tiger will be a year full of joy, peace, and love for everyone. Wishing you all a very happy and healthy Lunar New Year!

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cgp9gx@virginia.edu

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[1] https://www.history.com/topics/holidays/chinese-new-year.

[2] Id.

[3] See also https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/29/us/lunar-new-year-cut-fruit.html.

[4] Id.

[5] https://www.history.com/topics/holidays/chinese-new-year.

[6] Id.

[7] Id.

Letter to the Editor

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Letters of interest to the Law School community may be sent to editor@lawweekly.org. Letters may be published at the discretion of the Editorial Board and are subject to editing for grammar, style, and clarity, but not content or viewpoint. The views expressed reflect the opinion of the writer, and not of the Law Weekly.

Good morrow mine esteemed brethren, 

A writing moste peculiar hath crossed my path by way of carrier pigeon, and I couldst not permit such abhomynable arguing forego dispute. Al-thugh I am a mere spectre, a phantom of days long passed, I pray thee, take heed of the guidance of thine learned lordshipes and be grateful for the blessinges beforen thee. Verily, I suggest each and every scholar in this fine institution abide by the issued decrees, for they followe the counseil of the moste learned physicienes and philosophres. As for my tale of woe and sorrow, I beseech thou to listen and appreciate the giftes of moderne science for they would haven saved mine owne life. 

It was the year of the Lord 1348 when a great pestilence took hold of my town in the county of Dorset, and spread forth to all and sundry. With such a fury and tempestuousness yet unforeseen, we witnessen an accursed maladie claim souls in aboundaunce. Wherever thou loked with thine eies, thine gaze was troubled by an occean of bodies, one heaped atop another in vast trenches near the churches, merely waitinge to be covered by more dead the morn next. Thrugh-oute the land, the peple were afeared and many-fold persounes were abandoned by thine kin to secure the savety of them-selves. 

We had no savf refuge nor any hope of salvation in sighte for neither physicienes nor medicines were able to offren a cure. At night, I prayed for a healinge, some sort of miracle. Each morn, I awoke with dread, knowinge there was nought to forestall the spreden of the pestilence. Not long thereafter, the ende of mine life arriven. The course of mine death was afar from peaceable: the tumoures and buboes throbbed and the sores from blood-letting ached while a wretched fever ravaged mine body. There was nought a soul near-by when I toke mine last breth, non there to easen the anguisshe. 

Wherefore, I do forsake the perspectif writen in the Virginia Laue Fortnightly this past six-and-twentieth day of Januarie. It portraien an unconninge of moderne medicine and a voide of compassioun for other man-kinde in need. This neuest forme of pestilence callen Covid-Nine and Ten ist not the same horrour of mine. Now, there are soluciounes and protectiones in existence, unlike mine own time. Nonetheless, the aforementioned writing has many compleininges over imagined injustices and oppressiouns. Al be that the writer of the opinioun proclaimed he is contrarie to neither vaccines nor boosters, methinks he doth protest over-muche. 

Instede of cherishing the quik arivaille of the cure, he bemoans the decree to avail oneself of the wondrous ‘booster’ as a recquirement to studie at one of the moste respected schooles of laue in thine country. Rather, he besmirches the very name of science itself by invoking the name of sources of ill-repute and insufficient skill and learninge. Moreover, he misconstruen the evidence supportinge continued vaccination to safeguard against the horrid sickness. Thugh I be but a peasant borne into poverte, I carefully examined the resources offren to buttress his controversial jugement on the moralite and intelligence of the decree. I find it sorely lackinge.

One resource listed might be a man of medicine, but upon reviewinge his educaccioun, it appears that his specialtie is on matters of surgerie of the pancreas and not on infectious diseases or vaccination. His owne colleagues at the prestigious Johns Hopkins whom hath studied infecciones find his opiniounes and arguements disagreeable and incorrect.[1] I know not how moderne persounes think, but I certainly would chuse to listen to those with expertise on such matters. 

Muche of the other resources seem to suggest that the current variacioun of the pestilence, Omicron, does not warrant the decreed use of the booster. However, mine owne research hath found that the booster was approximately ninety per cent effective in forestalling hospitalisationes whereas merely possessing the first two doses was only seven-and-fifty per cent effective.[2] Thus, evidence supportens the conclusioun that the booster is needed to reducen the amount of infecciounes. The writer might assert that the lackinge of severe illness and symptomes indicates that Omicron is not dangerous, but many reputable institutiones hath concluded that it remains a sizeable risk to moste persounes.[3] [III]

To be sure, the last four-and-twenty months hath been distressinge and the cause of much frustraccion. Hou-ever, I haven little sympathy for the alleged aggrievances of the writer. It is no burden to undertake a harmless and effective medicine as a measure of proteccioun and care for thine neighbours. On be-half of fellow victimes of diseses past, I decrie the callousness to those infortunate souls for whom the sickness did beget concerns most severe for their savety. Not all peple hath so muche privilege to be so unafeared of a disease which hath claimed the lives of milliounes thrugh-out the world and created long-lastinge effectes on those who mercyfully survived. I declare that under-takinge the slight effort of innoculaccioun is not just a humanitarian dutie, but the only logical conclusioun to reach with all availble science. 

For those who foresake the plentiful giftes offren by societie, I simplie must say that I muste commit the crime of flatulence in thou generale direccioun.  Hou darest thou bemoan the opportunitie presenten to thou. I suffren a needless and horrifyinge death and thou can assiste others in avoidinge similar fates, but proclaim it an injustice to do so by decree. Great shame upon thou and upon thine cattle and upon thine kin. Eache persoun with dignite and honour wouldst never questioun the wise edicts of thine lordshipes whomst are lokinge out for our all best interestes. 

With muche displeasure,

A concerned ghoust of times passed.

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[1] https://www.virginiamercury.com/2022/01/12/what-to-know-about-glenn-youngkins-newest-covid-19-adviser/

[2] https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/21/health/cdc-omicron-booster-studies/index.html

[3] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2788105

Libel Show Auditions 2022

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Auditions will be held from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. in Brown Hall 126:

Tuesday, February 1st
Wednesday, February 2nd
Thursday, February 3rd

Feel free to come by any time between 6 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. on any of the above dates where we will be holding acting and singing auditions. We will provide short scripts for actors to read. If you want to participate in singing auditions, please come prepared to sing a portion of a song a cappella. Dance auditions will be held at a later date. Anyone interested in being a part of the band (interested in a variety of instruments) can reach out to Chris Nolan (eke8dh@virginia.edu) to schedule an audition.