Virginia Law Review Online Symposium Examines Law Behind Events of August 11-12

Clayton Bailey '18
(he/him/his)
Guest Columnist

Michael Dooley '18
(he/him/his)
Guest Columnist

Over the past few months, UVa Law students have responded to the events of August 11 and 12, 2017 with grace and conviction. Their accounts of the events, and reactions to them, have been published in numerous outlets, including The New York Times and the Virginia Law Weekly. I am so proud to call many of these people, who spoke out passionately for their beliefs, my friends. Their collective reaction shows the true character of our community. Much like our classmates, members of the Virginia Law Review were horribly disturbed by the scenes of violence and hate that made “Charlottesville” national shorthand for the dangers of white supremacy. In the aftermath, fighting the feeling of helplessness that comes when confronting true tragedy, we turned to the law. These events did not happen in a vacuum. They were influenced—and, to an extent, even dictated—by background legal principles that govern our state and our country. Perhaps by examining these questions of law, we can advance our understanding of the incomprehensible actions of men. 

This week, it is our pleasure to publish in our Online companion a number of scholarly essays, written by UVa students and faculty, that seek to do just that. The full essays can be read at virginialawreview.org, and a panel discussion with the authors will be held Thursday, February 1 at 1 p.m. in Purcell Reading Room. Lunch will be provided. 

The essays alternate between U.S. constitutional law and the relationship between states and municipalities. A brief summary of each piece follows, in order of its appearance in our symposium.

Professor Farah Peterson, who joins our faculty this semester, provides the introduction to our symposium. She explores how the events of August 11 and 12 may have come about, drawing connections to the sordid elements of our country’s recent history. Despite the horror and chaos, Professor Peterson recognizes the abundant potential for change and our role in bringing it forth.

Timothy Horley’s essay, Rethinking the Heckler’s Veto After Charlottesville, asks one of the most difficult questions in First Amendment law: when can a speaker’s expression that is likely to provoke a violent response from listeners justify government intervention against the speaker? Examining the morass surrounding the issue, he proposes drawing on the test created by the Supreme Court in Brandenburg v. Ohio. This solution, he argues, would better protect speakers’ rights while expanding the ability of authorities to intervene before violence occurs.

In her essay, Your ‘Little Friend’ Doesn’t Say ‘Hello’: Putting the First Amendment Before the Second in Public Protests, Kendall Burchard addresses an issue that was on plain display on August 11 and 12—whether the states are (or should be) able to restrict the presence of firearms at protests. Exploring the current state of the law, she concludes that protests should be recognized as “sensitive places” where states are permitted to bar such weapons.

Amanda Lineberry’s essay, Payne v. City of Charlottesville and the Dillon’s Rule Rationale for Removal, addresses Virginia’s ability to remove the Lee Statue that ostensibly served as a reason for numerous protests in Charlottesville, including the “Unite the Right” rally on August 11 and 12. Discussing decades of statutory grants that permitted localities to erect monuments, she determines that the statutory grant under which the statue was purportedly erected, as well as subsequent statutes, cannot serve as a legal bar to its removal.

Finally, Professor Richard Schragger’s essay, When White Supremacists Invade a City, argues that Charlottesville’s response to the events of August 11 and 12 was a result of its weakness and liminal status under Virginia (and United States) law. Since cities like Charlottesville are not afforded the rights granted to private corporations and lack the full power of the state—instead relying upon specific grants of authority—they have limited abilities to respond to crises. Professor Schragger asks whether this should be the case, particularly given all that we demand from our cities and municipalities.

In her thoughtful foreword, Professor Peterson invokes Justice Thurgood Marshall’s optimism for the capacity of law. While anger and protest are often necessary in the face of injustice, we learn in law school that change can also be found “through the rule of law and the elaboration of legal principles.” It is the “mutually enforcing efforts of law and protest, of anger and optimism, that have dragged this country out of the darkness of the early twentieth century, and that are responsible for all of the civil rights gains we have made.” Today, we continue this tradition of optimism. While we would love to believe that “Charlottesville” was a turning point, the final thrust of a dying sentiment of hate, more dark days may yet litter our path forward. But we are confident that these challenges, legal and otherwise, will be overcome by the men and women of compassion and capacity who inevitably rise to meet them. 

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clb5jc@virginia.edu

mpd8af@virginia.edu

Sec. Clinton Goes to Charlottesville

Jenna Goldman '18
(she/her/hers)
Editor-in-Chief

Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks to a crowd of students at Old Cabell Hall. Photo courtesy of UVA Today.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks to a crowd of students at Old Cabell Hall. Photo courtesy of UVA Today.

The University of Virginia welcomed Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton to Main Grounds on Tuesday, November 14, as the keynote speaker for the Women’s Global Leadership Forum. The Forum was held in conjunction with the UVa Bicentennial, which brought speakers from around the world to examine “The Role of Women in 21st Century Democracy.” Panels focused on Education and Health, Economic Access and Innovation, and Equity and Political Empowerment.

President Teresa Sullivan opened by welcoming Governor Terry McAuliffe and his wife, Dorothy McAuliffe. Governor McAuliffe introduced Secretary Clinton by highlighting her work as an advocate for women and children, as a First Lady of both Arkansas and the United States, as the first woman senator from New York, and as the first woman Presidential nominee of a major political party. 

Secretary Clinton began her remarks by congratulating the cheering crowd in electing Governor-elect Ralph Northam and for setting records in the number of women elected to state office in the Commonwealth. 

“When I was serving as First Lady and serving as Secretary of State I was ‘serving’ men, and in those positions, I was viewed more favorably. When I left the State Department I had a whooping sixty-nine percent approval rating,” Clinton said. “Those societal characteristics translate into politics.” 

She drew her advice to women with political aspirations from a quote by Eleanor Roosevelt: “Develop skin as thick as a rhinoceros!” Clinton recounted the double standards as excruciating, giving the classic example of speech. “I was walking a tightrope without a safety net.” She recalled practicing for debates and being told to be careful of varying her tone to avoid the perception of “yelling” or “nagging,” and to under no circumstances lay a fist to the podium, “even though male orators often raise their voices and pound on the podium for emphasis—to men those are perceived as successful techniques.” 

More than just the manner of speaking, Clinton pointed to the recent examples of the silencing of Senator Elizabeth Warren on the floor of the Senate, and of Senator Kamala Harris as she questioned Jeff Sessions during a Senate Intelligence Committee Hearing. Clinton encouraged the audience to take these attacks personally. “We need to understand and accept the fact that the diminishment of any woman is a diminishment of you and me,” she said. 

Though Clinton addressed the difficult realities of running for office as a woman, she left the crowd with words of encouragement. “We have made progress, and we cannot let anyone turn us back,” she said. She urged the women in the room to cultivate their determination and to take on the risks that come along with leadership. “It takes courage, but the more women who run and win, the easier this process will become.”  

After her speech, Clinton sat down on stage with moderator, and First Lady of Virginia Dorothy McAuliffe. McAuliffe asked Clinton a host of questions from cyber security to tax policy.

“I am encouraged by young Americans who are much more inclusive, valuing of diversity, and better at connecting with each other than previous generations.” 

McAuliffe referenced the criticism Clinton received from those on the right and left for writing her book and for continuing to speak about the election. At first Clinton joked that if the pundits had left her alone, she still might be hiking in the woods. But she turned to the very serious reason why she continues to speak out. “When these guys, and they are all guys, when they tell me to go away I just say, ‘I’m not going to listen.’ I’m not going to walk away from the debates I’ve had my entire career.” Clinton noted that critics did not ask previous candidates like Mitt Romney, John McCain, or Al Gore to “go away” after losing an election, especially on issues like children’s access to healthcare.  

After graduating from Yale Law School in 1973, Clinton continued postgraduate studies on children and medicine at the Yale Child Study Center and began her forty-year career in public service as a staff attorney for the Children’s Defense Fund in Cambridge, Mass.  

“I helped found CHIP [Children’s Health Insurance Program] as First Lady in the ‘90s, and I will not remain silent as millions of children lose their healthcare.” Congress allowed the program, which provided insurance to 9 million children and pregnant women, to lapse in September.

What else worries Secretary Clinton? From the vantage point of international affairs she said bluntly, “Russia.” She made reference to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s past as a KGB leader and cautioned that Putin is cunning and no novice at meddling in foreign elections. “I’ve sat across the table from Putin. We have known for a long time what he is capable of.” [In reference to the Russian strikes on social media she recounted the adage ‘fool us once, shame on you, fool us twice, shame on us.’] 

The event took place in Old Cabell Hall, and seating was limited to those who secured a ticket through a lottery, which ran weeks before. Shivani Patel ’19 was one of the few law students to secure a ticket through the lottery. Anna Bobrow ’20 initially did not get a ticket, but was given one by a friend who couldn’t make it.    

Bobrow enjoyed the breadth of the subject matter and how genuine the conversation was. Though Clinton is on a book tour, “She kept on topic for the discussion,” instead of only referencing her book and focused her remarks on global women’s leadership and the Commonwealth of Virginia. “I heard she was more personable and funny than she has come across in the media, but I was surprised by how true that was.” Bobrow loved how she was self-deprecating and made lots of jokes, seemingly untethered from the binds of the campaign. 

First Lady Dorothy McAuliffe moderates a discussion with Secretary Clinton. Photo courtesy of UVA Today.

First Lady Dorothy McAuliffe moderates a discussion with Secretary Clinton. Photo courtesy of UVA Today.

Patel also liked the tone Clinton struck, and one of the most memorable moments from Clinton’s remarks was her retelling a story about a linguist approaching her to improve her speech and tone of voice on camera. “Secretary Clinton said, ‘Sure, let’s try it. But can you send me a picture of a woman doing the same technique?’ The video was never sent, probably because when men do whatever it was that Hillary was doing, it’s just fine.” 

Clinton did not shy away from discussing the results of the election. “She acknowledged a real feeling I’ve heard among women my age, which is that the election was devastating because it reminded us of the obstacles that we face as women leaders,” Bobrow said. “But she also has been encouraged (as I have been) by the ways that women have stepped into leadership and politics for the first time in response to feelings of frustration and sadness following the election.”

The common thread throughout the forum was the importance of women running for office, especially in the wake of the 2016 election. The crux of her message, Patel said, was to “expect pushback from men and other women, but use it as a catalyst instead of a deterrent.” 

The biggest takeaway from the Secretary’s talk for Bobrow was that leadership comes in many different forms. “While it is certainly hard to put yourself out there as a woman leader, it’s critical that we do,” Bobrow remembered Clinton urging, “Until we have more critical mass, the status quo will never change.” 

Patel echoed, “The only way to truly change the fact that we expect something different from women in politics than from men in politics is for more women to be involved in politics—at all levels.”

Bobrow found encouragement in hearing Clinton speak, especially going into her first finals in law school. “In the midst of outlining season and exams, it was important to me that I think about the bigger picture of why my peers and I are here— even if you do not want to enter public service after graduation and even if you are not a woman, we all have a duty to be positive leaders in our communities and to take on the responsibilities that come with being a lawyer and a professional.” She said, “It was great to hear Secretary Clinton speak about some of the challenges she sees and think about how my schoolwork can prepare me to be a more thoughtful, engaged citizen going forward.”

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jmg3db@virginia.edu

 

    

A Monumental Fight for City Speech

Katherine Mann '19
(she/her/hers)
Columns Editor

From left to right, Professors Blank, Brady, and Schragger discuss municipal free speech. Photo courtesy of The Law Weekly. 

From left to right, Professors Blank, Brady, and Schragger discuss municipal free speech. Photo courtesy of The Law Weekly

Against the backdrop of the recent violence in Charlottesville and statues shrouded in black, a distinguished panel of law professors held a discussion on Monday night entitled “Do Cities Have Free Speech Rights? Confederate Monuments, Sanctuary Cities, and State-Local Conflicts.” At issue was whether cities have or should have free speech rights that override state laws restricting their expression. 

Professors Richard Schragger and Molly Brady, both of whom study local governments, cities, and property, participated, as well as Professor Yishai Blank, a visiting professor at Harvard Law School and professor at Tel-Aviv University who studies land use and local government. The three professors discussed the relationship between states and cities, with a focus on Virginia and Charlottesville. One of the main issues discussed was whether a city such as Charlottesville might have a free-speech argument against the state’s ban on removal of Confederate statues. In other words, as Schragger put it, is the city being “forced to speak” by the state’s ban?

 Brady gave a brief history of Virginia’s ban on monument removal, which went into statewide effect in 1904. The state’s ordinance, § 15.2-1812, prohibits localities from disturbing or interfering with war monuments, although it’s gone through several iterations since its original focus on Confederate monuments. In its current form, it covers all additional wars since the Civil War. She said the issue now is “what happens when the city no longer wants to be associated with the message of the monuments, but the state is forcing them?” While cities have largely been beholden to state regulations, they have gained some rights against the state, such as in the realm of takings doctrine. 

Blank suggested it might be possible to conceive of a regime where cities were granted free speech rights and compared cities to corporations, which under decisions such as Citizens United, have been treated more like individuals when it comes to free speech. He noted that there are pros and cons to this approach, and that for “city speech,” the line between expression and action is a very difficult one. He said city speech could encompass maintaining statues, raising flags, Black Lives Matter signs on town halls, or be as broad as covering lobbying activities, which are currently covered for corporations. “But if all this is protected under the First Amendment,” he said, “there could be huge ramifications.”

One potentially positive ramification might be that cities could counter corporate influence in politics. Blank also noted that the state’s politics is more recently reflecting partisanship on the national level, and giving cities First Amendment rights might prevent federal and state encroachment on local politics. But he was careful to emphasize that cities wouldn’t be totally unregulated in their speech, since they would still have to show a compelling interest. And some cities might use opt-out mechanisms for citizens so that their money would not be used for speech with which they disagree. 

 Schragger explained that our concept of cities is not that of an individual entity with rights, but rather as an entity of the state that exercises power. At the same time, they’re also subordinate to the state, creating tension. He discussed SB 4 introduced in Texas, which would not only ban cities from becoming sanctuary cities, but would keep cities from endorsing such policies. He also noted that there was nothing Charlottesville could have done to prevent Unite the Right or Ku Klux Klan members from openly carrying weapons during their rallies, because state law preempts them from doing so. And of course, if the city wants to remove confederate monuments, the state forbids it. In effect, he said, the city “can only speak in the form of monuments at the state’s sufferance.”

“We might say as a policy matter, it doesn’t make sense for the state to decide what monuments to put up in any locality,” he continued. “Why would they care?” States might decide to regulate cities when desiring uniformity or when there is oppression of minorities, but those arguments aren’t especially compelling in the case of monuments. Schragger posed the question of whether a first amendment doctrine could remedy the vulnerability of cities, as well as whether we want it to. 

Brady noted that in the context of takings law, special doctrines were created to address the rights of municipalities. She suggested that a similar doctrine for the speech of cities might be a baby step toward addressing some of these issues. Blank brought up the ways cities are treated like corporations, such as in the bankruptcy context. He noted that in the federalism context, we have safeguards for states, such as representation in Congress, but an equivalent representation of cities’ at the state level might be seen as unconstitutional due to the one-person, one-vote doctrine. 

One audience member brought up the possibility of using referenda for citizens of a city to decide to remove a statue, and asked if such a mechanism might be permitted. The panelists agreed that this strategy would get closer to representing the speech of the citizens, but that generally, in Dillon’s Rule in states like Virginia, the state would win in the end. Blank mentioned a referendum from the 1980s in Washington, D.C. on medical marijuana, the votes of which Congress kept from being counted. That move provoked widespread disapproval and Blank agreed that a referendum gets closer to the nexus of the city and the citizens of the city. 

On the question of current politics in Virginia, Schragger said that both Governor McAuliffe and Attorney General Mark Herring have come down on the side of localities in deciding whether to take down monuments, although exit polls from the recent Virginia elections showed people favoring keeping monuments by a margin of about sixty to thirty. “What puzzles me as a conceptual matter is why the state would care, and yet the state cares deeply—the citizens—the culture, they care deeply even if they’ve never seen the monuments.” 

While the debate over speech rights of cities has yet to be resolved, it’s certain that contentious issues like Confederate monuments and sanctuary cities will keep it alive.

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kmm2vb@virginia.edu

Virginia Elections 2017: With Wins Like This, Who Needs Losses?

Gregory Ranzini '18
(he/him/his)
News Editor

By all indications, Democrats are pretty excited about their performance in last week’s Virginia elections.  Lieutenant Governor Ralph Northam will trade up to Governor.  Polls leading up to the election suggesting that his Republican opponent Ed Gillespie might be able to pull out a win by appealing to neo-Confederates turned out to be incorrect.  In the Thirteenth District, journalist and metal guitarist Danica Roem won election as America’s first openly transgender state legislator, defeating Bob Marshall, the self-proclaimed “chief homophobe” of Virginia who authored our state’s version of the “bathroom bill.”  Democrats made up a great deal of lost ground in the House of Delegates, as a whole turning fifteen red seats blue.  Good news, certainly, but far from adequate.  Current projections have the GOP clinging to a 51-49 seat majority.  This, in a year more-or-less defined by Republican political scandals, and coming on the heels of a presidential election in which the Democratic candidate won Virginia by better than five percent, is nothing short of an embarrassment.

Failed Republican gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie next to a screen capture from his campaign television ad. Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Steve Helber/AP; screen capture from ad, Getty Images.

Failed Republican gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie next to a screen capture from his campaign television ad. Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Steve Helber/AP; screen capture from ad, Getty Images.

Granted, much of this discrepancy can of course be attributed to voter suppression brought about by Virginia’s new voter ID law, and much of the rest is owed to gerrymandering.  As chairman of the Republican National Committee, Ed Gillespie (yes, that Ed Gillespie) implemented a program called REDMAP, which sought to make the GOP’s 2010 election victories permanent by shamelessly drawing unrepresentative districts.  It was a runaway success and a big part of why Republicans can expect a House of Delegates majority despite garnering barely 4/5 as as many total votes as Democrats in last Tuesday’s election.  Indeed, they’re downright gleeful about it.  The project’s website—yes, it has a website—describes the effort thusly:

The rationale was straightforward:  Controlling the redistricting process in these states would have the greatest impact on determining how both state legislative and congressional district boundaries would be drawn.  Drawing new district lines in states with the most redistricting activity presented the opportunity to solidify conservative policymaking at the state level and maintain a Republican stronghold in the U.S. House of Representatives for the next decade.

REDMAP’s effect on the 2012 election is plain when analyzing the results: Pennsylvanians cast 83,000 more votes for Democratic U.S. House candidates than their Republican opponents, but elected a 13-5 Republican majority to represent them in Washington; Michiganders cast over 240,000 more votes for Democratic congressional candidates than Republicans, but still elected a 9-5 Republican delegation to Congress.  Nationwide, Republicans won 54 percent of the U.S. House seats, along with 58 of 99 state legislative chambers, while winning only 8 of 33 U.S. Senate races and carrying only 47.8 percent of the national presidential vote.

With the 2020 Census fast approaching, the Republicans have already gone to work shoring up their firewall against fair elections.  One of their lower-profile recent efforts has been hobbling the Census Bureau, which the GAO recently placed on its “High Risk List,” citing pernicious underfunding, inadequate IT systems, and untested procedural changes.  Republicans have moved to cut back on human enumerators in favor of online responses, with the apparent overall objective of suppressing the count in low-income and minority neighborhoods and skewing representation.  Democrats, for their part, seem to just be counting on the voters rescuing them in time to avoid another lost decade, which makes it that much more galling that the Democratic Party of Virginia made such a pathetic showing last week.

At press time, four Delegate races had a margin of less than one half of one percent: the 94th District (by 13 votes), the 28th District (by 84 votes), the 40th District (by 115 votes), and the 27th District (by 125 votes).  Republicans led or had been declared the winners in all of them.  In all, eleven races had been decided by a margin of less than five percent—the widest, the 100th District, by a mere 1004 votes.  In a further ten races, the Democratic Party failed to field a candidate at all.  These are not wave election numbers: these are missed opportunities.  Voter suppression and gerrymandering played their roles, but it is hard to deny that even the slightest improvement in voter enthusiasm—fewer than a hundred additional votes spread across the right districts—could have given the Dems the statehouse.  

So, what did the Democratic Party of Virginia try this time to avoid a repeat of 2016’s drubbing?  Same-old, same-old: not content to let the populist (and popular) former Representative Tom Perriello go uncontested in the primary, Governor McAuliffe, Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring, Dominion Energy, and the entire Virginia Democratic House and Senate Caucuses threw their weight behind Lieutenant Governor Ralph Northam.  Sure, Perriello had already received the endorsements of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Khizr Khan, but what did they know?  Everyone knows that Bernie Sanders isn’t a real Democrat, after all—not like Ralph Northam, whose votes for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004 we’re apparently supposed to forgive because he “didn’t pay much attention to politics” at the time.

And so on.  Point being, less than a year after an election cycle in which the Democratic establishment’s compulsive habit of putting its thumb on the scale nearly tore the party apart, their solution for rebuilding trust in the leadership was to do it all over again, but this time with a milquetoast ex-Republican as nominee.  That it (mostly) worked is a testament less to Northam’s nonexistent political instincts than it is to Virginia voters being well and truly fed up.  Not that Northam still didn’t do his utmost to throw the election.

Faced with a blitz of racist Gillespie TV and radio ads, Northam couldn’t muster the guts to stand up for minority Virginians.  Instead, he rushed to co-opt the Right’s policies, pledging to ban so-called “sanctuary cities” and report undocumented immigrants to ICE.  Rather than pledge to raise Virginia’s minimum wage from the federal floor, the best Northam could offer Virginian workers were limp, vacuous buzzwords like “job training,” “apprenticeships,” and “STEAM.”  Again and again, Northam opted to play within the constraints imposed upon him by his opponent, as if daring to dream just a little bit bigger would somehow make him a less sober and realistic candidate than a professional lobbyist pretending to be a good old boy.  Had Northam been even an iota more sincere, he should have had no difficulty rolling over Gillespie, a carpetbagger from New Jersey whose strategy consisted of wrapping himself in the Stars and Bars and dog-whistling about “Southern Heritage.”  Northam could with minimal effort have brought another half-dozen seats along on his coat-tails.  Instead, we’re going into the all-important 2019 House of Delegates elections with a Republican majority, and the Democratic Party is too busy patting each other on the back to realize how close they came to losing everything.

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gpr7qx@virginia.edu

An Auction for Altruism: PILA 2017

Gregory Ranzini ‘18
(he/him/his)
News Editor

The Board of PILA enjoys the fruits of their labors. Photo courtesy of Jason Boyle 

The Board of PILA enjoys the fruits of their labors. Photo courtesy of Jason Boyle 

This year marks my third (and final) opportunity to review the PILA Auction, and, to be completely honest, I’m tired of it—tired of writing about it, of course, but also tired of the auction itself.  All indications were that those in attendance this Saturday shared my ennui.  It was the usual crowd.  Gangly 1Ls wobbled about on the dancefloor and made small-talk with their sections.  Jaded 2Ls hovered near the bid sheets, optimizing their strategy.  At the appointed time, flush 3Ls took a break from cycling repeatedly through the bar line (“Do you know where the ATM is? I need more cash for the bar—go to the one on that end; she makes them strong as fuck…”) to tender outrageous sums for the usual live-auction junkets.  The usual polo-shirted rent-a-cops wandered listlessly through the crowd, and the usual modicum of two professors served as auctioneers.

This year’s faculty representatives, Professors Jaffe and Geis, decked out in top hats and glowing bow-ties, did their level best to drum up enthusiasm for last year’s auction items, with mixed success: dessert with outgoing President Sullivan and Professor Laycock seems to have lost much of its shine, but Pokémon Go with Professors Schwartzman and Kendrick has held its value far better than the fad cellphone game itself.  For all that the evening went according to plan, however, there was an edge of desperation in Professor Geis’s voice as he hawked a weeklong beach-house rental with “An! Out! Door! Shower!” and came to realize just how few people were listening, even among those who could hear over the din.

There were a few differences from last year, of course.  The Omni replaced its square flatbread pizzas with triangular flatbread pizzas.  (The recipe, unfortunately, was unchanged, as was the management’s puzzling belief that garage-door floodlights adequately substitute for heat lamps.  Also: who puts out chicken satay without satay sauce?  Barbarians, that’s who.) Notwithstanding worries in the weeks leading up to this year’s auction that there would not be sufficient items to hold a full silent auction, the tables were packed. But it was absolutely the case that there were more duplicate items in the silent auction this year, and less variety generally— although there was a tremendous variety of Robert F. Kennedy-themed tchotchkes, for whatever reason.  Faced with a bank of one-topping pizza vouchers and a heavily-marked down Derriere de Soie fitting party, priced to move because it didn’t sell last year, a (male) 3L commented to me, “I don’t need another incentive to eat pizza, but I’d buy that lingerie shit, fuck.”  Two very tiny garden gnomes seemed almost to accuse the indifferent masses who passed by their bid sheets without a second look. 

To be clear—there was nothing particularly wrong with this year’s event.  But there wasn’t anything particularly memorable about it, either.  I was probably not the only who entertained a vague fantasy throughout that perhaps it was still November 12, 2016—that I had forgotten something in the coat-check and returned to the venue to find the bid-sheets erased, the chafing dishes refilled, and the dried-up ballpoint pens replaced with other, equally dried-up ballpoint pens.  I expect that next year will probably see a return to the same venue with a few incremental changes—a new, equally imperceptible theme, at the very least, and perhaps the return of drinking tickets.  It will probably not see the return of 2015’s sullen, Kraftwerk-cosplaying DJ, beer-slicked and perilously canted floor, or mildly inebriated Uber drivers—and that’s probably an improvement. See Gregory Ranzini, Sold: PILA Auction a Success, Raises Money for a Good Cause, Virginia Law Weekly, Nov. 4, 2015, at 2 (“Conscientious to a T, she had us confirm that our chosen drop-off point, the bus stop at the foot of the law school law, was ‘a safe spot to walk from,’ because ‘you don’t look like fighters.’”).  But there’s still probably some room to innovate, at least so long as we don’t return to the Jefferson Theater.  Wherever the auction is, however, the Law Weekly will be there with the story next year.

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gpr7qx@virginia.edu

It’s Better When She’s Here: An Interview with Dean Davies

Jenna Goldman ‘18
(she/her/hers)
Editor-in-Chief

Lia-Michelle Keane ‘18
(she/her/hers)
Features Editor

Assistant Dean for Student Affairs Sarah DaviesPhoto courtesy of University of Virginia School of Law

Assistant Dean for Student Affairs Sarah Davies
Photo courtesy of University of Virginia School of Law

August 26, 2017 was a picturesque summer day. Dean Sarah Davies was out for a ride with friends, trotting with her horse, Claudia. A barn and rolling hills served as the backdrop for a routine, leisurely ride before the bustle of the fall semester began. 

Davies, who started riding at the age of nine, is an accomplished equestrian. Beginning when she her horse a year and a half ago, she rode four to five times per week. Earlier this summer, Davies and Claudia took home two blue ribbons in shows, and two days before the accident she signed up for another competition in cross-country jumping. 

“She is part draft horse so she looks big and stocky, but she is so light on her feet,” said Davies. 

The horses were grazing in a field adjacent to the dressage and jumping arenas when Davies signaled for her horse to lift her head up from the grass. Then, out of nowhere, her normally docile horse took off at a bucking gallop. Claudia took the bit in her teeth so Davies had no control to stop her from tearing across the field and leaping the barrier around the dressage ring as she galloped towards the nearby barn. 

    Luckily, Davies’s years of training took over. She stood up in the stirrups and leaned over her horse like a jockey, desperate to remain on the animal.

“I remember thinking, if I let go, I will fall and I will die.”

As the horse ran full speed toward the barn, Claudia suddenly made a sharp left, and the saddle slipped to the right, causing Davies to fall to the ground. 

“I don’t remember falling,” Davies said. “My friends followed behind me, one of them called 911 while chasing me at a full gallop.” Davies was unconscious for two to three minutes before coming to.

She spent the next week in intensive care with a broken clavicle, scapula, seven broken ribs on her right side and a broken tibia plateau (her knee) on her left side. In all, she broke ten bones and sustained a concussion and temporary nerve damage to her right hand. 

 “It could have been so much worse,” said Davies, “Because of the strength I built up from riding intensively for the last year and a half, I was able to hold on [to the horse] for much longer than I would have if I didn’t have the strength.” 

Davies quickly went into surgery to place a titanium plate in her clavicle. “I’m a million dollar woman!” she joked as she discussed the procedure. 

After recovering in a rehabilitation hospital for two weeks and at home for four weeks, Davies returned to the Law School. The day before this interview, nine and a half weeks after the accident, Dean Davies was finally cleared to walk without crutches.

When asked whether she will ever get back on the horse, she replied, “Right now, I don’t know.” Davies still has about a year’s worth of recovery left on her knee alone before she will be able to withstand the physical demands of riding.

 “Then there is the mental aspect.” Throughout her life as an equestrian, Davies dreaded losing control of a galloping horse. “My biggest fear was realized, and that will be a big mental hurdle for me to overcome.”  

There is also the anger and frustration that came with such a devastating injury. “I’m mad at my horse. It is totally irrational, but I feel like she took away something I love,” Davies said emotionally. “Riding was a place I could go to decompress—I am always a ‘future thinker’—and riding helped me stay present.” 

Davies applauded the help and support she received from her colleagues. “Lisa and Kate have been tremendous in handling my workload while I was recovering.” Lisa Napier and Kate Duvall kept Davies informed of school happenings, but relieved her of the stress of the day-to-day administration of the office.

“I am so thankful the Law School let us hire Kate. It was so important to have an office that can be fully functional even if one of us is absent,” Davies continued, praising Duvall for seamlessly taking over many aspects of Student Affairs during Davies’s recovery. 

Initially, Davies underestimated the amount of time she would need to recover. She said with a laugh, “I called Lisa and said ‘I will be back in the office in two weeks.’”  

While describing her experience in the hospital and later in rehab, Davies said, “It was hard to disconnect. I wanted to be there to welcome the incoming first years and be there for my 2L and 3L students.”

“I’m impatient to be better—it’s hard to let other people take care of you when you are usually the one taking care of others.” This is a lesson she hopes to impart to her students: “Many lawyers are not comfortable asking for help, but it is the healthiest thing to do. There is no shame in asking for help.” 

That, and to be careful out there: “Three weeks before my accident, my husband totaled his motorcycle. In both of our accidents, we were wearing helmets, and they saved our lives. You can’t plan for such traumatic events.” 

 “It’s great to be back,” Davies said with a smile. “The doctor cleared me to start going back part-time on a Friday and I was at the Law School the following Monday.” 

As positive as Davies remains about being back, recovering from the concussion made going back to work difficult. Even the half days were exhausting: “As soon as I got home I would sleep for the rest of the day. I now feel so much experiential empathy for students with concussions.” 

As shocking as the accident was, Davies saw the silver lining in the experience: “When awful things happen, it’s okay to say they are awful—but you need to find what is joyous and good. I forced myself to find things to be grateful for and it helped me through the toughest points in my recovery.” 

Davies was appreciative of the outpouring of love and support she received from the UVa Law community. She read each card, email, and banner she received while in the hospital and at home. “At UVa Law we really do look out for one another.”  

Dean Davies is slowly but surely marching back to her active self, and encourages all students to stop by her office to introduce themselves or to just say hello! 

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jmg3db@virginia.edu

lk3da@virginia.edu

 

Virginia Votes: An Election Preview

Jansen VanderMeulen '19
(he/him/his)
Executive Editor

Gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie. Photo courtesy of the Richmond Times Dispatch.

Gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie. Photo courtesy of the Richmond Times Dispatch.

Gubernatorial candidate Ralph Northam. Photo courtesy of the Richmond Times Dispatch.

Gubernatorial candidate Ralph Northam. Photo courtesy of the Richmond Times Dispatch.

Diligent students of American politics will know that most American states hold statewide elections in even-numbered years to coincide with federal elections. There are five exceptions: Kentucky, Mississippi, and Louisiana, which hold statewide elections during the year prior to presidential elections; and New Jersey and Virginia, which elect their statewide officials in the year following the election of the president. These elections are often viewed, fairly or not, as signs of political things to come; the 2009 election of Republicans Chris Christie and Bob McDonnell as governors of, respectively, New Jersey and Virginia—held just a year after Barack Obama’s election as President—was widely interpreted as a harbinger of the 2010 Republican wave in Congress.

Virginia is unique among the fifty states in another way: It is the only state to forbid its governors from serving consecutive terms. As such, Governor Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat elected in 2013, is ineligible to seek re-election, and Virginia will have a new governor in January of 2018. Virginia Republicans nominated Ed Gillespie, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee under George W. Bush and unsuccessful nominee for the U.S. Senate in 2014. The Virginia Democratic Party nominated Lieutenant Governor Ralph Northam, a physician and former state senator. Northam defeated former Congressman Tom Periello (D-Charlottesville) in a fiercely contested primary election that many in the national media portrayed as “a Hillary Clinton-Bernie Sanders redux,”1 with Northam representing the more moderate Clinton wing.

Accompanied on election night only by a sleepy New Jersey gubernatorial election—Chris Christie’s lieutenant governor, Republican Kim Guadagno, is expected to lose handily to Democratic financier Phil Murphy in the shadow of Christie’s woeful approval ratings—Virginia’s election for governor has attracted an outsized spotlight of polling and commentary. Gillespie ran a surprisingly close race for Senate in 2014, nearly pulling off a massive upset to defeat popular Democratic Sen. Mark Warner even as Virginia continues to lean more Democratic.2 Northam, meanwhile, cruised to victory in 2013, pummeling Republican minister E.W. Jackson 55–45 even as McAuliffe only narrowly defeated conservative Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. Focus on the race grew with the competitive Northam-Periello primary, and expanded further when Gillespie had more difficulty than expected in defeating Prince William County Board of Supervisors Chair Corey Stewart in the Republican primary. Stewart, a native Minnesotan and staunch supporter of President Donald Trump, centered his campaign around “protecting Virginia’s heritage,”3 including its Confederate statues, and derisively labeled Gillespie “Establishment Ed.” On election night, Gillespie defeated Stewart by fewer than 5,000 votes out of more than 365,000 cast.

Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe. Photo courtesy of CNN.

Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe. Photo courtesy of CNN.

The resulting general election campaign has been sharp-elbowed and well funded. Virginians with television sets are by now well versed in each side’s attacks: Gillespie, says Northam, is a Trump-loving, neoconfederate apologist who would inflict a Handmaid’s Tale-like future on Virginia’s women. Northam, according to Gillespie, is soft on MS-13—the notorious Central American gang—and out to erase Virginia’s glorious Confederate history. Northam raised more than $7 million in September alone, while Gillespie pulled in nearly $4.5 million in the same time period. Polling of the race is wildly divergent. A Hampton University poll from October 25 had Gillespie up eight points,4 while an October 30 poll from Quinnipiac University gave Northam a seventeen-point lead.5 The Real Clear Politics average has Northam leading by 3.3 percent.6 History says Northam is favored: In nine of its last ten gubernatorial elections, Virginia has elected the candidate of the party out of the White House. The one exception? McAuliffe’s narrow 2013 victory, which was seen as a symptom of Virginia’s continued drift to the Democratic column. Once reliably Republican—the commonwealth voted Republican in every presidential election between 1964 and 2008—Virginia has moved leftward with the explosive growth of the affluent Northern Virginia suburbs, voting twice for Barack Obama and most recently for Hillary Clinton in 2016. With conflicting polling and mudslinging on both sides, Northam’s advantage with polling and cash-on-hand make him the smart bet. But wise Law School community members will remember the unreliable polls of 2016 and proceed with caution in making predictions.

Alongside the gubernatorial election, Virginians will cast ballots for lieutenant governor and attorney general. In the lieutenant governor race, ex-federal prosecutor and Venable attorney Justin Fairfax (D) faces off against attorney and state Sen. Jill Vogel (R). Fairfax would be Virginia’s first black statewide official since Democratic Gov. Doug Wilder left office in 1994. While Northam has advocated for the removal of Confederate statutes in the wake of the August 11 and 12 Charlottesville rallies, Fairfax has trod more carefully, calling for the issue to be handled locally. Vogel has tried to toe a difficult line between old and new Virginia: Her campaign has reached out to socially liberal Northern Virginians by handing out rainbow stickers at LGBT parades, but she was known in the legislature as a sponsor of Virginia’s transvaginal ultrasound bill. While less prominent than the gubernatorial race, the lieutenant governor’s race is also expected to be close.

Finally, Virginians will select an attorney general. Incumbent Democrat Mark Herring is seeking re-election, challenged by a Republican with a famous name: Richmond attorney John Adams. Herring won Virginia’s narrowest race in 2013, defeating fellow state Sen. Mark Obenshain (R) by just over 800 votes, but is favored over Adams going into Tuesday’s election. Adams, a McGuireWoods attorney and former clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas, criticized the incumbent over his “political” refusal to defend the commonwealth’s constitutional amendment that limited marriage to one man and one woman prior to the Obergefell decision.7 Herring defended his tenure, noting his work to eradicate human trafficking.8

Virginia’s elections will be held Tuesday, November 7. For those anxious to know what 2018 holds in the Age of Trump, Tuesday’s elections could be a good indicator of what is to come.

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jmv5af@virginia.edu

1 https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/06/virginia-primary-2017-governors-race-perriello-northam/530082/

2 https://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/virginia-senate-ed-gillespie-mark-warner-112631

3 http://www.npr.org/2017/06/13/532704812/trump-looms-over-both-democratic-and-gop-primaries-for-virginia-governor

4 http://wtkr.com/2017/10/25/hampton-university-poll-shows-gillespie-leading-by-8-points-in-virginia-a-race/

5 http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/357824-poll-northam-leads-gillespie-by-17-in-virginia-gov-race

6https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2017/governor/va/virginia_governor_gillespie_vs_northam-6197.html

7 http://freebeacon.com/issues/gop-opponent-says-gun-control-money-proof-mark-herring-political-animal/

8 https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/virginia-attorney-general-candidates-release-dueling-ads/2017/10/04/5ef2f186-a917-11e7-850e-2bdd1236be5d_story.html?utm_term=.480521cdb24d

 

SBA Endorses Open Letter to Student Records Office

Eric Hall '18
(he/him/his)
Managing Editor

Last Tuesday, October 24th, the Student Bar Association voted unanimously to endorse an open letter to Dean Dugas and the Student Records Office. The letter, printed in its entirety below, strikes a cooperative tone in asking the SRO to make changes that would make class registration easier and more organized. Although the suggestions are modest, many of the letter’s signers expressed general frustration with the SRO, and are hopeful that it will open the door to more accommodating academic and class registration policies. 

The letter’s primary sponsor, 3L Pheobe Willis, has offered the letter in her mailbox for students to sign until Thursday evening. So far 170 students, and the SBA have endorsed it. The letter reads as follows:

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ech8vm@virginia.edu

Dear Student Records Office,

In the spirit of cooperation, and with sincere acknowledgement of the hard work and effort of the UVA Law Student Records Officer (SRO), we write with the goal of collaborating on the ideas below designed to improve the course registration process. This letter is the result of a productive conversation among a group of 3Ls reflecting on shared experiences with the current course registration process. We have gathered signatures from a broad and diverse group of students to show support, not only for these ideas, but also for the hope that the SRO’s proven commitment to UVA Law students will encourage its support for and the implementation of these ideas. 

We thank you in advance for your consideration of our suggestions and welcome your feedback. You can count on us to follow-up on these ideas and work towards their implementation.

We ask that course registration be left open over one weekend in the summer in addition to a few days during the week. Many students work during the week and do not feel comfortable conducting, or are unable to conduct, personal business on work computers. 

We ask that 3L class sign-up not be scheduled over fall break. This is a time when many 3L students travel to see family and it seems counterintuitive to make students sign up for classes when they are supposed to be on a break. The tentative academic calendar on the law school website has the 2018 fall break dates as October 8-10th and we ask that 3L registration not take place on these dates.

We ask that the SRO send out calendar invites to students for registration deadlines that students can accept and place on their personal calendars. This would alleviate the influx of emails the SRO receives from students trying to find the dates, serve as a built-in reminder for students and make this information easier for all to access. Currently, Darden utilizes such a process, which provides a helpful roadmap to implementing a calendar invite-based system.

The UVA Law Students below have thoughtfully considered the suggestions above and sign their name in full support of each idea’s implementation.

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paw2vg@virginia.edu

Young Children Terrorize North Grounds

Eric Hall '18
(he/him/his)
Managing Editor

Last Monday, on the eve of All Hallows Eve, miniature monsters and munchkin-sized superheroes overtook Spies Garden at the annual Halloween Carnival. Professors, law students, and faculty brought their kids to school to sample the tricks and treats 1L sections had on offer. Groups of 1Ls offered all variety of sweet eats including frosted donuts dangled from strings, and spooky cupcakes handed out without fuss. For games, 1Ls delivered a wheel of fortune with prizes, witch’s hat ring-toss, and—our personal favorite—Section C’s professional mummy wrapping services. 

Cdr. Emma Ospina trains with a donut in anticipation of a zero gravity environment. Photo courtesy of Eric Hall.

Cdr. Emma Ospina trains with a donut in anticipation of a zero gravity environment. Photo courtesy of Eric Hall.

The Community Fellows group brought a basin of apples for bobbing where sisters Kyoko and Ryoko (pictured) could be found sparring with a pair of Honeycrisps that refused to be bit. Their mother, Shoko Terasaka, is an LLM candidate from Japan.  Nearby, LLM-candidate Maria Londono’s daughter Commander Emma Ospina (pictured; dressed in a NASA flight suit) took chunks out of a suspended frosted donut. Charles Cain, a 1L, and his wife Anita brought their human child, Teddy, and their canine child, Chevy, both dressed as Paddington Bear. 

Olivia and her mother, Kate Duvall, attempt to rehab the scary image of witches. Photo courtesy of Eric Hall.

Olivia and her mother, Kate Duvall, attempt to rehab the scary image of witches. Photo courtesy of Eric Hall.

Professors and faculty were eager to get in on the fun. Kate Duvall, appeared escorted by Batman (son Charlie) and a mysterious cat-like witch (daughter Olivia). And Professor George Geis was stalked into the courtyard by terrifying T-Rex. With the latest Halloween Carnival, UVa Law continued a time-honored tradition of gathering law school families for some fall-time fun.

Ryoko Terasaka gets some assistance with her apple bob as her sister, Unicorn Kyoko looks on. Photo courtesy of Eric Hall

Ryoko Terasaka gets some assistance with her apple bob as her sister, Unicorn Kyoko looks on. Photo courtesy of Eric Hall

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ech8vm@virginia.edu

In Search of Common Ground

Jenna Goldman '18
(she/her/hers)
Editor-in-Chief

From left to right, Hamna Ahamad and Robert Smith participate in the CLG discussion. Photo courtesy of Eric Hall.

From left to right, Hamna Ahamad and Robert Smith participate in the CLG discussion. Photo courtesy of Eric Hall.

Common Law Grounds’s first symposium titled “Of Bubbles and Biases: The Press and Democratic Dialogue,” took place last Friday, October 20th, in Caplin Pavilion.

Professor Deborah Hellman, faculty sponsor and founder of Common Law Grounds, began the day by quoting a portion of the organization’s mission: “To encourage discussion and debate among students and faculty across the ideological spectrum with the goal of identifying and articulating areas of agreement about core values and practices.”

She introduced Dean Risa Goluboff, who gave introductory remarks.

“How do you create dialogue across our differences?” Goluboff asked the audience. “With mutual respect.” She answered— a point woven through her speech. 

“We are in a profession that is all about dialogue, open discourse, and persuasion,” Goluboff reminded the audience. “We don’t always agree, and that’s not the assumption that will happen at the end of the day.” 

She believes that the Law School is uniquely situated to tackle difficult conversations because of the school’s reputation for collegiality and the diverse intellectual community on North Grounds.

“I think we are a place that has dialogue across difference because we are committed to each other and we are committed to our community.” 

The first panel brought together four editors and reporters to discuss “Challenges Facing Journalists.” 

Richard Leiby, senior writer at the Washington Post, started the remarks off with a satirical description of the “Fake News desk at the Washington Post,” garnering laughs as he illustrated a news room out of a Donald Trump fantasy. He went on to discuss the problem of normalizing the term “fake news.”

Quoting a Politico poll, Leiby said, “Nearly half of all voters believe that the news media fabricate news stories about President Trump.” He went on to say that even though three-quarters of the public think the media is biased, three-quarters of the public also think that the media is important in keeping politicians accountable.

Media bashing is not a new phenomenon. Leiby noted that Thomas Jefferson was not always a fan of how he was portrayed by the press during his Presidency and famously said, “Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper.” 

In that same breath, Leiby quoted a letter Jefferson wrote to Edward Carrington in 1787 on the subject of freedom of the press:

“And were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them.”

He ended his introduction with a call to action: “Report as rigorously as possible. Nothing is riding on it except the freedom of the press, the first amendment, and maybe the future of the country.”

Robert Blau, a managing editor at Bloomberg News, echoed Leiby, “The cries of fake news come daily, the very legitimacy of reporting has come into question.”  He referenced the reporter who was body-slammed by Montana Congressman Greg Gianforte and the recent murder of the investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in Malta. 

From left to right, Professor Deborah Hellman and Robert Blau, Managing Editor at Bloomberg News, speak at CLG Symposium. Photo courtesy of Eric Hall.

From left to right, Professor Deborah Hellman and Robert Blau, Managing Editor at Bloomberg News, speak at CLG Symposium. Photo courtesy of Eric Hall.

“How did this remarkable shift come about?” posed Blau. He surmised it was a building combination of mistakes of judgment, the inability to read carefully ideological shifts, and the failure to report on stories that have been hiding in plain sight for decades (like sexual harassment at the hands of public figures and the opiod epidemic). 

Paige Lavender, Senior Politics Editor and Assignment Editor at Huffington Post, focused on the problem of perception. “People have different understandings of what truth is,” said Lavender. “You can’t just say ‘Trump tweeted this’ without immediately getting pushback.” 

Lavender gave the example of the announcement by President Trump that transgender service members are no longer welcome to join the military. Soon after, CNN reported that Trump did not speak to the Joint Chiefs of Staff before issuing the ban. “Just repeating those facts directly puts into people’s minds a bias.” 

“Even when you are working in facts there will be some interpretation, and that’s something that I think about every day and am mindful of in my reporting.”

Peter Hasson, an associate editor at The Daily Caller, suggested that the most serious problem facing journalists now is the lack of trust, which he says underscores the importance to have honest journalism in all arenas.

“It’s not entirely surprising that as people segregate themselves politically, they are doing it in how they consume their news as well.” Hasson elaborated, “There are going to be people who don’t trust the Washington Post, even though it produces great journalism, and will turn to sources like Alex Jones or Breitbart, and that’s not good for anyone.” He ended with the point that it is the responsibility of right and left leaning publications to report the facts, regardless of what their audience wants to hear.

Michael Barthel, of Pew Research, and Dr. Meredith Clark, a UVa Media Studies professor, participated in the second panel called “State of the Media.” Moderated by former Time reporter and 2017 UVa Law graduate Adam Sorenson, the discussion centered on the empirics of studying the media.

Barthel shared facts discerned from Pew’s polling during the election. “There’s a fifty-seven point gap in approval ratings of the media between Democrats and Republicans, the largest gap we have seen since we began tracking in 1995.” 

Fox News was the main campaign news source for Trump voters, while no single source was as pronounced for Clinton voters. 

The way Americans consume media is dramatically changing; Barthel reported that the web is closing in on television as a source for news (going from a ninteen-point gap in 2016 to a seven-point gap in 2017). Two-thirds of US adults get news from social media. 

Dr. Clark’s research focuses on the intersection of race, media, and power. “Four out of ten black people say the news they consume does not accurately reflect their community” says Clark. “The people I interview say they don’t see their communities covered in the legacy media, so they don’t look to those outlets anymore.” 

The ideological rift grows because the default news source for many Americans is social media: “Filter bubbles and algorithms mean that we can have two distinct experiences,” making it difficult to parse fact from opinion.  

The solution? Clark says, “Reach out and build trust in those communities by covering them.”

When addressing the elephant in the room, Sorensen asked, “Even when confronted with facts that may counter what they believe, some people hold to their beliefs even more strongly. What do we do?”

A difficult question, to which Barthel replied, “Now we have access to more facts than ever before, maybe we just like to watch them wiz by?” He ended by recounting a quotation written on the wall at Pew, “Give the people the facts and let them decide.”

The event concluded in an exercise and discussion called the “Bubble Challenge.” The exercise involved reading a series of articles by different publications about Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, and ended with a long term charge to “consume media from sources students would not normally read for two weeks in an effort to get out of our bubbles.”

Keisha James ’18, who attended the event and participated in the exercise summarized it like this: “One of the main takeaways—for me—from the last presentation was that we should continue engaging in these conversations even if we don’t think we’ll be able to persuade someone else of our view.”

As for the challenge, “There are some ‘sources’ that I view as being abhorrent and will never view or read, but I do think I’ll consider looking at more conservative news sources as part of the challenge.” 

James said she particularly enjoyed learning more about Dr. Clark’s research on media coverage of communities of color. “I think one of the main challenges is getting more voices in the room, and making sure these dialogues are inclusive.” 

If you missed the event but want to watch the first panel, it will be posted on the UVa homepage in the coming days.

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jmg3db@virginia.edu

Clashes at City Council

Jenna Goldman '18
(she/her/hers)
Editor-in-Chief

The Charlottesville City Council meeting on Monday, October 16 attracted a crowd of over 100 residents to participate in public comment on the city council’s response to the violent “Unite the Right” rallies in Charlottesville on August 11 and 12. 

Charlottesville citizens listen to public comments. Photo courtesy of Jenna Goldman.

Charlottesville citizens listen to public comments. Photo courtesy of Jenna Goldman.

Though there were no metal detectors or bag searches that occurred before entering the City Hall building on East Main Street on the Downtown Mall, there were two police officers at the door of the building, two more at the front of the city council meeting room, and one patrolling the hall. 

Roughly twenty minutes before the start of the meeting, the room was filled and a palpable anger hung in the air. Sixty-five days after the protests, emotions were still raw. 

Vice Mayor Wes Bellamy opened the meeting outlining the agenda, from the start of the public hearing about the proposed responses to the KKK rallies on July 8, and the “Unite the Right” rallies on August 11-12. In reference to the extended public comment period, Bellamy said, “Those who are passionate in the quest for change and equity, and those who are emotionally scarred must be heard.” Each member was allotted three minutes to speak.

After the public comments the commission was slated to discuss an independent citizen review board about housing rent vouchers. Bellamy also remarked that he hoped the meeting would remain civil so the council could address the remaining agenda items.

Councilor Kristin Szakos presided over the public comment portion of the meeting and made a point that disruption and use of foul language would not be tolerated, motioning to the police officers standing in the back of the room. Protestors had shut down the previous week’s meeting.  

The meeting lasted two hours, and two dozen people stood up to speak before the council on a variety of issues. 

Many members discussed the changing of the hastily named “Emancipation Park,” formerly known as “Lee Park,” where the now-shrouded statue of Robert E. Lee still stands at the center of the downtown district, blocks from city hall. One woman suggested the name be changed to a more neutral “Charlottesville City Park” or “Court Square Park” in reference to its proximity to the courthouse. 

Another heated topic was the school district’s slow response to FBI intelligence about threats to a Charlottesville elementary school. “I’m afraid for my life every day I walk out the door, my children are threatened at school. I can’t even sleep at night,” said one resident, a sentiment that was echoed throughout the evening.

Meeting attendants passed out flyers that detailed a list of demands, including the dropping of charges against DeAndre Harris, a black man who was beaten by several white attackers in a parking garage on August 12. The City Manager Maurice Jones responded to comments about Harris by stating that the issue is now being handled by the judiciary and will be up to the Commonwealth’s Attorney to drop or move forward with charges.  

Charlottesville citizens listen to public comments. Photo courtesy of Jenna Goldman.

Charlottesville citizens listen to public comments. Photo courtesy of Jenna Goldman.

The consensus of the meeting was “Something needs to be done. I’m hurt, I’m frustrated, and I’m tired.” Many simply wanted an apology to be made by the City Council and an acknowledgement of its failure.

Professor Molly Brady’s State and Local Government class was in attendance to observe the process of Charlottesville local government. 

Sarah Legault ’18, who attended for the class made a few observations. “The visceral tension at the meeting reminded me of the tension in St. Louis in 2014 when protests broke out in Ferguson and St. Louis City.” Legault, a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis, worked at that time for a small law firm that did work for local governments and followed the protests closely.

“I think I knew St. Louis better and felt more integrated into the community,” said Legault, contrasting her experience in Charlottesville: “I’ve been disconnected from the extent of the tension in some parts of the city.” 

 “Watching the public hearing, I felt like the city council had a hopeless job when it came to responding to the citizens’ concerns.” She said from a budding lawyer’s perspective, “There is no way to make the First Amendment seem relevant to people who feel truly threatened.”

One by one, audience members spoke about their frustration with the police department and the unequal protection of “free speech.” The frustration was best encapsulated by a comment made by one black Charlottesville resident, who motioned to his body as he said, “If I was carrying a tiki-torch, I would not have been free to go like the KKK were.”

Alli Herzog ’18 agreed. “I definitely sympathize with the frustration expressed at the meeting, that police appeared to treat the Nazis with a lot of respect and carefulness.” As for the intersection of their legal studies and the public comments before city council, “There is a communication barrier because of the legal aspects, which seems to increase frustration.” 

Legault expanded, “Discussions about the First Amendment and the law may just not be able to encompass the lived experiences people at the meeting voiced.” 

Mayor Signer weighed in, “These [events] are not free speech, this is now conduct that is meant to hurt, intimidate, frighten, threaten and make people feel unwelcome here.”

The meeting ended with Bellamy introducing a request from the Police Citizen’s Advisory Panel to amend its bylaws to have more authority in the panel’s responses. The council voted unanimously to authorize the panel to either amend its bylaws or to create a citizen review board in place of the panel to advise the Charlottesville Police Department.

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jmg3db@virginia.edu

 

Domestic Violence Awareness Month

Liesel Schapira '18
(she/her/hers)
Guest Columnist

Dean Goluboff and members of Virginia Law Women wear purple to raise awareness for the Domestic Violence Project. Photo courtesy of Virginia Law Women.

Dean Goluboff and members of Virginia Law Women wear purple to raise awareness for the Domestic Violence Project. Photo courtesy of Virginia Law Women.

Legal process is of vital importance for victims of domestic violence. Without a court order of protection (known as a restraining order in some states), victims are often unable to leave their abusers, and a cycle of violence can continue indefinitely. Because victims depend on confusing and lengthy state court processes to escape these dire situations, lawyers are instrumental to their success. 

Over the summer I saw firsthand the crucial role of lawyers as advocates for victims of domestic violence. As part of the Courtroom Advocates Program (CAP) in New York, I accompanied a young woman to Bronx Family Court as she filed for an order of protection from her ex-boyfriend. She shared a child and a home with her ex, who refused to move out after their relationship ended. He was both physically and verbally abusive to her. 

For this woman, and many others, the only way to move on or to end an abusive cycle is through the court system. She came in to Bronx Family Court because after the most recent incident of physical violence against her, she feared for her safety. She was afraid to return to the shared home, but had to go back to get clothes and supplies for herself and her son. She had no idea the process would take an entire day—nor did she realize that she would need to secure childcare for her adjournment date four days later. 

As an advocate, I was trained by CAP’s attorneys—who regularly worked with victims of domestic violence. I was armed with a manual, written by lawyers, describing the process of obtaining an order of protection in this particular court and how to craft a narrative describing the abuse. I was instructed that filing for an order of protection could take all day, and it would require a subsequent court visit a few days later. I also had a list of nearby shelters and non-profit organizations that could loan her clothing and supplies while she was sleeping out in order to stay away from her abuser. We were successful in obtaining a temporary order of protection, but that is only the very first step. 

Lawyers are crucial for victims of domestic violence because it is rare that a domestic violence case only involves getting an order of protection. Additional legal questions usually arise, such as the initiation of divorce proceedings, child support or custody issues, immigration issues, and even property issues. Allegations of physical abuse can also lead to a criminal trial. Aside from knowledge of the law however, lawyers are uniquely capable of supporting and lending their voice to victims who proceed in court. Domestic violence victims often stay in abusive relationships because they feel they are without resources—financial or otherwise, to escape. Lawyers educate victims about the legal process so that victims can leave bad situations, and move on with their lives. Lawyers stand by and lend their voice to victims in court, which can ease the re-traumatization that occurs when a victim of domestic violence has to face her abuser and recount upsetting instances of past abuse.

As we consider our future legal careers, including potential pro bono projects or volunteer activities, please keep in mind the enormous impact we can have by assisting victims of domestic violence.

If you are interested in getting involved on grounds this month:

October 16-20: Stop by the Domestic Violence Project’s table in Hunton & Williams all week where you can purchase t-shirts, thermoses, and baked goods to raise money for Charlottesville’s Shelter for Help in Emergency, an organization dedicated to assisting local women, men, and children who have been impacted by domestic violence.

October 26 at 1:15pm: Attend a presentation on forced marriage, immigration, and domestic violence (Lunch provided; co-sponsored by the Human Rights Program and the Immigration Law Program). 

October 27 at 12pm: Attend a presentation by staff from the University’s Title IX and Equal Opportunity and Civil Rights Office on processes and protections available for students in instances of sex or gender-based harassment or violence. (Lunch provided to those who RSVP to Cory at cks2fm@virginia.edu). 

November 4: Run (or walk) in a 5K on the Downtown Mall; proceeds will benefit Charlottesville’s Shelter for Help in Case of Emergency (the 5K is on Saturday, November 4th; sign up here: http://www.shelterforhelpinemergency.org/5k-runwalk-shelter/). 

Key Facts from the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence:

1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men have been physically abused by an intimate partner

Domestic violence is prevalent in every community, and affects all people regardless of age, socio-economic status, sexual orientation, gender, race, religion, or nationality

Domestic violence can include physical violence, sexual violence, threats, stalking, economic abuse, and emotional/psychological abuse

To sign up for any of the above events, or to join the Domestic Violence Project e-mail list, please contact Cory Sagduyu at cks2fm@virginia.edu.

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lns5ah@virginia.edu

 

As Dust Settles, Law School Rises

Eric Hall '18
(he/him/his)
Managing Editor

White Nationalists rally on Main Grounds during the night of August 11. Photo courtesy of Yahoo News.

White Nationalists rally on Main Grounds during the night of August 11. Photo courtesy of Yahoo News.

On August 11 and 12, armed white men and women—shrieking, bearing oddly comical garden torches—paraded through our town. They bore assault rifles and riot shields, and they protected themselves with the Constitution we, as lawyers, will swear to uphold. Although only a few of us were literally in the line of fire, the catastrophic weekend affected all of us at the Law School in a unique way.  As UVa students, Charlottesville is our adopted home. Heather Heyer was murdered on the same street where, months from now, Uber drivers will deliver students to Barrister’s Ball. Chris Cantwell was filmed skipping past the same restaurants where law firms host receptions. To many, the name of our city is synonymous with the resurfacing of unmasked KKK members and neo-Nazis. 

Tenacious UVa students circle the Thomas Jefferson statute on August 11, 2017. Photo courtesy of Daily Progress.

Tenacious UVa students circle the Thomas Jefferson statute on August 11, 2017. Photo courtesy of Daily Progress.

    But as future lawyers, our connection to the rally goes deeper than domicile. The rally touched another institution we claim: the U.S. Constitution. When a federal court cited the First Amendment to block the city’s attempt to move the rally, the freedom of speech we defend was in turn used to defend hate groups. The gossamer line between lawful and unlawful assembly was thrust into the hands of an overwhelmed police force. In the lead-up and aftermath, county officials aided by UVa professors continue to tread the murky contours of Equal Protection doctrine. Each headlining event was fraught with uncharted legal issues. More than a month later, debate surrounding the legality of removing the Lee statue, and the interaction between First and Second Amendment law thrives in the national dialogue. 

        For many in the law school, however, the rally was a more personal assault. Rather than an adopted home or the lofty principles of our profession, the rally assaulted our innate characteristics. Their hatred was directed at the colors of our skin, the ways we feel love, and the faiths we follow. The UVa Law community—especially students and faculty of color—were shoved into the national spotlight to respond to the violence and hatred—at once its victims and its first responders. The burden of leading the response fell to Charlottesvillians, custodians of democracy, and people of all races, sexual orientations, and faiths. 

    Over the past few weeks, the Virginia Law Weekly heard from nearly a dozen law students and faculty—many of whom were in Charlottesville on August 11 and 12. We scrutinized the Deans Working Group report and the university’s official timeline of the Friday march. We found the burden spread throughout the Law School, on each of its major departments and throughout its student groups. Faculty and students rose to the challenge of either opposing the rally or mitigating its fallout. The admissions office gathered new students and fielded their challenging questions. And Dean Risa Goluboff stepped up to lead the whole university’s response, lighting the way for future towns and universities to avoid mistakes that happened here. Though we never asked for terrorists to come to our town, we dutifully hoisted the mantle of responding to them. 

A black tarp shrouds the Lee statue in Emancipation Park. Photo courtesy Law Weekly.

A black tarp shrouds the Lee statue in Emancipation Park. Photo courtesy Law Weekly.

 

August 11, 2017

 

Around 8:10 p.m. on August 11, according to the official timeline jointly produced by the University Police Department (UPD) and the Office of University Counsel, details of the surprise torchlight rally started to emerge. Rumors had been swirling since early Friday afternoon, and the UPD was frantic to connect with the organizers of Unite the Right (referred to in official documents as “UTR”). The University and Charlottesville Police Departments established cooperation early in the day which lead to the evening’s first blunder. After making contact with a UTR organizer, the Charlottesville Police Department, failing to understand that “Nameless Field” referred to a location on Grounds, told University Police that UTR refused to give a location for their march. Nearly forty-five minutes passed before the mistake was corrected, leaving both police departments barely a half an hour to prepare for the march. 

By the time the rally began, Professor Anne Coughlin and her husband were going to bed early. They had volunteered to help drive vans at 7:00 a.m. the next the morning.  No strangers to activism, the Coughlins always participate in marches and protests they believe in, and consciously decided not to be legal observers this time because they couldn’t remain impartial on the issue of racism. 

Back on North Grounds, a group of 2Ls split on the same decision. Elizabeth Sines and Leanne Chia, who would later be featured in, among others, The New York Times, decided they couldn’t be impartial legal observers. Courtney Koelbel arrived at the opposite conclusion. “[As law students,] we are in a unique position to do this job,” she tells the Law Weekly, “not everyone can do it.” But watching the protests on Friday night, Koelbel admitted she had second thoughts. “As I watched what Elizabeth and Leanne were posting and what was shown on television, I became very scared. If I hadn’t made the commitment, I might not have gone to either rally.” 

Professor Barbara Armacost made the same commitment but had a chance to preview the protestors she would be observing the next day. “I saw a group of men gathering on Nameless Field,” Armacost told the law school’s communications department, “as I watched from the parking lot in front of\Memorial Gymnasium, the group got bigger and bigger, and they began to light torches and march toward the lawn of\my university. It was one of the most terrifying and horrible sights I have ever seen. I called 911.”

According to the official timeline, at 9:52 p.m. the marchers mobilized gripping tiki torches and flying drones overhead, presumably to capture video from the air. Despite the University’s “Open Burn and Open Flame” policy that expressly prohibits burning an open flame without prior approval, and a Virginia state law that makes it a felony to burn an object “with the intent of intimidating any person or group of persons,” the University Police made no attempt to extinguish the flames that illuminate the most iconic and terrifying images from that night. They did, however, intervene to ground the drones. 

Chia and Sines were there too, keeping their distance but trying to capture video. “We knew very few [counter-protestors] would be there because it was a last -minute, surprise rally,” Chia said. By official estimates, only sixteen minutes passed from the time UTR men arrived at the Rotunda to the time police declared an unlawful assembly, but to Chia and Sines, it felt like an eternity. They watched as the UVa students circling the Jefferson statue were “punched and kicked with no one to defend them.” From their position, they saw noted white supremacist and UVa alumnus Richard Spencer, flanked by a security detail, attempt an unheard rallying cry. When the UPD finally broke up the chaos around 10:30 p.m., Sines and Chia agreed to join the counter-protests the next day. Said Chia, “I wanted to see them in the daylight, maybe I thought something would be different if they couldn’t hide their faces in darkness.”

 

August 12, 2017

 

On the morning of the rally, the Coughlins woke up to news of the Friday night march, and saw for the first time the huge numbers of angry white supremacists on their doorstep. Although they were shocked, “staying home was not an option,” said Professor Coughlin.

By 7:30 a.m., the air was already thick with tension and pepper spray. “I thought maybe the protest wouldn’t be so bad because I didn’t see any protestors in the area I was observing. But as I was walking with the group to another park I saw a man get out of his car parked on the street and start loading up an assault rifle,” said Courtney Koelbel, the 2L legal observer and a woman of color. “I was scared to be targeted,” she told the Law Weekly, “I thought maybe the official green ‘legal observer’ hat would protect me. I held onto that thought as I moved through more densely populated areas and saw more and more white supremacists.” Each of the students and faculty we spoke to recognized that their safety was at risk, and for some the police presence offered little comfort. “We were about as afraid of the police reaction as we were the white supremacists,” Professor Coughlin said, “but we were an old white couple, our organizer reminded us that the police wouldn’t use force against us.”

Precedent supported the Coughlins’ fear of a police overreaction. Only a month earlier, when robed Klansmen appeared in Justice Park, police appeared to usher the KKK members out of the crowd, and then returned only to declare an unlawful assembly and tear-gas the counter-protestors. At a recent panel discussion in Caplin Pavilion, Professor Armacost called the earlier rally “terrible optics” for the police. According to her, police insisted that counter-protestors refused to disperse, and counter-protesters insist they were never told to. Regardless of whether they felt their actions were justified, police were aware of the scrutiny they would be under in the latest rally. “That history may have affected August 12,” said Armacost.

Making sure history didn’t repeat itself was part of the reason Koelbel and Armacost were there. “As a legal observer on Market Street, I was there to hold the government accountable,” Armacost told the students at the panel discussion on September 12. “Legal observers were paired into twos, and our job was to mostly observe police, to take down the names of people who [were] arrested, to watch for civil rights violations,” said Koelbel. 

After the criticism of their overreaction to the July protests, police arguably underreacted on August 12.  By some estimates, 800 UTR protestors and perhaps a thousand counter-protestors arrived downtown. Police lined three sides of Emancipation Park and a side-street adjacent to it, leaving one side of the park open to rally-goers. By Professor Armacost’s account, police stood by passively as the fourth unguarded side was “becoming a tinder box.” 

At the First United Methodist Church, less than a block from Emancipation Park, the Coughlins led sorties into the crowd to retrieve injured counter-protestors and shuttle them to medical assistance. Professor Coughlin remembers watching a man in neo-Nazi regalia point a gun at a counter-protestor. “The experience was life-shaking; I had no idea what was going to happen at any moment.” Both Koelbel and Armacost confirm that police only watched. “As people were getting pepper sprayed and tear gassed, the police did nothing. People were pulling guns and the police only held the perimeter,” said Koelbel. At the September 12 panel, Armacost recalled asking over and over, “Why aren’t the police doing anything?”

Hours passed before police finally declared an “unlawful assembly” and the governor declared a state of emergency. Dean Kevin Donovan was just wrapping up the annual callback session that happens right before the start of callback season. “My phone started buzzing with people calling to tell me to wrap it up and get people home,” Donovan told the Law Weekly. Back at Emancipation Park, police were attempting to wrap up the rally. They closed in on the UTR protestors pushing them out of the park. “For a brief shining moment, the counter-protesters moved into the park,” said Armacost, shedding her impartiality for a moment. 

Sines and Chia described the feeling of victory in an interview with the Law Weekly. “We both had tears in our eyes; I had never felt such an outpouring of love and raw emotion. We truly did feel like we had won. There were no white supremacists in sight, and it felt like we had reclaimed our town,” said Sines. Watching from the sidelines, however, Professor Armacost retained some trepidation. With the white supremacists gone, she listened for the order to disperse that would herald a repeat tear-gassing of the counter-protestors. When no order came, Armacost literally took off her legal observer hat and approached the police line. “I wanted to confirm their decision to stand down,” she said. Although they held their position, police left counter-protestors alone. 

The victory was fleeting. When police declared an unlawful assembly, they forced UTR protestors into the streets near Emancipation Park where a young malice-filled Ohio man would fire up his black Dodge Challenger. “We were at the front of the crowd, about halfway up Water Street, when we began to hear screams,” said Sines. “[W]e both leapt to the side of the street just as a Dodge [Challenger] came barreling through the crowd. People were hit in front of us; they laid in the middle of the street. We were three feet away from being hit.”

The black Challenger that would take the life of Heather Heyer narrowly misses law students Leanne Chia and Elizabeth Sines. Photo courtesy Daily Progress.

The black Challenger that would take the life of Heather Heyer narrowly misses law students Leanne Chia and Elizabeth Sines. Photo courtesy Daily Progress.

Sines and Chia would talk about their experience later. They agreed that, while terrifying, neither had any regrets about being there. In a joint statement they released to the press, they summarized with a quotation frequently attributed to Edmund Burke: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.”

 

One Administration Cowers; Another Springs into Action

 

On Saturday the 12th, President Trump—usually a bottomless reservoir of bile spewed freely at Kaepernicks or Khans—was dry-heaving at Klansmen. As the Trump administration’s limp statements failed to denounce neo-Nazis, our own law school administration took action. In interviews with the Law Weekly, Deans Faulk, Donovan, and Goluboff each said their first concern was the safety of their students in Charlottesville. “As the dean of the law school, my first priority has to be to the people who are, in a sense, under my care are safe,” said Dean Goluboff. “My first instincts were towards my own law school community, making sure that people who were fearful, or vulnerable, or new or in town and felt like targets—which they were in a collective sense, if not an individual sense—were as safe as they could be and felt supported.”

Senior Assistant Dean of Career Services Kevin Donovan was returning home from a callback training session with students when news broke that the protests had turned violent. “We . . . reached out to a few student groups to let them know that if people felt unsafe, they were welcome to come out to our house for as long as things were unstable” said Donovan, whose first concern was for students in physical danger.an offer he also extended to 2Ls gathered at the callback session. “My secondary concern was for students who experienced a loss of a sense of personal safety because of the events.\ Concern for OGI was really third.” Thankfully, OGI appeared to carry on successfully. Although Donovan offered to call firms on behalf of students who felt they couldn’t go through with callbacks, no students asked him to. “The students showed extraordinary resiliency and strength in being able to move forward and do what had to be done,” Donovan said.

Because the rally happened on the weekend after OGI and nearly two weeks before the start of 1L classes, many students and faculty were either out of town or leaving. The ones who remained, however, may have been the most vulnerable. On that Saturday, most of the LLM students—many of whom had never having been to the United States before—“arrived in the midst of hate and violence much of which is xenophobic in addition to being racist and intolerant,” said Goluboff. According to Assistant Dean of Admissions Cordel Faulk, there was also a contingent of incoming 1Ls in town who, without a network of friends yet, “were just kind of sitting in their apartments watching, and they didn’t know anybody so they didn’t have anyone to process this with.” Although both deans were out of town, Dean Faulk recalls getting a phone call from Dean Goluboff on Saturday and putting into action a plan to support some of the new 1Ls. 

Dean Goluboff was particularly concerned for minority students. On the Saturday of the rally, Dean Goluboff took a phone call with the mother of an incoming woman of color. Her daughter had arrived in Charlottesville early as part of the Law School’s Community Fellows program only to find violence and white supremacy. “She said, ‘I’m inclined to just fly her home and have her go to a different law school. Why shouldn’t I do that?’” In talking to the Law Weekly, Goluboff paraphrased her reply, “I can’t guarantee her safety, I wish I could. And, as a mother, I understand why you might want to bring her back, but, I said, let me tell you why I think she chose us and who we are. Who we are today is just as much who we were yesterday, and maybe even more so.”

The administration’s response was not limited to comforting words, however. After her calls with the student’s mother and Dean Faulk, Dean Goluboff recruited 2L Toccara Nelson to pick up the new student. Within a half an hour the two law students were together hanging out. Nelson, hesitant to take credit for her own heroics, credited Dean Goluboff for her “amazing” leadership. “I’m very encouraged” she said. “They’re meeting with us to get our perspectives and that’s a start.”

One of those meetings happened Sunday after the rally. Dean Faulk returned to Charlottesville where he and Senior Director of Law Firm Recruiting Patrice Hayden immediately set to work reaching out to a larger group of 1Ls. “Dean Goluboff and I decided to do something to try to get them together as a group so they [could] at least talk to each other and ask us questions,” said Faulk in an interview last week. Under different circumstances, planning a large last-minute dinner might have been a challenge. “By the time I had the guest count back it was probably four o’clock in the afternoon and we were going to dinner at six-thirty.” Faulk said.So, I called Burton’s, and I talked to one of the managers there and told them what we were trying to do. And they gave us their private room, no charge, on two hours’ notice. They were amazing.”

To plan the dinner, Faulk drew on his experience from past national moments including the discredited 2014 Rolling Stone article, and the violent arrest of Martese Johnson that happened just before the open house for the class of 2018. “Unfortunately, we’re reusing lessons the lessons that we’ve learned from those terrible incidents”,” Faulk said. During the admissions cycle, the admissions team fans out across the country to “bring admits together in small groups and let them ask any questions that they have regardless of how tough they are, and then answer with utter honesty,” Faulk said, “and then invite them to come to Charlottesville to look for themselves.”

The questions at Burton’s that Sunday were, by Faulk’s own description, “really tough.” Although Faulk was unwilling to repeat them to maintain the askers’ confidentiality, he went on record to say, “The thing that impressed me most was that the 1Ls had such mature questions about what had happened, what the university had done, what the university was going to do moving forward . . . these are 1Ls who just moved to town, had not had a day of classes, and they were asking questions you would want a lawyer to ask.”

Miles away, Dean Goluboff also drew on a pool of experience supplied by tragic incidents. “There’s a listserv for everything, and it’s not something you think about as a student, but there’s a listserv for law school deans,” Goluboff revealed. Her comments, reprinted here verbatim, are a reminder that UVa is not alone:

Law schools now have joint resources to share for responding to major civil unrest, and responding to stark racial inequalities, and violence. It wasn’t that the events were the same as ours but it’s both a sad thing and a gratifying thing that there are so many places that have had to respond to these kinds of things in recent years to know that we have been gathering these resources and they’re not going to waste, that we’re sharing them each other and helping each other cope and improve.

In the days following the rally, Dean Goluboff relied on her counterparts at other law schools for their support and ideas. She shared with them her Monday email to the law school community, and read the messages they were sending to their own students. “That was when I really felt like this was a national moment,” said Goluboff. “Most of the deans felt like they had to say something to their communities who were not even in school yet. You could imagine university presidents doing that, but the law school deans felt like this was something they had to address.” Goluboff hypothesized that their special interest stemmed from the event’s unique relationship to the law and to law schools as engines of social change. 

As much as she relied on her peers at other schools, Dean Goluboff also relied on her administrators here. When she heard that Faulk and Hayden had taken a group of students to dinner, and that Donovan had opened his home, she was heartened. By her own account, she teared up when thanking them at the annual faculty luncheon. “I wrote in my email that we have to live our values of diversity and humanity and belonging,” Goluboff said, “and we did in the response to that moment. People really went above and beyond.” 

The Deans Working Group

In her message to the Law School community and her interview with the Law Weekly, Dean Goluboff applauded her school’s response to the violence and hatred. Mere days after the rally, however, her focus broadened from praising the Law School’s response to evaluating the entire University’s. Around August 18, University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan appointed Goluboff to chair the Deans Working Group, a congregation of deans from each of the university’s schools and departments charged with evaluating and guiding the university’s response. The group’s composition was unique because, as Goluboff explained, university decision-making doesn’t usually involve the deans directly. With the working group, however, President Sullivan wanted information from sources closer to the students and faculty. The deans were also eager to open lines of communication between schools so they could better coordinate their own responses. “Just as I was fortunate to get resources from the deans of other law schools, [we wanted] to share resources from all the other schools at UVa,” said Goluboff. Sullivan charged the working group with scrutinizing the events on three levels that, broadly summarized, are (1) safety and security; (2) self-examination; and (3) academic mission. 

“We spent the most time on safety and security,” Goluboff told the Law Weekly in an interview that took place several days after the working group released its first official report on the Friday protests. Pursuant to this directive, the working group coordinated with consulting firm Margolis Healy, the University Police Department (UPD), the Office of University Counsel and others to evaluate the risk to student safety on August 11, and generate a timeline of events. 

The report, which posted on September 11, is limited in scope to the August 11 unannounced march through Main Grounds.1 Goluboff declined to discuss any of the fact-finding used to generate the timeline and report, but it is clear that university officials, including UPD officers, were interviewed for their recollections of the evening. Their subjective beliefs about how the rally was going to play out color the report’s modest proposals.  For example, the report prefaces its recommendations with the assertion that “University officials’ frame of mind was shaped by a decades-long history of non-violent protests on Grounds that led them to approach the march with the assumption that it was constitutionally protected and should be accommodated with minimal police intrusion.” Statements like these appear to justify the UPD’s passive reaction to violent torch-bearing white supremacists. Furthermore, they fail to explain why the UPD allegedly remained passive even after their assumption proved false. Taken together, they reflect a cautious working group, eager to enact concrete change without pointing fingers.

Goluboff was willing to comment on one of the reports’ more startling findings. According to the reports, University Police had two independent opportunities to extinguish the white supremacist march long before any violence occurred. They failed to take either. The report states: 

The University’s “Open Burn and Open Flame Operations at the University of Virginia” policy, prohibits open flame devices (which includes but is not limited to candles and tiki torches) on University property and facilities unless that use has been approved by the Office of Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) or the University of Virginia Medical Center Fire Protection Inspector’s Office, as appropriate, and is conducted in accordance with the Virginia State, County and City codes and regulations. 

Obviously, no office in the university approved UTR’s use of torches on Grounds, but the UPD did not think to (and was not required to) check with the proper university officials, and university officials were not required to notify UPD of approvals. Goluboff backed up the report: “We’ve long had a policy that you have to apply for an approval, but those approvals were never communicated to the police so they were never in the business of enforcing those.” Therefore, the failure to use the university’s “Open Burn and Open Flame” policy to obstruct the UTR march might be seen as a mere lapse in communication. But the report leaves open the possibility that UPD knew about the policy but mistakenly believed the protestors had a permit for their torches.

Workers pry Confederate plaques off the Rotunda's facade. Photo Courtesy Daily Progress.

Workers pry Confederate plaques off the Rotunda's facade. Photo Courtesy Daily Progress.

The official timeline shows that University police weren’t the only law enforcement present Friday night. Local Charlottesville Police (CPD) were also on hand. Neither police department attempted to enforce Virginia Code section 18.2-423.01, a state law enacted in 2002 that makes it a felony to intimidate others by burning objects in a public space. The legislative history of the act makes it clear that the law was meant to target precisely the sort of race-based intimidation the marchers sought to evince. The report cites a “lack of any recent incidents of intimidation by fire” to explain the UPD’s ignorance of it. In a certain light, that explanation is cause for celebration, but its non-enforcement surely led to violence on the steps of the Rotunda. 

Though these missteps might appear egregious, they are essentially self-correcting. Now that police are aware that these rules exist, police stand a better chance of enforcing them. Dean Goluboff agreed that some of the working group’s achievements would come from merely enforcing the laws that are already on the books, but she also told the Law Weekly about a few other changes the working group had to seek proactively. For example, the Office of Environmental Health and Safety is now required to notify the University Police about open flame approvals and the Lawn is now a designated “facility” so firearms are no longer permitted there.

Speaking about safety more broadly, Dean Goluboff showed empathy for the police and university officials who were caught off guard by the violence. She told the Law Weekly:

The mindset was that this was going to be a non-violent demonstration, and that is not what it turned out to be at all. It turned out to be intimidation and violence and threats. It blew up conventions that we had become accustomed to. And it’s not that these conventions were never blown up before, but it did so in such a dramatic fashion. And it came on the heels of other demonstrations that happened that looked a lot different. UVa is not alone in not having thought out the First Amendment and Second Amendment relationship, and in not having tailored the way we think about free speech to make sure we equip our police officers with the information and authority they need to stop violence and intimidation from happening when it comes under the guise of non-violent demonstration. The articulated stance of these groups is that they are coming to “speak,” and it is true that you have to be content neutral in responding to threats, but when speech is violent threats, well, then you might have justification. I think you’re going to see a real turning point.  That is not to say that we should develop rules that quash free speech. The goal is to continue to make the effort that it takes to make a robust free speech community. And so I have asked a number of faculty members who are First Amendment experts to think about how to come up with time, place, and manner policies that continue to foster demonstrations that are not violent. 

The working group has made progress on President Sullivan’s other two directives too. Dean Goluboff described the second piece, self-examination, as a process of “continuing to ask questions about how we are doing and what we can do better,” and reaffirming our values of diversity, inclusion, belonging, and equity. Already the University has drafted a “pan-university survey” to identify which students feel most targeted and, although the working group wasn’t directly involved, the Board of Visitors voted to remove the plaques honoring Confederate soldiers that were displayed on the face of the Rotunda. “Living those values isn’t something we say or do once, we have to keep recommitting to them.”

Professor John Mason describes his role on the Blue Ribbon Commission on Race at the Sept. 12 panel. Photo courtesy of law.virginia.edu.

Professor John Mason describes his role on the Blue Ribbon Commission on Race at the Sept. 12 panel. Photo courtesy of law.virginia.edu.

There were, however, some positions to which Dean Goluboff could not commit. One of the working group’s initiatives was to assemble an advisory group to help answer questions about the university’s “historical landscape.” The advisory group comprises, among others, historians and architects whose expertise should help the University identify what else needs to be done in conjunction with the president’s Commission on Slavery and the university. Dean Goluboff declined to say whether the Black Student Association’s demand to “re-contextualize” Thomas Jefferson’s statue with a plaque about white supremacy would be on the agenda. 

Finally, President Sullivan’s third agenda item, to examine the events through the university’s academic mission, was already under way before UTR set foot on Grounds. “We, as an academic community, will and should respond to these events by asking scholarly questions,” Goluboff said. “The relationship between the First Amendment and the Second Amendment might be [a question we] thought about before, but not nearly as much as when white supremacists and neo- Nazis arrived in Charlottesville armed to the hilt.” Indeed, the panel discussion on September 12 was planned long before the UTR rally, but it took on much greater significance afterward. 

At the event, Professor Leslie Kendrick discussed the First Amendment status of hate speech and clarified for many that the Constitution does protect it. Professor Armacost shared her observations as a legal observer during the protests. Professor John Mason from the UVa History Department described the racist origins of the Lee statue and called for its removal saying it “is no longer separable from the blood of Heather Heyer.” He and Professor Kim Forde-Mazrui disagreed subtly on the fate of our own Thomas Jefferson statue. 

Though the instruction was to generate scholarly questions throughout the university, many of the most important answers will need to come from us, the lawyers, the Bill of Rights interpreters, and law journal editors. Coming from UVa, the town where armed Nazis marched, our voices carry distinct authority. And on the question of how to treat our Founders’ legacies, our opinions, as the modern custodians of Thomas Jefferson’s legacy, are even weightier.

There is another striking quality to the working group report that, in our interview, Dean Goluboff confirmed was intentional. The report seems written for an outside audience, as if it were a guide for future towns and campuses who witness the modern face of hatred. “People are looking at us, and they are watching to see what we do and that means recommitting to our values and recommitting to our mission in ways that look different after these events,” Goluboff said. The incoming 1Ls seemed to already understand this when they had dinner with Dean Faulk and Director Hayden. We asked Dean Faulk if he sensed any fear or regret in the new students; he was categorical in his reply: “No. No, I sensed law student. I sensed resolve. They were strong. And they were glad they were here at this time. The sense I had from them is that they had a mission here, this was the right place for them.” 

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ech8vm@virginia.edu

1 https://response.virginia.edu/system/files/public/observations-improvements-uva-response.pdf

Foxfield: Off to the Races

David Ranzini '20
(he/him/his)
Staff Reporter

The bus sweeps out of the roadside hedges of kudzu and into wine country. On either side the vinyl post-and-rail fences of Albemarle County—the estates of people with in-ground pool money, but not enough for Thoroughbreds to crop the grass. Good Charlotteville people; a Lexus in the carriage house, or at least a Subaru. Seniors yoga. I’m With Her. A glass or two of wine in the evening while the grandkids play with Daddy’s Bean Boots. Were you in town for the… demonstrations? Awful. To think that we’ve become this… political... as a society. Oh yes, I know. There was just so much... rage. And to think. How many of those kids even remember what the Civil War was all about? Personally, I just wish he wouldn’t tweet so much. 

Photo courtesy of David Ranzini.

Photo courtesy of David Ranzini.

Inside the bus, more than half the seats are empty. It makes the passengers uncertain; in the air is the nervous bravado of boys trying to make new friends at sleepaway camp. Nah, dude, if I’m day drinking I’ll just get some tequila and then get beer to tide me over. I still have the nudes she sent but her personality was a little too much for me… you know? Dude I once did like ten shots of vodka and… With the women the boys search, slightly desperately, for common ground. It smells exactly like a bowling alley in here—you know, right? The sun is hot in the windows. It’s going to be a long day. 

There is Foxfield, out the left side—a ring-fenced grassy parking lot, sparsely dotted with family wagons wearing craft beer bumper stickers and Audis with bike racks. Here and there, good Charlottesville people walk to and from their cars, hand in hand with their fair-haired toddlers.We are the last of the UVa group to arrive, and as the buses pull away, it’s not at all clear where we’re going. Toward the bouncy castle? The ranks of cornhole boards? The announcer, in his best Derby-day twang, is calling a race in progress, but as Purple pulls ahead of Green in the third turn, we can see that it’s Montessori kids astride pool noodles with brown felt manes. The only horses in evidence are a team of stolid chestnuts pulling the hayride wagon round the infield. 

Photo courtesy of David Ranzini.

Photo courtesy of David Ranzini.

Finally the UVa tailgate comes into view beyond the Vineyard Vines pavilion, with a cluster of porta-potties, a jumbo dumpster, and a decent interval of open ground interposed as a tasteful hedge between us and the pony petting. 

When we reach the law school tents, the precautions seem ludicrous. Perhaps it’s the midday heat and perhaps everyone is waiting in solemn anticipation of the evening’s community moment of Dave Matthews healing, the Concert for Charlottesville, but for an event billed as UVa Law’s wild answer to Hunter Thompson’s decadent and depraved Kentucky Derby, there’s nothing more outré going on here than a knot of 1Ls wearing their church clothes and self-consciously sucking on half-lit, punky gas station cigars. From time to time a desultory circle of shotgunners form, but what’s being drunk the fastest in the shimmering heat is bottled water. A rumpled cop on a quadbike is there to show the flag, but you can tell, even through his mirrored ‘tactical shades’ that he’s got nothing much to look at and he knows it. On the other side of the fence, a rank of racing horse trailers wait in the shade, but by noon we haven’t seen so much as a trace of their occupants. One of our number has visited the children’s side of the paddock and returned with a Peppa Pig birthday balloon looped around his wrist. 

1:30. The beer is beginning to run thin. Does anyone have any liquor left? Someone disappointedly rummages through the wreckage of the food tables for an unemptied handle. The ground is strewn with Solo cups and crushed cans of Keystone. It’s a house party pregame that’s gone on too long, and the first buses don’t leave until half past two. The only riders in sight are the marshals, dressed in huntsmen’s red coats, but checking their cell phones in the saddle as they lazily pace back and forth. We’re too far from the PA to hear the announcer. A recorded hunting horn announces… what? Somewhere over yonder where the craft tent blocks the view, the faint sound of whickering and hooves. All but the last eighth of the last quesadilla has been eaten. 

Photo courtesy of David Ranzini.

Photo courtesy of David Ranzini.

Then—a rumble of distant excitement from behind the craft tent—there they go! Real racing horses with color-coded jockeys bouncing in their numbered saddles! On the horizon they round a bend behind the car park at an easy gallop and disappear from view behind a low rise. People look up, waiting a long moment for them to come around our uphill corner.

Have they rounded the bend yet? From behind the hill, the sound of hoofbeats grows, a rhythmic bass note that competes with the cell speaker party anthems. And there they are! A tight pack of racers, their jockeys crouched low over their necks. They’re gawky-looking youngsters being ridden steady, but as they cut close into the third turn fence, they’re still something to see. 

Yeah ponies! someone yells. Go ponies! 

Around the bend and into home straight the horses go, disappearing once again behind the craft tent. There is a long pause as everyone wonders what comes next. Does anyone actually know how horse racing works? Is there like, a lap 2? A shortish man in blue and white casually steps under the fence and begins to walk across the track. 

Hey dude! 

—What?

Dude! 

—I can’t hear you! 

 Watch out, dude! 

The man pulls his jockey’s helmet off and shakes out a full head of dreadlocks. Watch out?

They’re coming back! 

—No they aren’t! That’s it! 

That’s it? 

—Yeah?

… Who won? 

Not the horse with the rider in blue silks, apparently. 

The shadows lengthen and the crowds thin as the first of the buses arrive and the last of the last of the thirty-racks grow warm and flat. The horses, slick with sweat but tossing their heads and prancing in excitement, are led back to their trailers. The straggling students, bowties askew, toss bags of trash into the dumpster. The good Charlottesville people lead their tow-headed youngsters back to their cars. And that’s all. 

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dwr7ed@virginia.edu

Manufacturing an Epidemic

Julie Dostal '19
(she/her/hers)
Features Editor

The U.S. population accounts for 80 percent of opioids consumed globally. The continued growth in American opioid use and abuse has led to a staggering increase in opioid overdoses. In 2015, opioids were involved in the overdose deaths of 33,091 people.1 Drug overdoses now kill more people than cars and handguns combined.2 States experiencing the toll of the human loss, healthcare costs, and enforcements costs of the epidemic formed a broad coalition to investigate what role manufacturers may have played in contributing to the opioid epidemic. State attorneys general in forty-one states have served major opioid manufacturers and distributors with subpoenas seeking information concerning marketing, sales, and distribution of prescription opioids.3 

On September 19, 2018, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced a move by the coalition to expand its investigations into the nationwide opioid epidemic. The forty-one-state coalition is now pooling resources to address the most pressing public health issue in decades. Attorney General Schneiderman’s state has not been immune to the effects of the opioid epidemic; the crisis contributed to 2,754 deaths in New York State in 2015, a number that has quadrupled since 1999.4 Opioids accounted for a staggering 41 percent of deaths in Sullivan County, 37 percent in Erie County, and 32 percent in Nassau County.5

Since he entered office, Schneiderman has launched a multi-step strategy to address the escalating health emergency in New York. He stated at a press conference announcing the action of the coalition: “We’re committed to getting to the bottom of broken system that has fueled the epidemic and taken far too many lives.”6 Schneiderman has attempted to both ease the process of rehabilitation for opioid addicts and bring suit against actors supplying the sustenance of the epidemic: pills. His reforms include settling with major insurers to remove barriers to life-saving treatments for opioid use disorder, creating an internet tracking system so relevant prescription history is known to doctors, and obtaining an agreement for reduced-priced Naloxone, a life-saving overdose reversal drug.7 Schneiderman has also used the prosecutorial capacity of his office to convict ten licensed pill prescribers as “pill mills,” as well as cracking down on illicit drug trafficking networks.8 

Attorneys general from other states experiencing the shocking impacts of the epidemic also initiated dramatic efforts to mitigate the impacts of the crisis, starting with legal suppliers of opioids. In the past year, at least twenty-five states, cities, and counties have filed civil cases against manufacturers, distributors, and large drugstore chains that help supply $13 billion-a-year industry.9 The coalition filed suit against five major prescription opioid manufacturers and three major distributors. The strategy echoes the effort against major tobacco companies in the 1990s in attempts to lessen the increasing costs of the public health crisis. Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine brought suit against five drug manufacturers stating, “If they’re not going to do it voluntarily, we’re going to drag them to the table and make them.”10 These suits will likely be difficult to win. 

If these companies’ representation strategy for their upcoming suits mirrors that of past tobacco litigators, the companies will settle rather than try and defend themselves against dozens, perhaps hundreds, of claims.11 Tobacco companies drove up the cost of litigation until defendants finally settled. In the 1990s, forty-six attorneys general collaborated to sue tobacco companies, reaching a settlement of over $200 billion.12 Manufacturers, distributors, and pharmacy chains are expected to argue that they cannot be held liable for what occurs when prescription pain pills travel down the supply chain. Once the pill leaves the distributor, a great number of bad actors may intervene. Pills mills, doctors who over prescribe, and patients who give or sell their prescribed medication others, all may constitute breaks in the causation chain aiming to establish responsibility for opioid manufactures and suppliers. In a blow to this defense, the D.C. Court of Appeals rejected arguments from a drug distributor that would have undermined the DA’s ability to hold companies responsible for pain pills that are directed to the black market.13

While past precedent may favor the opioid suppliers, prosecutors at all levels of state and local governments are pursuing lawsuits and policy reform to counteract the irresponsible distribution of opioids to the American people. Two congressional panels, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and the House Energy and Commerce Committee, are also investigating the practices of the industry, much to the dismay of the massive pharmaceutical lobby. 

As prosecutors and policymakers all over the country work to reform and pursue a more effective strategy to slow the opioid epidemic, responsibility will also fall on suppliers. Pharmaceutical companies and drug distributors alike publically condemned the current status of opioid use and abuse in the United States. Teva Pharmaceuticals, a company that reported $327 million in earnings last year, released a statement asserting the company is “committed to working with the healthcare community, regulators, and public officials to collaboratively find solutions.” Proactive work in the private sector will remain imperative in efforts to deescalate the crisis. Hopefully, reform in both the public and private sector will break the upward trend in opioid related deaths and costs in 2017.

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jpe5pd@virginia.edu

1 CNN Library, Opioid Crisis Fast Facts, Edited 09.18.2017. http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/18/health/opioid-crisis-fast-facts/index.html

2 Id.

3 Kounang, Nadia, 41 State Attorneys General Subpoena Opioid Manufacturers, 09.20.2017. http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/19/health/state-ag-investigation-opioids-subpoenas/index.html?sr=twCNN091917state-ag-investigation-opioids-subpoenas0528PMStoryGal

4 A.G. Schneiderman Office Press Release, Bipartisan Coalition of AGs Expand Multistate Invetsigation into the Opioid Crisis, 09.19.2017. https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/ag-schneiderman-bipartisan-coalition-ags-expand-multistate-investigation-opioid-crisis

5 Id.

6 Id.

7 Id.

8 Id.

9 Higman, Scott and Lenny Bernstein, Drug makers and Distributors Face a Barrage of Lawsuits Over Opioid Epidemic, Washington Post, 07.04.2017. https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/drugmakers-and-distributors-face-barrage-of-lawsuits-over-opioid-epidemic/2017/07/04/3fc33c64-5794-11e7-b38e35fd8e0c288f_story.html?utm_term=.36efbd0ca49a

10 Id. 

11 Id. 

12 Id.

13 Id.

Champions Born From C Section

Kimberly Hopkin '19
(she/her/hers)
Columns Editor

Section C, 1L softball champions, pose for a photograph. Photo courtesy of Kim Hopkin.

Section C, 1L softball champions, pose for a photograph. Photo courtesy of Kim Hopkin.

This past Sunday at Copeley Field, North Grounds Softball League (NGSL) hosted the 1L Softball Tournament, which pitted the 1L Sections and the LLM Section against each other to determine a champion. Jonathan York, Head Commissioner of NGSL and Head PA, explains the purpose behind the tournament as “an opportunity to form close friendships both inside and outside of [the] 1L sections.” Indeed, a “perfect break from the stresses of starting 1L,” this year’s tournament was impressively run. The bracket was determined based on Dandelion results and the outcomes of each team’s first regular-season game. 

The tournament started at 9:00 a.m. with the #7 seeded team, Section C’s Cases Loaded, competing against the #10 seeded team, Section E’s Liabilit-E’s. Cases Loaded pulled ahead winning 7-6 and advanced to the next round. At 10:00 a.m., the #6 and #11 seeded teams played with Section B’s Bad News Bearisters securing a decisive victory against the LLMs1 outscoring them 9-5. Section G’s Grand Slamicus and Section F’s F is for Phenomenal commenced their offensively impressive game at 11:00 am; Grand Slamicus managed to secure a victory by scoring a hotly contested run during extra innings after the teams were tied at 9. When the Moe’s BBQ arrived at noon, Cases Loaded headed back on the field to challenge the #2 seeded team, Section I’s Inglawrious Batters. While there was some initial back and forth over the lead, Cases Loaded came roaring back to pull off an upset, winning 11-7. Bad News Bearisters then had to face off against the #3 seeded team, Section J’s Juris Daddies. The fact that Bad News Bearisters won 14-5 was indicative of the game in general. At 2:00 p.m., Section D’s Do It for the JD managed to best Grand Slamicus winning 9-8. Completing the last quarterfinal at 3:00 p.m., Section A’s Accidentally in Law dominated over Section H’s Hoos on First? by shutting them out 7-nothing with a stifling defense. 

Heading into the semifinals, Accidentally in Law completed a double-header against Do It for the JD. Benefitting from some clutch hitting up and down their lineup, Accidentally in Law prevailed over Do It for the JD 5-3. Bad News Bearisters and Cases Loaded faced off at 5:00 p.m. Reinvigorated after the break,2 Cases Loaded triumphed over Bad News Bearisters through a combination of impressive outfielding and base-clearing home runs, winning 9-5. Cases Loaded celebrated briefly and exuberantly as Accidentally in Law prepared their strategy under the shade of trees at the far end of the field. 

Photo courtesy of Kim Hopkin.

Photo courtesy of Kim Hopkin.

The final started at 6:00 pm—a double-header for Cases Loaded. In the games leading up, Accidentally in Law adhered to the 1L tournament spirit to play all section members who wanted to play, while Cases Loaded opted for the “best ten players will play” strategy. The atmosphere still elicited the sense that Cases Loaded was an underdog. Playing the first game of the tournament and dressed in mismatched blue shirts compared to Accidentally in Law’s late start time and polished jerseys certainly added to that impression. Accidentally in Law exhibited a strong defense and notable team leadership under captains Eleanor Schmalzl3 and Peter Dragna. The first inning reflected Accidentally in Law’s strength, as they pushed ahead with a 6-4 lead. However, as the Cases Loaded team captain Reese Gwin stated, “It was all about having fun—until we got to the championship. Then, it was only about winning.” That competitive attitude served the team well as Cases Loaded managed to shut the opposing team out for the next five consecutive innings. Accidently in Law slipped defensively in the third and fifth innings allowing Cases Loaded to pull ahead 10-6. Feeling the pull of defeat, Accidentally in Law strategically forced the end of the sixth inning to start a seventh inning.4 After some incredulous pushback from Cases Loaded fans5 about a new inning starting fifty-four minutes into the game, Cases Loaded team captain Jackson Stallings energized Cases Loaded players and fans alike by assuring them that, with continued effort, victory would be theirs. Seizing that slight momentum, Cases Loaded scored an additional run in the top of the seventh inning. That’s not to say that Accidentally in Law didn’t exhibit some exemplary defensive moments during the last inning. Heading into the bottom of the seventh inning, Accidentally in Law scored an early run, but, unfortunately for them, were ultimately unable to capitalize on this momentum. Cases Loaded became the champions winning 11-7. 

When asked about the win, Cases Loaded team captains stated that the team’s tenacity depended on a feeling of comradery and trust within the section: “We knew we had to have each other’s backs, and we did. We are all we have.” They also credited their non-playing section mates and PAs for supplying solid cheers and chants6 that energized the team throughout the day. And with that, both teams shook hands, retired their gloves and bats, and headed to the library to complete an impending LRW assignment.7

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knh3zd@virginia.edu

Contributions courtesy of Eleanor Schmalzl

mes5hf@virginia.edu

1 Seemingly nameless.

2 And in search of further procrastination of LRW assignments according to some team members.

3 Proud Law Weekly staff member.

4 NGSL regulations restrict umpires from allowing the start of a new inning more than 55 minutes into the game. Accidentally in Law denies the allegation.

5 Mostly Section C PAs.

6 As well as pizza and "unbelievable dance moves."

7 And for Cases Loaded, to showcase their winning trophy to leave no doubt in their classmates’ minds who the winners were.

 

Panel Confronts Enforcement of Civil Rights

Kimberly Hopkin '19
(she/her/hers)
Columns Editor

    

A panel on “Enforcing Civil Rights under the Trump Administration” brought four civil rights and diversity-focused attorneys together on Friday, September 15 to respond to the August 12 Charlottesville rallies and to discuss how lawyers can continue to work towards a more progressive America. This panel was supported by multiple UVa student groups including Lambda Law Alliance, Black Law Students Association, Jewish Law Students Association, Asian Pacific American Law Students Association, Latin American Law Organization, and the American Constitution Society, and by Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP.  Lambda Law Alliance President, Raphaelle Debenedetti, opened the panel by broadening the scope of the discussion from the events of August 12, in which white supremacist protestors violently clashed with counter-protestors in Emancipation Park resulting in the death of Heather Heyer, to the larger issue of ensuring equal protection under the law for all minorities.

Stuart Delery, a litigation partner at the D.C. office of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP, started by reviewing the history of Confederate statues within the broader history of Jim Crow laws and the judicial system’s unwillingness to help the disenfranchised. Putting forward a theory that exclusion of black Americans from the political process in the late 19th century followed a progressive pattern of violence, restrictive voting laws, and a lack of federal enforcement of equal protection, Mr. Delery noted that current events echoed history too much.  As a former Acting Associate Attorney General in the Department of Justice under the Obama administration, Mr. Delery brought an informed perspective on the obligation to build federal judicial policy that will appropriately and vigorously protect minorities. In his opinion, the Trump administration has started a wholesale retreat from this responsibility. He cited the Arpaio pardon, withdrawal of transgender rights in schools, and restrictive voting laws. While acknowledging the allure of believing that we have no more work to do, Mr. Delery closed by urging students to push for a more perfect union and to remember that current events cannot be separated from the past. 

Chantale Fiebig, of counsel at the D.C. office of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP, brought a uniquely personal viewpoint to the discussion by sharing her experiences as an African American attending UVa as an undergraduate. Born in Central Africa, Ms. Fiebig shared her African mother’s disbelief upon learning about the enslavement and subsequent disenfranchisement of black Americans when they first moved to the United States. Ms. Fiebig felt disconnected from the weight other black Americans had to bear until she attended UVa. During an orientation event, she recalled how the university played country rock music on the front lawn and rap music on the back lawn promoting a de facto segregation of students. To this day, she wonders why they couldn’t just “turn off the music, and let people talk.”  During her first experience at a protest, Ms. Fiebig recalls being marginalized by another student insisting that the protestors were protesting being black by wearing black; they were actually protesting a homophobic line in “The Good Ole Song.” She denounced those who hide behind excuses of history and tradition because they often fail to see that the history itself is what feels so oppressive. To fight against this, Ms. Fiebig advises lawyers to stay vigilant and to “choose kindness.” When discussing career options, she reminded the audience that private sector lawyers still have opportunities to contribute through pro bono work and choosing to take civil rights cases. 

Angela Ciolfi, Director of Litigation and Advocacy at the Legal Aid Justice Center and UVa Law alumna, addressed what the August 12 rally meant and what it changes. Ms. Ciolfi contended that it may have started a discussion, but that racism was present before and is still present today. Citing multiple statistics, including the fact that black Americans are stopped and frisked by police nine times more often than white Americans and that 0.04 percent of government contracts in the local area go to female, veteran, or minority owned companies, Ms. Ciolfi challenged the audience to seek structural change at the state level. Although charity and passion are important, she implored the audience to understand the need for a strategy when confronting systemic injustice. Ms. Ciolfi also reminded the audience that change is not about politics; it’s about reaching across the spectrum to build the right policies. 

The final panelist, James Hingeley, a public defender for Albemarle County and elected member of the executive committee of the Ablemarle-Charlottesville NAACP, started his remarks by commemorating the 67th anniversary of Gregory Swanson enrolling as the first African-American UVa Law student. After recounting the UVa Law faculty’s unanimous support through Swanson’s court battle, Mr. Hingeley called Mr. Swanson a hero and urged the audience to remember his legacy. Then, Mr. Hingeley pivoted his speech towards the August 12 rally and the ways the legal system could have been used to procure a better outcome. Following the July 8 protest, Charlottesville was inundated with requests to silence the white supremacist group by denying their protesting permit. Recognizing the hateful message this group perpetuated, Mr. Hingeley said the city did a poor job of communicating to its citizens that the First Amendment still allowed this speech. Rather than even insisting it was a negative consequence, Mr. Hingeley urged the audience to understand and celebrate the power of the First Amendment in combatting inequality. He felt that focusing on the expression the white supremacist groups would espouse instead of the high amount of violent threats leading up to the August 12 rally was the reason the city was enjoined from moving the protest to an area that could have been controlled better. For this reason, he pushed the importance of communicating and giving weight to the proper arguments in this type of legal work. He urged the audience to use non-violent tactics and celebrate the First Amendment even when it seems like an assault on our values. 

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kmh3zd@virginia.edu

 

The New Wolf of Wall Street

Jenna Goldman '18
(she/her/hers)
Editor-in-Chief

“As future attorneys, we must know the language of finance in order to effectively interface with clients,” says Allie Hemmings ‘18, who recently took over as Chief Investment Officer of the only student run investment organization at an American law school. Rivanna Investments began in 2010 with $100,000 of seed money from alumni and in the seven years since has grown to $160,000.

Photo courtesy of Rihanna Investments

Photo courtesy of Rihanna Investments

Despite the impressive gains, the purpose of the organization is focused on education, not risk. Its stated mission is “to promote opportunities for UVa law students to learn about financial concepts, through programming and speakers series, before entering the business world as attorneys.”

“We want to make this club accessible,” says Hemmings. “Our goal is to get everyone active in coming to meetings, even if they are coming in with zero knowledge about finance, to learn enough throughout the year to be able to give their own stock pitch by spring.” 

The organization’s investment strategy is to follow the S&P 500 Index and limits all stock pitches to S&P 500 companies. Throughout the year, students will learn about companies from the ground up in preparation for a stock pitch to the ten 2Ls and 3Ls who make up the executive committee. The executive committee then votes on which stocks to add to the organization’s portfolio. The current portfolio holds stock in companies like Apple, Boeing, Chipotle and Netflix.  

Rivanna’s emphasis on education is what initially drew Hemmings in as a member in the fall of her 1L year.  

Though she graduated with a B.A. in economics from Reed College and wrote her senior thesis on the economics of parking in Portland, Oregon Hemmings said she had to teach herself finance on the fly when she started her job in equity research. 

“I studied economics, so I understood the broader concepts, but when it came down to key words and the practical, day-to-day finance, I had to play catch-up.” Hemmings recalls, “There would be days where I would have a textbook open next to my computer, and an assignment due to my boss in an hour. I loved it, but I definitely would have benefited from the skills I learned through Rivanna at that time.” 

Adding to the difficulty of the job was that, despite her firm’s location on the West Coast, it operated on New York hours so she would arrive at work at 4:30 a.m. and leave at 3:30 p.m. 

But the most disarming aspect of starting her job, Hemmings recounts, was the glaring absence of women in her office. “Of the twelve researchers, only two of us were women. It was always disheartening to feel so outnumbered at work.” 

That’s one reason why Hemmings is looking forward to her term as Chief Investment Officer: She will be the first woman to hold the position in the organization’s history. 

“The financial field is still intensely male-dominated, and I think there are lots of reasons for that. Two of which, I believe, are the lack of accessibility to the field and the lack of approachability. If you don’t know anything about investing and you don’t see anyone you can identify with, of course you will be more reluctant to join both the organization and the field.” She says jokingly, “I mean, have you seen Wolf of Wall Street?” 

As Chief Investment Officer, Hemmings will oversee the active portfolio, teach educational programming, and facilitate the speakers series and stock pitching along with her board. “I feel fortunate to work with a board of incredibly talented and passionate people.” This year’s board also has a record-breaking number of women and students of color serving in positions, Hemmings notes.

“In the past I think students have seen us as serving a very niche interest, but I want to get the message across that finance is for everyone. It can sound very serious when you hear the term ‘investment management,’ but it’s a very fun group of members. They have a good time and we work hard to make these concepts approachable.” 

What Hemmings finds most exciting about the organization is the opportunity to learn about different industries. “My first pitch was for a cyber-security software company and my second pitch was for Ulta, which required a lot of research into makeup marketing dynamics.” 

Hemmings looks forward to focusing on renewable energy financing at Norton Rose Fulbright in the Project Finance and Power group in Washington, D.C., after graduation. 

 Rivanna Investments meets every Friday at noon, location to be announced in the weekly SBA email. Hemmings and Max Hare will be co-teaching a lesson on financial statements and valuation methods this week. Everyone is welcome.

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jmg3db@virginia.edu

Is DACA Constitutional?

Jansen VanderMeulen '19
(he/him/his)
Executive Editor

Is DACA Constitutional?

When President Donald Trump announced this week that he was ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program instituted under his predecessor, reaction from critics understandably focused on the consequences of the executive action. With DACA rescinded, approximately 800,000 unauthorized immigrants living in the United States will now be subject to deportation, where previously they were permitted a semblance of legal presence in the United States. Under DACA, those 800,000 or so immigrants were permitted to obtain driver’s licenses, attend college, and pay income taxes.1 With DACA now facing a March 2018 execution date, those immigrants’ continued protection from deportation is in question. President Trump has urged Congress to act, but it is uncertain exactly what sort of legislative fix he has in mind.

While the ramifications of DACA’s rescission are grave and receive more in-depth treatment in other sections of this newspaper, this columnist is stuck in 2012, when President Barack Obama issued the landmark protections for immigrants brought to the United States as children without legal authorization. Was that executive order legal? Legal scholars differ on that all-important question, and several states, led by Texas, had threatened suit against the order. States had already successfully sued to enjoin DACA’s more wide-reaching twin, Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA), which offered protection from deportation to the parents of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents.2  The position of those attorneys general challenging DACA’s legality can be summed up by a statement of one of their own, Attorney General Derek Schmidt of Kansas. Schmidt, in a statement to the Lawrence (Kansas) Journal-World, said, “The problem with DACA is that it is unlawful; under our Constitution, only Congress, not the president, has the power to change immigration law. Those who understandably feel strongly that the law should accommodate children brought to the U.S. at a young age and raised here would be well-advised to focus on persuading Congress to act.” Mr. Schmidt’s statement sums up the legal opposition to DACA: Congress has acted and declared that those who immigrate to the United States without legal authorization are to be subject to deportation. The president, they argue, lacks the power to unilaterally grant a sort of quasi-legal status to a group of immigrants whose presence in the United States is unlawful. That decision, should it be made, is Congress’s alone.

Not so fast, say DACA advocates. Writing in The New York Times, columnist Linda Qiu points to the Department of Homeland Security’s own DACA “Frequently Asked Questions” section, in which the department refers to DACA as “a form of prosecutorial discretion.”3,4 Scholars who support DACA’s constitutionality dispute that the program’s recipients have received any kind of legal status. Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California at Berkeley School of Law, writing for the Sacramento Bee, noted, “[P]residents always have discretion as to who to prosecute or deport. DACA did not confer citizenship on anyone.”5 Defending the constitutionality of President Obama’s order, Chemerinsky also noted immigration’s proximity to foreign policy, which he called “uniquely in the domain of executive power and control.”6

So what does DACA do, exactly? Does it, as critics claim, create a legal or quasi-legal status for unauthorized immigrants? Or, as Chemerinsky insists, is it merely a legitimate exercise of the president’s prosecutorial (in this case, deportation) discretion? The conservative Heritage Foundation insists that DACA recipients have been granted what they call “pseudo-legal status,” saying President Obama “promised them that they wouldn’t be deported and provided them with work authorizations and access to Social Security and other government benefits” despite the fact that Congress rejected proposals to do just that.7 The liberal ThinkProgress calls that “nonsense,” citing longstanding federal regulations from 1981 that allow an unauthorized immigrant granted deferred status the right to an employment permit.8 Critics argue that granting access to benefits, confirmed reprieve from deportation, and the ability to obtain a driver’s license is tantamount to conferring legal status upon individuals whose presence in the United States is proscribed by Congress. Supporters say the limited set of benefits given to DACA recipients is nowhere close to legal status, and that the president is empowered and, indeed, required to use his discretion to decide which unauthorized immigrants will be deported.

What is clear is that this issue is highly litigable and depends greatly on how “legal status” is defined. Both critics and supporters of DACA seem to agree that the president lacks the power to confer legal status on unauthorized immigrants. They disagree on whether DACA conferred that status. Reportedly, it was the suit threatened by the Texas-led attorneys general that led president Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions to announce the program’s termination.9 The Department of Justice lost the battle to preserve parent-focused DAPA when the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld a district court’s preliminary injunction against the program. While the program’s end fits conveniently with President Trump and Attorney General Sessions’ well-known disfavor of unauthorized immigration, a charitable observer of the administration might argue that the Department of Justice’s uncertainty of its ability to win the suit against the state attorneys general in court led to the president’s decision. 

With the executive order now rescinded, the legal question may be moot—for now. If Congress cannot pass a fix, it seems likely that a future Democratic President would implement a similar policy. But one of this newspaper’s core values is “there is never a bad time to discuss the separation of powers.” No doubt, the debate will rage on, and if there is any hope of coming to a consensus, defining what it means to have legal status seems to be the key.

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jmv5af@virginia.edu

1 http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/04/politics/daca-dreamers-immigration-program/index.html

2 http://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/29/texas-attorney-general-end-daca-dreamers-240121

3 https://www.dhs.gov/news/2017/09/05/frequently-asked-questions-rescission-deferred-action-childhood-arrivals-daca

4 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/08/us/politics/why-common-critiques-of-daca-are-misleading.html?mcubz=0

5 http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/california-forum/article172670771.html

6 Id.

7 http://www.heritage.org/immigration/commentary/daca-unconstitutional-obama-admitted

8 https://thinkprogress.org/trump-admin-constitutional-case-daca-a3134e0059e3/

9 http://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-daca-trump-decision-obama-immigrant-program-dreamers-2017-9

 

DACA Repeal: What Comes Now?

Julie Dostal '19
(she/her/hers)
Features Editor

Photo courtesy of Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Photo courtesy of Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

DACA, the acronym for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, is a program created by the Obama administration in 2012. The immigration policy allows young people unwittingly brought across the border without documentation by others to receive a temporary reprieve from deportation and permission to work, study, and obtain a driver’s license. Individuals could only receive protections from DACA after meeting a series of requirements. Applicants need to have been younger than 31 years of age at the date of program implementation. Applicants must prove they have lived in the U.S. continuously since June 15, 2007 and that they had arrived in the U.S. before the age of 16. Further, applicants must show they have clean criminal records; they must not have been convicted of a felony, certain significant misdemeanors (including a single DUI), or three or more misdemeanors of any kind.1 Beneficiaries of the program must also all be enrolled or have completed high school, a GED program, or college, or serve in the military. These administrative requirements help to narrow eligible recipients to individuals most likely to further the declared purpose of the program, which was to protect from deportation eligible immigrant youths who came to the United States when they were children.  A DACA beneficiary’s status was renewable every two years based on information supplied and recorded by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. This same information may now be used by the United States Justice Department to deport unprotected recipients beginning in 2018.

Following its implementation, DACA provided relief from deportation and granted work permits to unauthorized immigrants than any other immigration policy since the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act.2 There are approximately 800,000 DACA recipients now living in the U.S.3 Since 2015, the vast majority (81.3%) of DACA applications have been renewals. Most DACA beneficiaries arrived from Mexico (78.5), El Salvador (3.6%), Guatemala (2.5%), and Honduras (2.3%). They live primarily in California, Texas, and Illinois. The average recipient of DACA protections is 22 years old and employed. The majority are students and 17% are pursuing advanced degrees.4 

After the implementation of DACA in 2012, academics began to monitor its effects. Many found the immigration policy directly translated into positive outputs in the education and employment sectors. Research conducted by Roberto Gonzales, a professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, focused on the factors that promote and impede educational progress for immigrants and Latino students. Gonzales noted that DACA has provided a “tremendous boost” to its recipients, helping them contribute to their families, communities, and the U.S. economy.5 DACA had large effects on eligible individuals’ labor market outcomes, and there is evidence that suggests it altered recipients’ education decisions. Many respondents to Gonzales’ research study reported that DACA led them to enroll in community college or in job-training programs sponsored by community based organizations. Education has been and remains a key barrier for undocumented immigrant children, with 40% failing to complete high school.6

DACA helped recipients find jobs. “69% of respondents reported moving to a job with better pay.”7 Within two years of implementation, DACA moved 50,000 to 75,000 unauthorized immigrants into employment.8 Generally, research indicates that DACA benefited labor market outcomes and increased the likelihood of employment for beneficiaries. The positive economic outcomes for beneficiaries of DACA were the same outcomes placed under scrutiny when the Justice Department commented on its concerns with the program. Attorney General Jeff Sessions stated that the program had “denied jobs to hundreds of thousands of Americans by allowing those same illegal aliens to take those jobs.”9 

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has scheduled a six-month phase-out for the program. “The DHS timeline ensures that a new group of beneficiaries will lose their status and accompanying benefits every day from March 2018 through early 2020.”10 Therefore, the consequences of the DACA repeal will continue uninterrupted for the next two years, damaging the lives of hundreds of thousands of recipients and the American economy. DHS has already outlined a schedule for the loss of DACA protections. Starting September 6, 2017, DHS will not accept new DACA applications. Current beneficiaries whose status expires between September 5, 2017 and March 5, 2018 must apply for renewal by October 5, 2017. Individuals who renew their status by October 5th will keep their DACA protections for two years. The unluckiest of DACA recipients will lose their protections on March 6, 2018. The final group of DACA-protected immigrants will be stripped of their status in January or February of 2020. 

The ramifications of repealing DACA will be swift and severe for its recipients. Former beneficiaries will lose their work permits. In several states, beneficiaries will lose their in-state college tuition.11 Others will be expelled from higher education altogether, where a handful of states lifted the bar on undocumented immigrants attending public universities for DACA beneficiaries. Texas has already declared it will cancel driver’s licenses of DACA recipients, and more states are likely to follow.12 DACA beneficiaries serving in the U.S. Armed Forces will also lose their protected status and may be discharged from the military. 

Perhaps the most concerning element of the DACA repeal is that the same information that immigrants voluntarily submitted by unauthorized immigrants seeking to benefit from a government-offered immigration policy could now be given to immigration authorities for the purpose of their deportation. However, the future of DACA is uncertain. President Donald Trump urged Congress to pass a replacement piece of legislation to take the place of DACA. President Trump specifically called on Congress via Twitter to “legalize DACA.” The words of the President seem to imply he would be willing to sign into law a legislative equivalent of the DACA executive order. For the moment, the fates of 800,000 individuals raised in the U.S. remain uncertain. A large majority of the American people agree DACA beneficiaries should continue to receive legal protection. The fate of DACA beneficiaries is now in Congress’ hands.

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jpd5pd@virginia.edu

1 Stern, Mark J. “The Slow Death of DACA Will Be a Rolling Catastrophe that Trump Can’t Escape,” http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/09/06/rolling_daca_cancellations_will_dog_the_trump_administration.html Slate, 09.2017. 

2 Baker, S. “Effect of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act on Crime,” Stanford Law and Economics Olin Working Paper No. 412 (2014).

3 U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Resources/Reports%20and%20Studies/Immigration%20Forms%20Data/All%20Form%20Types/DACA/daca_performancedata_fy2017_qtr2.pdf

4 Wong, Tom K., “Results of Tom K. Wong, National Immigration Law Center, and Center for American Progress National Survey,” (Washington: National Immigration Law Center and Center for American Progress, June 2015), https://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/DACA-Wong_NILC_CAP-Codebook-PDF.pdf.

5 Stern, “The Slow Death of DACA…,” Slate, 09.2017.

6 Id.

7 Wong, Tom K., “Results of Tom K. Wong, National Immigration Law Center, and Center for American Progress National Survey,” 

8 Pope, Nolan G., “The Effects of DACAmentation: The Impact of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals on Unauthorized Immigrants” 2014

9 Shear, Michael D. and Julie Hirschfeld Davis, “Trumps Moves to End DACA and Calls on Congress to Act,” New York Times, 09.2017.

10 Id.

11 Stern, “The Slow Death of DACA…,” Slate, 09.2017. 

12 Id.