Welcome to Verdict Magazine
Listed below is only a brief synopsis of some of the thousands of insightful articles published in Verdict magazine. To read the full articles, contact NCCLP. You can also join as a member, volunteer, become a subscriber or participate in a myriad of other ways to help advance our cause.
Our Inalienable Rights Can Never Be Recovered
By Monroe H. Freedman, Esq.
April 2014
With the revelations released by Edward Snowden of mass surveillance of telephone calls and emails of Americans, foreign leaders and millions of people throughout the world, President Obama has proposed “reforms” of the NSA’s data gathering, while maintaining the government’s right to orchestrate such encroachment into individual and organizational privacy. Freedman, a leading expert on legal ethics, says it is too late to put the genie back in the bottle.
Will Charter Cities Force a Third Middle Passage For the Garífuna People?
By Cesar Rochez-Reyes, Honduran attorney
October 2013
The author details the struggle of the Garífuna peoples in Honduras to preserve their homeland and culture. Public-private collusion has led to the supplantation of representative government and forceable uprooting of Garífuna from their coastal homelands. Investor-controlled “Charter Cities” now pave the way for multinational corporate resort development schemes…at what cost to principles of governance and indigenous rights?
Constitutional Consequences of Cutting Court Budgets
By James L. Kaller, Esq.
July 2013
In the face of budget cuts at all levels of federal and state government, the right to one’s “day in court” is seriously threatened as the government closes courthouses and courtrooms and raises court fees.
Sargent Shriver and the Ordered Quest for Justice
By John A. Girardi, Esq. and Mark K. Shriver
October 2012
Mark Shriver remembers his late father, Sargent Shriver, and his many accomplishments, including his role in founding the federal Legal Services Program. In an interview with NCCLP Board of Directors’ member John Girardi, Esq., Shriver talks about his father’s courage and vision to create the means for the program to bring about systemic change by allowing legal service lawyers to challenge government policy.
Kill the Indian, Save the Child - One Hundred Years of Indian Boarding Schools
By Dr. Kay McGowan
October 2012
In 1819 Congress created a national program to instruct Native Americans in agriculture, reading, writing and arithmetic. By the late 1800s, the law was used to fund Indian boarding schools as part of a federal program to “civilize” Native children. The author details the economic, cultural and psychological damage wrought by the forced removal of children, stripping them of their identify and heritage.
Fighting Voter Exclusion and Suppression
By Jonathan A. Weiss, Esq., and Otis H. King, Esq.
April 2012
By 2012 eleven states had passed laws making it more difficult for minority and poor citizens to register to vote. In an election year where the “SuperPACs” are channeling billions in corporate campaign donations into elections, the rights of those with the least money is of special concern. The authors discuss measures to protect the rights of minorities and the poor to vote.
Every Accused Citizen Deserves a Trial
By Dianne Feinstein (deceased)
April 2012
On New Year’s Eve, 2011, President Obama signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act. The act authorizes the U.S. military to arrest and detain American citizens indefinitely without trial and to ship them anywhere in the world. The law obliterates the constitutional guarantees that support our adversarial system of justice. Senator Feinstein, one of the few outspoken opponents of these provisions, has introduced the Due Process Guarantee Act to repeal this effort to vest the military with unbridled power to arrest and hold individuals incommunicado.
Predatory Practices in Financial Institutions
By James C. Sturdevant, Esq.
April 2010
In his 2010 State of the Union address, President Obama promised financial reform in response to the banking industry’s reckless speculative manipulations. Sturdevant, an expert in consumer class actions, examines these proposals and the need for changes in the system, most notably related to the innumerable and increasing fees and penalties that banks and credit card companies charge their poorest customers (such as those on Social Security or other fixed income) through which exploitation they generate billions.
The Criminal Character of the Civil Immigration Law System
By Sean R. Olender, Esq., and Jonathan C. Dunten, Esq.
July 2009
Tens of thousands of immigrants are imprisoned in federal government detention centers across the United States. Arrested by local police officers on “civil” charges, and without any effective means to challenge the reasonableness of their arrests, these individuals are often spirited half way across the country by the federal government to become what are in growing numbers, America’s “disappeared.”
Fencing Out the Constitution
By Jonathan Dunten, Esq.
October 2008
With the goal of completing some 698 miles of fence along the U.S.-Mexico border by the end of 2010, Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff has been armed by Congress with the authority to “waive all legal requirements” “in his sole discretion,” including those designed to protect the environment, Native American graves and territorial integrity – without judicial review. This extraordinary delegation in the hands of an appointed executive officer raises critical questions regarding separation of powers, federalism and equal protection of the laws. The Texas Border Coalition, including 19 cities, 18 Chambers of Commerce and 10 counties challenged this delegation of power as unconstitutional.
Continuing Labor’s Divide: Government Sanctions Exploitation
By Mark R. Humowiecki, Esq., and Piper Hoffman, Esq.
July 2008
In Coke v. Long Island Care at Home, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that in-home care workers are excluded from the minimum wage and overtime protections of the Fair Labor Standards Act, upholding the Department of Labor’s redefinition of “companion” and “babysitter” to exclude a growing sector of the workforce. The authors discuss the ramifications such decisions have on the workforce.
Guantanamo Close Up: An Interview with Dicky Grigg, Esq.
By John Girardi, Esq.
October 2007
NCCLP Board member John Girardi, Esq., interviewed the well-respected attorney Dicky Grigg, Esq., from Austin, Texas, concerning Grigg’s representation of detainees at the United States’ facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Grigg provides a gripping description of the restraints facing any counsel attempting to represent a defendant in the custody of the United States who has been labeled an “enemy combatant” or who is “awaiting such a determination.” He further details through his experience the United States government’s abandonment of basic constitutional standards of due process and its abrogation of standards under the Geneva Conventions.
Why We All Need CCLP
Bay Area CCLP Board member James L. Kaller takes up the recurring question, “Aren’t the legal needs of low-income workers already being met by local legal aid societies and programs funded by the Legal Services Corporation (LSC)?” He describes the history of government-funded legal services, culminating in a 2006 government finding that 80% of the legal needs of low-income Americans are not being met. He details the limitations Congress has placed on LSC attorneys’ ability to challenge laws or practices shown to be harmful to low-income workers and the poor, ensuring continuance of the status quo of no meaningful recourse for a growing portion of our population. Kaller contrasts the approach CCLP takes to seeking systemic solutions to the problems through independent, community based organizing.
A Presumption of Abuse
By Eugene Crane, Esq.
October 2006
A distinguished bankruptcy attorney and trustee examines the chilling effect of the new federal bankruptcy law on those filing for bankruptcy, their counsel and bankruptcy trustees. The new law sanctions attorneys for their clients’ failures, errors or misreporting. It also creates a presumption that consumer debtors have engaged in wrongdoing and are undisciplined abusers of credit.
Taking Liberties
By Ora Prochovnick, Esq.
January 2006
The June 2005 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Kelo v. City of New London, approving the use of eminent domain power for purely private uses as long as it promises economic gain, has set off a storm of opposition in the media and in federal and state legislatures. In this article, the author examines the decision in light of both prior legal precedents and the history of economic development of projects and suggests an alternative approach to development rooted in CCLP’s own history.
Feudalism in Freehold: Day Laborers Under Attack
By Maria M. Perales
October 2004
The exploitation of day laborers in Freehold, New Jersey, as in other cities around the nation forms the basis of an ongoing construction boom. Excluded from the protection of federal labor legislation, they are also subject to feudalistic laws permitting their arrest on unspecified charges, restricting their right to seek employment in public areas and criminalizing them as “illegal guests” not registered with the town. Assisted by the LatinoJustice PRLDEF, these workers have won some gains, but their fight has only begun.
The Legal Legacy of San Francisco’s 1934 General Strike
By Marco Sulpizi
October 2004
July 2004 marked the 70th anniversary of the epoch-making 1934 San Francisco General Strike, begun by longshoremen and maritime worked, that changed the position, legally and organizationally, of Labor forever. Now, with the membership of labor unions under the Wagner Act decreasing and their power at the bargaining table facing threats from downsizing and outsourcing, participants in the strike, historians and current-day labor leaders analyze the significance of the strike and what we can learn from it today.
Eye of the Hurricane: California’s ‘Energy Crisis’- An Interview with California State Senator Joseph Dunn
October 2002
California State Senator Joseph Dunn, now Emeritus, a class action attorney before his election to the Senate, explains the economic and political background of California’s “energy crisis” of 2000-2001 and how it could have been prevented.
Attica- History Made and Lessons Lost
By Michael Deutsch, Esq., Dennis Cunningham, Esq., and Elizabeth Fink, Esq., with Joseph Heath, Esq., and Dan Meyers, Esq.
July 2001
Twenty-nine years after New York’s watershed riot at New York’s Attica prison and its brutal aftermath, New York State has agreed to a settlement for the damage done to the inmates. The attorneys who devoted 25 years to litigation express their conclusions about the settlement, the significance of the case, the riot and where things stand today – in the era of isolation units, private prisons, prison labor and more prisons holding more prisoners serving longer sentences.
Guardians of Gideon Disarmed and Union Busting in the 90’s
By Michael Z. Letwin, Esq.,
January 2001 and part II April 2001
The Supreme Court’s 1963 decision in Gideon v. Wainwright spawned not only public defenders’ offices throughout the nation but the first union of attorneys. The President of the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys, Local 2325, UAW, presents the over 30-year-history of the struggle of defense attorneys employed by New York City’s Legal Aid Society to organize themselves; describing their goals, their tactics and the opposition they have encountered in their quest to improve both their wages and conditions of work and the fate of their clients. The union struck in 1994. Broken by New York City Mayor Rudoph Giuliani through a combination of union-busting tactics such as threatening blacklisting of the strikers, hiring strike breakers, layoffs and cutting funds, the strike and its aftermath was a blow to the overburdened and underfunded attorneys and the constitutional rights of their clients.