I Am Luscious, and Other Campaign Slogans

By Associate Clinical Professor Jessica Levinson

This op-ed was originally posted on Pacific Standard.

I have a new idea to increase civic engagement, and it is all about vegan food.
Some background for the non-hipsters out there. So all three of you, listen up. There is a vegan restaurant with locations, unsurprisingly, in Los Angeles, Santa Cruz, and Berkeley, the birthing centers of true hipster culture. The fun (or perhaps failure, depending on your perspective) of this chain is how they name their dishes: Each is a personal, positive, declarative statement. Instead of rice with lentils, you'll order the "I Am Humble." Feel like hummus and pesto? You'll dine on the "I Am Abundant."

If you're a rain-on-your-parade curmudgeon like me, you'll do your best to avoid ordering the dishes by their given names. Instead of confidently telling my server, "I Am Terrific," I prefer to spend three minutes describing the dish, which is, as the name fails to indicate, made of kelp noodles. One of my very favorite dining companions suggested that I should "pick my battles," but the opportunity to avoid announcing, "I Am Liberated" (another kelp noodle dish) is well worth the time I spend boorishly pointing at the menu.

With Housing Crisis, State Bar Helps Pave Road to Recovery

By Patrick Kelly, Guest Alumni Blogger

While the housing market finally seems to be rebounding, the effects of the foreclosure crisis continue to reverberate throughout California. Many homeowners are still struggling and in need of help in order to save their homes. The State Bar of California, in partnership with the Office of Attorney General Kamala Harris, has stepped up to provide assistance.

In November, Harris announced a $10 million grant program for organizations that provide housing counseling and legal services to homeowners. The funds were secured through the National Mortgage Settlement . The State Bar offered to help administer the new grant program, in conjunction with the Attorney General's Office. Because the State Bar already administers legal services grants, we were able to offer our help at no cost to taxpayers. That means that the entire $10 million will go to the people who are struggling and need it most.

The State Bar has been compiling and processing dozens of applications to help the selection teams set up by the Attorney General's Office make funding recommendations to the Attorney General. These applications are from legal aid organizations and other nonprofits proposing innovative, scalable and sustainable approaches for helping California families dealing with a foreclosure crisis. About $9 million is going toward Consumer Assistance Grants, which will give families the resources they need to achieve longterm financial security, including counseling, legal representation and financial planning assistance.

The Buy Side: A Wall Street Trader's Tale of Spectacular Excess by Turney Duff

By Professor Jeffery Atik

This review was originally posted on Jeffery Atik's Blog Attraverso.

The Buy Side is part tell-all, part movie treatment and part self-therapy. Turney Duff presents the rise and fall of a Wall Street trader (Duff himself, or a character resembling him) in the years leading up to the 2007/2008 financial crisis. Duff is well on the way to crashing long before the crisis hits; The Buy Side is a story of self-absorption, addiction and perhaps (though it does not arrive by book end) redemption.

Duff would have us believe that he was one of those Masters of the Universe - magically in touch with the hidden rhythms of the markets, knowing just when to hit the buy or sell button. And his sure-footed ascent is predictable. He deftly passes from sales to the Buy Side - the trading firms who engage the fawning brokers to execute their transactions. The Buy Side may or may not be where the big compensation is - but it's certainly where the perks lie. And Duff relishes the Buy Side life: imagine buying six extra Yankees tickets in order to take out-of-park smoke breaks.

Duff claims no special savvy; he's just a party guy who attracts other party guys (and party gals). Somehow this leads to universal admiration and a seven-figure bonus check. I wonder if Duff is calculating in his modesty: it makes a better film. Still he must have had some knowledge of the health-care sector (he was heralded as an expert).

The Supreme Court Rules There Is No One Left Standing To Appeal Prop. 8

By Associate Clinical Professor Jessica Levinson

This op-ed was originally posted on Jurist

In a 5-4 opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the US Supreme Court has ruled that there is simply no one left standing to appeal California's infamous 2008 ballot initiative, Proposition 8. Prop 8, as the entire world now knows, amended the California State Constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman to the exclusion of same-sex marriages.

In the much-anticipated case, Hollingsworth v. Perry, the Court avoided the larger, and more politically charged issue potentially presented by the case: whether the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits California from defining marriage as between a man and a woman. This question raises the issues of whether gays and lesbians are members of a so-called "suspect class" and whether there is a "fundamental" right to marry.

Chief Justice Roberts ruled on narrower grounds, finding that proponents of ballot initiatives lack the "standing" under Article III, ¨ 2 of the Constitution. Standing, the Court reiterated, is necessary to appeal a case in federal court.

Battle Over CA's Public Records Act was Actually a Budget Deal

By Associate Clinical Professor Jessica Levinson

This op-ed is cross-posted from KCET.

Some of you may have gotten whiplash following the latest kerfuffle over California's Public Records Act (CPRA).

First, as part of the budget deal it looked like there would be limited access to government documents. Why? Because the deal provided that the CPRA would be suspended, instead of paid for from state coffers. Specifically, the state is required to reimburse local agencies for the cost of compliance. The anticipated cost of the CPRA totals in the tens of millions of dollars.

Under the budget plan, local agencies would have the ability to opt out of certain portions of the law, those requiring local agencies to help people trying to access information, provide respond to record requests within 10 days, and furnish people with electronic records when they are obtainable.

Then, predictably, there was a significant backlash. And then, equally predictably, legislators reacted. At the end of last week two State Senators introduced a constitutional amendment purportedly intended to strengthen the CPRA. State President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D - Sacramento) and State Senator Mark Leno (D - San Francisco) introduced an amendment, which would require that local agencies comply with and pay the costs of complying with the CPRA.

Who's Killing the Voting Rights Act, Congress or the Supreme Court?

By Associate Clinical Professor Jessica Levinson

This op-ed was originally published by Pacific Standard Magazine
In a much-anticipated case decided Tuesday, the Supreme Court concluded that Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, a landmark civil rights law originally enacted a half century ago to reverse the rampant disenfranchisement of Southern blacks, is unconstitutional. The VRA itself is not dead, but a key section of it is undoubtedly on life support. And while a 5-4 court majority wielded the weapon, know that Congress' inaction gave the court an excuse to take it up.

If you've been following the saga of pre-clearance, you may have expected to read that Section 5--not Section 4--was declared invalid. Section 5, after all, has gotten most of the press. Allow me to explain.

WHAT IS THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT?

Congress passed the VRA in 1965 in response to pervasive discrimination against African American voters. This landmark piece of legislation contains two key provisions.

The first is Section 2, which provides a general prohibition against any voting procedure or practice that discriminates on the basis of race, color, or membership in certain language minority groups. Section 2 was not at issue in Shelby County v. Holder but likely will begin to bear a much heavier weight thanks to the Supreme Court declaring Section 4 invalid.

Shadowboxing and Unintended Consequences

By Associate Professor Justin Levitt

This commentary was cross-posted from SCOTUS blog.

The Court today struck down a statute that did not exist. And it did so at the request of jurisdictions seeking a little extra "dignity" -- who might end up with less dignity as a result.

Formally, the Court struck the 2006 reauthorization of 42 U.S.C. § 1973b -- Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, and a central part of the Act's preclearance regime. Its more famous counterpart, Section 5, requires certain jurisdictions to submit election changes for federal review, to ensure that they do not harm minority voting power. Section 5 sets the "what." Section 4 sets the "where," delineating which jurisdictions receive Section 5′s special medicine.

But the Section 4 that the Court struck is a curious creature -- as I'd feared, a simulacrum. The Court branded it the rote reenactment of a "formula based on 40-year-old facts having no logical relation to the present day."

This stale formula is not the coverage formula actually in the law. The formula started with 1960s and 1970s registration and turnout figures, locating the broken democracies connected to the worst discrimination. But it did not end there. It allowed any jurisdiction that had demonstrated consistent improvement in minority opportunities, without backsliding, to "bail out" of coverage.