Month: April 2016

Jonathan Todres

Once thought of as primarily a criminal justice issue, human trafficking is now recognized as an issue that implicates all sectors of society. Trafficked individuals have been identified in a breadth of industries, including agriculture, manufacturing, construction, mining, fisheries, forestry, health care, hospitality and tourism, domestic service, restaurants, forced-begging operations, and the sex industry. Preventing exploitation across so many sectors requires a comprehensive, coordinated response. In other words, in addition to the criminal justice system, social service professionals, health care providers, educators, businesses, media, and others all have a role to play in addressing human trafficking and its attendant forms of exploitation. As part of the recent push to broaden engagement in anti-trafficking efforts, policymakers and advocates have identified mandatory child abuse reporting statutes as a vehicle for engaging health care providers, educators, and other professionals who work with children to help identify children at risk of or exploited by human trafficking.

Richard E. Redding

Learning experiences often produce outcomes we do not expect. Professor Yackee’s study finding no relationship between a schools’ clinical offerings (measured by “the number of positions available in faculty supervised law clinic courses . . . as a percent of total JD enrollment”) and student employment outcomes (measured by the school’s Law School Transparency employment score) was greeted with skepticism by practitioners and advocates of clinical legal education (hereinafter “CLE”). Law students and recent graduates may also be skeptical given the popularity of clinical courses and surveys finding that many lawyers view their law school clinical experiences as useful in preparing them for law practice, which is often advertised to students and employers as a key benefit of clinics.

Thomas E. Simmons

Sexbots may displace humans in the sex trade (or on a wider scale) sometime between the 2020s and the 2050s. Although some perquisites may derive from the proliferation of sexbots (lower levels of sexually transmitted diseases, for example), significant social harms can also be predicted. In anticipation of those harms, lawmakers may endorse targeted regulation or outright bans. The uncertain limits of Lawrence v. Texas and its progeny of sex-toy decisions will present vague constitutional shoals to these aims. The legislating-of-sexbots crusade will also make for strange bedfellows, politically speaking, as social conservatives aiming to maintain traditional values ally with liberals concerned with amplified objectification.