Student Voices

Cartoon depicting a prison inmate at a track, where a judge asks "Here for the PRLA-thon?" and requiring a $450 entry fee and hurdles labeled "injury requirement", "money payment", and "exhaustion."

Time for Change to Prisoners’ Rights Advocacy

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The Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) was signed in 1996 as a way of limiting frivolous lawsuits in federal court stemming from prisoners over such egregious civil rights violations as serving crunchy (versus smooth) peanut butter in prisons. It was never intended to harm the reasonable civil rights of prisoners. But 30 years later, criticism from human rights advocates persist while prisoners continue to face procedural and financial hurdles just to have their (often very reasonable) lawsuits even looked at by a judge. In this “Student Voices” blog, Spencer Thieme offers suggestions both on rigorous testing and updating data to make a more compelling case for legislative change.

Unaccompanied Immigrant Minors–Poster Children for the Access to Justice Gap

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Recent immigration proceedings have exposed the particularly vulnerable position that unaccompanied immigrant children face in court. Heavily dependent on federally funded legal aid, their access to legal representation is challenging at best, doomed at worst. This week, we bring you a “Student Voices” blog that examines the current immigration court environment–hostile to reliance on federal support–and looks at alternative paths for funding and legal right to counsel going forward.

Cartoon depicting an individual counting the days behind bars while a prosecutor is buried under paperwork

How Overburdened Prosecutors Harm Defendants

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Public defenders aren’t the only ones burdened by excessive caseloads. Prosecutors also face widespread high-volume workloads, and the result can mean delays, weak-case backlogs, overlooked alternative, and unintentional Brady violations. This bonus “Student Voices” blog proposes reforms such as randomized controlled trial research and data-informed case screening.

Cartoon depicting both worker unions and worker centers as ballerinas. The "union" ballerina asks the "worker center" ballerina how she got so flexible.

Worker Centers Build Collective Worker Power

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Labor unions, known for advancing workers’ rights, are limited by the National Labor Relations Act and whom they represent. This scope typically excludes low-wage workers–namely, immigrants and gig workers–from unionization support. So where have these excluded workers found access to justice in the form of legal support and collective action organization? Community-based worker centers.

Cartoon depicting Blob accessing AI legal help from various publicly accessible locations--library, municipal court self-help center, community centers, and 'AI terminals'.

Distribution, Not Just Design: Rethinking Access to AI Legal Help

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To make AI legal help truly accessible requires less focus on the AI tools themselves and more focus on the distribution channels where people will use them. Libraries, court self-help centers, community institutions, and kiosks all bring accessibility-related challenges from privacy, workflow support, and overreliance. This “Student Voices” post argues for AI literacy support, as well as improved policy standards and more funding, to help those who need legal AI help the most.

Cartoon depicting a scale measuring the Law Enforcement Officer Bill of Rights, with public accountability being outweighed by police protections.

LEOBR-oken? Barriers to Justice in the Law Enforcement Officer Bill of Rights

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Do increased procedural protections for police officers undercut access to justice? Are citizens less likely to be able to hold police officers accountable for misconduct under the Law Enforcement Bill of Rights (LEOBR)? This potential conflict constitutes this week’s bonus post, which examines the history and efficacy of LEOBR while also proposing a randomized controlled trial to study both the perceived fairness and actual fairness of LEOBR.

Cartoon depicting a Reclamo robot protecting a worker from a robber stealing worker wages

AI: Defender of Wage Theft Victims (and Access to Justice)

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Can AI be the superhero in wage recovery efforts? This “Student Voices” post illustrates the widespread wage theft problem in the U.S. juxtaposed with equally widespread indifference on the part of law enforcement, federal government, and other stakeholders.
The gap leaves room for technology and AI tools to be part of the triage picture.

Cartoon depicting a drunk attorney representing a client, with the judge shrugging it off

Drunk, Asleep, or Silent: Ineffective Assistance of Counsel in Capital Cases

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Ineffective assistance of counsel counts among its more egregious causes lack of preparation, sleeping through trial, and drunkenness. So, what is the legal standard for this incompetence? This “Student Voices” bonus blog examines the Supreme Court’s Strickland and Cronic decisions, their application in capital cases, and potential reforms to provide a more just process for defendants.

Cartoon depicting a line of potential jurors outside a courthouse with a sign saying the jury selection is at capacity (but only two jurors selected)

Randomizing Reforms to Ensure the Right to an Impartial Jury

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The Sixth Amendment right to an impartial jury—particularly for Black defendants facing disproportionately white juries—isn’t always a guarantee. This “Student Voices” blog proposes three reforms to be randomized and studied in real courts, rather than assuming they work, to mitigate possible implicit racial bias in juries.

Cartoon depicting a pro se litigant seeking help from AI, but AI is literally tied up in caution tape from UPL regulations

Is UPL Targeting AI to Protect Consumers or Protect Lawyers?

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Law could use a tool like AI to bridge the accessibility gap between practitioners and the pro se litigants attempting to navigate the legal field. In this second post in a two-part series on AI and the unauthorized practice of law (UPL), HLS student Elizabeth Guo outlines six points of argument in favor of AI and against UPL as the tool to regulate AI in legal practice.

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