The Rutgers Law Record

In her Jacob Prize award-winning book, At Home in the Law: How the Domestic Violence Revolution is Transforming Privacy (2009), Professor Jeannie Suk mounts a sustained argument to the effect that under the guise of protecting women, coercive state power has infiltrated the hitherto sacrosanct domain of the home. Unfortunately, Professor Suk makes a number of errors in her book. She misreports cases, misrepresents statutes, and misinterprets law. The purpose of this paper is to address and analyze these errors in the area of domestic violence.

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The significant downturn in the United States economy has not only affected the ability for law school graduates to find jobs, it has caused significant problems for law schools as well. Law schools rely on their reputations and statistics to entice prospective students to apply to their schools and many applicants rely heavily on this information when choosing which school to attend. As a result, the spotlight has been put on law schools that have publicly reassured potential students that they will be able to find jobs, even during these turbulent economic times, by posting employment percentage rates for students after graduation. Given the decline in legal jobs, some students have begun to take action against their law schools that posted employment percentage rates that did not accurately reflect graduates with law-related employment. Skewing employment statistics has been considered by many to constitute false advertising, which is not only illegal, but also violates the ethical laws that lawyers must adhere to and goes against what is taught in essential law school courses. As a result, the question remains: how can law schools expect students to make ethical decisions as lawyers when school administrators are violating the very laws they teach?

Law schools throughout the country become accredited after the American Bar Association (the “ABA”) recognizes that these schools have met certain standards. Beginning in 1952, the United States Department of Education approved the ABA to act as the national agency responsible for accrediting law schools and ensuring that all accredited law schools adhere to its rules and procedures.1] Although some law schools are not accredited by the ABA, most states only allow graduates from ABA-accredited law schools to sit for their bar exams. In fact, twenty states require that students attend ABA-accredited law schools before they can sit for the bar in that state. The states that do not require this usually accept bar admission from another state or have additional requirements that can make the application process more difficult.

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40 Rutgers L. Rec. 81 (2012) | WestLaw | LexisNexis | PDF
Post-secondary education and the student loans associated with it have become hot topics recently. There has been increasing political and media attention focusing on the rising cost of education as well as the low employment numbers among graduates. There has also been, and will continue to be, media punditry and political soap boxing about whether we should modify the bankruptcy statute to permit a greater number of people to discharge their student loans. Proprietary schools operate within this mix and it is this author’s opinion that they deserve a closer look. This article will focus on the potential harm caused to students by proprietary schools and some of the remedies available to those students.

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40 Rutgers L. Rec. 48 (2012) | WestLaw | LexisNexis | PDF
“In the song “Gold Digger,” Kanye West laments, “18 years, 18 years [a]nd on her 18th birthday he found out it wasn’t his.” This represents the perception in American society that a parent’s legal obligation to support their child ends when the child reachesthe age of majority. New Jersey has defined majority to be, “every person 18 or more years of age shall in all other matters and for all other purposes be deemed to be an adult…” Pennsylvania defines majority as “either eighteen years of age or when the child graduates from high school, whichever comes later.” Most other states, after the passage of the twenty-sixth amendment to the U.S. Constitution, lowered the age of majority from 21 to 18 as well.

Since in most states the age of majority is 18, for parents who remain married throughout their children’s college years, for the most part, there is no legal requirement to contribute to the college expenses of their children. However, people who divorce may end up having to pay a portion of their child’s college expenses, even though college students are typically past the age of majority. If a divorced parent is required to contribute to their child’s college cost, should they be able to know what courses the student took and what grades they received? This is the question the court was faced with in Van Brunt v. Van Brunt.”

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40 Rutgers L. Rec. 1 (2012) | WestLaw | LexisNexis | PDF
“Does a religious community have a remedy when a municipality’s intent-neutral zoning ordinance acts to completely exclude that group from living within its borders by prohibiting the only type of housing the religious group will use? That the zoning ordinance acts to discriminate against this group, excluding them from living within the municipality’s border by excluding their housing, there can be little question. However, where the zoning ordinance is neutral on its face, and no intent to either interfere with the community’s free exercise of religion, or intent to discriminate against them in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment equal protection clause is evidenced, courts will only apply rational basis review to a facial challenge of the ordinance in order to determine if the zoning ordinance is arbitrary and capricious. Application of rational basis usually means that where a religious group cannot prove that the municipality’s intent to discriminate against that group was a motivating factor in the decision to zone as it did, the possibility of constitutional challenge is foreclosed, and the group is left without remedy because the rational basis test favors the power of municipalities to zone as they see fit. ”

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