Volume 13 Number 3

• Zero-Tolerance: The Trump Administration’s Human Rights Violations Against Migrants on the Southern Border

  by Jeffrey R. Baker and Allyson McKinney Timm

  In 2017, the Trump Administration imposed its policy of zero-tolerance immigration enforcement on the southern border. This policy resulted in the forcible separation of families and the prolonged detention of children in harsh conditions without due process or adequate resources. The Trump Administration unleashed these policies to deter people from immigrating and seeking asylum, consistent with President Trump’s racist campaign rhetoric. This Article analyzes and critiques these policies based on international human rights law.

  13 Drexel L. Rev. 581

• The Labor Law that Wasn’t: How the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in the Nineteenth Century Denied Mechanics’ Liens to Wageworkers

  by Peter D. DeChiara

  Mechanics’ lien laws give those who supply labor or material to the construction of a building a lien against the building if they are left unpaid. Historians have often described these statutes, which had spread throughout the United States by the mid-nineteenth century, as an early form of labor legislation. This Article shows how, in Pennsylvania at least, that description is simply wrong.

  13 Drexel L. Rev. 663

• Note - “Be a Lie if I Told You that I Never Thought of Death”: Using Judicial Discretion to Consider Anticipated Early Death During Sentencing

  by Sarah Fishel

  The juvenile legal system has been built upon the idea that youthful offenders are capable of change. This assumption is probably best exemplified by the line of cases surrounding the malleability of youth and the inappropriate nature of mandatory long-term punishments (i.e., the death penalty and life in prison without the possibility of parole) that do not acknowledge the potential for rehabilitation. Thus, juveniles are provided resources and presumptions not afforded to individuals in the adult system. Youthful offenders who operate under the assumption that they will die young, however, may be over the age of eighteen and thus not eligible for these benefits. As such, judges should use their discretion to consider anticipated early death during sentencing for all youthful offenders.

  13 Drexel L. Rev. 707

• Note - Finding Favor: A Call for Compassionate Discretion in Cases of Battered Mothers Who Fail to Protect

  by Kaley Gordon

  This Note explores notable, recent examples of women who were either charged with the failure to protect their children from abuse, or with murder for failing to prevent the deaths of their children. Many scholars, practitioners, and law students have proposed solutions to this issue with varying degrees of success. This Note aggregates and explores some of those solutions, and argues for greater use of prosecutorial discretion in charging these women as a necessary piece of the puzzle.

  13 Drexel L. Rev. 747

• Note - The First Amendment in School Libraries: Using Substantial Truth to Protect a Substantial Right

  by Shane Morris

  The First Amendment right to freedom of speech is that of a two-sided coin, as the right to speech goes hand in hand with the right to receive speech. Where an author’s book is banned from a school library, the reader’s right to freedom of speech is censored with it, interfering with the ability of school libraries to serve as the “marketplace of ideas” in education.

  13 Drexel L. Rev. 787