Author Archives: Hanna Burt

Encampment Ban Is Miami’s Latest Effort to Criminalize Homelessness

MAGGIE MARQUART—Birth certificates, urns, medication, family photos—these are all items the City of Miami has confiscated from people experiencing homelessness in recent street “clean ups.” Now, the city also has the authority to arrest people for living on the streets. In October, Miami passed an ordinance banning encampments, taking another step toward criminalizing homelessness. Ordinance […]

Gambling for the Ballot: Potential Election Fraud in Florida’s Latest Gambling Initiative

HILLARY GABRIELE—Florida’s multibillion-dollar gaming industry has incited a “turf war” between the Seminole Tribe of Florida and rival gaming companies, which hoped to place certain gaming constitutional amendments on the 2022 midterm ballot. The Seminole Tribe currently runs the only Las Vegas-style gaming operations in Florida. However, the Tribe, which recently poured $1.5 billion into its signature Seminole Hard […]

Death Penalty Debate: The Role of Spiritual Advisors During Execution

ISABELLE CARBAJALES—The constitutionality of capital punishment has long been debated. The rights of those on death row and aspects of the death-penalty system have been similarly subject to wide-spread debate. One of the more recent death penalty debates arises in Ramirez v. Collier and questions the role of spiritual advisors during the execution of death […]

Safeguarding Borrower Rights in Crisis-Era Microfinance

CHAD KRAMER—While the Covid-19 crisis has broadly shaken global economic stability, those who borrow from for-profit microfinance institutions (MFIs) have often encountered disastrous financial circumstances. MFIs professedly further global financial inclusion by offering microcredit and other services to the underbanked in developing economies. And MFIs do provide microentrepreneurs otherwise inaccessible capital, frequently empowering them to […]

Financial Institutions Must Comply with FTC’s Revised “Safeguards Rule” by December 2022

MICHAEL NEWELL—The Federal Trade Commission (“FTC” or “Commission”), created by congressional statute, is empowered to prescribe rules that define with specificity acts or practices in or affecting commerce that are unfair or deceptive and establish requirements designed to prevent such acts or practices. In October 2021, the FTC issued a final rule to amend the […]