Justice Now

December 12, 2019

Justice Now is a California based non-profit social justice organization providing legal advocacy and other types of supportive services to incarcerated women. Justice Now envisions a world without prisons and seeks to dismantle the prison industrial complex, believing that the current system damages those incarcerated as well as their communities.…

The Justice Arts Coalition

December 5, 2019

The Justice Arts Coalition (JAC) is a non-profit organization that unites institutions and individuals that believe in the power of the arts to ignite change by supporting artists in and around the justice system. Since 2008, JAC, formerly called the Prison Arts Coalition, has been uniting teaching artists, arts advocates,…

The Basics of Case Law Research

October 25, 2019

Case law, also known as common law, are rules of law derived from judicial decisions in particular court cases. Higher court decisions are binding on lower courts based on the concept of precedent, or stare decisis, which means to follow or adhere to what was previously decided. Case law is…

What are Therapeutic Justice Courts?

August 7, 2019

Therapeutic Justice Courts (TJCs), also called Problem Solving Courts, Specialty Courts, Recovery Courts, Treatment Courts or Collaborative Justice Courts, focus on education, healing, and restoration for criminal offenders, their victims, and the community.

Consciously Co-Creating Better Contracts

May 6, 2019

Black's Law Dictionary defines a contract as "A deliberate engagement between competent parties, upon a legal consideration, to do or abstain from doing, some act." In order for a contract to be legally binding, there must be (1) an offer; (2) acceptance of the offer; (3) consideration (bargained-for exchange); (4)…

Involuntary Commitment: Can You Force Someone to Go to Rehab?

March 1, 2019

As the nationwide opioid epidemic continues, desperate parents and addiction advocates are pushing lawmakers to expand the use of involuntary commitment laws to force addicts into inpatient addiction treatment. Its a controversial subject with constitutional as well as practical implications. Most state involuntary commitment statutes are used to confine people…

Legal Options When a Loved One Loses Mental Capacity

February 23, 2019

Life is unpredictable and there are any number of explanations for how and why an adult may lose mental capacity. An elderly parent could develop dementia or Alzheimer's. A spouse could get into an accident and suffer a traumatic brain injury. Even long-term substance abuse could result in the deterioration…

Legal Protections for Domestic Violence Victims in New Jersey

January 23, 2019

According to statistics from the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, every minute in the United States an average of 20 people experience physical violence by an intimate partner, amounting to more than 10 million people every year. Approximately 1 in 4 women and 1 in 9 men experience severe intimate…

Service Animals & Federal Law

January 10, 2019

The subject of service animals has been in the news quite a bit recently, mostly because of the wave of controversy surrounding "fraudulent" service animals creating problems on airplanes. However, legitimate service animals provide crucial assistance to many disabled individuals, allowing them the freedom to live their lives safely and…

What is Conscious Contracting?

December 5, 2018

This past weekend I attended a Conscious Contracting Workshop at The Center for Open Hiring at Greyston in Yonkers, New York taught by lawyer and legal consultant J. Kim Wright. Also known as Values-Based, Vision-Based, Mindful, Sustainable or Integrative Contracts, Conscious Contracts® is the brain child of legal innovators J.…

Age Discrimination in Employment

November 15, 2018

On November 6, 2018 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the federal law which prohibits age discrimination in employment applies to state and local governments, regardless of their size. The case, Mount Lemmon Fire District v. Guido, involved a municipal fire department that laid off its two oldest firefighters…

The Affordable Housing Crisis

November 9, 2018

According to findings published by Princeton's Eviction Lab, in 2016 there were nearly a million evictions nationally. That amounts to 2.3 million people, 6,300 people a day that were evicted, many of them children. To put those numbers into perspective, the number of people evicted was twice the number of people who…

New Jersey Landlords’ Responsibility to Provide Heat

October 27, 2018

If you are a New Jersey renter and your lease requires your landlord to provide heat, your landlord must abide by heating standards set by state codes and local town or city ordinances. The New Jersey state housing code requires that from October 1st through May 1st, landlords must provide…

The 2018 Spirit Law Conference

October 19, 2018

Last week I attended a four day conference organized by the Project for Integrating Spirituality, Law and Politics (PISLAP), a nationwide network of lawyers, law professors, law students, legal workers, and others who are seeking to develop a new spiritually-informed approach to law and social change. I became aware of PISLAP…

New Jersey Landlord-Tenant Law

October 3, 2018

Join host Jacqueline Crosby and guest Jose Abreu, senior staff attorney at Central Jersey Legal Services, Inc., in a discussion about New Jersey tenant's rights and responsibilities, including: What to do when your landlord won't make essential repairs What to do if your landlord is foreclosed on What your rights…