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Under the Sixth Amendment, a criminal defendant has both the right to counsel and the right to represent himself. These rights are mutually exclusive, and the default right is the right to counsel; to exercise the right to self-represent, a defendant must 'knowingly and intelligently' waive the right to counsel and its attendant benefits. Typically, a defendant who self-represents does so after expressly invoking that right and affirmatively rejecting the right to counsel. But trial courts frequently confront defendants whose conduct seems to abuse the right to counsel and confuses the exercise of their Sixth Amendment rights. This conduct ranges from delayed proceedings because of repeated requests to substitute counsel without good cause to threats and physical violence against counsel. Faced with such conduct, courts ask whether the right to counsel can be relinquished by means other than express waiver. In finding that it can be, courts apply existing doctrines of waiver by conduct and forfeiture to this new context. However, the courts largely fail to engage with the underlying theoretical justifications for those doctrines and offer little guidance for trial courts to determine when and how they should (and should not) be applied. This Comment surveys state courts' current approaches to waiver by conduct and forfeiture in the context of indigent defendants' right to counsel, looking at both judicial practices and justifications as well as scholarly criticism and proposed alternatives. After reexamining the caselaw to demonstrate the theoretical justifications for the doctrines and noting how waiver is used in other criminal law contexts, this Comment offers guidelines for applying waiver by conduct and forfeiture to the right to counsel. These guidelines include general principles for analyzing factors that require case-by-case analysis as well as specific best practices concerning the substantive and procedural requirements of each doctrine., INTRODUCTION 1403 I. MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE SIXTH AMENDMENT RIGHTS 1405 A. The Right to Counsel 1405 B. The Right to Represent Oneself and Express Waiver of the 1407 Right to Counsel [...]

Introduction 1274 I. Factual Background 1276 A. The Access to Civil Justice Crisis 1276 B. The Civil Right to Counsel (Or Lack Thereof) 1277 II. Existing Approaches 1278 A. The [...]

In a 1992 speech, delivered one year before her elevation to the Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg criticized Roe v. Wade for the comprehensiveness of the framework it adopted. "A less encompassing Roe, one that merely struck down the Texas law [at issue in the case] and went no further that day," Ginsburg remarked, "might have served to reduce rather than fuel controversy." Two decades later, by then a member of the Court, Ginsburg renewed her criticism of Roe. In comments she made at a gathering commemorating Roe's fortieth anniversary, Ginsburg faulted the Court for having pre-empted the political process. The Supreme Court shouldn't have acted as "the single decision-maker," she remarked. Instead, there should have been "much more dialogue ... among people who play the political game." These comments don't indicate that Ginsburg was opposed in principle to the possibility of a constitutionally protected right to elective abortion. Rather, they establish that she viewed Roe as premature--that she reasoned in terms of a developmental framework of constitutional interpretation, one in which new rights emerge over time through the interplay of latent semantic possibilities contained in the constitutional text and alterations in national practice that are registered in state legislation before they ultimately secure recognition by the Court through its exercise of the Marbury power. This Article relies on the developmental framework Ginsburg employed throughout her career to assess cases unrelated to abortion and also to analyze the Court's opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the case that overruled Roe. The right announced in Roe (and affirmed in Planned Parenthood v. Casey) is problematic on developmentalist grounds, the Article suggests. On the other hand, given developmental reasoning, it must be recognized that Roe relied on a nascent movement in American life and that its conclusion having become law, Roe (in conjunction with Casey) generated legitimate reliance interests concerning reproductive freedom. The Roe-Casey framework thus should have been pared back, the Article suggests, but it shouldn't have been completely set aside. No claim is made here that Ginsburg would have reached this conclusion. The Article's aim is different. Rather, it defends, with only modest qualifications, the developmental approach to constitutional interpretation Ginsburg employed over the course of a quarter century on the Court; explains how this interpretive method has produced enduring, non-originalist conclusions in branches of law unrelated to abortion; and (in the case of abortion rights) explains how attention to reliance interests calls for preservation of an abortion option that, while less extensive than the one recognized in either Roe or Casey, is nonetheless sufficiently robust to preserve the right to reproductive freedom that has existed for the last half-century., CONTENTS CONTENTS ABSTRACT INTRODUCTION I. JUSTICE GINSBURG'S DEVELOPMENTAL CONSTITUTIONALISM A. Developmental Constitutionalism Beyond VMI i. The Eighth Amendment Punishments Clause ii. The Sixth Amendment Assistance of Counsel Clause iii. The [...]

Today, the Fourth Amendment Warrant Clause governs arrest warrants and search warrants only. But in the founding era, the Warrant Clause governed a third type of warrant: the 'warrant of commitment.' Judges issued these warrants to jail defendants pending trial. This Article argues that the Fourth Amendment Warrant Clause, with its oath and probable cause standard, should be understood today to apply to this third type of warrant. That means the Warrant Clause would govern any initial appearance where a judge first commits a defendant--a process that currently falls far short of fulfilling its constitutional and historical function. History supports this understanding. For example, in two Supreme Court cases in 1806 and 1807, lawyers and the Justices applied, either expressly or implicitly, the Fourth Amendment Warrant Clause to the warrant of commitment. Moreover, Chief Justice Marshall did so expressly in a different case, riding circuit, in 1807. Leading lawyers of that era, as well as nineteenth-century treatises, likewise understood that the Warrant Clause applied to the commitment warrant separate from any arrest warrant. The commitment warrant, often called a mittimus, therefore required its own probable cause supported by oath or affirmation. Remarkably, this history has largely been lost. Neither courts nor scholars today recognize that the Fourth Amendment applies to this third, important type of warrant-- even though judges still use such warrants to commit. But applying the Warrant Clause directly to commitment warrants would restore to defendants some of the surprisingly robust pretrial rights they enjoyed in the founding era and help reduce the mass incarceration of defendants pending trial., INTRODUCTION I. CONTEMPORARY SCHOLARSHIP ON PRETRIAL COMMITMENT II. TEXT A. Seize B. Warrants III. HISTORY OF THE PRELIMINARY EXAMINATION AND THE Mittimus to the Founding era A. Marian Statutes B. [...]

Introduction 950 I. The McCoy Case and the Issue of Defendant Autonomy 953 A. The Crime and the Trial of Robert McCoy 953 B. The Supreme Court's Decision 955 1. [...]

In March of 2023, OpenAI released GPT-4, an autoregressive language model that uses deep learning to produce text. GPT-4 has unprecedented ability to practice law: drafting briefs and memos, plotting litigation strategy, and providing general legal advice. However, scholars and practitioners have yet to unpack the implications of large language models, such as GPT-4, for long-standing bar association rules on the unauthorized practice of law ('UPL'). The intersection of large language models with UPL raises manifold issues, including those pertaining to important and developing jurisprudence on free speech, antitrust, occupational licensing, and the inherent-powers doctrine. How the intersection is navigated, moreover, is of vital importance in the durative struggle for access to justice, and low-income individuals will be disproportionately impacted. In this Article, we offer a recommendation that is both attuned to technological advances and avoids the extremes that have characterized the past decades of the UPL debate. Rather than abandon UPL rules, and rather than leave them undisturbed, we propose that they be recast as primarily regulation of entity-type claims. Through this recasting, bar associations can retain their role as the ultimate determiners of 'lawyer' and 'attorney' classifications while allowing nonlawyers, including the AI-powered entities that have emerged in recent years, to provide legal services--save for a narrow and clearly defined subset. Although this recommendation is novel, it is easy to implement, comes with few downsides, and would further the twin UPL aims of competency and ethicality better than traditional UPL enforcement. Legal technology companies would be freed from operating in a legal gray area; states would no longer have to create elaborate UPL-avoiding mechanisms, such as Utah's 'legal sandbox'; consumers--both individuals and companies--would benefit from better and cheaper legal services; and the dismantling of access-to-justice barriers would finally be possible. Moreover, the clouds of free speech and antitrust challenges that are massing above current UPL rules would dissipate, and bar associations would be able to focus on fulfilling their already established UPL-related aims., Article Contents Introduction I. ChatGPT Meets UPL .... A. What is UPL? B. UPL's Existential Problems C. UPL in Action (Causing Inaction) II. Human-AI Legal Collaboration III. The Case for [...]

For those of you who don't know me, my name is Bill Silverman, and I run the pro bono program here at Proskauer. It's a real privilege to be hosting [...]

Over the last decade, Washington State has seen a substantial increase in its unhoused population and an increase in laws that harm this group. Many of these laws subject unhoused and unsheltered people to fines, fees, and forfeitures that are exceedingly difficult for them to afford. The Excessive Fines Clauses in the United States and Washington Constitutions protect citizens from fines deemed constitutionally excessive and could be used to shield unsheltered people from the burden of paying unjust fines they cannot afford. In City of Seattle v. Long, the Washington State Supreme Court analyzed the ability to pay of a person who lived in his vehicle when deciding whether the fines imposed on him violated the state or federal Excessive Fines Clauses. This Note contends that the Long decision offers a strong constitutional foundation for arguments against the enforcement of many laws and policies that adversely affect vehicle residents and unsheltered people. Part I reviews the housing crisis in Washington and the legal ramifications unhoused people face. Part II discusses the historical jurisprudence of the Washington State and the federal Excessive Fines Clauses and their relation to a person's ability to pay. Part II also outlines the Long case and how it fits into the framework of the Excessive Fines Clause. Finally, Part III argues that an expansive reading of the Long decision is both constitutionally appropriate in light of current jurisprudence and an important tool for advocating for unsheltered people., INTRODUCTION In 2016, Steven Long lived in his truck until it was towed by the City of Seattle, and he ended up on the street. (1) At the time, Long [...]

We have all seen the headlines: No Lawyer for Miles or Legal Deserts Threaten Justice for All in Rural America. There is a substantial body of literature, across disciplines and for diverse audiences, that looks at access to justice in rural communities and geographies. However, in both the popular and scholarly imaginations, the access to justice crisis has been largely conflated with the shortage of local attorneys in rural areas: When bar associations, lawyers, and legal academics define the problem as not enough lawyers, more lawyers become the obvious solution. Consequently, programs aimed at building pipelines from law schools to rural locations and incentivizing rural practice have proliferated in central states, including South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Illinois, Nebraska, and Arkansas. And while there may be good reasons to want more lawyers in rural communities, we argue that more lawyers may not, in fact, be the most effective or impactful intervention in the rural access to justice crisis. This Article begins with the hypothesis that an attorney shortage and the justice gap are two distinct issues that have been uniquely conflated in the rural context and that when we begin to disentangle these problems, we better understand the complexity of each. As a starting point, we cannot measure what we cannot define. Advocates, scholars, and the legal profession lack shared definitions of both 'access to justice' and 'rural,' making measurement of rural access to justice, let alone comparisons across jurisdictions, nearly impossible. When we look at rural access to justice independently and without a bias or preference for lawyer-focused solutions, it seems less likely that more attorneys can effectively address the crisis for a multitude of reasons including rural community dynamics, information gaps, unclear demand, mismatched skills or expertise, cost, and potential conflicts. What we propose, instead, is a conceptualization of access to justice that is not centered around the lawyer, and we argue for a measurement of access to justice that does not rely on lawyers per capita or county (or anything) as its primary unit of measure. This Article, in turn, establishes the foundation for future work developing broader measures of access to justice infrastructure and proposing legal vulnerability as a concept that could help anticipate the needs of a community., INTRODUCTION I. DEFINING A CRISIS II. DEFINING RURAL A. Who is Rural? B. Where is Rural? III. DEFINING ACCESS TO JUSTICE A. __ to Justice and Access to B. What [...]

South Dakota, like many states, lacks any legislation regulating gestational surrogacy. For over thirty years, South Dakota intended parents and surrogates have worked together without judicial case or controversy. Good [...]

The Supreme Court's recent decision in Shinn v. Ramirez, 142 S. Ct. 1718 (2022), diminished the role of federal courts in protecting defendants' Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel by limiting when a defendant can raise an ineffective-assistance-of-counsel (IAC) claim in federal court. Defendants in states like Arizona and Texas--which bar raising IAC claims until state habeas proceedings--will be unable to effectively litigate those Sixth Amendment claims in federal court. In other states that do not defer IAC claims, a defendant has the right on appeal (1) to raise an IAC claim regarding their trial counsel and (2) to raise that claim with the constitutional guarantee of the effective assistance of their appellate counsel. But in states like Arizona and Texas, the first right is deferred to state habeas, and the second right--because there is no constitutional right to effective assistance of counsel in state habeas proceedings--is extinguished altogether. This Note considers what Shinn portends for defendants in states that defer IAC claims to state habeas proceedings. The Note argues that, while there may be no right to a remedy in federal court, the Constitution requires that state courts fill the vacuum left by the departure of the federal courts. The argument proceeds in three steps. First, where defendants have a Sixth Amendment right to counsel, they may assert that right by raising an IAC claim. Second, that right includes presenting evidence in support of the IAC claim. Finally, when a state defers IAC claims from a proceeding in which the defendant ordinarily would have a right to effective assistance of counsel to one where the defendant ordinarily lacks such a right, for example state habeas proceedings, the state must provide the defendant with effective assistance of counsel at that subsequent proceeding. If all three of these propositions are true, this Note argues defendants in states that defer IAC claims have the right to an additional forum: one where they can raise an IAC claim about the lawyer that first raised an IAC claim on their behalf. Providing such a forum would restore defendants to the same constitutional position as defendants in other states. While the federal courts used to provide this forum, after Shinn v. Ramirez, they have bowed out. The task now falls to the state courts., Introduction I. Doctrinal Background on the Right to Effective Assistance of Counsel A. Effective Assistance of Counsel B. Collateral Review Overview C. A Right Deferred II. An Unconstitutional Situation A. [...]

Removal proceedings are high-stakes adversarial proceedings in -which immigration judges must decide whether to allow immigrants -who allegedly have violated U.S. immigration laws to stay in the United States or to order them deported to their countries of origin. In these proceedings, the government trial attorneys prosecute noncitizens who often lack English fluency, economic resources, and familiarity with our legal system. Yet, most immigrants in removal proceedings do not have legal representation, as removal is considered to be a civil matter and courts have not recognized a right to governmentappointed counsel for immigrants facing removal. Advocates, policymakers, and scholars have described this situation as an access-to-justice crisis or a representation crisis for immigrant communities. The prevailing wisdom suggests that the solution to this crisis is more lawyers or more nonlawyer practitioners, such as accredited representatives and legal technicians, who can provide affordable and quality legal services. The focus, therefore, has been on the ubiquity of 'legal deserts,' commonly defined as areas that are in shortage of lawyers, and on ways to increase the supply of legal service providers in the marketplace. This Article presents an empirical study of legal representation that unsettles this prevailing wisdom by showing why an adequate supply of legal service providers is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition to address the representation crisis. Our study uses a new and original dataset that we compiled for the purposes of this study on immigration lawyers and non-detained immigrant respondents in removal proceedings. Our findings suggest that although the focus on the supplyside dimension of the representation crisis is important, it obscures other complex sets of barriers to obtaining legal representation that are distinct from the problem of legal deserts. Specifically, our empirical analyses show that whether a non-detained immigrant respondent obtains legal representation is predicted by where they reside, their primary language, and the size of their conational social networks, controlling for the availability of practicing immigration lawyers in close proximity to their places of residence and other potential confounders. In short, we argue that geography, language, and networks are destiny for immigrant respondents when it comes to obtaining legal representation. Thus, addressing the representation crisis requires looking beyond the problem of legal deserts to attend to a variety of other hurdles to obtaining legal representation that are associated with certain geographical, linguistic, and social isolation in which many immigrants live., INTRODUCTION 789 I. REMOVAL AND LEGAL REPRESENTATION 794 A. Removal Proceedings and Legal Representation 794 B. Immigration Bar 800 II. THE CURRENT STUDY 809 A. Predictors of Legal Representation 809 [...]

Although much recent attention has been paid to qualified immunity, the biggest threat to civil rights enforcement is actually the lack of lawyers able and willing to represent people whose constitutional rights have been violated. There are small, tight-knit communities of civil rights lawyers with expertise and passion in the cities of the Great Migration, but few civil rights attorneys practice outside those urban areas. Limits on attorneys' ability to recover fees mean that even attorneys willing to take civil rights cases will have financial incentives to decline meritorious cases if they would be expensive to litigate or if the expected damage awards are low. People who bring civil rights cases pro se are far less likely to succeed than those with lawyers. Most pro se cases are dismissed for failure to plead cognizable claims in their complaints or for failing to prosecute their claims--bases for dismissal that do not necessarily reflect on their underlying merits. When a meritorious pro se civil rights case is dismissed, not only the named plaintiff is harmed. Losses in these cases have negative downstream effects as well--frustrating future plaintiffs' ability to overcome qualified immunity, prove municipal liability, and establish entitlement to injunctive relief. Civil rights enforcement depends on lawyers' willingness to bring cases on behalf of people whose rights have been violated. Unless and until more lawyers are willing to take these cases, abolishing qualified immunity and other proposed reforms will not achieve their intended aims. Any plan to restore the power and potential of [section] 1983 must include a blueprint to expand the number of lawyers who are bringing civil rights cases, expand the types of cases that they are bringing, and expand the locations where they are bringing them., TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 644 I. THE RIGHTEOUS CIVIL RIGHTS CASES LAWYERS WILL NOT TAKE 652 A. The False Promise of Fee Shifting 653 B. Private Attorneys' Case Selection Decisions [...]

I. INTRODUCTION The police arrive at your workplace and ask to speak with you. Feeling embarrassed and confused, you agree to accompany them to an isolated room to answer questions. [...]

Sometimes juries are prejudiced against defendants. A jury may be predisposed to find a defendant guilty because of the nature of the charges. They may be predisposed to find a defendant guilty because of the reputation and demeanor of the defendant. They may be biased against a defendant for bigoted reasons, either consciously or not. A jury may also lack the ability to understand and apply the law in some cases. And indeed, such kinds of juror prejudice may pervade the jury pool. The resulting pervasive juror prejudice imposes constitutional harms on the defendant. Among other things, pervasive juror prejudice contravenes a defendant's presumption of innocence and a defendant's right to fair trial procedures. The way our current law handles such pervasive juror prejudice is inadequate: courts are unlikely to delay trial when appropriate, instead relying on voir dire and jury selection to avoid a prejudicial jury. But this is no solution, because voir dire and jury selection are unable to cure pervasive juror prejudice. In this Article, I proffer the first comprehensive, multimodal argument that defendants have a constitutional right to bench trial. First, I explain that as a theoretical matter, providing the defendant with the unilateral option of a bench trial with the requirement of a reasoned opinion is the only effective way to combat pervasive juror prejudice. Second, I show that the empirical and historical evidence confirm that the problem of pervasive prejudice is substantial: it arises frequently, including in the most high-profile cases; prosecutors do refuse consent to bench trial in cases where prejudice may arise; and the purported solutions of voir dire and jury selection are ineffectual. Finally, I show that, as a doctrinal matter, the interpretation of the Sixth Amendment--including with respect to the right to waive counsel, the right to a unanimous jury trial verdict, and the Court's response to racism in jury selection and jury deliberations--shows that the defendant has the unilateral right to bench trial., INTRODUCTION 1623 I. THE JURY AND FAIR TRIALS 1628 1628 B. The Presumption of Innocence 1631 C. The Right to Fair Trial Procedures 1632 D. Juror Bias and Deficiency 1634 [...]

I. Introduction I am delighted to be here in Tauranga this evening and honoured to be speaking as part of this lecture series. It was suggested that I revisit the [...]

In the 2010 landmark decision Padilla v. Kentucky, the Supreme Court held that the Sixth Amendment right to counsel demands that criminal defense attorneys inform their clients of adverse immigration consequences that may flow from a guilty plea. Although over a decade has passed since Padilla, astonishingly little is known about how public defense systems have incorporated this watershed decision on the ground. This Article presents the first empirical study of representation by public defenders in the post-Padilla era. By researching Padillas implementation in California--the state with the largest immigrant population in the nation and a longstanding commitment to public defense--this study shows how immigration expertise has been provided to indigent defendants and identifies weaknesses with the current delivery system. Our results reveal a patchwork system in which each county in California has created its own approach to immigration advising. Exhibiting efforts at compliance, most large counties with institutional public defender offices have embedded immigration experts within their offices and reshaped attorney understanding of adequate pre-plea advisals and plea-bargaining practices. At the same time, however, many other counties have languished: They have not hired immigration experts, developed county protocols for immigration advising, or implemented immigration law training for their attorneys who accept indigent court appointments. The urgency to create a workable Padilla delivery system is particularly acute in California's small and rural counties, which generally have not established an institutional public defender office and instead have relied on a county-funded contract system for appointing defense counsel. The lack of state funding for public defense in California contributes to these problems, as does the fact that some county defender systems have been slow to restructure their existing defense services to strengthen their immigration advising and defense. Based on these findings, this Article concludes by offering policy recommendations for how to improve the representation of immigrants in California. These insights are also relevant to other public defender systems throughout the country that are struggling with similar issues., Table of Contents Introduction I. A Brief History of Indigent Defense in California A. The Invention of a County-Run Defense System B. Early Development of the Right to Counsel on [...]

I. INTRODUCTION The constitutional right to the assistance of counsel, including the subsidiary rights to appointed (1) and effective (2) assistance of counsel, unquestionably is a criminal defendant's most important [...]

Civil asset forfeiture laws permit police officers to seize property they suspect is connected to criminal activity and sell or retain the property for the police department's use. In many states, including Washington, civil forfeiture occurs independent of any criminal case--many property owners are never charged with the offense police allege occurred. Because the government is not required to file criminal charges, property owners facing civil forfeiture lack the constitutional safeguards normally guaranteed to defendants in the criminal justice system: the right to an attorney, the presumption of innocence, the government's burden to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt, and protection from double jeopardy, among others. Washington's civil forfeiture laws currently provide minimal legal protection for property owners and contain a profit motive for police to pursue property forfeiture. Washington agencies need only prove property is connected to illegal activity by a preponderance of the evidence to forfeit, or permanently keep, the item. This is the second lowest burden of proof for civil forfeiture in the country. Moreover, Washington state law allows agencies to retain 90% of the proceeds from forfeited property. Washington also utilizes administrative forfeitures, which are nonjudicial proceedings handled by an officer of the seizing agency. These provisions combine to create serious due process concerns in Washington's civil forfeiture system. This Comment addresses these concerns and proposes a reform of the statutory scheme to eliminate civil forfeiture completely by replacing it with a criminal forfeiture system like New Mexico's. Under New Mexico law, property owners must be convicted of a crime before their property can be forfeited and all forfeiture proceeds are transferred to the state's general fund. By funneling forfeitures through the criminal system and eliminating any profit motive, New Mexico property owners are provided with legal protections that are severely lacking in Washington's current civil forfeiture system. Washington should implement similar reforms to protect the due process rights of property owners and prevent forfeiture abuse by law enforcement., INTRODUCTION Enlisted ... as a legitimate auxiliary tool in the so-called war on drugs, the legal doctrines of civil asset forfeiture have since been perverted to serve an entirely improper [...]

INTRODUCTION In 2018, Steve Cheatham was serving his prison sentence for three bank robberies. (1) That fall, Steve was diagnosed with advanced-stage cancer. (2) Steve petitioned the Bureau of Prisons [...]

This article examines the case of Y v University of Queensland and the issue of university disciplinary action in cases of student-on-student sexual assault. In addition to the question of whether universities have legal jurisdiction to decide these matters, there is the more fundamental question of whether they should. Using Martha Fineman's theory of vulnerability as a theoretical lens, this article seeks to evaluate whether accusations of sexual assault should be treated exclusively as police matters or whether universities have a moral obligation to take independent action., I INTRODUCTION Sexual assault on college and university campuses has recently come to the forefront of public consciousness both in Australia and internationally. In 2017, the Australian Human Rights Commission [...]

New York City (NYC) finds itself in an unprecedented housing crisis as the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic reveals with devastating force that safe, sustainable and affordable housing is both a human right and a public health necessity. The profound humanitarian and economic devastation of COVID-19 puts millions of New Yorkers at risk of eviction--especially those within Black and Latinx communities. In addition, the pandemic hit just as the legal landscape for tenants was transformed through landmark legislation ensuring the Right to Counsel in eviction proceedings and sweeping reforms of New York's rent laws. The unparalleled COVID-19 pandemic, the influx of hundreds of new tenant attorneys resulting from the Right to Counsel, and the robust rent law reforms fundamentally alter the role and powerful potential of housing advocacy and the very function of NYC's Housing Court. These three forces provide an opportunity for housing attorneys representing low-income tenants to imagine new and creative ways to provide housing security and build tenant power. This Article canvasses the fundamental shifts in the NYC housing landscape and the movement to expand tenants' rights. It urges lawmakers to take bold action to avoid an eviction pandemic and shield tenants from homelessness and crushing debt. Next, it lays a blueprint for housing attorneys, both experienced and novice, to aggressively use the new tenant-friendly rent laws, creatively maximize underused tools, and leverage their collective strength to re-envision housing as a human right. The combination of the Right to Counsel, which has filled the ranks with passionate tenant attorneys, an empowered and progressive state legislature, and a vibrant tenants' movement has created a powerful force to demand comprehensive and far-reaching housing and racial justice for all New Yorkers and redefine the housing world that lies beyond the virus., I. INTRODUCTION 119 II. THE PROBLEM: THE EVICTION CRISIS 120 A. New York's Eviction Crisis 123 B. The Impact of COVID-19 124 III. AN ARMY OF HOUSING RIGHTS ATTORNEYS: THE [...]