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Culture Clash: Teaching Cultural Defenses In The Criminal Law Classroom, Susan S. Kuo

Faculty Publications

In the law school classroom, the Socratic method of legal analysis removes a dispute at issue in a given case from its sociocultural context and takes the cultural backgrounds of the parties into account only when they serve the legal argument. The language of the law commands law students to siphon off the emotional and cultural content because of the enduring belief that the law is neutral and impartial. Accordingly, cultural conflicts are deemed irrelevant to legal analysis because laws are unbiased and culture-blind. This detached outlook has been termed perpectivelessness to denote a neutral, odorless, colorless non-perspective.

This essay …

Pour Encourager Les Autres? The Curious History And Distressing Implications Of The Criminal Provisions Of The Sarbanes-Oxley Act And The Sentencing Guidelines Amendments That Followed, Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

This Article presents a legislative history of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the subsequent amendments to the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines. It explains the surprising interaction between the civil and criminal provisions of Sarbanes-Oxley. The Article also provides a dramatic and detailed account of the interplay of political interests and agendas that ultimately led to large sentence increases for serious corporate criminals and blanket sentence increases for virtually all federal fraud defendants. The tale illuminates the substance of the new legislation and sentencing rules, but is more broadly instructive regarding the distribution of power over criminal sentencing between the three branches and …

Train Wreck? Or Can The Federal Sentencing System Be Saved? A Plea For Rapid Reversal Of Blakely V. Washington, Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

In Blakely v. Washington, the Court found the Washington State Sentencing Guidelines unconstitutional, placed the validity of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines in the gravest doubt, and cast a shadow of deep uncertainty over many state sentencing systems and the entire twenty-five-year sentencing reform movement. Over the next year, legal publications will be deluged with sober analyses, exegeses, dissections, and deconstructions of the doctrinal origins and long-term effects of Blakely. If the big train wreck really happens, I expect I'll write a few myself. However, it is early for that sort of thing since so much about Blakely remains unclear. Indeed, …

The Transnational And Sub-National In Global Crimes, Lan Cao

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.