Digital Commons Network^™

“Exporting U.S. Anti-Terrorism Legislation And Policies To The International Law Arena, A Comparative Study: The Effect On Other Countries' Legal Systems”, Olga Kallergi

Olga Kallergi

Abstract

The terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York on 9/11 set in motion a new era all over the world: an era of a world uniting against a common enemy, but also an era of insecurity and fear. Laws have been changed worldwide, nations have united against a common threat, legal theories and belies of centuries have been questioned, and civil liberties have been replaced by a need for national safety. Has this worldwide effort worked? Is our world a better place not that we are all fighting the same enemy? Did we learn from our …

"Drug Treatment Courts In The 21st Century: Improving The Criminal Justice System's Response To Drug Offenses", Peggy Fulton Hora, Theodore Stalcup

Peggy Hora

The article demonstrates that the traditional criminal justice system’s response to drug offenses – arrest, trial and incarceration and re-arrest, re-trial and re-incarceration of 70% of offenders within three years – wastes vast economic and human resources. Drug treatment courts, on the other hand, have proven to be strong alternatives to incarceration as well as effective mechanisms for dealing with America’s drug problem. The article addresses criticism of drug treatment courts, including resistance to the disease model of addiction, disputes over efficacy of treatment, legal issues related to purported coercion of treatment, concern over unbridled judicial discretion and ethical issues …

Do Rules Of Evidence Apply (Only) In The Courtroom? Deceptive Interrogations In The United States And Germany, Jacqueline E. Ross

Jacqueline E Ross

Scholars who compare common law and civil law countries have long argued that civil law legal systems like Germany do not employ formal rules of evidence comparable to those which govern American courtrooms. The complex and restrictive nature of American evidentiary rules is said to be an artifact of the adversarial process and lay juries, which the legal system does not trust to evaluate evidence dispassionately. Civil law systems that commit fact-finding to mixed panels of lay and professional judges are said to have less need for formal rules of evidence that withhold information from decision-makers.

My essay challenges this …

Credit Card Interchange Fees: Three Decades Of Antitrust Uncertainty, Steven Semeraro

Steven Semeraro

This article re-examines the historical, economic, and legal analyses of credit card interchange fees, rejecting the standard assumptions that (1) collectively set interchange fees are unlikely to harm consumers and (2) these fees cannot feasibly be set in a competitive fashion. Through a new historical assessment and consideration of the most recent economic learning, this article shows that under current market conditions collusively set interchange fees are likely to harm consumers and thus violate the antitrust laws. In addition, a competitive remedy is feasible. The six largest Visa and MasterCard issuers, which are larger than the Discover Card System and …

Effective Implementation Of The Trafficking Of Persons And Involuntary Servitude Articles: Lessons From The Criminal Justice System Response To The Illinois Domestic Violence Act, Alison L. Stankus, Jennifer A. Kuhn

Alison L Stankus

When the Illinois Domestic Violence Act was enacted in 1986, the General Assembly acknowledged that “the legal system has ineffectively dealt with family violence in the past … and has not adequately acknowledged the criminal nature of domestic violence; that, although many laws have changed, in practice there is still widespread failure to appropriately protect and assist victims.” However, despite these stated purposes, the criminal justice system response to the Act in the last twenty years has been slow to correct this failure. Last year, the Trafficking of Persons and Involuntary Servitude Articles were added to the Illinois Criminal Code. …

Deciding Death, Corinna Lain

Corinna Lain

When the Supreme Court decides death, how much does law matter? Scholars long have lamented the majoritarian nature of the Court’s Eighth Amendment “evolving standards of decency” doctrine, but a close look at the Court’s decisions in this area shows that their criticism misses the mark. Doctrine does not matter one whit in the Supreme Court’s “evolving standards” cases, but where majoritarian doctrine does not constrain the Court’s decision-making, other majoritarian forces do. To make this point, I first examine three of the Supreme Court’s most prominent (and in two cases, most recent) “evolving standards” decisions, along with the decisions …

Private Criminal Justice, Ric Simmons

Ric Simmons

The past few decades have seen the rise of two very different alternatives to the traditional criminal justice system: private police and restorative justice programs. Each of these approaches represents a revolutionary paradigm shift as to how criminal justice is administered in this country—and yet each of these movements has been limited in its impact on the current criminal justice system. The privatization movement has been restricted to the law enforcement stage of the criminal justice system, while the restorative justice movement has been dependent upon state support. This Article argues that it is only a matter of time before …