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Designing For Justice: Pandemic Lessons For Criminal Courts, Cynthia Alkon
Designing For Justice: Pandemic Lessons For Criminal Courts, Cynthia Alkon
Faculty Scholarship
March 2020 brought an unprecedented crisis to the United States: COVID-19. In a two-week period, criminal courts across the country closed. But, that is where the uniformity ended. Criminal courts did not have a clear process to decide how to conduct necessary business. As a result, criminal courts across the country took different approaches to deciding how to continue necessary operations and in doing so many did not consider the impact on justice of the operational changes that were made to manage the COVID-19 crisis. One key problem was that many courts did not use inclusive processes and include all …
How To Be A Better Plea Bargainer, Cynthia Alkon, Andrea Kupfer Schneider
How To Be A Better Plea Bargainer, Cynthia Alkon, Andrea Kupfer Schneider
Faculty Scholarship
Preparation matters in negotiation. While plea bargaining is a criminal lawyer’s primary activity, the value of this skill is discounted by law schools and training programs. A systemic model can be used to improve plea bargaining skills. This Article offers a prep sheet for both prosecutors and defense attorneys and explains how each element of the sheet specifically applies to the plea bargaining context. The prep sheet is designed as a learning tool so that the negotiator can learn from the sheet and then make their own. The sheet highlights important considerations such as understanding the interests and goals of …
Introduction To Symposium On "Adr's Place In Navigating A Polarized Era", Nancy A. Welsh
Introduction To Symposium On "Adr's Place In Navigating A Polarized Era", Nancy A. Welsh
Faculty Scholarship
Ours is a nation built for conflict, for friction. Such conflict, while painful, can be good. It can signal newfound agency, and it can be a catalyst for dialogue, customized and creative solutions, and ultimately progress. This is what many dispute resolution academics teach their students. But we are caught in such an extraordinarily polarized time, and many wonder what role ADR can and should play in navigating a polarized era. That was the question addressed by Texas A&M School of Law's March 2020 symposium, with the resulting articles - by Baruch Bush & Peter Miller, Jonathan Cohen, Jill DeTemple, …
Sweetheart Deals, Deferred Prosecution, And Making A Mockery Of The Criminal Justice System: U.S. Corporate Dpas Rejected On Many Fronts, Peter Reilly
Faculty Scholarship
Corporate Deferred Prosecution Agreements (DPAs) are contracts negotiated between the federal government and defendants to address allegations of corporate misconduct without going to trial. The agreements are hailed as a model of speedy and efficient law enforcement, but also derided as making a “mockery” of America’s criminal justice system stemming from lenient deals being offered to some defendants. This Article questions why corporate DPAs are not given meaningful judicial review when such protection is required for other alternative dispute resolution (ADR) tools, including plea bargains, settlement agreements, and consent decrees. The Article also analyzes several cases in which federal district …
"Enemy Of The People": Negotiating News At The White House, Carol Pauli
"Enemy Of The People": Negotiating News At The White House, Carol Pauli
Faculty Scholarship
How can the press serve as a check on executive power when the president calls it “fake” and the White House denies facts? As journalists debate the right response, this article offers advice from the perspective of a journalist who is now in the legal academy. Drawing on legal scholarship in the field of conflict resolution — as well as literature in journalism and political science — this article analyzes the White House press briefing as a negotiation over both the content of news and the relationship of the press and president. It aims to help the press fulfill the …
Plea Bargain Negotiations: Defining Competence Beyond Lafler And Frye, Cynthia Alkon
Plea Bargain Negotiations: Defining Competence Beyond Lafler And Frye, Cynthia Alkon
Faculty Scholarship
In the companion cases of Lafler v. Cooper and Missouri v. Frye the U.S. Supreme Court held that there is a right to effective assistance of counsel during plea bargaining. However, the Court defined effective assistance of counsel in only one narrow phase of plea bargaining: the client counseling phase. The Court said it would not look more broadly at the negotiation process itself as "[b]argaining is, by its nature, defined to a substantial degree by personal style.” This statement indicates that the Court does not fully understanding developments in the field of negotiation over the last thirty years. Negotiation …
An Overlooked Key To Reversing Mass Incarceration: Reforming The Law To Reduce Prosecutorial Power In Plea Bargaining, Cynthia Alkon
An Overlooked Key To Reversing Mass Incarceration: Reforming The Law To Reduce Prosecutorial Power In Plea Bargaining, Cynthia Alkon
Faculty Scholarship
The need to “do something” about mass incarceration is now widely recognized. When President Obama announced plans to reform federal criminal legislation, he focused on the need to change how we handle non-violent drug offenders and parole violators. Previously, former Attorney General Eric Holder announced policies to make federal prosecutors “smart on crime.” These changes reflect, as President Obama noted, the increasing bipartisan consensus on the need for reform and the need to reduce our incarceration rates. However, proposals about what to reform, such as President Obama’s, tend to focus on some parts of criminal sentencing and on prosecutorial behavior …
What's Law Got To Do With It? Plea Bargaining Reform After Lafler And Frye, Cynthia Alkon
What's Law Got To Do With It? Plea Bargaining Reform After Lafler And Frye, Cynthia Alkon
Faculty Scholarship
This symposium article responds to the question, what's left of the law in the wake of ADR? The article addresses this question in the context of the criminal justice system in the United States. As with civil cases, few criminal cases go to trial. Negotiated agreements through plea bargaining have been the predominate form of case resolution since at least the mid-twentieth century. Plea bargaining, as with other forms of alternative dispute resolution, is an informal process that operates largely outside the formal legal system. Plea bargains are rarely negotiated on the record in open court. Instead, they are usually …
Negotiating Bribery: Toward Increased Transparency, Consistency, And Fairness In Pretrial Bargaining Under The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Peter Reilly
Faculty Scholarship
This article will explore the factors that contribute to less-than-optimal transparency, consistency, and fairness in pre-trial bargaining under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The article will conclude with recommendations to strengthen the current system and make it more fair.
The article is divided into four Parts: Part I will discuss the extent of the bribery problem worldwide; the history of the FCPA; and the reasons behind the recent dramatic increase in FCPA enforcement.
Part II will discuss the elements that make up FCPA ‘jurisprudence’ given that so few cases are litigated in court; the history of using DPAs and NPAs …
Justice Deferred Is Justice Denied: We Must End Our Failed Experiment In Deferring Corporate Criminal Prosecutions, Peter Reilly
Justice Deferred Is Justice Denied: We Must End Our Failed Experiment In Deferring Corporate Criminal Prosecutions, Peter Reilly
Faculty Scholarship
According to the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”), deferred prosecution agreements are said to occupy an “important middle ground” between declining to prosecute on the one hand, and trials or guilty pleas on the other. A top DOJ official has declared that, over the last decade, the agreements have become a “mainstay” of white collar criminal law enforcement; a prominent criminal law professor calls their increased use part of the “biggest change in corporate law enforcement policy in the last ten years.”
However, despite deferred prosecution’s apparent rise in popularity among law enforcement officials, the article sets forth the argument …
Resistance Is Not Futile: Harnessing The Power Of Counter-Offensive Tactics In Legal Persuasion, Peter Reilly
Resistance Is Not Futile: Harnessing The Power Of Counter-Offensive Tactics In Legal Persuasion, Peter Reilly
Faculty Scholarship
A core competency for people working in law or business is the ability to influence and persuade: People need to become expert at getting others to agree, to go along, and to give in. The potential “targets” of one’s influence throughout a given workday are seemingly endless and include clients and customers, co-counsel, opposing counsel, supervisors, direct reports, contractors, subcontractors, consultants, secretaries, judges, juries, witnesses, police officers, court personnel, and others. Moreover, that influence is largely exerted through words spoken and behaviors exhibited within the context of a negotiation. And yet, leading academics have argued that the vast majority of …
I Could Have Been A Contender: Summary Jury Trial As A Means To Overcome Iqbal's Negative Effects Upon Pre-Litigation Communication, Negotiation And Early, Consensual Dispute Resolution, Nancy A. Welsh
Faculty Scholarship
With its recent decisions in Ashcroft v. Iqbal and Bell Atlantic v. Twombly, the Supreme Court may be intentionally or unintentionally “throwing the fight,” at least in the legal contests between many civil rights claimants and institutional defendants. The most obvious feared effect is reduction of civil rights claimants’ access to the expressive and coercive power of the courts. Less obviously, the Supreme Court may be effectively undermining institutions’ motivation to negotiate, mediate - or even communicate with and listen to - such claimants before they initiate legal action. Thus, the Supreme Court’s recent decisions have the potential to deprive …
Mindfulness, Emotions, And Mental Models: Theory That Leads To More Effective Dispute Resolution, Peter Reilly
Mindfulness, Emotions, And Mental Models: Theory That Leads To More Effective Dispute Resolution, Peter Reilly
Faculty Scholarship
At the core of nearly all great negotiators, mediators, lawyers, and leaders is a person who has learned to connect with other people, that is, to build relationships of trust, cooperation, and collaboration. This Article argues that when people learn a sense of "self" and "other" through both theoretical and practical knowledge and understanding of mindfulness and human emotion, connections with others are more likely to be made, and important relationships are more likely to be built.
My goal, then, is to begin thinking about how one might bring mindfulness and emotions from the “mind level” to what human relations …
Online Communication Technology And Relational Development, Anita D. Bhappu, Noam Ebner, Sanda Kaufman, Nancy A. Welsh
Online Communication Technology And Relational Development, Anita D. Bhappu, Noam Ebner, Sanda Kaufman, Nancy A. Welsh
Faculty Scholarship
Key to success in negotiation is managing and enhancing relationships. This concept can be difficult to convey in short-term executive training courses where students have little time for relational development. Not to worry: the authors assert that by strategically using online communication before, during, and after such courses, students can effectively both train for, and depend on, good relations at a distance.
Was Machiavelli Right? Lying In Negotiation And The Art Of Defensive Self-Help, Peter Reilly
Was Machiavelli Right? Lying In Negotiation And The Art Of Defensive Self-Help, Peter Reilly
Faculty Scholarship
The majority of law review articles addressing lying and deception in negotiation have argued, in one form or another, that liars and deceivers could be successfully reined in and controlled if only the applicable ethics rules were strengthened, and if corresponding enforcement powers were sufficiently beefed up and effectively executed. This article takes a different approach, arguing that the applicable ethics rules will likely never be strengthened, and, furthermore, that even if they were, they would be difficult to enforce in any meaningful way, at least in the context of negotiation. The article concludes that lawyers, businesspeople, and everyone else …
Perceptions Of Fairness In Negotiation, Nancy A. Welsh
Perceptions Of Fairness In Negotiation, Nancy A. Welsh
Faculty Scholarship
In all of negotiation, there is no bigger trap than "fairness." This chapter from the Negotiator's Fieldbook explains why among multiple models of fairness, people tend to believe that the one that applies here is the one that happens to favor them. This often creates a bitter element in negotiation, as each party proceeds from the unexamined assumption that its standpoint is the truly fair one. For a negotiation to end well, it is imperative for both parties to assess the fairness of their own proposals from multiple points of view, not just their instinctive one – and to consider …
Making Deals In Court-Connected Mediation: What's Justice Got To Do With It?, Nancy A. Welsh
Making Deals In Court-Connected Mediation: What's Justice Got To Do With It?, Nancy A. Welsh
Faculty Scholarship
When mediation was first introduced to the courts, the process was hailed as “alternative.” Mediation gave disputants the opportunity to discuss and resolve their dispute themselves; the role of the third party was to facilitate the disputants’ negotiations, not to dictate the outcome; and because the disputants were able to focus on their underlying interests in mediation, the process could result in creative, customized solutions. The picture of mediation is changing, however, as the process settles into its role as a tool for the resolution of personal injury, contract, and other nonfamily cases on the courts’ civil dockets. Attorneys dominate …