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Certainty In A World Of Uncertainty: Proposing Statutory Guidance In Sentencing Juveniles To Life Without Parole, Sonia A. Mardarewich

Sonia A Mardarewich

CERTAINTY IN A WORLD OF UNCERTAINTY: PROPOSING

STATUTORY GUIDANCE IN SENTENCING JUVENILES TO LIFE WITHOUT PAROLE

Sonia Mardarewich[1]

Florida Coastal School of Law

March 2013

Abstract: Before the Supreme Court’s decision in Miller v. Alabama, the states were divided between mandatory and discretionary life without the possibility of parole sentencing approaches. The Supreme Court decision of Miller eliminated mandatory life without parole for juvenile defendants under the age of eighteen at the time of the crime. The Supreme Court now mandates that every juvenile must be granted an individualized sentencing hearing to ensure youth and attendant mitigating circumstances …

Funding Gideon's Promise By Viewing Excessive Caseloads As Conflicts Of Interests, Heidi R. Anderson

Heidi R Anderson

Some states recently have attempted to legislate around a defendant’s constitutional right to effective assistance of counsel via a novel two-step method. Step one is to allocate insufficient funds for public defense, which results in excessive caseloads for public defenders. Sadly, that step is nothing new. Step two—the one that has slipped by without sufficient notice or criticism—is to bar a public defender from withdrawing from representation based on his excessive caseload. Ultimately, this statutory two-step further entrenches the systematic deprivation of defendants’ Sixth Amendment rights to effective assistance.

In this article, I urge courts to “constitutionalize” the excessive caseload …

Foster Children And The Idea; The Fox Guarding The Henhouse, Rebekah Gleason Hope

Rebekah G Hope

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) creates a complex bundle of rights that protects parents of children with disabilities in an effort to provide each child that is eligible with a free appropriate public education (FAPE). Children in the dependency system, commonly referred to as foster children, also require a free appropriate public education when they have disabilities that affect their learning, but they have no one to advocate for them or assist them in securing an appropriate educational program. They need a surrogate to take the place of the parents who are unable to fill that role. The …

Democracy And Tort Law In America: The Counter-Revolution, Christopher J. Roederer

Christopher J. Roederer

Although the seeds of democracy and democratic tort reform were sown well before America’s founding, neither began to blossom until after the Second World War. Democratic progress from the 1950s to the 1970s led to, and was in part consolidated by, progressive developments in tort law during the same period. Unfortunately, the last quarter century has been a period of democratic decay in America and just as the revolution in tort law was bound up with democratic progress, the counter-revolution in tort law has tracked and reinforced the waning of American democracy since the 1980s. Although a few authors have …