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Asymmetries And Incentives In Plea Bargaining And Evidence Production, Saul Levmore, Ariel Porat

Articles

Legal rules severely restrict payments to fact witnesses, though the government can often offer plea bargains or other nonmonetary inducements to encourage testimony. This asymmetry is something of a puzzle, for most asymmetries in criminal law favor the defendant. The asymmetry seems to disappear when physical evidence is at issue. One goal of this Essay is to understand the distinctions, or asymmetries, between monetary and nonmonetary payments, testimonial and physical evidence, and payments by the prosecution and defense. Another is to suggest ways in which law could better encourage the production of evidence, and thus the efficient reduction of crime, …

Custom, General Principles And The Great Architect Cassese, Mary Fan

Articles

Major advances in international criminal law and procedure rose on the trusses of judicially elucidated sources of international law—custom and general principles. These sources depend on the crucial art of derivation advanced by the architect of modern international criminal justice, President Antonio Cassese. What has transformed international criminal justice into flourishing law able to address changing configurations of violence is the development of the art of finding law in the dark and wilds of murky unwritten norms. [para] President Cassese pioneered paths through a perilous bog. "[T]he law lives in persons," and to understand the law one must study the …

Picturing Takings, Lee Anne Fennell

Articles

Takings doctrine, we are constantly reminded, is unclear to the point of incoherence. The task offinding our way through it has become more difficult, and yet more interesting, with the Supreme Court's recent, inconclusive foray into the arena of judicial takings in Stop the Beach Renourishment. Following guideposts in Kelo, Lingle, and earlier cases, this essay uses a series of simple diagrams to examine how elements of takings jurisprudence fit together with each other and with other limits on governmental action. Visualizing takings in this manner yields surprising lessons for judicial takings and for takings law more generally.

Accountability And The Sri Lankan Civil War, Steven R. Ratner

Articles

Sri Lanka's civil war came to a bloody end in May 2009, with the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) by Sri Lanka's armed forces on a small strip of land in the island's northeast. The conflict, the product of long-standing tensions between Sri Lanka's majority Sinhalese and minority Tamils over the latter's rights and place in society, had begun in the mid-1980s and ebbed and flowed for some twenty-five years, leading to seventy to eighty thousand deaths on both sides. Government repression of Tamil aspirations was matched with ruthless LTTE tactics, including suicide bombings of civilian …

Rehabilitation, Research, And Reform: Prison Policy In Ireland, Mary Rogan

Articles

The paper tracks the concept of rehabilitation within official thinking in

Ireland since the foundation of the State. It explores when and how the term was first

used and how it has fared since. It then examines barriers to and the role of research

in the making of prison policy and comments on data deficits in the system at present.

Finally it looks at the role of interest groups within the criminal justice system in

Ireland, and specifically their effect, or potential effect, on the formation of prison

policy.

Taking, Tort, Or Crown Right? The Confused Early History Of Government Patent Policy, Sean M. O'Connor

Articles

From the early days of the Republic, Congress and the federal courts grappled with the government’s rights to own or use patents it issued. Courts rejected the British “Crown Rights” rule that allowed the sovereign to practice whatever patents it issued. Instead, the federal government was conceptualized as a legal person on par with any other persons with regard to issued patents. But, this simple rule presented challenges as complexities arose in three intertwined patent rights scenarios. The first involved inventions by government employees. The second revolved around government and government contractor use of patents held by private citizens. And …

Our Broken Misdemeanor Justice System: Its Problems And Some Potential Solutions, Eve Brensike Primus

Articles

Although misdemeanors comprise an overwhelming majority of state criminal court cases, little judicial and scholarly attention has been focused on how misdemeanor courts actually operate. In her article, Misdemeanors, Alexandra Natapoff rights this wrong and explains how the low-visibility, highly discretionary decisions made by actors at the misdemeanor level often result in rampant discrimination, incredible inefficiency, and vast miscarriages of justice. Misdemeanors makes a significant contribution to the literature by refocusing attention on the importance of misdemeanor offenses and beginning an important dialogue about what steps should be taken going forward to fix our broken misdemeanor justice system.

Effectively Curbing The Gst Exemption For Perpetual Trusts, Lawrence W. Waggoner

Articles

In "Effectively Curbing the GST Exemption for Perpetual Trusts," I criticized the Treasury Department’s proposal for dealing with perpetual trusts. My objection is that Treasury’s approach would leave many trusts and much wealth GST-exempt for much longer than Congress originally intended. For perpetual trusts created before enactment, Treasury’s approach would allow them to continue to be unburdened by a durational limit. For perpetual trusts created after the effective date of enactment, Treasury’s approach would still allow them to qualify for the GST exemption, but would have the exemption expire 90 years after the trust was created.

From The Thief In The Night To The Guest Who Stayed Too Long: The Evolution Of Burglary In The Shadow Of The Common Law, Helen A. Anderson

Articles

Burglary began evolving from the common law crime almost as soon as Lord Coke defined it in 1641 as breaking and entering a dwelling of another in the night with the intent to commit a crime therein. But sometime between the Model Penal Code in 1962 and today, burglary lost its core actus reus, “entry.” In the majority of jurisdictions, burglary can now be accomplished by simply remaining in a building or vehicle with the intent to commit a crime. Not only does such an offense cover a wide range of situations, but it allows burglary to be attached to …

The Embedded Epistemologist: Dispatches From The Legal Front, Susan Haack

Articles

In ordinary circumstances, we can assess the worth of evidence well enough without benefit of any theory; but when evidence is especially complex, ambiguous, or emotionally disturbing-as it often is in legal contexts-epistemological theory may be helpful. A legal fact-finder is asked to determine whether the proposition that the defendant is guilty, or is liable, is established to the required degree of proof by the [admissible] evidence presented; i.e., to make an epistemological appraisal. The foundherentist theory developed in Evidence and Inquiry can help us understand what this means; and reveals that degrees of proof cannot be construed as mathematical …

Review Of Co-Defendant Sentencing Disparities By The Seventh Circuit: Two Divergent Lines Of Cases, Alison Siegler

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No abstract provided.

Forum Choice For Terrorism Suspects, Aziz Huq

Articles

What forum should be used to adjudicate the status of persons suspected of involvement in terrorism? Recent clashes between Congress and the president as to whether the status of terrorism suspects should be determined via Article III courts or military commissions have revived the debate about this venue question. The problem is typically framed as a matter of legal doctrine, with statutory and doctrinal rules invoked as dispositive guides for sorting suspects into either civilian or military venues. This Article takes issue with the utility of that framing of the problem. It argues that the forum question can more profitably …

Reflections On Mobilizing For Human Rights, Beth Simmons

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No abstract provided.

Attorney General Bradford’S Opinion And The Alien Tort Statute, Curtis A. Bradley

Articles

In debates over the scope of the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), one historical document has played an especially prominent role. That document is a short opinion by U.S. Attorney General William Bradford, issued in the summer of 1795, concerning the involvement of U.S. citizens in an attack by a French fleet on a British colony in Sierra Leone.¹ In the opinion, Bradford concluded that “[s]o far . . . as the transactions complained of originated or took place in a foreign country, they are not within the cognizance of our courts; nor can the actors be legally prosecuted or …

Brown, Governor Of California Et Al V. Plata Et Al., Mary Rogan

Articles

The case of Brown, Governor of California et at v. Plata et al (hereinafter Plata) is one of the most eye-catching decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States in recent times. The result in itself – the upholding of an order of a Californian District Court to reduce the state’s prison population by up to 46,000 prisoners – would warrant attention. The reasoning of the Court and the differences between the majority and minority are also, however, most significant. The willingness of the Court to uphold the drastic measure of ordering a sizeable reduction in the Californian prison …

The Institution Matching Canon, Aziz Huq

Articles

This Article identifies and analyzes a transsubstantive tool of constitutional doctrine that to date has escaped scholarly attention. The Article terms this device the "institution matching" canon. It can be stated briefly as follows: When the government makes a decision that may impinge upon a liberty or equality interest-which may or may not be directly judicially enforced otherwise-a court should determine whether the component of government that made the decision has actual competence in and responsibility for the policy justifications invoked to curtail the interest. If not, the court should reject the government action but leave open the possibility of …

When Was Judicial Self-Restraint?, Aziz Huq

Articles

This Essay responds to Judge Posner's Jorde Symposium Essay The Rise and Fall of Judicial Restraint by analyzing the question of when, if ever, has judicial self-restraint thrived in the federal courts. Its central aim is to shed historicizing light on the trajectory of judicial activism by imaginatively rifling through an array of canonical and somewhat-less-than-canonical empirical identification strategies. Two conclusions follow from the inquiry. First, I find that the available data on the historical trajectory of judicial restraint are surprisingly poor, and it is necessary to offer any judgment about the historical path of judicial activism with great caution. …

In Praise Of Realism (And Against 'Nonsense' Jurisprudence), Brian Leiter

Articles

Ronald Dworkin describes an approach to how courts should decide cases that he associates with Judge Richard Posner as a "Chicago School of antitheoretical, no-nonsense jurisprudence." Since Professor Dworkin takes his own view of adjudication to be diametrically opposed to that of the Chicago School, it might seem fair then, to describe Dworkin's own theory as an instance of protheoretical, nonsense jurisprudence. That characterization is not one, needless to say, that Professor Dworkin welcomes. Dworkin describes his preferred approach to jurisprudential questions, to be sure, as theoretical, in opposition to what he calls the practical orientation of the Chicago School. …

Deference To The Executive In The United States After September 11: Congress, The Courts, And The Office Of Legal Counsel, Eric A. Posner

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No abstract provided.

Judicial Engagement With The Affordable Care Act: Why Rational Basis Analysis Falls Short, Richard A. Epstein

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No abstract provided.

Response And Colloquy Concerning The Papers By Jack Balkin And David Strauss, David A. Strauss

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No abstract provided.

Are Even Unanimous Decisions In The United States Supreme Court Ideological?, Richard A. Posner, William M. Landes, Lee Epstein

Articles

The fact that a substantial percentage of Supreme Court decisions are unanimous is often used to undermine the theory that the Court's decisions are ideologically driven. We argue that if the ideological stakes in a case are small, even slight dissent aversion is likely to produce a unanimous decision. The data support this interpretation but also establish the existence of an ideological effect in unanimous decisions. These findings are consistent with a realistic conception of the Court as a mixed ideological-legalistic judicial institution.

The Constitutional Conservatism Of The Warren Court, Justin Driver

Articles

Scholarly debate about the Warren Court casts a long shadow over modern constitutional law. The essential contours of this debate have now grown exceedingly familiar: where liberal law professors overwhelmingly heap praise upon the Warren Court, conservatives generally heap contempt. Although some liberals have begun contending that the Warren Court overstepped the bounds of judicial propriety, such concessions do not reconfigure the debate's fundamental terms. Conspicuously absent from scholarly discourse to date, however, is a sustained liberal argument contending that the Warren Court made substantial mistakes-not by going excessively far, but by going insufficiently far in its constitutional interpretations. This …

Options For Owners And Outlaws, Lee Anne Fennell

Articles

No abstract provided.

Aggregation And Law, Ariel Porat, Eric A. Posner

Articles

If a plaintiff brings two claims, each with a 0.4 probability of being valid, the plaintiff will usually lose, even if the claims are based on independent events, and thus the probability of at least one of the claims being valid is 0.64. If a plaintiff brings two independent claims, and neither of them alleges misconduct sufficient to justify a remedy, the plaintiff will usually lose, even if the claims jointly allege sufficient wrongdoing to justify a remedy. Thus, as a general rule, courts refuse to engage in what we call factual aggregation (the first case) and normative aggregation (the …

Public Choice And Law's Either/Or Inclination (Reviewing Leo Katz, Why The Law Is So Perverse (2011)), Saul Levmore

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No abstract provided.

Can Originalism Be Saved?, David A. Strauss

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No abstract provided.

Congressional Will And The Role Of The Executive In Bivens Actions: What Is Special About Special Factors?, Anya Bernstein

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No abstract provided.

Delegation In Immigration Law, Eric A. Posner, Adam B. Cox

Articles

Immigration law both screens migrants and regulates the behavior of migrants after they have arrived. Both activities are information intensive because the migrant's "type" and the migrant's post-arrival activity are often forms of private information that are not immediately accessible to government agents. To overcome this information problem, the national government can delegate the screening and regulating functions. American immigration law, for example, delegates extensive authority to both private entities--paradigmatically, employers and families-and to the fifty states. From the government's perspective, delegation carries with it benefits and costs. On the benefit side, agents frequently have easy access to information about …

Talk About Talking About Constitutional Law, Adam M. Samaha

Articles

Constitutional theory branches into decision theory and discourse theory. The former branch concentrates on how constitutional decisions are or should be made, the latter on how constitutional issues are or should be discussed, For its part, originalism initially was promoted as a method for resolving constitutional disagreement, but it has spread into discourse theory as well. Jack Balkin's "living originalism" illustrates this extension. This Article examines inclusive versions of originalism like Balkin's that permit many different answers to constitutional questions. The Article then suggests pathologies associated with loose constitutional discourse in general. For instance, a large domain for constitutional discourse …