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Can Judges Help Ease Mass Incarceration?, Jeffrey Bellin

Faculty Publications

A scholar considers how judges have contributed to historically high incarceration rates -- and how they can help reverse the trend.

Sentencing In An Era Of Plea Bargains, Jeffrey Bellin, Jenia I. Turner

Faculty Publications

The literature offers inconsistent answers to a question that is foundational to criminal law: Who imposes sentences? Traditional narratives place sentencing responsibility in the hands of the judge. Yet, in a country where 95% of criminal convictions come from guilty pleas (not trials), modern American scholars center prosecutors—who control plea terms—as the deciders of punishment. This Article highlights and seeks to resolve the tension between these conflicting narratives by charting the pathways by which sentences are determined in a system dominated by plea bargains.

After reviewing the empirical literature on sentence variation, examining state and federal plea-bargaining rules and doctrines, …

The Race To The Top To Reduce Prosecutorial Misconduct, Adam M. Gershowitz

Faculty Publications

This Essay offers an unconventional approach to deterring prosecutorial misconduct. Trial judges should use their inherent authority to forbid prosecutors from appearing and handling cases in their courtrooms until the prosecutors have completed training on Brady v. Maryland, Batson v. Kentucky, and other types of prosecutorial misconduct. If a single trial judge in a medium-sized or large jurisdiction imposes training prerequisites on prosecutors, it could set off a race to the top that encourages other judges to adopt similar (or perhaps even more rigorous) training requirements. A mandate that prosecutors receive ethics training before handling any cases is …

Judges And Their Editors, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Restoring The Civil Jury In A World Without Trials, Dmitry Bam

Faculty Publications

Early in this nation’s history, the civil jury was the most important institutional check on biased and corrupt judges. Recently, concerns about judicial bias, especially in elected state judiciaries, have intensified as new studies demonstrate the extent of that bias. But the jury of Hamilton, Madison, and Jefferson is nowhere to be found. In fact, the civil jury is virtually dead. It is used in less than 1% of all civil cases, and even when it makes a rare appearance, the jury’s powers have been significantly curtailed.

This article argues that we must reimagine the civil jury to match the …

Recusal Failure, Dmitry Bam

Faculty Publications

The American judiciary is suffering from a terrible affliction: biased judges. I am not talking about the subconscious or unconscious biases — stemming from different backgrounds, experiences, ideologies, etc. — that everyone, including judges, harbors. Rather, I am describing invidious, improper biases that lead judges to favor one litigant over another for reasons that almost everyone would agree should play no role in judicial decision-making: the desire to repay a debt of gratitude to those who helped the judge get elected and be reelected.

In this article, I argue that that recusal has failed to prevent biased judges from rendering …

Judges And Their Editors, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

This essay discusses the roles of personal law clerks, central staff clerks, and Reporters of Decisions in editing judges’ opinions at the drafting stage. “The overarching lesson [is] that by submerging pride of authorship during an opinion’s gestation and by weighing editorial input with an open mind, judges secure in their craft advance the interests of justice.” The essay also discusses the constraints imposed by the ABA Model Code of Judicial Conduct on the circle of persons a judge may consult without giving the parties advance notice. The essay is adapted from Prof. Abrams’ address to the international meeting of …

On Misjudging And Its Implications For Criminal Defendants, Their Lawyers And The Criminal Justice System, Rodney J. Uphoff

Faculty Publications

Unquestionably, judges misjudge. Even the most arrogant of judges ultimately will concede that all judges err and, at some point, fail to apply governing law to the facts of the case accurately. Although all might agree that judges err, not all judges, lawyers, and scholars agree on how judges should behave or on what constitutes good judging. Not surprisingly, they also disagree about misjudging and the frequency with which it occurs.In his provocative article Misjudging, Chris Guthrie contends that “misjudging is more common, more systematic, and more harmful than the legal system has fully realized.” Based on my observations and …

Beyond Bandaids: A Proposal For Reconfiguring Federal Sentencing After Booker, Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

This Article proposes a simplified sentencing table consisting of nine base sentencing ranges, each subdivided into three sub-ranges. The base sentencing range would be determined by combining offense facts found by a jury or admitted in a plea with the defendant's criminal history. A defendant's placement in the sub-ranges would be determined by post-conviction judicial findings of sentencing factors. No upward departures from the base sentencing range would be permissible, but defendants might be sentenced below the low end of the base sentencing range as a result of an acceptance of responsibility credit or due to a downward departure motion. …

Congressional Threats Of Removal Against Federal Judges, Marc O. Degirolami

Faculty Publications

The federal judicial branch has lately become the object of increasing scrutiny and distrust by its legislative counterpart. Congressional suspicion is often directed toward judicial discretion in criminal sentencing and, more generally, the degree to which judges are perceived to be beholden to a particular ideological point of view or personal bias. This distrust has bred a potent strain of political opportunism that Congress has manifested in several recent bills. One of these, the Feeney Amendment to the PROTECT Act, all but eliminated judicial discretion in sentencing and tacitly threatens judges' continued employment. Though the Supreme Court's recent decision in …

Book Review: The Business Of Judging, S. I. Strong

Faculty Publications

Lord Bingham of Cornhill is no stranger to the business of judging. Senior Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, former Lord Chief Justice of England, former Master of the Rolls, he has been sitting on the bench in one capacity or another for the last twenty years - twenty-five if one counts his tenure as a recorder. Although he began his career at the bar in 1959 as a commercial and civil lawyer, his appointment in 1996 as Lord Chief Justice placed him at the apex of the criminal justice system. In becoming senior Law Lord, Lord Bingham has expanded his …

Introduction: The Voices And Groups That Will Preserve (What We Can Preserve Of) Judicial Independence, John Q. Barrett

Faculty Publications

As the 1996 election year commenced, the leading issues of the day included welfare reform, late-term abortions, Bosnia, immigration, drugs, taxes, the budget deficit, and the budget impasse that had shut parts of the federal government. The "hot" national issues did not include judicial philosophy, federal judicial appointments, individual judges or particular judicial decisions. Within weeks, however, that changed, thanks to a single judicial opinion. On January 22, 1996, United States District Judge Harold Baer, Jr., decided a pretrial motion to suppress evidence in the then (and now) obscure New York federal drug prosecution of a woman from Detroit named …

Art Of Judicial Biography, Michael J. Gerhardt

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Appellate Court In Mandatory Sentencing Schemes, Larry I. Palmer

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.