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Revisiting The Total Incarceration Variable Should Researchers Separate Jail From Prison Sentences In Sentencing Research?, Michael P. Harrington Oct 2008

Revisiting The Total Incarceration Variable Should Researchers Separate Jail From Prison Sentences In Sentencing Research?, Michael P. Harrington

Journal Articles

Recent research has examined the use of the total incarceration variable. The results of these studies have shown that the factors affecting a decision to sentence an offender to jail are different than those influencing a prison sentence. These studies have suggested that disentangling jail and prison sentences will enhance our understanding of how race influences sentence outcomes. Neither of these studies examined the sentence-length portion using the expanded definition of the total incarceration variable. The research presented here examines the validity of using the total incarceration variable and whether the same factors affect the length of a jail sentence …


The Culpability Of Felony Murder, Guyora Binder May 2008

The Culpability Of Felony Murder, Guyora Binder

Journal Articles

Legal scholars are almost unanimous in condemning felony murder as a morally indefensible form of strict liability. This Article provides the long-missing principled defense of the felony murder doctrine. It argues that felony murder liability is deserved for killing negligently by means of a violent or apparently dangerous felony involving an additional malign purpose independent of physical injury to the victim killed. This claim follows from the simple idea that the guilt incurred in attacking or endangering others depends on one’s reasons for doing so. The article develops this idea into an expressive theory of culpability that assesses blame for …


Duress, Demanding Heroism And Proportionality, Luis E. Chiesa May 2008

Duress, Demanding Heroism And Proportionality, Luis E. Chiesa

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.


Jail For Juvenile Child Pornographers?: A Reply To Professor Leary, Stephen F. Smith Jan 2008

Jail For Juvenile Child Pornographers?: A Reply To Professor Leary, Stephen F. Smith

Journal Articles

Even though Professor Leary and I are united in the goal of protecting children against sexual exploitation, we part company on the proper societal response to the problem of self-produced child pornography. In my view, children who produce and distribute pornographic images of themselves ordinarily should not be regarded as proper objects of punishment. In this context, child protective services, backed up if necessary by the threat of criminal prosecution, is a much more appropriate way of reforming minors and protecting them against the serious dangers to which they expose themselves by creating and distributing pornographic images of themselves. A …


Criminal Procedure In Perspective, Kit Kinports Jan 2008

Criminal Procedure In Perspective, Kit Kinports

Journal Articles

This Article attempts to situate the Supreme Court's constitutional criminal procedure jurisprudence in the academic debates surrounding the reasonable person standard, in particular, the extent to which objective standards should incorporate a particular individual's subjective characteristics. Analyzing the Supreme Court's search and seizure and confessions opinions, I find that the Court shifts opportunistically from case to case between subjective and objective tests, and between whose point of view - the police officer's or the defendant's - it views as controlling. Moreover, these deviations cannot be explained either by the principles the Court claims underlie the various constitutional provisions at issue …


Victims And The Significance Of Causing Harm, Guyora Binder Jan 2008

Victims And The Significance Of Causing Harm, Guyora Binder

Journal Articles

Many criminal law theorists find the punishment of harm puzzling. They argue that acts should be evaluated only on the basis of the risks they create and the actors' awareness of those risks; that punishing results violates both desert and utility. This article explains punishment of harm on the basis of political theory rather than moral philosophy. Punishing harm helps legitimize the rule of law by vindicating victims. A rule of law state precludes cycles of organized retaliatory violence by asserting a monopoly on retaliatory force, thereby depriving individuals and groups of the option of securing their own dignity. We …


A New Look At Neo-Liberal Economic Policies And The Criminalization Of Undocumented Migration, Teresa A. Miller Jan 2008

A New Look At Neo-Liberal Economic Policies And The Criminalization Of Undocumented Migration, Teresa A. Miller

Journal Articles

This paper situates the current “crisis” surrounding the arrival and continued presence of undocumented immigrants in the United States within penological trends that have taken root in American law over the past thirty years. It positions the shift from more benevolent to the increasingly harsh legal treatment of undocumented immigrants as the continuation of a succession of legal reforms criminalizing immigrants, and governing immigration through crime. By charting the increasing salience of crime in public perceptions of undocumented immigrants, and comparing the immediately preceding criminal stigmatization of so-called “criminal aliens”, this paper exposes current severity toward undocumented immigrants as consistent …


The Rise Of Spanish And Latin American Criminal Theory, Luis E. Chiesa Jan 2008

The Rise Of Spanish And Latin American Criminal Theory, Luis E. Chiesa

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.


The Supreme Court And The Politics Of Death, Stephen F. Smith Jan 2008

The Supreme Court And The Politics Of Death, Stephen F. Smith

Journal Articles

This article explores the evolving role of the U.S. Supreme Court in the politics of death. By constitutionalizing the death penalty in the 1970s, the Supreme Court unintentionally set into motion political forces that have seriously undermined the Court's vision of a death penalty that is fairly administered and imposed only on the worst offenders. With the death penalty established as a highly salient political issue, politicians - legislators, prosecutors, and governors - have strong institutional incentives to make death sentences easier to achieve and carry out. The result of this vicious cycle is not only more executions, but less …


United States Opposition To The 1998 Rome Statute Establishing An International Criminal Court: Is The Court's Jurisdiction Truly Complementary To National Criminal Jurisdictions?, Jimmy Gurule Jan 2008

United States Opposition To The 1998 Rome Statute Establishing An International Criminal Court: Is The Court's Jurisdiction Truly Complementary To National Criminal Jurisdictions?, Jimmy Gurule

Journal Articles

Although the United States supports the creation of a permanent International Criminal Court (ICC), it opposes such a court as set forth in the 1998 Rome Statute because it leaves open the potential for United States military personnel and government officials to be prosecuted for unintended loss of civilian life. Can the United States formulate a legal argument to support its view that inadvertent civilian casualties should not be considered a war crime within the jurisdiction of the ICC? The article argues that it can because the ICC’s jurisdiction under the Rome Statute is not complementary to national prosecutions held …


Pretrial And Preventative Detention Of Suspected Terrorists: Options And Constraints Under International Law, Douglass Cassel Jan 2008

Pretrial And Preventative Detention Of Suspected Terrorists: Options And Constraints Under International Law, Douglass Cassel

Journal Articles

This article analyzes the grounds, procedures and conditions required by International Human Rights Law and International Humanitarian Law for pretrial detention of suspected terrorists for purposes of criminal law enforcement, and for their preventive detention for security and intelligence purposes. Recognizing the difficulties in securing sufficient admissible evidence to prosecute terrorists within the tight time limits imposed by international law, the Article nonetheless suggests that indefinite detention, solely or primarily for purposes of intelligence interrogation, is probably not lawful under U.S. or international law. Preventive detention for security purposes, on the other hand, is generally permitted by international law, provided …