Digital Commons Network^™

The Price Of Pretrial Release: Can We Afford To Keep Our Fourth Amendment Rights?, Melanie Wilson

Scholarly Works

This Article looks at the intersection of the Fourth Amendment, which protects Americans' personal security against arbitrary and oppressive searches by law enforcement officials, and the Eighth Amendment, which proscribes excessive bail. The focus is on the validity and effectiveness of an arrested person's agreement to relinquish some or all of her Fourth Amendment rights as a means of gaining freedom from pre-trial detention. In other words, can an arrested person validly "consent" to waive some of her Fourth Amendment rights to avoid pre-trial detention? Recently, in a case of first impression in the federal courts of appeal, the Ninth …

(Whatever Happened To) The Ada's Record Of Disability Prong(?), Alex B. Long

Scholarly Works

The ADA's record of disability prong is the prong least likely to be used by ADA plaintiffs in claiming protection under the Act. Between the years 2000 and 2004, ADA and Rehabilitation Act plaintiffs in federal court who alleged employment discrimination relied upon the record of disability prong less than one-third as often as the actual and perceived disability prongs in claiming disability status. Nor have ADA plaintiffs enjoyed any greater success when asserting coverage under the record of disability prong during that time period. Congress, the Equal Opportunity Commission (EEOC), and the federal courts bear much of the blame …

International Law And Rehnquist-Era Reversals, Diane Marie Amann

Scholarly Works

In the last years of Chief Justice Rehnquist's tenure, the Supreme Court held that due process bars criminal prosecution of same-sex intimacy and that it is cruel and unusual to execute mentally retarded persons or juveniles. Each of the later decisions not only overruled precedents set earlier in Rehnquist's tenure, but also consulted international law as an aid to construing the U.S. Constitution. Analyzing that phenomenon, the article first discusses the underlying cases, then traces the role that international law played in Atkins, Lawrence, and Simmons. It next examines backlash to consultation, and demonstrates that critics tended to overlook the …

Reconsidering The Corporate Attorney-Client Privilege: A Response To The Compelled-Voluntary Waiver Paradox, Lonnie T. Brown, Jr.

Scholarly Works

The Department of Justice (“DOJ”) has adopted guidelines that seem to make waiver of the attorney-client privilege and work product protection a prerequisite for being deemed “cooperative,” a significant designation that carries with it the prospect for more favorable penal treatment. In addition, the United States Sentencing Commission underscored the potential importance of such waivers by approving an amendment to the Federal Sentencing Guidelines in 2004 that, under certain circumstances, makes privilege waiver a factor in assessing a corporation's “culpability score,” which is used in determining the appropriate sentencing range.

This perceived ever-present concern has caused many corporate executives and …

John Paul Stevens, Human Rights Judge, Diane Marie Amann

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This article explores the nature and origins of Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens' engagement with international and foreign law and norms. It first discusses Stevens' pivotal role in the revived use of such norms to aid constitutional interpretation, as well as 1990s opinions testing the extent to which constitutional protections reach beyond the water's edge and 2004 opinions on post-September 11 detention. It then turns to mid-century experiences that appear to have contributed to Stevens' willingness to consult foreign context. The article reveals that as a code breaker Stevens played a role in the downing of the Japanese general …

The Under-Appreciated Value Of Advisory Guidelines, Erica J. Hashimoto

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The Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 provided that the trial court "shall impose a sentence of the kind, and within the range" set forth in the United States Sentencing Guidelines ("Guidelines") issued by the Sentencing Commission. With that one phrase, the Act created a system of guidelines that was binding upon judges, rather than simply advisory. Concerns about excessive disparity and undue leniency in sentencing unquestionably drove the political coalition that passed the Act. It is not clear, however, why Congress believed that mandatory-as opposed to advisory-guidelines were necessary to address those concerns. With the benefit of hindsight, it is …

Against Bipolar Black Masculinity: Intersectionality, Assimilation, Identity Performance, And Hierarchy, Frank Rudy Cooper

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In this article, Professor Frank Rudy Cooper contends that popular representations of heterosexual black men are bipolar. Those images alternate between a Bad Black Man who is crime-prone and hypersexual and a Good Black Man who distances himself from blackness and associates with white norms. The threat of the Bad Black Man label provides heterosexual black men with an assimilationist incentive to perform our identities consistent with the Good Black Man image.

The reason for bipolar black masculinity is that it helps resolve the white mainstream's post-civil rights anxiety. That anxiety results from the conflict between the nation's relatively recent …

The Visible Brain: Confidentiality And Privacy Implications Of Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Stacey A. Tovino

Scholarly Works

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has built on a number of technologies, including electroencephalography, magnetoencephalography, positron emission tomography, and single-photon emission computed tomography, to become one of the decade’s most powerful tools for mapping sensory, motor, and cognitive function. Scientists also are using fMRI to study the neural correlates of a range of conditions, characteristics, and social behaviors, including severe brain injury, major depression, schizophrenia, dyslexia, cocaine addiction, compulsive gambling, pedophilia, racial evaluation, deception, cooperation, altruism, and even sexual preference. Poised to move outside the research context, fMRI and its ability to detect correlations between brain activations and sensitive and …

Bringing Families In: Recommendations Of The Incarceration, Reentry And Family Roundtables, Ann Cammett, Johnna Christian, Nancy Fisherman, Lori Scott-Pickens

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Building on the findings of the New Jersey Reentry Roundtable and a growing concern around the state about how to improve outcomes for the more than 70,000 individuals expected to return home from prison over the next five years, the roundtable examined the complex role that families – broadly defined – play in the lives of prisoners during incarceration and after their release. This document presents a set of recommendations emerging directly from roundtable sessions and provides a road map for individual and collaborative efforts accepted by a range of key players in New Jersey, including government officials, community and …

Instituting Innocence Reform: Wisconsin's New Governance Experiment, Katherine R. Kruse

Scholarly Works

The DNA exoneration cases of the past two decades have provided a window into what hasn't been working in the criminal justice system and an agenda for criminal justice reform. The challenge currently facing the innocence reform community is to translate this agenda into concrete reforms that institute and sustain best practices for the investigation and prosecution of crimes, while allowing flexibility for the understanding of best practices to continue to evolve. In 2005, Wisconsin underwent a breathtaking course of legal reform in two of the problem areas that have plagued wrongful convictions: mistaken eyewitness identification and false confession. The …

Reflections Of A Former Dean, Nancy B. Rapoport

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law school admininstration, higher education governance, dean, deaning

Looking Ahead: October Term 2007, Glenn Harlan Reynolds

Scholarly Works

A look at some interesting cases likely to come before the U.S. Supreme Court, including Parker v. District of Columbia, the case in which the D.C. gun ban was overturned.