Digital Commons Network^™

Big Capital & The Carceral State, Laura I. Appleman

UC Law Journal

Who is accountable for the imposition of punishment in our carceral system? The answer used to be much simpler, as we held local, state, and federal government actors responsible. In recent decades, however, our correctional system has become increasingly privatized, with deeply troubling results. All aspects of the carceral state—whether prisons, jails, juvenile detention, rehabilitation, forensic hospitals, bail, or electronic monitoring—have dramatically increased their use of privatized correctional services.

With this new world of privatized corrections, we frequently don’t know whom can be held accountable when wrongdoing occurs. The bulk of our correctional services are now provided by complicated web …

Care And Custody In Federal Bank Robbery, Victor Qiu

UC Law Journal

By the time federal appellate courts began to examine the withdrawal of money from an ATM and the question of to whom that money belongs pursuant to the first paragraph of the Federal Bank Robbery Act (“FBRA”), 18 U.S.C. § 2113(a), the FBRA had been law for over seventy years and automated teller machines (“ATM”) had been in use for around thirty-five years. Since then, the circuit courts have disagreed as to whom the money belongs when an individual forces a victim to withdraw money and give it to the perpetrator. This question stems from competing methods of statutory interpretation …

Proving Actionable Racial Disparity Under The California Racial Justice Act, Colleen V. Chien, W. David Ball, William A. Sundstrom

UC Law Journal

Racial disparity is a fact of the United States criminal justice system, but under the Supreme Court’s holding in McCleskey v. Kemp, racial disparities—even sizable, statistically significant disparities—do not establish an equal protection violation without a showing of “purposeful discrimination.” The California Racial Justice Act (CRJA), enacted in 2020 and further amended in 2022, introduced a first-of-its-kind test for actionable racial disparity even in the absence of a showing of intent, allowing for relief when the “totality of the evidence demonstrates a significant difference” in charging, conviction, or sentencing across racial groups when compared to those who are “similarly situated” …

Comparing Reasons For Hate Crime Reporting Using Racialized Legal Status, Pamela Ho

UC Law Journal

In the past decade, Latinxs and Asians in the United States have experienced an increase in hate crime victimization. Previous research has identified correlations between hate crime reporting and race. However, few statistical studies examine the intersection of race, immigration status, and hate crime reporting. This Note explores how racialized legal status applies to Latinx and Asian communities respectively and how racialized legal status affects a hate crime victim’s decision to report the crime to police. This Note then sets forth some recommendations for increasing hate crime reporting rates by Latinx and Asian victims.

“Cancel Culture” And Criminal Justice, Steven Arrigg Koh

UC Law Journal

This Article explores the relationship between two normative systems in modern society: “cancel culture” and criminal justice. It argues that cancel culture—a ubiquitous phenomenon in contemporary life—may rectify deficiencies of over- and under-enforcement in the U.S. criminal justice system. However, the downsides of cancel culture’s structure—imprecise factfinding, potentially disproportionate sanctions leading to collateral consequences, a “thin” conception of the wrongdoer as beyond rehabilitation, and a broader cultural anxiety that “chills” certain human conduct—reflect problematic U.S. punitive impulses that characterize our era of mass incarceration. This Article thus argues that social media reform proposals obscure a deeper necessity: transcendence of blame …

Ai Proctoring: Academic Integrity Vs. Student Rights, Samantha Mita

UC Law Journal

Advancements in artificial intelligence (“AI”) and machine learning have found their way into the classroom. The use of artificial intelligence proctoring services (“AIPS”) has risen over the past few years with little consideration for the legal and ethical consequences of their implementation. Issues such as invasion of privacy and bias often get overlooked in favor of preconceived notions of fairness and infallibility associated with the concepts of AI and machine learning. These ethical concerns are especially magnified if AIPS are used in a K-12 setting. This Note, through a lens of AI ethics, recommends a two-pronged approach that creates an …

Impact Jurisdiction & Structural Investigations: The Key To The United States Prosecuting Human Rights Violators, Nick Wiley

UC Law Journal

Since the turn of the century, there has been an exponential rise in forcibly displaced persons and human rights violations. This rise has coincided with a series of acts that have removed the United States as a global leader in the fight for human rights. When President Biden took office, he stated his goal of returning the United States to being the global moral authority leader. To achieve this goal, the Biden Administration implemented a plan to address the human rights violations in Central America that are driving forcibly displaced persons to the U.S.-Mexico border seeking asylum. The plan, however, …

When Further Incarceration Is No Longer In The Interest Of Justice: Instituting A Federal Prosecutor-Initiated Resentencing Framework, Lydia Tonozzi

UC Law Journal

The dire state of the prison population in the United States has become common knowledge both at home and abroad. Mass incarceration in the United States has been caused by nearly four decades of retributive criminal justice policies that do little to reduce crime. This mass incarceration imposes a multitude of costs on American society, both financially and socially. Furthermore, congressional goals to reduce crime rates are necessarily undermined by punitive policies at the federal level. The history of California’s penal system during the same time frame parallels the federal history. Yet in 2017, California began to remedy this history …

Forensic Linguistics: Science Or Fiction?, Abigail Shim

UC Law Journal

The history of linguistics is meager and splintered due to the subject’s interdisciplinary nature. In the postwar era, the discipline attempted to revive as a scientific one, spearheaded by Noam Chomsky and his theory of generative grammar. Linguistics consequently broke away from the predominant structuralist approach of the nineteenth century, returning to rationalist roots. But with the rise of computer technology, Chomsky’s critiques of empirical, applicational linguistic approaches have lost their force. As academic linguistics splinters off again, loses its scientific edge, and regroups with the humanities, linguistics applied in the forensic context may implicate more questions than it answers, …

Limiting The Use Of The Categorical Approach And Setting A Statute Of Limitations For Deportation, Viridiana Ordonez

UC Law Journal

The United States relies, in part, on certain criminal convictions to determine which noncitizens are deportable. The specific types of criminal convictions subjecting an individual to deportation proceedings are found in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). However, the INA only lists categories and types of crimes that trigger deportation. It is the courts’ responsibility to compare the state criminal statute grounding the conviction with the list provided under the INA. This process is done using the “categorical approach,” which allows courts to make a comparison and determine if a state criminal conviction matches a crime listed in the INA, …

The Law Of Pseudonymous Litigation, Eugene Volokh

UC Law Journal

When may parties in American civil cases proceed pseudonymously? The answer turns out to be deeply unsettled. This Article aims to lay out the legal rules (such as they are) and the key policy arguments, in a way intended to be helpful to judges, lawyers, pro se litigants, and academics.

Institutional Choice For Software Safety Standards, Bryan H. Choi

UC Law Journal

The pursuit of software safety standards has stalled. In response, commentators and policymakers have looked increasingly to federal agencies to deliver new hope. Some place their faith in existing agencies while others propose a new super agency to oversee software-specific issues. This turn reflects both optimism in the agency model as well as pessimism in other institutions such as the judiciary or private markets.

This Essay argues that the agency model is not a silver bullet. Applying a comparative institutional choice lens, this Essay explains that the characteristic strengths of the agency model—expertise, uniformity, and efficiency—offer less advantage than one …

Mass Criminalization And Racial Disparities In Conviction Rates, Erin E. Meyers

UC Law Journal

A staggering number of Americans experience criminal justice contact each year, ranging from arrest to long-term incarceration. One 2014 Wall Street Journal report estimated that approximately one in three Americans are represented in the FBI’s master criminal database. Many scholars and commentators have questioned the desirability of mass criminalization and the resulting large-scale arrests.

I add new empirical context to this ongoing discussion by examining conviction rates among a nationally representative sample of young men. I find that, conditional on having been arrested, Black men are 29% less likely than their similarly situated White counterparts to experience conviction. This result …

Trade Secrecy And Innovation In Forensic Technology, Eli Siems, Katherine J. Strandburg, Nicholas Vincent

UC Law Journal

Trade secrecy is a major barrier to public scrutiny of probabilistic software tools that are increasingly used at all stages of the criminal system, from policing and investigation through trial and sentencing. Such tools allow prosecutors to leverage imperfect forensic evidence, such as DNA mixtures, smudged fingerprints, and grainy video footage. Probabilistic software tools unavoidably rely on potentially contestable assumptions, parameters, and implementation choices. Judicially recognized trade secrecy in criminal cases impedes scrutiny of these tools by defendants and the public. Previous critics have focused on secrecy’s potential to undermine the integrity and fairness of the criminal justice system, invoking …

Taking Stock: Open Questions And Unfinished Business Under The Vawa Amendments To The Indian Civil Rights Act, Jordan Gross

UC Law Journal

The primary statutory tool for federal regulation of Tribal court criminal procedure is the Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968 (ICRA). ICRA replicated most of the procedural protections in the Bill of Rights applicable to the States, as then interpreted by the Supreme Court. ICRA also sets out procedures Tribes must extend to criminal defendants in their courts, caps their sentencing authority, and defines their criminal jurisdiction.

Some parts of Indian country are the most dangerous places in the United States today, particularly for indigenous women and girls. They are exposed to a higher level of personal violence than any …

The United States’ Ineffective Response Towards Hong Kong’S National Security Law, Justine Yu

UC Law Journal

The city of Hong Kong has undergone a dramatic political shift in recent years. Once known as a safe haven for freedom of speech and expression,1 HK is now a place where anti-Communist Party views are suppressed under the National Security Law.2 The imposition of national security legislation over HK drew wide criticism from Western nations and pro-Democracy activists. This Note will focus specifically on the United States’ response and critique its shortcomings in response to the NSL. Because the current U.S. approach fails to achieve its desired outcome of upholding HK autonomy and democracy, this Note will also set …

The Opioid Doctors: Is Losing Your License A Sufficient Penalty For Dealing Drugs?, Adam M. Gershowitz

UC Law Journal

Imagine that a medical board revokes a doctor’s license both because he has been peddling thousands of pills of opioids and also because he was caught with a few grams of cocaine. The doctor is a family physician, not a pain management specialist. Yet, during a one-year period he wrote more than 4,000 prescriptions for opioids—roughly eighteen scripts per day. Patients came from multiple states and from hundreds of miles away to get oxycodone prescriptions. And the doctor prescribed large quantities of opioids—up to 240 pills per month—to patients with no record of previously needing narcotic painkillers. Both federal and …

America’S Unforgiving Forgiveness Program: Problems And Solutions For Public Service Loan Forgiveness, Robert Wu

UC Law Journal

In the first three years of Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF), over 227,000 borrowers applied for relief. The U.S. Department of Education granted relief to less than 3800 borrowers, denying forgiveness to roughly 98% of the program’s applicants. This astronomically high rejection rate raises questions of responsibility for the program’s initial failure. Many have blamed the Trump Administration for using its political influence to manufacture an unforgiving result. However, a purely political explanation for the program’s failure provides an incomplete illustration of the reasons underlying PSLF’s demise. This Note examines the numerous pitfalls that resulted in PSLF’s unforgiving forgiveness rate. …

Nonmarket Criminal Justice Fees, Ariel Jurow Kleiman

UC Law Journal

The public finance literature tells us that user fees will introduce market-like efficiency to public good provision. Meanwhile, criminal justice scholars note that criminal justice fees have run amok, causing crippling debt, undermining reentry efforts, and raising civil rights and constitutional concerns. This Article reconciles these seemingly opposed perspectives, arguing that criminal justice fees have become harmful precisely because they deviate from the traditional market-like environment that the public finance literature envisions. This nonmarket structure occurs for two reasons. First, criminal justice agencies are monopolistic providers of mandatory services, and second, criminal defendants cannot or do not consider the fee …

Dying For Equal Protection, Teri Dobbins Baxter

UC Law Journal

When health policy experts noticed that health outcomes for African Americans were consistently worse than those of their White counterparts, many in the health care community assumed that the poor outcomes could be blamed on poverty and lifestyle choices. Subsequent research told a different story. Studies repeatedly showed that neither money, nor marriage, nor educational achievement protect African American men, women, or children from poor health. Instead, the disparities were more likely explained by racism. Specifically, multiple studies have shown that experiencing racism has been linked to increased infant and maternal mortality rates, elevated stress levels, and an increased risk …

The Roper Extension: A California Perspective, Zoe Jordan

UC Law Journal

Although adulthood legally begins at age eighteen, young adults between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one are distinct from the rest of the adult population. Many studies conducted over the last two decades have revealed that the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for social and emotional maturity as well as impulse control, is not fully developed until near the age of twenty-five. Thus, young adults have a neurobiologically-compromised ability to exercise self-control, adequately consider the consequences of their actions, and resist coercive pressures from others. Notably, the California Legislature has acknowledged the need to treat young adults …

Algorithmic Discrimination Is An Information Problem, Ignacio N. Cofone

UC Law Journal

While algorithmic decision-making has proven to be a challenge for traditional antidiscrimination law, there is an opportunity to regulate algorithms through the information that they are fed. But blocking information about protected categories will rarely protect these groups effectively because other information will act as proxies. To avoid disparate treatment, the protected category attributes cannot be considered; but to avoid disparate impact, they must be considered. This leads to a paradox in regulating information to prevent algorithmic discrimination. This Article addresses this problem. It suggests that, instead of ineffectively blocking or passively allowing attributes in training data, we should modify …

Data Philanthropy, Yafit Lev-Aretz

UC Law Journal

The term “data philanthropy” has been used to describe the sharing of private sector data for socially beneficial purposes, such as academic research and humanitarian aid. The recent controversy over an academic researcher’s alleged misuse of Facebook users’ data on behalf of Cambridge Analytica has brought data philanthropy into the spotlight of public debate. Calls for data ethics and platform transparency have highlighted the urgent need for standard setting and democratic oversight in the use of corporate data for public ends. Data philanthropy has also received considerable scholarly attention in various academic disciplines but has, until now, been virtually overlooked …

Judicial Archaeology: The Ninth Circuit Opinions Of Justice Kennedy, Marsha Berzon The Honorable

UC Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Enduring Virtues Of Deferential Federalism: The Federal Government’S Proper Role In Prosecuting Law Enforcement Officers For Civil Rights Offenses, Adam Harris Kurland

UC Law Journal

No abstract provided.

An “Sdvcj Fix”—Paths Forward In Tribal Domestic Violence Jurisdiction, Joshua B. Gurney

UC Law Journal

Domestic violence has riddled the indigenous communities of the United States for decades. Within this problem lies another—non-Indians perpetrate crimes of domestic violence against Indian women at disproportionately high rates. Exacerbating this issue is the complicated web of criminal jurisdiction split between federal, state, and tribal governments. To ostensibly solve the problem, Congress enacted the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013. The Act contained an important provision that returned criminal jurisdiction to tribes, called “Special Domestic Violence Criminal Jurisdiction.”

Special Domestic Violence Criminal Jurisdiction, by most accounts, has been a resounding success. But it suffers from critical limitations, namely, …

California’S New Law Will Fail To Address The Larger Problem Of Brady Violations, Christina E. Urhausen

UC Law Journal

No abstract provided.

“Innocence” And The Guilty Mind, Stephen F. Smith

UC Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Can Democracy Withstand The Cyber Age?: 1984 In The 21st Century, David M. Howard

UC Law Journal

No abstract provided.

A Better Balance For Federal Rules Governing Public Access To Appeal Records In Immigration Cases, Nancy Morawetz

UC Law Journal

No abstract provided.