Law Commons^™

Force-Feeding Pretrial Detainees: A Constitutional Violation, Bryn L. Clegg

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Bucklew V. Precythe'S Return To The Original Meaning Of "Unusual": Prohibiting Extensive Delays On Death Row, Jacob Leon

Cleveland State Law Review

The Supreme Court, in Bucklew v. Precythe, provided an originalist interpretation of the term “unusual” in the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution. This originalist interpretation asserted that the word “unusual” proscribes punishments that have “long fallen out of use.” To support its interpretation, the Supreme Court cited John Stinneford’s well-known law review article The Original Meaning of “Unusual”: The Eighth Amendment as a Bar to Cruel Innovation. This Article, as Bucklew did, accepts Stinneford’s interpretation of the word “unusual” as correct. Under Stinneford’s interpretation, the term “unusual” is a legal term of art derived from eighteenth-century …

Remorse, Not Race: Essence Of Parole Release?, Lovashni Khalikaprasad

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

Breaking The Silence: Holding Texas Lawyers Accountable For Sexual Harassment, Savannah Files

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

Following the 2017 exposure of Harvey Weinstein, the #MeToo movement spread rapidly across social media platforms calling for increased awareness of the prevalence of sexual harassment and assault and demanding change. The widespread use of the hashtag brought attention to the issue and successfully facilitated a much-needed discussion in today’s society. However, this is not the first incident prompting a demand for change.

Efforts to bring awareness and exact change in regards to sexual harassment in the legal profession date back to the 1990s. This demonstrates that the legal profession is not immune from these issues. In fact, at least …

Decriminalization Of Prostitution Policy: Amnesty International Punishes A Dissenting Member, Marcia R. Lieberman

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

In 2016, Marcia Lieberman, a local group coordinator for Amnesty International, USA, was expelled by the board of directors for speaking out publicly against the new Policy on the Decriminalization of Sex Work. Amnesty used a little-known rule that prohibits a member from publicly opposing a position that Amnesty has taken. Lieberman writes about her experience and her view that Amnesty violated its fundamental principle of protecting free speech to silence her dissent.

Equal Protection Under The Carceral State, Aya Gruber

Northwestern University Law Review

McCleskey v. Kemp, the case that upheld the death penalty despite undeniable evidence of its racially disparate impact, is indelibly marked by Justice William Brennan’s phrase, “a fear of too much justice.” The popular interpretation of this phrase is that the Supreme Court harbored what I call a “disparity-claim fear,” dreading a future docket of racial discrimination claims and erecting an impossibly high bar for proving an equal protection violation. A related interpretation is that the majority had a “color-consciousness fear” of remedying discrimination through race-remedial policies. In contrast to these conventional views, I argue that the primary anxiety …

Trapped In The Shackles Of America's Criminal Justice System, Shristi Devu

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming

What Is Life? Geriatric Release And The Conflicting Definitions Of “Meaningful Opportunity For Release”, Anthony Gunst

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

"Where Can I Go?": Excessiveness Of The Geographical Restraints Imposed By The Sexual Assault Reform Act In Urban Neighborhoods, Leslie Anne Mendoza

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Reforming School Discipline, Derek W. Black

Northwestern University Law Review

Public schools suspend millions of students each year, but less than ten percent of suspensions are for serious misbehavior. School leaders argue that these suspensions ensure an orderly educational environment for those students who remain. Social science demonstrates the opposite. The practice of regularly suspending students negatively affects misbehaving students as well as innocent bystanders. All things being equal, schools that manage student behavior through means other than suspension produce the highest achieving students. In this respect, the quality of education a school provides is closely connected to its discipline policies.

Reformers have largely overlooked the connection between discipline and …

“Criminal Records” - A Comparative Approach, Sigmund A. Cohn

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Evading Miller, Robert S. Chang, David A. Perez, Luke M. Rona, Christopher M. Schafbuch

Seattle University Law Review

Miller v. Alabama appeared to strengthen constitutional protections for juvenile sentencing that the United States Supreme Court recognized in Roper v. Simmons and Graham v. Florida. In Roper, the Court held that executing a person for a crime committed as a juvenile is unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment. In Graham, the Court held that sentencing a person to life without parole for a nonhomicide offense committed as a juvenile is unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment. In Miller, the Court held that a mandatory sentence of life without parole for a homicide offense committed by a juvenile is also unconstitutional under …

Federal Incarceration By Contract In A Post-Minneci World: Legislation To Equalize The Constitutional Rights Of Prisoners, Allison L. Waks

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In the 2012 case Minneci v. Pollard, the United States Supreme Court held that federal prisoners assigned to privately-run prisons may not bring actions for violations of their Eighth Amendment right against cruel and unusual punishment and may instead bring actions sounding only in state tort law. A consequence of this decision is that the arbitrary assignment of some federal prisoners to privately-run prisons deprives them of an equal opportunity to vindicate this federal constitutional right and pursue a federal remedy. Yet all federal prisoners should be entitled to the same protection under the United States Constitution-regardless of the type …

Choosing Those Who Will Die: The Effect Of Race, Gender, And Law In Prosecutorial Decision To Seek The Death Penalty In Durham County, North Carolina, Isaac Unah

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

District prosecutors in the United States exercise virtually unfettered power and discretion to decide which murder cases to prosecute for capital punishment. According to neoclassical theory of formal legal rationality, the process for determining criminal punishment should be based upon legal rules established and sanctioned by the state to communicate the priorities of the political community. The theory therefore argues in favor of a determinate mode of decision-making that diminishes the importance of extrinsic elements such as race and gender in the application of law. In the empirical research herein reported, I test this theory using death eligible cases in …

The Color Line Of Punishment, Jerome H. Skolnick

Michigan Law Review

If "the color line," (in W.E.B. Du Bois's 1903 phrase and prophecy) was to be the twentieth century's greatest challenge for the domestic life and public policy of the United States, the law has had much to do with drawing its shape. No surprise, this. By now, legal theorists accept that law does not advance in preordained fashion, immune from the sway of political interest, belief systems and social structure. Still, it is hard to exaggerate how powerfully the law has shaped the life chances of Americans of African heritage, for good or ill, and in ways that we scarcely …

Benign Neglect* Of Racism In The Criminal Justice System, Angela J. Davis

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Michael Tonry, Malign Neglect: Race, Crime, and Punishment in America

The Punishment Of Hate: Toward A Normative Theory Of Bias-Motivated Crimes, Frederick M. Lawrence

Michigan Law Review

This article explores how bias crimes differ from parallel crimes and why this distinction makes a crucial difference in our criminal law. Bias crimes differ from parallel crimes as a matter of both the resulting harm and the mental state of the offender. The nature of the injury sustained by the immediate victim of a bias crime exceeds the harm caused by a parallel crime. Moreover, bias crimes inflict a palpable harm on the broader target community of the crime as well as on society at large, while parallel crimes do not generally cause such widespread injury.

The distinction between …

Section 1983, Martin A. Schwartz, Honorable George C. Pratt, Leon Friedman

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Legal Rights In A Juvenile Correctional Institution, Matthew L. Myers

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This article focuses on the effect on juvenile correctional institutions of the erosion of the "hands-off" doctrine and the introduction of procedural safeguards in the juvenile justice system. In so doing, the article examines the difficulties inherent in any attempt to reform institutional practices and procedures to accommodate the goals of the juvenile correctional model. In the juvenile context, the extent to which fundamental rights need or may be abrogated to allow the institution freedom to rehabilitate and treat its inmates is crucial. Therefore, this article examines three areas involving fundamental constitutional rights: imposition of punitive segregation, freedom of communication, …

Civil Rights Crimes And The Federal Power To Punish Private Individuals For Interference With Federally Secured Rights, Howard M. Feuerstein

Vanderbilt Law Review

Participants in the current civil rights movement in the South have been subjected to countless acts of violence and intimidation committed by private individuals acting either on their own or as part of racist organizations. As a result of such acts of violence, new legislation has been introduced in Congress.' Yet, the federal system historically has placed strict limitations on the power of the national government to deal with the acts of private individuals. The time is therefore ripe for a re-examination of these limitations. In so doing,this article deals with acts of private individuals in the technical sense of …