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Full-Text Articles in Law

The Pope And The Capital Juror, Aliza Plener Cover Dec 2018

The Pope And The Capital Juror, Aliza Plener Cover

Articles

In a significant change to Catholic Church doctrine, Pope Francis recently declared that capital punishment is impermissible under all circumstances. Counterintuitively, the Pope’s pronouncement might make capital punishment less popular but more prevalent in the United States. This Essay anticipates this possible dynamic and, in so doing, explores how “death qualification” of capital juries can insulate the administration of the death penalty when community morality evolves away from capital punishment.


Lockett Symposium: Lockett As It Was, Is Now, And Ever Shall Should Be, Karen A. Steele Nov 2018

Lockett Symposium: Lockett As It Was, Is Now, And Ever Shall Should Be, Karen A. Steele

ConLawNOW

Lockett made clear what was constitutionally unacceptable in capital sentencing statutes (limiting the range of mitigating factors to be considered) while affirmatively heralding the significance and breadth of mitigating factors unique to the defendant that must be affirmatively and independently considered by jurors, courts and counsel; the inverse correlation between mitigating factors and disproportionate sentencing; and the interrelationship between mitigating factors and narrowing—all in an effort to provide a “meaningful basis for distinguishing the few cases in which the death penalty is imposed from the many cases in which it is not.” The threatened and actual use of “double-edged” aspects …


Lockett Symposium: Justice White's Lockett Concurrence And The Evolving Standards For A Capital Defendant's Mens Rea, Jordan Berman Oct 2018

Lockett Symposium: Justice White's Lockett Concurrence And The Evolving Standards For A Capital Defendant's Mens Rea, Jordan Berman

ConLawNOW

In Lockett v. Ohio, Justice Byron White authored a separate concurring opinion specifically to assert that capital punishment violates the Eighth Amendment when imposed absent “a finding that the defendant possessed a purpose to cause the death of the victim.” This view was largely vindicated when Justice White authored the opinions in Enmund v. Florida and Cabana v. Bullock, in which the Court held that the death sentence could not constitutionally be imposed on one who did not kill or attempt to kill or have any intention of participating in or facilitating a killing. Nonetheless, just one year …


All Bathwater, No Baby: Expressive Theories Of Punishment And The Death Penalty, Susan A. Bandes Apr 2018

All Bathwater, No Baby: Expressive Theories Of Punishment And The Death Penalty, Susan A. Bandes

Michigan Law Review

A review of Carol S. Steiker and Jordan M. Steiker, Courting Death: The Supreme Court and Capital Punishment.


Convictions Of Innocent People With Intellectual Disability, Sheri Johnson, John H. Blume, Amelia Courtney Hritz Jan 2018

Convictions Of Innocent People With Intellectual Disability, Sheri Johnson, John H. Blume, Amelia Courtney Hritz

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In Atkins v. Virginia, the Supreme Court held that executing individuals with intellectual disability violates the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause of the Eighth Amendment. In addition to concerns over culpability and deterrence, the Court’s judgment in Atkins was informed by the heightened “risk of wrongful execution” faced by persons with intellectual disability. This essay explores that question both anecdotally and quantitatively, hoping to illuminate the causes of wrongful conviction of persons with intellectual disability. We provide examples from our experiences in the Cornell Death Penalty Clinic and cases brought to our attention by defense attorneys. We also present data …


Legal Vs. Factual Normative Questions & The True Scope Of Ring, Emad H. Atiq Jan 2018

Legal Vs. Factual Normative Questions & The True Scope Of Ring, Emad H. Atiq

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

When is a normative question a question of law rather than a question offact? The short answer, based on common law and constitutional rulings, is: it depends. For example, if the question concerns the fairness of contractual terms, it is a question of law. If it concerns the reasonableness of dangerous risk-taking in a negligence suit, it is a question of fact. If it concerns the obscenity of speech, it was a question of fact prior to the Supreme Court's seminal cases on free speech during the 1970s, but is now treated as law-like. This variance in the case law …


Arbiters Of Decency: A Study Of Legislators' Eighth Amendment Role, Aliza Plener Cover Jan 2018

Arbiters Of Decency: A Study Of Legislators' Eighth Amendment Role, Aliza Plener Cover

Articles

Within Eighth Amendment doctrine, legislators are arbiters of contemporary values. The United States Supreme Court looks closely to state and federal death penalty legislation to determine whether a given punishment is out of keeping with “evolving standards of decency.” Those who draft, debate, and vote on death penalty laws thus participate in both ordinary and higher lawmaking. This Article investigates this dual role.

We coded and aggregated information about every floor statement made in the legislative debates preceding the recent passage of bills abolishing the death penalty in Connecticut, Illinois, and Nebraska. We categorized all statements according to their position …


Equal Protection Under The Carceral State, Aya Gruber Jan 2018

Equal Protection Under The Carceral State, Aya Gruber

Publications

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 …