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Full-Text Articles in Law
How The Rational Basis Test Protects Policing For Profit, William R. Maurer
How The Rational Basis Test Protects Policing For Profit, William R. Maurer
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Since the police shooting of Michael Brown in 2014 and the civil unrest that followed, numerous lawsuits have challenged laws that use the government’s ability to impose fines and fees for reasons other than the protection of the public. These challenges have usually raised equal protection challenges to these laws—that is, that the laws punish the poor more harshly than others. The challenges have been unsuccessful, largely because courts examine these laws using “rational basis review,” a standard that is highly deferential to the government and one in which the courts themselves are often required to actively advocate for the …
Debt To Society: The Role Of Fines & Fees Reform In Dismantling The Carceral State, Wesley Dozier, Daniel Kiel
Debt To Society: The Role Of Fines & Fees Reform In Dismantling The Carceral State, Wesley Dozier, Daniel Kiel
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Fines and fees that result from contact with the criminal legal system serve as a suffocating debt for those against whom they are assessed. Many states have countless laws that require taxes, fines, and fees to be assessed against individuals involved in the criminal legal system at various stages of the criminal legal process, and they have the effect of permanently trapping individuals within the system. In Tennessee, for example, these debts, which can accumulate to over $10,000 in a single criminal case, stand in the way of individuals getting their criminal records expunged, keeping valid driver’s licenses, and restoring …
Prohibiting The Punishment Of Poverty: The Abolition Of Wealth-Based Criminal Disenfranchisement, Amy Ciardiello
Prohibiting The Punishment Of Poverty: The Abolition Of Wealth-Based Criminal Disenfranchisement, Amy Ciardiello
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
The majority of U.S. states disenfranchise formerly incarcerated individuals because of their poverty by conditioning re-enfranchisement on the full payment of legal financial obligations. This Note discusses the practice of wealth-based criminal disenfranchisement where the inability to pay legal financial obligations, including fines, fees, restitution, interest payments, court debts, and other economic penalties, prohibits low-income, formerly incarcerated individuals from voting. This Note argues this issue has not been adequately addressed due to unsuccessful legislative reforms and failed legal challenges. An examination of state policies, federal and state legislative reforms, and litigation shows that a more drastic state legislative solution is …
The Future Of Pretrial Detention In A Criminal System Looking For Justice, Gabrielle Costa
The Future Of Pretrial Detention In A Criminal System Looking For Justice, Gabrielle Costa
Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity
No abstract provided.
The Central Park Five As “Discrete And Insular” Minorities Under The Equal Protection Clause: The Evolution Of The Right To Counsel For Wrongfully Convicted Minors, Todd K. Beharry
Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity
No abstract provided.
The Structural Underpinnings Of Access To Justice: Building A Solid Pro Bono Infrastructure, Latonia Haney Keith
The Structural Underpinnings Of Access To Justice: Building A Solid Pro Bono Infrastructure, Latonia Haney Keith
Mitchell Hamline Law Review
No abstract provided.
"It's Not You, It's Your Caseload": Using Cronic To Solve Indigent Defense Underfunding, Samantha Jaffe
"It's Not You, It's Your Caseload": Using Cronic To Solve Indigent Defense Underfunding, Samantha Jaffe
Michigan Law Review
In the United States, defendants in both federal and state prosecutions have the constitutional right to effective assistance of counsel. That right is in jeopardy. In the postconviction setting, the standard for ineffective assistance of counsel is prohibitively high, and Congress has restricted federal habeas review. At trial, severe underfunding for state indigent defense systems has led to low pay, little support, and extreme caseloads—which combine to create conditions where lawyers simply cannot represent clients adequately. Overworked public defenders and contract attorneys represent 80 percent of state felony defendants annually. Three out of four countywide public defender systems and fifteen …
Take This Job And Shove It: The Pragmatic Philosophy Of Johnny Paycheck And A Prayer For Strict Liability In Appalachia, Eugene "Trey" Moore Iii
Take This Job And Shove It: The Pragmatic Philosophy Of Johnny Paycheck And A Prayer For Strict Liability In Appalachia, Eugene "Trey" Moore Iii
The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice
Abstract forthcoming
Injustice Under Law: Perpetuating And Criminalizing Poverty Through The Courts, Judge Lisa Foster
Injustice Under Law: Perpetuating And Criminalizing Poverty Through The Courts, Judge Lisa Foster
Georgia State University Law Review
Money matters in the justice system. If you can afford to purchase your freedom pretrial, if you can afford to immediately pay fines and fees for minor traffic offenses and municipal code violations, if you can afford to hire an attorney, your experience of the justice system both procedurally and substantively will be qualitatively different than the experience of someone who is poor. More disturbingly, through a variety of policies and practices—some of them blatantly unconstitutional—our courts are perpetuating and criminalizing poverty. And when we talk about poverty in the United States, we are still talking about race, ethnicity, and …
Speedy Trial As A Viable Challenge To Chronic Underfunding In Indigent-Defense Systems, Emily Rose
Speedy Trial As A Viable Challenge To Chronic Underfunding In Indigent-Defense Systems, Emily Rose
Michigan Law Review
Across the country, underresourced indigent-defense systems create delays in taking cases to trial at both the state and federal levels. Attempts to increase funding for indigent defense by bringing ineffective assistance of counsel claims have been thwarted by high procedural and substantive hurdles, and consequently these attempts have failed to bring significant change. This Note argues that, because ineffective assistance of counsel litigation is most likely a dead end for system-wide reform, indigent defenders should challenge the constitutionality of underfunding based on the Sixth Amendment guarantee of speedy trial. Existing speedy trial jurisprudence suggests that the overworking and furloughing of …
Plea Bargaining And The Right To Counsel At Bail Hearings, Charlie Gerstein
Plea Bargaining And The Right To Counsel At Bail Hearings, Charlie Gerstein
Michigan Law Review
A couple million indigent defendants in this country face bail hearings each year and most of them do so without court-appointed lawyers. In two recent companion cases, Lafler v. Cooper and Missouri v. Frye, the Supreme Court held that the loss of a favorable plea bargain can satisfy the prejudice prong of an ineffective assistance of counsel claim. If the Constitution requires effective assistance of counsel to protect plea bargains, it requires the presence of counsel at proceedings that have the capacity to prejudice those bargains. Pretrial detention has the capacity to prejudice a plea bargain because a defendant held …
The Right To Counsel For Indians Accused Of Crime: A Tribal And Congressional Imperative, Barbara L. Creel
The Right To Counsel For Indians Accused Of Crime: A Tribal And Congressional Imperative, Barbara L. Creel
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
Native American Indians charged in tribal court criminal proceedings are not entitled to court appointed defense counsel. Under well-settled principles of tribal sovereignty, Indian tribes are not bound by Fifth Amendment due process guarantees or Sixth Amendment right to counsel. Instead, they are bound by the procedural protections established by Congress in the Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968. Under the Indian Civil Rights Act (ICRA), Indian defendants have the right to counsel at their own expense. This Article excavates the historical background of the lack of counsel in the tribal court arena and exposes the myriad problems that it …
The Poverty Defense, Michele Estrin Gilman
The Poverty Defense, Michele Estrin Gilman
University of Richmond Law Review
No abstract provided.
Taking The English Right To Counsel Seriously In American Civil Gideon Litigation, Scott F. Llewellyn, Brian Hawkins
Taking The English Right To Counsel Seriously In American Civil Gideon Litigation, Scott F. Llewellyn, Brian Hawkins
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Courts have rejected a right to counsel for indigent civil litigants under the U.S. Constitution. But in some American states, that right arguably already exists as a matter of common law, albeit derived from centuries-old English common and statutory law. This Article analyzes the viability of arguments for incorporating the old English right to counsel in the twenty-seven American states that continue to recognize old English common and statutory law as a source of binding authority. Such "originalist" arguments may be appealing to judges who are more willing to revive a historically based right than establish a new right based …
Agency And Equity: Why Do We Blame Clients For Their Lawyers' Mistakes, Adam Liptak
Agency And Equity: Why Do We Blame Clients For Their Lawyers' Mistakes, Adam Liptak
Michigan Law Review
If you were to ask a child whether it would be fair to execute a prisoner because his lawyer had made a mistake, the answer would be no. You might even get a look suggesting that you had asked a pretty stupid question. But judges treat the issue as a hard one, relying on a theory as casually accepted in criminal justice as it is offensive to principles of moral philosophy. This theory holds that the lawyer is the client's agent. What the agent does binds the principal. But clients and lawyers fit the agency model imperfectly. Agency law is …
Rights And Freedoms Under The State Constitution: A New Deal For Welfare Rights, Sandra M. Stevenson, Eve Cary, Mary Falk, Helen Hershkoff, Robert A. Heverly
Rights And Freedoms Under The State Constitution: A New Deal For Welfare Rights, Sandra M. Stevenson, Eve Cary, Mary Falk, Helen Hershkoff, Robert A. Heverly
Touro Law Review
No abstract provided.