Law Commons^™

Ethical Cannabis Lawyering In California, Francis J. Mootz Iii

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

Cannabis has a long history in the United States. Originally, doctors and pharmacists used cannabis for a variety of purposes. After the Mexican Revolution led to widespread migration from Mexico to the United States, many Americans responded by associating this influx of foreigners with the use of cannabis, and thereby racializing and stigmatizing the drug. After the collapse of prohibition, the federal government repurposed its enormous enforcement bureaucracy to address the perceived problem of cannabis, despite the opposition of the American Medical Association to this new prohibition. Ultimately, both the states and the federal government classified cannabis as a dangerous …

Can Judges Be Uncivilly Obedient?, Brannon P. Denning

William & Mary Law Review

In a recent article, Jessica Bulman-Pozen and David Pozen identified “uncivil obedience” as a tactic for protesting laws or regulations, not by violating the law, as with civil disobedience, but rather by scrupulous attendance to it. They noted that it is a tactic available to private and public actors alike, but were doubtful that a judicial variety existed. They were skeptical because, in their opinion, even hyper-formalist legal opinions would be unlikely to be perceived as provocative as scrupulous adherence to the letter of the law might be when practiced by non-judicial actors. In this Article, I argue that judicial …

The Johnson & Johnson Problem: The Supreme Court Limited The Armed Career Criminal Act's "Violent Felony" Provision—And Our Children Are Paying, Shelby Burns

Pepperdine Law Review

The Armed Career Criminal Act and United States Sentencing Guidelines prescribe sentence enhancements based upon a defendant’s prior convictions. In particular, these federal sentencing tools contain violent felony provisions that outline the requirements a state criminal statute must satisfy for a conviction to constitute a violent felony, making the convicted person eligible for a federal sentence enhancement. However, the Supreme Court’s holdings in Johnson v. United States, 559 U.S. 133 (2010) and Johnson v. United States, 135 S. Ct. 2551 (2015) severely limited the scope of both sentencing tools’ violent felony provisions, making it more difficult for certain crimes to …

American Exceptionalism In Mass Incarceration, Isabell Murray

Global Honors Theses

American exceptionalism is often positively connotated; America’s exceptionalism often refers to the nation’s unique, progressive ideals of liberty during the nation’s founding, as well as the premise of a free Democratic Republic. While the United States of America has many positive and exceptional qualities, this research illustrates an unfortunate exceptional American quality: the mass incarceration of over 2.3 million people in the United States of America. This paper reviews the literature to understand the evolution of mass incarceration on the basis of three lines: the United States’ history of race, the nation’s governmental structure and the development of policy. Additionally, …

A Comparison Of The American Model And French (-Inspired) Appellate Model, Frederic Blockx

Duke Law Master of Judicial Studies Theses

Both the American and the French legal system have a three-tiered structure. However, the respective roles and functions of the courts on each step of the ladder is vastly different in both. Whereas the general system in the U.S. is to have one trial court and two ‘higher’ courts (a court of appeals and a supreme court), the French / European continental system consists of two ‘factual’ courts (the basic level and the court of appeals), and one ‘legal’ (the supreme court) with limited or even inexistent possibilities to look at the facts.

The purpose of this thesis is to …

Comparative Approaches To Constitutional History, Jamal Greene, Yvonne Tew

Faculty Scholarship

An historical approach to constitutional interpretation draws upon original intentions or understandings of the meaning or application of a constitutional provision. Comparing the ways in which courts in different jurisdictions use history is a complex exercise. In recent years, academic and judicial discussion of “originalism” has obscured both the global prevalence of resorting to historical materials as an interpretive resource and the impressive diversity of approaches courts may take to deploying those materials. This chapter seeks, in Section B, to develop a basic taxonomy of historical approaches. Section C explores in greater depth the practices of eight jurisdictions with constitutional …