Law Commons^™

Criminal Liability Of Corporate Officers For Strict Liability Offenses - Another View, Kathleen F. Brickey

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Article offers an alternative analysis of the doctrine articulated by the Supreme Court in Dotterweich and Park and its subsequent application by the Ninth Circuit. In the course of so doing, it suggests that Professor Abrams has lost sight of the public welfare offense model that provided the analytical framework within which the cases were decided and that his postulates may thus be faulted as lacking in context. The analysis in this Article demonstrates that the responsible share standard of liability has, from the outset, incorporated the requirement of an act or omission to act and that of causation …

Rule 10b-5-The Equivalent Scope Of Liability Under Respondeat Superior And Section 20(A)-Imposing A Benefit Requirement On Apparent Authority, Carol M. Lynch

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Note demonstrates that the scope of employer liability for employees' rule 10b-5 violations is no broader under a proper application of respondeat superior than under section 20(a). This Note does not address the question whether respondeat superior applies under rule 10b-5, but rather how courts should apply it.

Part II examines the majority, minority, and Third Circuit decisions on employer liability. Part III discusses the traditional analysis under both respondeat superior and section 20(a) and compares the scope of liability under each one. Part III concludes that except for an employer's liability for acts that are within an employee's …

Disclosure And Civil Use Of Immunized Testimony, Elizabeth J. Schwartz

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Recent Development examines the current conflict among the circuits. This study first explores the rationales under-lying use immunity and contrasts them with the guidelines formulated by the Supreme Court for controlling judicial disclosure of grand jury testimony. Second, this Recent Development examines the analyses used by the federal courts in determining whether to release immunized grand jury testimony for civil use's and the effect of disclosure on a witness' claim of fifth amendment privilege.This study submits that in their effort to promote civil discovery,several courts have misconstrued the scope and effect of the disclosure power and have usurped the …

The Acquisition Of Evidence For Criminal Prosecution: Some Constitutional Premises And Practices In Transition, H. Richard Uviller

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Article isolates only two of the many aspects of the Court's labors affecting the acquisition of evidence for criminal prosecution. The first concerns the allocation of primacy among the values that the exclusionary response to the illegal acquisition of evidence serves: a theoretical choice that may carry some notable practical consequences. The second requires are examination of the role of the trial court in supervising the preaccusatory search for evidence in a way that suggests the possible obsolescence of the Supreme Court's ruling credo in the Stewart era.

Criminal Law: The Missing Element In Sentencing Reform, Michael H. Tonry

Vanderbilt Law Review

The thesis of this Article is that the substantive criminal law is the missing element in sentencing reform. If comprehensive sentencing reform strategies are to have lasting effect, legislatures must reintroduce the criminal law to the sentencing process. This step will require a rekindled interest in a moral analysis of the substantive criminal law and the enactment of greatly reduced statutory sentence maximums, along with more conventional institutional changes to structure discretion and increase official accountability.

Objections to American sentencing procedures range from the principled to the practical. Part II of this Article summarizes the basic objections that have influenced …

Double Jeopardy And Prosecutorial Appeal Of Sentences: Di Francesco, Bullington, And The Criminal Code Reform Act Of 1981, Ronald P. O'Hanley, Iii

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Recent Development first traces the evolution of the double jeopardy doctrine. The Recent Development then focuses on the recent sentence modification cases as well as the proposed revisions to the Federal Criminal Code. Finally, this Recent Development attempts to develop a coherent double jeopardy rationale and concludes that, under this proposed rationale, unilateral government appeal of sentences is unconstitutional.

Foreword, G. Michael Mccrossin, Editor

Vanderbilt Law Review

One of the primary goals of the American criminal justice system is to protect the civil liberties of accused persons while at the same time ensuring the security of citizens' persons and property. Recently, some people have begun to argue that the pursuit of these dual purposes has resulted in a dangerous imbalance, and that our criminal justice system now focuses far too heavily on the rights of the accused. These people have perceived an alarming upswing in the incidence of violent crime and have attributed that upswing to a breakdown in the legal profession's administration of the criminal law.

The Expert As Educator: A Proposed Approach To The Use Of Battered Woman Syndrome Expert Testimony, Meredith B. Cross

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Recent Development proposes that courts should permit the use of battered woman syndrome expert testimony, but restrict its use to informing juries of the peculiar mental and emotional state of battered women. This role of the expert as educator would serve to dispel a jury's misconceptions about battered women and, at the same time, draw the focus of the testimony away from the implication which troubled the Buhrle court--that the battered woman syndrome represents a new defense to murder.The Advisory Committee explains in a note that rule 702 of the Federal Rules of Evidence suggests the use of expert …

Youth Crime And Urban Policy: A View From The Inner City, Diana R. Gordon

Vanderbilt Law Review

One does not expect to be mesmerized by a book entitled Youth Crime and Urban Policy: A View from the Inner City. Yet this volume, compiled from the proceedings of a May 1980 conference sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) proves to be a powerful testament to the plight of the dweller in America's crime-plagued inner-city neighborhoods. Because Robert Woodson has edited the comments of the conference's participants with a light hand, the book gives the reader the power of voices from the street-voices of people who are trying daily to stem the tide of …

Colloquy, Mr. Wiseman, Professor Uviller, Ms. Rosen, Professor Zeisel, Professor Reiss, Mr. Washington, Mr/ Carrington, Ms. Collins, Professor Tonry, Mr. Hishta

Vanderbilt Law Review

At present, our system of criminal law administration has a considerable Rube Goldberg quality to it. Once the system decides to imprison a particular defendant--if we except from the generalization the couple of states that recently changed their laws in fundamental respects--the judge naturally asks himself what will happen when this man goes to prison. The answer is that the convicted offender will sit in prison for as long as the parole board wants him to. The judge must next consider whether any constraints exist on the parole board's decisions on when to release people from prison. In a third …

The Limits Of Law Enforcement, Hans Zeisel

Vanderbilt Law Review

Society will not be able to solve the crime problem before it has solved the problems of the ghettos. Such an undertaking is a big task, on which society thus far has worked with little diligence.Even if efforts are increased beyond their present level, the task will take a long time. Nevertheless, the question must be ad-dressed, and the statistics point precisely to where the endeavor must begin. Crime typically starts early in life, therefore, radical efforts should be made to reach these crime-prone youths before their life style is fixed. One particular statistic illuminates the problem and suggests a …

Deterrence, Death, And The Victims Of Crime: A Common Sense Approach, Frank G. Carrington

Vanderbilt Law Review

The concept of deterrence is one of the most important in the formulations of the victim advocate, primarily because of two essential premises that underlie the entire field of victim advocacy.The first, but not necessarily the most important, of these premises concerns the policy that favors assuaging the plight of persons after they have been victimized. This relief can be provided in a number of different ways: compensation to innocent victims from the states; restitution to victims as a condition of granting probation to the criminal; victim counselling; and victim/witness assistance programs.' The second premise of victim advocacy, namely,preventing victimization …

The Crime Controversy: Avoiding Realities, David L. Bazelon

Vanderbilt Law Review

Speaking before the nation's police chiefs last fall, President Reagan said, "The frightening reality is that for all the speeches by those of us in Government-for all the surveys, studies, and blue ribbon panels--for all the 14-point programs and the declarations of war on crime--crime has continued its steady, upward climb and our citizens have grown more and more frustrated, frightened,and angry."'I must concur with the President's depressing picture. In the thirty-two years that I have been on the bench, the "war against crime" has been a high national priority. Nevertheless, crime--and the fear of crime--seem worse today than ever …

How Serious Is Serious Crime?, Albert J. Reiss, Jr.

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Article examines the information systems that are available to the American public. Part H of the Article discusses crime information sources and limitations arising from their excessive dependence upon the same sources of information. Parts III and IV of the Article focus on the information and methods that American society depends upon to determine the amount and seriousness of"serious" crime. These parts of the Article criticize society's present modes of crime assessment by evaluating public perceptions of crime under several standards for determining the amount of harm that results from different criminal acts. In part V, the Article examines …

Books Received, Journal Staff

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Books Received

CANADIAN CRIMINAL LAW: INTERNATIONAL AND TRANSNATIONAL ASPECTS

By Sharon A. Williams and J. G. Castel

Toronto: Butterworth's, 1981. Pp. 513. $80.00.

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CASES AND MATERIALS ON SALE OF GOODS

By John Adams

London & Canberra: Croom Helm: Ltd., 1982. Pp. 174. $15.50.

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THE DEFENSE POLICIES OF NATIONS: A COMPARATIVE STUDY

Edited by Douglas J. Murray and Paul R. Viotti

Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982. Pp. 525. $35.00 (cloth), $12.95 (paper)

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DOCUMENTS ON THE LAWS OF WAR

Edited by Adam Roberts and Richard Guelff

New York: the Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press, 1982. …

Case Digest, Law Review Staff

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Admiralty Jurisdiction Exists in Products Liability Action although Product is not Unique to Maritime Use

Plaintiff, a shipyard worker who was exposed to asbestos dust and fiber while installing asbestos insulation, contracted asbestosis, an incurable lung disorder, and sued the manufacturer of the asbestos product, Johns-Manville Corporation, alleging negligent failure to warn and breach of warranty.

British Courts have Jurisdiction over British Subjects Committing Offenses aboard a Foreign Ship on the High Seas

Three British subjects were charged in a British court with violating the Criminal Damage Act of 1971 by committing acts of vandalism on a Danish vessel in …