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Full-Text Articles in Law
Judicial Interference With Effective Advocacy By The Defense, Bennett L. Gershman
Judicial Interference With Effective Advocacy By The Defense, Bennett L. Gershman
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
A fundamental premise of the American criminal justice system is defense counsel's zealous professional advocacy. Representation of a criminal defendant to be effective must be vigorous. In administering a trial, judges have a duty to ensure a fair and orderly proceeding. On occasion, however, judges overstep the line and impede defense counsel's advocacy functions unfairly. This article describes some of the ways that trial judges may violate legal and ethical standards by improperly interfering with defense counsel's courtroom functions.
Passion's Progress: Modern Law Reform And The Provocation Defense, Victoria Nourse
Passion's Progress: Modern Law Reform And The Provocation Defense, Victoria Nourse
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Based on a systematic study of fifteen years of passion murder cases, this article concludes that reform challenges our conventional ideas of a "crime of passion" and, in the process, leads to a murder law that is both illiberal and often perverse. If life tells us that crimes of passion are the stuff of sordid affairs and bedside confrontations, reform tells us that the law's passion may be something quite different. A significant number of the reform cases the author has studied involve no sexual infidelity whatsoever, but only the desire of the killer's victim to leave a miserable relationship. …