Law Commons^™

Redistributing Justice, Benjamin Levin, Kate Levine

Faculty Articles

This Essay surfaces an obstacle to decarceration hiding in plain sight: progressives’ continued support for the carceral system. Despite progressives’ increasingly prevalent critiques of criminal law, there is hardly a consensus on the left in opposition to the carceral state. Many left-leaning academics and activists who may critique the criminal system writ large remain enthusiastic about criminal law in certain areas— often areas in which defendants are imagined as powerful and victims as particularly vulnerable.

In this Essay, we offer a novel theory for what animates the seemingly conflicted attitude among progressives toward criminal punishment—the hope that the criminal system …

Rethinking Culpability And Wrongdoing (In The Criminal Law—And Everyday Life), T. Markus Funk

University of Cincinnati Law Review

Determining an offender’s “culpability” is fundamental to justice systems worldwide. However, this crucial concept, built on a blending of moral responsibility with legal guilt, remains significantly diluted. For instance, the U.S. Model Penal Code uses an offender’s moral culpability merely to “grade” offenses and determine sentences. This prevailing perpetrator-centric approach, mirrored in U.S. state and federal laws and academic discourse, affects individual cases and has far-reaching societal implications.

Viewed this way, “harm” narrowly refers to the concrete damage (or the “injury”), such as physical pain and damage or loss of property, the perpetrator caused. “Culpability,” on the other hand, is …

Considering Caretakers: An Explicit Argument For Downward Departures During Federal Sentencing Mitigation For Caretakers Of Children, Danielle Sparber Bukacheski

University of Miami Law Review

The sentencing stage of the federal legal system provides defendants with an opportunity to articulate why the sentencing judge is justified in imposing less severe sentences. Yet, under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, sentencing judges have been restricted in the characteristics and background information that can be utilized when imposing a downward departure from the recommended Guidelines sentence. More specifically, there is great variability regarding the extent to which family-related circumstances can be utilized as justification for a downward departure due to the Sentencing Commission’s ambiguous language. Considering the damaging effects of incarceration on children when a caretaker is physically removed …

The Unconstitutionality Of Underfunded Public Defender Systems, Braden Daniels

Senior Honors Theses

When a defendant is ineffectively represented by a public defender due to an underfunded public defender system, a defendant whose public defender provides him only cursory representation is entitled to a new trial only if blatantly innocent. The U.S. Supreme Court should follow its precedent and declare systemically underfunded public defender systems unconstitutional, with cases meriting reversal when the underfunding is to blame for unreasonable attorney errors, regardless of prejudice. This stems logically from the Court’s holdings in Gideon v. Wainwright, Strickland v. Washington, and United States v. Cronic. Many have argued for the reversal or modification …

Social Ecology, Preventive Intervention, And The Administrative Transformation Of The Criminal Legal System, Mark R. Fondacaro

Georgia State University Law Review

This Article outlines an administrative model of criminal justice that provides a conceptual framework and empirical justification for transforming our criminal legal system from a backward-looking, adjudicative model grounded in principles of retribution toward a forward-looking model grounded in consequentialist principles of justice aimed at crime prevention and recidivism reduction. The Article reviews the historical roots and justifications for our current system, along with recent advances in the behavioral, social, and biological sciences that inform why and how the system fuels injustice. The concept of social ecology is introduced as an organizing framework for: (1) understanding why individuals do or …

U.S. Judiciary Syllabus: True True Crime Zines, Jason Leggett

Open Educational Resources

An experimental, open education syllabus for a pilot zero textbook cost course, U.S. Judiciary using zines and true crime.

Correcting Federal Rule Of Evidence 404 To Clarify The Inadmissibility Of Character Evidence, Hillel J. Bavli

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Courts misinterpret Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b)(2) as an exception to Rule 404(b)(1)’s prohibition on character evidence rather than a mere clarification that emphasizes the permissibility of other-acts evidence whose relevance does not rely on propensity reasoning. This misinterpretation turns the rule against character evidence on its head by effectively replacing Rule 404 with a Rule 403 balancing—and one that incorrectly treats character inferences as probative rather than prejudicial, thereby favoring admissibility rather than exclusion. Consequently, as currently interpreted, Rule 404(b)(2) generates substantial unpredictability and verdicts based on conduct not at issue in a case.

I therefore propose that the …

Criminal Law's Hidden Consensus, Steven Arrigg Koh

Faculty Scholarship

American criminal law is facing a crisis of meaning. On one hand, the “traditional school” invokes the archetype of the violent criminal—a murderer, rapist, or thief—who must be prosecuted and punished. On the other hand, the “critical school” invokes the archetype of the low-level drug offender, sentenced to a draconian prison term for mere possession of low levels of marijuana. On this account, the criminal legal system is itself systemically pathological, perhaps even warranting abolition. Like ships passing in the night, the two schools appear irreconcilable. This Article helps break this impasse and builds toward a justification for criminal law …