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Full-Text Articles in Law
Victims’ Rights Revisited, Benjamin Levin
Victims’ Rights Revisited, Benjamin Levin
Scholarship@WashULaw
This Essay responds to Bennett Capers's article, "Against Prosecutors." I offer four critiques of Capers’s proposal to bring back private prosecutions: (A) that shifting power to victims still involves shifting power to the carceral state and away from defendants; (B) that defining the class of victims will pose numerous problems; C) that privatizing prosecution reinforces a troubling impulse to treat social problems at the individual level; and (D) broadly, that these critiques suggest that Capers has traded the pathologies of “public” law for the pathologies of “private” law. Further, I argue that the article reflects a new, left-leaning vision of …
Regulation 55 And The Rights Of The Accused At The International Criminal Courts, Susana Sacouto, Katherine Cleary Thompson
Regulation 55 And The Rights Of The Accused At The International Criminal Courts, Susana Sacouto, Katherine Cleary Thompson
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
No abstract provided.
De-Naturalizing Criminal Law: Of Public Perceptions And Procedural Protections, Benjamin Levin
De-Naturalizing Criminal Law: Of Public Perceptions And Procedural Protections, Benjamin Levin
Scholarship@WashULaw
In this essay, I examine and challenge the rhetorical trope of the guilty going free by emphasizing the institutional and political intricacies that comprise the criminal justice system and necessarily under-gird a determination of “guilt”. My goal, at its essence, is to de-naturalize the criminal law and discussions of the criminal justice system in the context of this symposium. I aim to emphasize that a guilty verdict is the result of a series of (politically-inflected) decisions about how to draft criminal statutes, how to structure a trial, and how to select a jury. De-naturalizing criminal law is, of course, a …
A Defensible Defense?: Reexamining Castle Doctrine Statutes, Benjamin Levin
A Defensible Defense?: Reexamining Castle Doctrine Statutes, Benjamin Levin
Scholarship@WashULaw
Recent years have seen a proliferation of so-called “castle doctrine” statutes – laws that provide home dwellers with more expansive self-defense protections if they resort to lethal force in confrontations with intruders. The passage of such laws and subsequent uses of the defense have captured the public imagination, prompting significant media attention, as well as skeptical and critical scholarship from the legal academic community. Considering the current prevalence of castle laws and the often polarized nature of the debate concerning their application, this Article argues that it is important to excavate the doctrine from the culture wars rhetoric in which …
Should The Victims' Rights Movement Have Influence Over Criminal Law Formulation And Adjudication?, Paul H. Robinson
Should The Victims' Rights Movement Have Influence Over Criminal Law Formulation And Adjudication?, Paul H. Robinson
All Faculty Scholarship
The victims' rights movement has come into increasing influence in setting criminal justice policy. What can be said about where its influence should be heeded, and where it should not? With regard to substantive criminal law in particular, should the victims' rights movement have influence over its formulation and adjudication? The short answer, on which I'll elaborate below, is that it ought to have influence over criminal law formulation but not necessarily over criminal law adjudication. It ought to have influence over criminal law formulation because there is great benefit in formulations that track shared lay intuitions of justice, and …
Washington Defendants' New Right Of Pre-Trial Flight, Christopher T. Igielski
Washington Defendants' New Right Of Pre-Trial Flight, Christopher T. Igielski
Seattle University Law Review
Certainly, it is only by disregarding the "victim's rights" that one can begin to fathom the Washington Supreme Court's decision in State v. Jackson. This decision reversed the conviction of a man who raped his four-year-old niece on Christmas Eve in 1979, causing her to contract gonorrhea. Following his arraignment, Jackson fled and failed to appear at his trial. After attempts to locate Jackson failed, a trial was held in absentia' and he was found guilty of rape, with sentencing suspended pending his return to custody. Jackson evaded the law for nearly thirteen years.'0 Shortly after his eventual capture …