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Full-Text Articles in Law
Criminal Law And Common Sense: An Essay On The Perils And Promise Of Neuroscience, Stephen J. Morse
Criminal Law And Common Sense: An Essay On The Perils And Promise Of Neuroscience, Stephen J. Morse
All Faculty Scholarship
This article is based on the author’s Barrock Lecture in Criminal Law presented at the Marquette University Law School. The central thesis is that the folk psychology that underpins criminal responsibility is correct and that our commonsense understanding of agency and responsibility and the legitimacy of criminal justice generally are not imperiled by contemporary discoveries in the various sciences, including neuroscience and genetics. These sciences will not revolutionize criminal law, at least not anytime soon, and at most they may make modest contributions to legal doctrine, practice, and policy. Until there are conceptual or scientific breakthroughs, this is my story …
Legal Beagle's Blog Archive For November 2015, Roger Williams University School Of Law
Legal Beagle's Blog Archive For November 2015, Roger Williams University School Of Law
Law Library Newsletters/Blog
No abstract provided.
Lessons Learned From Ferguson: Ending Abusive Collection Of Criminal Justice Debt, Neil L. Sobol
Lessons Learned From Ferguson: Ending Abusive Collection Of Criminal Justice Debt, Neil L. Sobol
Faculty Scholarship
On March 4, 2015, the Department of Justice released its scathing report of the Ferguson Police Department calling for “an entire reorientation of law enforcement in Ferguson” and demanding that Ferguson “replace revenue-driven policing with a system grounded in the principles of community policing and police legitimacy, in which people are equally protected and treated with compassion, regardless of race.” Unfortunately, abusive collection of criminal justice debt is not limited to Ferguson. This Article, prepared for a discussion group at the Southeastern Association of Law Schools conference in July 2015, identifies the key findings in the Department of Justice’s report …
State V. Merlino, 131 Nev. Adv. Op. No. 65 (Sept. 10, 2015), Brittany L. Shipp
State V. Merlino, 131 Nev. Adv. Op. No. 65 (Sept. 10, 2015), Brittany L. Shipp
Nevada Supreme Court Summaries
The issue before the Court was whether selling stolen property through a retractable sliding tray on a pawn shop’s drive-through window satisfied the element of unlawful entry of a building as defined in the burglary statute. The Court held that when the outer boundary of a building is not self-evident from the shape and contours of the structure itself, courts must apply California’s “reasonable belief” test which legally defines the outer boundary to include, “any element that encloses an area into which a reasonable person would believe that a member of the general public could not pass without authorization.”
State V. Smith, 131 Nev. Adv. Op. 63 (Sept. 3, 2015), Jessie Vargas
State V. Smith, 131 Nev. Adv. Op. 63 (Sept. 3, 2015), Jessie Vargas
Nevada Supreme Court Summaries
Defendant Terrance Reed Smith entered a no contest plea to one count of child abuse resulting in substantial bodily harm. The Supreme Court of Nevada held Smith’s plea was involuntary because the plea was made in response to acts of coercion by the Washoe County Department of Social Services (“DDS”).
Cassinelli V. State Of Nevada, 131 Nev. Adv. Op. 62 131(Aug. 27, 2015), Mackenzie Warren
Cassinelli V. State Of Nevada, 131 Nev. Adv. Op. 62 131(Aug. 27, 2015), Mackenzie Warren
Nevada Supreme Court Summaries
The Court of Appeals determined that (1) the district court erred by ruling that Cassinelli was not eligible for alcohol treatment under NRS § 458.300(1)(d); (2) the district court did not abuse its discretion by denying Cassinelli’s request for assignment to a program of treatment; (3) the plea agreement was not breached and the prosecutor did not engage in misconduct at sentencing; (4) the district court did not err by refusing Cassinelli an opportunity to cross-examine the victim during her impact statement at sentencing; (5) Cassinelli’s sentence was illegal.
Summary Of Barral V. State, 131 Nev. Adv. Op. 52 (July 23, 2015), Aleem Dhalla
Summary Of Barral V. State, 131 Nev. Adv. Op. 52 (July 23, 2015), Aleem Dhalla
Nevada Supreme Court Summaries
Defendant Dustin James Barral was convicted of two counts of sexual assault with a minor under 14 years of age by a jury. The Supreme Court of Nevada held that the trial court committed a structural error by failing to administer an oath or affrimation to the jury panel prior to commencing voir dire. This error required reversal and a new trial.
Should The American Grand Jury Survive Ferguson, Roger Fairfax
Should The American Grand Jury Survive Ferguson, Roger Fairfax
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
The grand jurors deliberated in secret, as the masses demanded the indictment of the would-be defendants. Ultimately, the grand jury would refuse to indict, enraging the many who believed justice had been denied
Mirandizing Terrorism Suspects? The Public Safety Exception, The Rescue Doctrine, And Implicit Analogies To Self-Defense, Defense Of Others, And Battered Woman Syndrome, Bruce Ching
Journal Articles
This article argues that in creating the public safety exception to the Miranda requirements, the Supreme Court implicitly analogized to the criminal law doctrines of self-defense and defense of others. Thus, examining the justifications of self-defense and defense of others can be useful in determining the contours of the public safety exception and the related "rescue doctrine" exception. In particular, the battered woman syndrome -- which is recognized in a majority of the states and has been successfully invoked by defendants in some self-defense cases -- could provide a conceptual analogue for arguments about whether law enforcement officers were faced …
Is America Becoming A Nation Of Ex-Cons?, John A. Humbach
Is America Becoming A Nation Of Ex-Cons?, John A. Humbach
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
Recent rates of mass incarceration have become a concern, but those rates are only part of the challenge facing (and posed by) the American criminal justice system. An estimated 25% of the U.S. adult population already has a criminal record and, with new felony convictions churning out at a rate of a million per year, America is well on its way to becoming a nation of ex-cons. Already, the ex-offender class is the nation’s biggest law-defined, legally discriminated-against minority group, and it is growing. The adverse social implications of this trend remain unclear and the critical demographic tipping point is …
Sentencing Rules And Standards: How We Decide Criminal Punishment, Jacob Schuman
Sentencing Rules And Standards: How We Decide Criminal Punishment, Jacob Schuman
Journal Articles
Over the course of the past 300 years, American sentencing policy has alternated between “determinate” and “indeterminate” systems of deciding punishment. Debates over sentence determinacy have so far focused on three main questions: Who should decide punishment? What makes punishment fair? And why should we punish wrongdoers at all?
In this Article, I ask a new, fourth, question: How should we decide punishment? I show that determinate sentencing uses rules to determine sentences, while indeterminate sentencing relies on standards. Applying this insight to federal sentencing practice, I demonstrate that district court judges “depart” or “vary” from the United States Sentencing …
Probability And Punishment: How To Improve Sentencing By Taking Account Of Probability, Jacob Schuman
Probability And Punishment: How To Improve Sentencing By Taking Account Of Probability, Jacob Schuman
Journal Articles
The United States Sentencing Guidelines place little emphasis on probability. Instead, the Guidelines recommend a sentence in each case based only on whether certain facts about the offender’s crime exceed a “threshold” level of likelihood. Guidelines sentences therefore fail to reflect the precise odds of each defendant’s wrongdoing, which makes them both inefficient and unfair. This model of decision-making is particularly problematic in drug sentencing, where judges often impose lengthy sentences based on drug quantity calculations that carry a high risk of error. To address these problems, district courts should exercise their discretion and policymakers should implement reforms that incorporate …
When Theory Met Practice: Distributional Analysis In Critical Criminal Law Theorizing, Aya Gruber
When Theory Met Practice: Distributional Analysis In Critical Criminal Law Theorizing, Aya Gruber
Publications
Progressive (critical race and feminist) theorizing on criminal law exists within an overarching American criminal law culture in which the U.S penal system has become a "peculiar institution" and a defining governance structure. Much of criminal law discourse is subject to a type of ideological capture in which it is natural to assume that criminalization is a valid, if not preferred, solution to social dysfunction. Accordingly, progressives’ primary concerns about harms to minority victims takes place in a political-legal context in which criminalization is the technique of addressing harm. In turn, progressive criminal law theorizing manifests some deep internal tensions. …
An Eighth Amendment Analysis Of Statutes Allowing Or Mandating Transfer Of Juvenile Offenders To Adult Criminal Court In Light Of The Supreme Court's Recent Jurisprudence Recognizing Developmental Neuroscience, Katherine I. Puzone
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
The Moral Vigilante And Her Cousins In The Shadows, Paul H. Robinson
The Moral Vigilante And Her Cousins In The Shadows, Paul H. Robinson
All Faculty Scholarship
By definition, vigilantes cannot be legally justified – if they satisfied a justification defense, for example, they would not be law-breakers – but they may well be morally justified, if their aim is to provide the order and justice that the criminal justice system has failed to provide in a breach of the social contract. Yet, even moral vigilantism is detrimental to society and ought to be avoided, ideally not by prosecuting moral vigilantism but by avoiding the creation of situations that would call for it. Unfortunately, the U.S. criminal justice system has adopted a wide range of criminal law …
Sonic Jihad — Muslim Hip Hop In The Age Of Mass Incarceration, Spearit
Sonic Jihad — Muslim Hip Hop In The Age Of Mass Incarceration, Spearit
Articles
This essay examines hip hop music as a form of legal criticism. It focuses on the music as critical resistance and “new terrain” for understanding the law, and more specifically, focuses on what prisons mean to Muslim hip hop artists. Losing friends, family, and loved ones to the proverbial belly of the beast has inspired criticism of criminal justice from the earliest days of hip hop culture. In the music, prisons are known by a host of names like “pen,” “bing,” and “clink,” terms that are invoked throughout the lyrics. The most extreme expressions offer violent fantasies of revolution and …
The Jury's Constitutional Judgment, Nathan Chapman
The Jury's Constitutional Judgment, Nathan Chapman
Scholarly Works
Despite the early American jury’s near-mythical role as a check on overreaching government agents, the contemporary jury’s role in constitutional adjudication remains opaque. Should the jury have the right to nullify criminal statutes on constitutional grounds? Should the jury apply constitutional doctrine in civil rights suits against government officers? Should courts of appeals defer to the jury’s application of constitutional law, or review it de novo?
This Article offers the first holistic analysis of the jury’s role in constitutional adjudication. It argues that the Constitution’s text, history, and structure strongly support the jury’s authority to apply constitutional law to the …
Leniency In Chinese Criminal Law? Everyday Justice In Henan, Benjamin L. Liebman
Leniency In Chinese Criminal Law? Everyday Justice In Henan, Benjamin L. Liebman
Faculty Scholarship
This Article examines one year of publicly available criminal judgments from a basic-level rural county court and an intermediate court in Henan Province in order to better understand trends in routine criminal adjudication in China. I present an account of ordinary criminal justice in China that is both familiar and striking: a system that treats serious crimes, in particular those affecting State interests, harshly, while at the same time acting leniently in routine cases. Most significantly, examination of more than five hundred court decisions shows the vital role that settlement plays in criminal cases in China today. Defendants who agree …