Law Commons^™

Nine Ways Of Looking At Oklahoma City: An Essay On Sam Anderson’S Boom Town, Rodger D. Citron

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Advocacy As An Exercise In Virtue: Lawyering, Bad Facts, And Furman's High-Stakes Dilemma, Linda H. Edwards

Scholarly Works

Two of the conversations benefitting most from Jack Sammons's scholarship are conversations about legal rhetoric and about virtue ethics. Legal rhetoric is the study of the conventions of legal argument, specifically, the art of identifying and evaluating the best available means of persuasion and implementing those means effectively in light of audience, purpose, and occasion. Virtue ethics approaches moral reflection by asking what sort of person a particular moral choice encourages the actor to become. It focuses on consequences to the moral agent herself rather than directly focusing on consequences to others. The goal is to become a virtuous person, …

Empirical Studies Contribute To Death Penalty Debate, Joan W. Howarth

Scholarly Works

At a time of renewed scrutiny of capital punishment, Nevada lawyers may be interested in some of the recent legal scholarship on the death penalty based on social science data, rather than on legal philosophy or constitutional theory. Three projects are of particular interest: Professor James Liebman's work on errors in death penalty cases; the National Jury Project's data about how jurors decide capital cases; and David Baldus' recent study of peremptory challenges in capital cases.

Representing Black Male Innocence, Joan W. Howarth

Scholarly Works

This Article is a case study of a California capital case. Drawing on cultural studies, the first part develops the social construction of Black male gang member, especially as that identity is understood within white imaginations. The powerful and frightening idea of a Black man who is a gang member, even gang leader, captured the imagination and moral passion of the decisionmakers in this case, recasting and reframing the evidence in furtherance of this idea. In fundamental ways, this idea or imposed identity is fundamentally inconsistent with any American concept of innocence.

The second part uses the case to investigate …

Deciding To Kill: Revealing The Gender In The Task Handed To Capital Jurors, Joan W. Howarth

Scholarly Works

Day after day, across this country, ordinary people are summoned to court for a selection process that ultimately leaves them in a room deciding, with other jurors, whether a criminal defendant should be killed. The task handed to these jurors is an awesome, personal, moral decision, encased within the complex legal standards and procedures that constitute modern capital jurisprudence. The doctrine that created and sustains this moment of conscience reflects an ongoing struggle of rule against uncertainty, reason against emotion, justice against mercy, and thus, at one level, male against female. Capital jurisprudence -- the law for deciding whether to …

Review Essay: Feminism, Lawyering, And Death Row, Joan W. Howarth

Scholarly Works

Representing men on death row is confounding, but not without reward. This lawyering work has taught me at least two lessons, the subjects of this essay. First, capital punishment--our attempt to use legal procedures to kill people fairly--is a feminist issue, or should be. Second, death row representation is too big a job for lawyers; we need to recruit poets. To develop these ideas, and perhaps to convince you without requiring you to undertake the same path to these conclusions, I am appropriating novelist Beverly Lowry's stunning new book, Crossed Over: A Murder, A Memoir. Crossed Over is the story …