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Full-Text Articles in Law
Building Fierce Empathy, Binny Miller
Building Fierce Empathy, Binny Miller
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
In this Article I explore the process of building and sustaining empathy with clients in the context of representing juvenile lifers-- people convicted of serious crimes as children and sentenced to life or sentences that ensure that they spend most of their lives in prison--in a law school clinic. Before turning to my own lawyering experiences and those of my clinic students, I ground the discussion of empathy in the competing theories of Charles Ogletree and Abbe Smith about the value of empathic lawyering for public defenders. These theories, together with the contributions of other scholars, provide a springboard for …
Gideon In The Desert: An Empirical Study Of Providing Counsel To Criminal Defendants In Rural Places, Andrew Davies, Alyssa Clark
Gideon In The Desert: An Empirical Study Of Providing Counsel To Criminal Defendants In Rural Places, Andrew Davies, Alyssa Clark
Maine Law Review
Access to counsel for criminal defendants is a continuing challenge in rural localities, notwithstanding the mandates of Sixth Amendment jurisprudence. In this Article, we first review the state of the law on access to counsel in criminal cases, noting the latitude allowed to state and local governments in their policy decisions. We then examine empirical approaches to measuring access to counsel and describe in detail both the law and the data on this issue from the state of Texas. We present exploratory analyses of those data comparing rural and urban places for various aspects of access to counsel, including rules …
Viewing Access To Justice For Rural Mainers Of Color Through A Prosecutorial Lens, Maybell Romero
Viewing Access To Justice For Rural Mainers Of Color Through A Prosecutorial Lens, Maybell Romero
Maine Law Review
Rural areas throughout the country, including those in Maine, are beginning to navigate the challenges and benefits of burgeoning communities of color. District Attorneys’ offices in the state, however, have done little to prepare for this major demographic shift. Maine district attorneys must expand their understanding of their duties to do justice and assure access to justice by better serving rural Mainers of color. While a number of scholars have focused on the legal challenges communities of color face in urban environments as well as those faced by what have been presumed to be White communities in rural areas, this …
Prosecuting In The Shadow Of The Jury, Anna Offit
Prosecuting In The Shadow Of The Jury, Anna Offit
Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters
This article offers an unprecedented empirical window into prosecutorial discretion drawing on long-term participatory research between 2013 and 2017. The central finding is that jurors play a vital role in federal prosecutors’ decision-making, professional identities, and formulations of justice. This is because even the remote possibility of lay scrutiny creates an opening for prosecutors to make common sense assessments of (1) the evidence in their cases, (2) the character of witnesses, defendants and victims, and (3) their own moral and professional character as public servants. By facilitating explicit consideration of the fairness of their cases from a public vantage point, …
Shrinking Gideon And Expanding Alternatives To Lawyers, Stephanos Bibas
Shrinking Gideon And Expanding Alternatives To Lawyers, Stephanos Bibas
All Faculty Scholarship
This essay, written as part of a symposium at Washington and Lee Law School entitled Gideon at 50: Reassessing the Right to Counsel, argues that the standard academic dream of expanding the right to counsel to all criminal and major civil cases has proven to be an unattainable mirage. We have been spreading resources too thin, in the process slighting the core cases such as capital and other serious felonies that are the most complex and need the most time and money. Moreover, our legal system is overengineered, making the law too complex and legal services too expensive for …
Equal Protection In Enforcement Towards More Structured Discretion, Peter Finkle, Duncan Cameron
Equal Protection In Enforcement Towards More Structured Discretion, Peter Finkle, Duncan Cameron
Dalhousie Law Journal
How often has it been said by administrators, politicians and members of the general public that a certain law is good, the problem is that it is not enforced?1 The very form of the question expresses the fact that for the general public and politicians alike, not to mention the legal profession, the law is usually thought of as that which is written in the books. In reality, however, that written law is only part of a much broader legal process which includes the decisions of those charged with the responsibility of enforcement and, indeed, the activities of judges and …
Role Of The Criminal Defense Lawyer In Representing The Mentally Impaired Defendant: Zealous Advocate Or Officer Of The Court, Rodney J. Uphoff
Role Of The Criminal Defense Lawyer In Representing The Mentally Impaired Defendant: Zealous Advocate Or Officer Of The Court, Rodney J. Uphoff
Faculty Publications
This article examines a difficult question in the representation of mentally impaired criminal defendants: should counsel be obligated to inform the court of doubts about a client's competency to stand trial even though doing so may be contrary to the client's wishes or best interests? Professor Rodney J. Uphoff analyzes authorities that impose such an obligation on defense lawyers, including an American Bar Association Criminal Justice Standard and a recent decision of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, State v. Johnson. Uphoff concludes that these authorities needlessly undercut the mentally impaired defendant's right to zealous representation. He proposes an alternative ethical model …
Proposed Procedural Reform, Hugh Evander Willis
Proposed Procedural Reform, Hugh Evander Willis
Articles by Maurer Faculty
No abstract provided.
A Plan For The Reform Of Legal Procedure, Hugh Evander Willis
A Plan For The Reform Of Legal Procedure, Hugh Evander Willis
Articles by Maurer Faculty
No abstract provided.