Law Commons^™

Obama's Failed Attempt To Close Gitmo: Why Executive Orders Can't Bring About Systemic Change, Erin B. Corcoran

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Miscarriage Of Juvenile Justice: A Modern Day Parable Of The Unintended Results Of Bad Lawmaking, Amy Vorenberg

Law Faculty Scholarship

Sensationalized cases increasingly create the context for public policy discussion. Stories about violent crime are a common feature of the local evening news and their emotional nature can often create the hook politicians need to showcase their “tough on crime” agendas. Often anecdotal and lurid, stories of criminal misdeeds are widely used to convince the public of a need to create or change laws. This article demonstrates the perils of making law by extrapolating from a few random, albeit attention-grabbing, events. Specifically, the article examines the impact of a 1995 change in New Hampshire state law that lowered the age …

Table Of Contents, Volume 6, Number 3, 2008, The Death Penalty, Editorial Board

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

Table of contents for a special issue on the topic of capital punishment.

The Emerging Death Penalty Jurisprudence Of The Roberts Court, Kenneth C. Haas

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “In 1976, four years after finding the nation’s death penalty laws to be constitutionally flawed, the U.S. Supreme Court established the parameters of modern American death penalty jurisprudence. Since then the Court has gone through several phases. The Court proceeded cautiously from 1977 to 1982, limiting the death penalty to those who committed murder in a manner deemed especially heinous and despicable by judges and juries, requiring even-handedness and consistency in capital sentencing, and insisting that sentencing authorities examine the individual characteristics of each offender and the particular circumstances of his crime. From 1983 to 2001, however, the Court …

The Abolitionist’S Dilemma: Establishing The Standards For The Evolving Standards Of Decency, Dwight Aarons

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “For those who believe that the death penalty should be declared unconstitutional and that the U.S. Supreme Court is the institution that should make that declaration, these are interesting times. On one hand, the Rehnquist Court, which had previously not been a reliable friend of criminal defendants, in 2002, ruled that it was unconstitutional to execute mentally retarded defendants, and in 2005 it came to the same conclusion as to defendants who committed a capital crime before his or her eighteenth birthday. On the other hand, close scrutiny of these opinions evidences that the Court all but casts aside …

The Death Penalty And Reversible Error In Massachusetts, Alan Rogers

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “This article will survey Massachusetts homicide cases from 1805 to 1996 in which the SJC found reversible error. For comparative purposes, the data will be grouped into three periods: from 1805, the year the SJC began to publish its decisions, to 1891, the year original jurisdiction for homicide cases was transferred from the SJC to the Superior Court; 1892 to 1939, the year Massachusetts law allowed the SJC to review the facts as well as the law of capital cases; and from 1940 to 1996, the year Chief Justice Paul Liacos resigned from the court and the importance of …

Completely Unguided Discretion: Admitting Non-Statutory Aggravating And Non-Statutory Mitigating Evidence In Capital Sentencing Trials, Sharon Turlington

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “As an attorney practicing exclusively in the area of death penalty defense at the trial level for the last ten years, my perspective on the problems inherent in the system seems vastly different from that presented in academic research and even in case law. While most of the recent changes in death penalty law have focused on the right of the defendant to have sentencing enhancing elements of an offense proven to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt, much of the evidence presented in an actual death penalty jury trial is non-statutory aggravation and non-statutory mitigation. Generally, non-statutory aggravating …

Death Is Unconstitutional: How Capital Punishment Became Illegal In America—A Future History, Jur. Eric Engle Ph.D.

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “A constitution is an organic fact of every state: it is a part of the being of the state. People, like the state, also have a constitution—a character. Just as people change over time, so do states. But just as there are natural limits on what people can or cannot become, so there are natural limits on what the state can and cannot fairly do. No man, nor any group of men, ex ante may justly take the life of another person, though perhaps their killing may be excused (or forgiven) ex post.”

"The death of Death would surely …

Law, Order, And The Consent Defense, Keith M. Harrison

Law Faculty Scholarship

[Excerpt] Among the benefits that we gain on leaving the state of nature and joining together in a "civilized society" is some amount of added protection of our individual possessions and person. Among our losses is the ability to plunder, at will, the possessions and bodies of those who are weaker than we are. These two statements are generally, but not absolutely, true. I propose that one hallmark of civilization is the security of everyone who lives under its authority that they are free from the unwanted interferences of others with their personal integrity and property rights.' One way to …