Law Commons^™

No-One Receives Psychiatric Treatment In A Squad Car, Judy A. Clausen, Joanmarie Davoli

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Racial Justice And Federal Habeas Corpus As Postconviction Relief From State Convictions, Leroy Pernell

Journal Publications

It is the purpose of this Article not to simply document the influence of race on our criminal system and its role in the current racial crisis of overrepresentation of minorities in our prisons, but rather to focus on the future and importance of a key tool in the struggle for racial equity – federal habeas corpus as a postconviction remedy. By looking first at the racial context of several “landmark” criminal justice reform decisions, this Article considers how race serves as the root of the procedural due process reform that began in earnest during the Warren Court. This Article …

Drones, Henry H. Perritt Jr., Eliot O. Sprague

All Faculty Scholarship

Abstract

Drone technology is evolving rapidly. Microdrones—what the FAA calls “sUAS”—already on the market at the $1,000 level, have the capability to supplement manned helicopters in support of public safety operations, news reporting, and powerline and pipeline patrol, when manned helicopter support is infeasible, untimely, or unsafe.

Larger drones–"machodrones”–are not yet available outside battlefield and counterterrorism spaces. Approximating the size of manned helicopters, but without pilots, or with human pilots being optional, their design is still in its infancy as designers await greater clarity in the regulatory requirements that will drive airworthiness certification.

This article evaluates drone technology and design …

Calling A Truce In The Culture Wars: From Enron To The Cia, Craig S. Lerner

George Mason University School of Law Working Papers Series

This Article compares and evaluates recent Congressional efforts to improve institutional “cultures” in the private and public sectors. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 was designed to upgrade corporate culture by patching up the “walls” that separate corporate management from boards of directors, accountants, lawyers, and financial analysts. The Intelligence Reform Act of 2005 took a different tack, hammering away at walls that supposedly segmented the intelligence community. The logic was that the market failed because people did not observe sufficient formalities in their dealings with one another, while the intelligence community failed precisely because people kept their distance from one …

Victims And Perpetrators: An Argument For Comparative Liability In Criminal Law, Vera Bergelson

Rutgers Law School (Newark) Faculty Papers

This article challenges the legal rule according to which the victim’s conduct is irrelevant to the determination of the perpetrator’s criminal liability. The author attacks this rule from both positive and normative perspectives, and argues that criminal law should incorporate an affirmative defense of comparative liability. This defense would fully or partially exculpate the defendant if the victim by his own acts has lost or reduced his right not to be harmed.

Part I tests the descriptive accuracy of the proposition that the perpetrator’s liability does not depend on the conduct of the victim. Criminological and victimological studies strongly suggest …

Whistle Blowing, Ben Depoorter, Jef De Mot

George Mason University School of Law Working Papers Series

For law enforcement purposes corruption and fraud are hard battles. Because of the highly secretive and premeditated nature of these crimes, prime witnesses are themselves often implicated in the fraudulent transaction. Promises of immunity and whistle blowing rewards are often required to resolve these information asymmetries. These insights have set a trend, both in scholarship and law enforcement practice, towards reward-based approaches (carrots), as an alternative or complement to punishment based deterrence (sticks). Applying the U.S. False Claims Act (FCA) as an analytical framework, we provide a critical review of the efficiency limitations of whistle blowing. More specifically, the formal …

Dying Twice: Incarceration On Death Row, Michael B. Mushlin

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Dying Twice is an important report. The work is a collaboration between the Corrections Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, which I chaired, and the Committee on Capital Punishment of the Association chaired by Norman Greene. The working group that researched and wrote the report was drawn from members of both committees. The attorneys and the physician who served on the committee are wonderful, talented, dedicated people. It was a pleasure to work with professionals of this caliber on such an important effort. Dying Twice was endorsed as the position of the Association …

Dying Twice: Conditions On New York's Death Row, Michael B. Mushlin

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In 1995 New York State revived the death penalty as a punishment for certain categories of murder, and established a “death row” for condemned men at the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York (variously, “Clinton” or the “Prison”). Four years later, in October 1999, two committees of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York (the “Association”) joined together to study the conditions of confinement on this death row--or, as it is officially called, the Unit for Condemned Persons (the “UCP”). These committees--the Committee on Corrections and the Committee on Capital Punishment--formed a joint subcommittee (the …

Double Helix, Double Bind: Factual Innocence And Postconviction Dna Testing, Seth F. Kreimer, David Rudovsky

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

"Trapped" In Sing Sing: Transgendered Prisoners Caught In The Gender Binarism, Darren Rosenblum

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article first summarizes gender, transgendered identity, and legal issues facing transgendered people to contextualize the lives of transgendered prisoners. Parts II and III explore respectively the placement and treatment issues that complicate the incarceration of the transgendered. Corrections authorities, through indifference or incompetence, foster a shockingly inhumane daily existence for transgendered prisoners. In Part V, I examine the plight of transgendered prisoners through the metaphor of the miners' canary. Transgendered prisoners signal the grave dangers facing all of us in a wide array of social structures, elucidating the apparently intractable problems of gender. This Article simultaneously explores a human …

Rethinking Selective Enforcement In The First Amendment Context, Karl S. Coplan

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Note argues for the use of a balancing-of-interests approach in place of the current two-part test when enforcement policies are challenged on first amendment grounds. The Note begins by explaining the current two-part test and analyzing how it conflicts with other first amendment doctrines. Next, an inquiry into the development of current law reveals that the origins of both the selective prosecution defense and its motive requirement lie in equal protection review of administrative action. These roots suggest a defect in the application of an equal protection test in place of a direct application of the first amendment. The …

Review Of "The Limits Of Law Enforcement" By Hans Zeisel, Bennett L. Gershman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Abscam, The Judiciary, And The Ethics Of Entrapment, Bennett L. Gershman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Part I of this Article surveys the development of the competing threads of entrapment theory. Part II shows how these theories were applied in the Abscam prosecutions. Part III turns to the predisposition test and demonstrates its analytical flaws and its ineffectiveness in restraining he improper use of inducements in undercover investigations. Part IV offers specific suggestions for a federal entrapment statute to remedy these defects. The statute allows an entrapment defense where the undercover techniques used fall outside a narrowly defined range of permissible conduct. If the government's conduct is permissible, the statute nevertheless requires the decision-maker to examine …