Law Commons^™

The Psychology Of Separation: Border Walls, Soft Power, And International Neighborliness, Diana C. Mutz, Beth A. Simmons

All Faculty Scholarship

This study assesses the impact of international border walls on evaluations of countries and on beliefs about bilateral relationships between states. Using a short video, we experimentally manipulate whether a border wall image appears in a broader description of the history and culture of a little-known country. In a third condition, we also indicate which bordering country built the wall. Demographically representative samples from the United States, Ireland, and Turkey responded similarly to these experimental treatments. Compared to a control group, border walls lowered evaluations of the bordering countries. They also signified hostile international relationships to third-party observers. Furthermore, the …

Measuring Norms And Normative Contestation: The Case Of International Criminal Law, Beth A. Simmons, Hyeran Jo

All Faculty Scholarship

One way to tell if an international norm is robust is to assess the breadth of its support from a wide variety of important actors. We argue that to assess norm robustness, we should look at the general beliefs, rhetorical support, and actions of both primary and secondary norm addressees (states and non-state actors) at various levels: international, regional, domestic and local. By way of example, we evaluate the robustness of international criminal law (ICL) norms by looking at the rhetoric and actions of a diverse set of international actors, including not only states and intergovernmental organizations but also ordinary …

How Strong Is Public Support For The Death Penalty In Singapore?, Wing-Cheong Chan, Ern Ser Tan, Jack Tsen-Ta Lee, Braema Mathi

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Singapore is well known internationally for its uncompromising stance towards law and order and its use of the death penalty in particular for murder and drug trafficking. Until 2012, it was one of the few countries in the world where the death penalty was mandatory for persons convicted of these two crimes. The law was amended in 2012 to give a judge the choice to impose the death penalty or life imprisonment (with caning) for non-intentional murder and drug trafficking in some situations. What do Singaporeans think of the use of the death penalty in their own country? This article …

The Subversions And Perversions Of Shadow Vigilantism, Paul H. Robinson, Sarah M. Robinson

All Faculty Scholarship

This excerpt from the recently published Shadow Vigilantes book argues that, while vigilantism, even moral vigilantism, can be dangerous to a society, the real danger is not of hordes of citizens, frustrated by the system’s doctrines of disillusionment, rising up to take the law into their own hands. Frustration can spark a vigilante impulse, but such classic aggressive vigilantism is not the typical response. More common is the expression of disillusionment in less brazen ways by a more surreptitious undermining and distortion of the operation of the criminal justice system.

Shadow vigilantes, as they might be called, can affect the …

Conclusion: Trigger Crimes & Social Progress, Paul H. Robinson, Sarah M. Robinson

All Faculty Scholarship

Can a crime make our world better? Crimes are the worst of humanity’s wrongs but, oddly, they sometimes do more than anything else to improve our lives. It is often the outrageousness itself that does the work. Ordinary crimes are accepted as the background noise of everyday existence but some crimes make people stop and take notice – because they are so outrageous or so heart-wrenching.

This brief essay explores the dynamic of tragedy, outrage, and reform, illustrating how certain kinds of crimes can trigger real social progress. Several dozen such “trigger crimes” are identified but four in particular are …

Strict Liability's Criminogenic Effect, Paul H. Robinson

All Faculty Scholarship

It is easy to understand the apparent appeal of strict liability to policymakers and legal reformers seeking to reduce crime: if the criminal law can do away with its traditional culpability requirement, it can increase the likelihood of conviction and punishment of those who engage in prohibited conduct or bring about prohibited harm or evil. And such an increase in punishment rate can enhance the crime-control effectiveness of a system built upon general deterrence or incapacitation of the dangerous. Similar arguments support the use of criminal liability for regulatory offenses. Greater punishment rates suggest greater compliance.

But this analysis fails …

Measuring Older Adult Confidence In The Courts And Law Enforcement, Joseph A. Hamm, Lindsey E. Wylie, Eve M. Brank

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Older adults are an increasingly relevant subpopulation for criminal justice policy but, as yet, are largely neglected in the relevant research. The current research addresses this by reporting on a psychometric evaluation of a measure of older adults’ Confidence in Legal Institutions (CLI). Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) provided support for the unidimensionality and reliability of the measures. In addition, participants’ CLI was related to cynicism, trust in government, dispositional trust, age, and education, but not income or gender. The results provide support for the measures of confidence in the courts and law enforcement, so we present the scale as a …

Separation Of Powers Legitimacy: An Empirical Inquiry Into Norms About Executive Power, Cary Coglianese, Kristin Firth

All Faculty Scholarship

The continuing debate over the President’s directive authority is but one of the many separation-of-powers issues that have confronted courts, scholars, government officials, and the public in recent years. The Supreme Court, for instance, has considered whether the President possesses the power to make appointments of agency heads without Senate confirmation during certain congressional recesses. The Court has passed judgment recently, but has yet to resolve fully, questions about Congress’s authority to constrain the President’s power to remove the heads of administrative agencies. And the Court has considered the limits on Congress’s ability to delegate legislative authority to other rulemaking …

We Don’T Always Mean What We Say: Attitudes Toward Statutory Exclusion Of Juvenile Offenders From Juvenile Court Jurisdiction, Tina Zotolli, Tarika Daftary Kapur, Patricia A. Zapf

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

In the United States, juvenile offenders are often excluded from the jurisdiction of the juvenile court on the basis of age and crime type alone. Data from national surveys and data from psycholegal research on support for adult sanction of juvenile offenders are often at odds. The ways in which questions are asked and the level of detail provided to respondents and research participants may influence expressed opinions. Respondents may also be more likely to agree with harsh sanctions when they have fewer offender- and case-specific details to consider. Here, we test the hypothesis that attitudes supporting statutory exclusion laws …

The Rise And Fall Of Bad Judge: Lady Justice Is No Tramp, Taylor Simpson-Wood

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Climate Change Survey Measures: Exploring Perceived Bias And Question Interpretation, Tarik Abdel-Monem, Lisa M. Pytlikzillig, Tonya K. Bernadt, Nicole Wall

Lisa PytlikZillig Publications

Climate change has become an important yet politically divisive topic in recent years. Further complicating the issue are assertions that climate change– related public opinion surveys used by social scientists are biased or otherwise problematic. We conducted a pilot study to explore questions concerning bias and interpretation of climate change surveys. Our study sample was composed of adult residents of Nebraska (n = 115). We augmented our survey findings with cognitive interviews of a subsample of respondents (n = 20). We assessed study participants’ attitudes about climate change, and perceptions of bias and interpretation of survey questions drawn from previously …

Scholarly Discourse, Public Perceptions, And The Cementing Of Norms: The Case Of The Indian Supreme Court And A Plea For Research, Jayanth K. Krishnan

Articles by Maurer Faculty

For economic and nuclear reasons, India has received considerable attention over the last decade from observers in the United States. But attuned Americans are well-aware of India's rich culture and status as a shining constitutional democracy for most of its post-1947 independent history. For all that India has accomplished, however, its public has long viewed its government officials with great disdain. At the same time, a fascinating norm exists in this society which holds one institution in exceedingly high regard - the Indian Supreme Court.

In this article, I seek to examine what accounts for this counter-intuitive norm. As opposed …

The Discretionary Power Of "Public" Prosecutors In Historical Perspective, Carolyn B. Ramsey

Publications

Norms urging prosecutors to seek justice by playing a quasi-judicial role and striving for fairness to defendants are often assumed to have deep historical roots. Yet, in fact, such a conception of the prosecutor's role is relatively new. Based on archival research on the papers of the New York County District Attorney's Office, "The Discretionary Power of 'Public' Prosecutors in Historical Perspective" explores the meaning of the word "public" as it applied to prosecutors in the nineteenth century. This article shows that, in the early days of public prosecution, district attorneys were expected to maximize convictions and leave defendants' rights …

Update: American Public Opinion On The Death Penalty - It's Getting Personal (Symposium: How The Death Penalty Works: Empirical Studies Of The Modern Capital Sentencing System), Samuel R. Gross

Articles

Americans' views on capital punishment have stabilized. In 1994, when Professor Phoebe Ellsworth and I published a review of research on death penalty attitudes in the United States,' we began by noting that "support for the death penalty [is] at a near record high."'2 That finding, like most of the others we reported, has not changed. Nonetheless, it is interesting to pause and review the data on public opinion on the death penalty that have accumulated over the past several years. Stability is less dramatic than change but it may be equally important, and there is some news to report. …

The Romance Of Revenge: Capital Punishment In America, Samuel R. Gross

Articles

On February 17, 1992, Jeffrey Dahmer was sentenced to 15 consecutive terms of life imprisonment for killing and dismembering 15 young men and boys (Associated Press 1992a). Dahmer had been arrested six months earlier, on July 22, 1991. On January 13 he pled guilty to the fifteen murder counts against him, leaving open only the issue of his sanity. Jury selection began two weeks later, and the trial proper started on January 30. The jury heard two weeks of testimony about murder, mutilation and necrophilia; they deliberated for 5 hours before finding that Dahmer was sane when he committed these …

The Role Of Public Opinion In Constitutional Interpretation, James G. Wilson

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This Article seeks to answer two questions. First, to what degree has public opinion influenced American constitutional interpretation, both on and off the Supreme Court, over the past two centuries? Second, how much weight, if any, should constitutional decision-makers give to public opinion, however that protean concept is defined? The Article initially places these queries in a contemporary context by considering the extended discussion of public opinion in the Planned Parenthood v. Casey opinions of Justice Souter, Chief Justice Rehnquist, and Justice Scalia. Justice Souter partially relied on public opinion to not overrule the constitutional right to an abortion created …

Political Pressure And Judging In Constitutional Cases, Robert F. Nagel

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Reincarnation Of The Death Penalty: Is It Possible?, Yale Kamisar

Articles

Fifty years ago Clarence Darrow, probably the greatest criminal defense lawyer in American history and a leading opponent of capital punishment, observed: The question of capital punishment has been the subject of endless discussion and will probably never be settled so long as men believe in punishment. Some states have abolished and then reinstated it; some have enjoyed capital punishment for long periods of time and finally prohibited the use of it. The reasons why it cannot be settled are plain. There is first of all no agreement as to the objects of punishment. Next there is no way to …

Defects In Our Legal System, Henry M. Bates

Articles

That the practice of law and the administration of justice are under a fire of popular distrust and criticism of extraordinary intensity requires no proof. A fact of which there is evidence in numerous contemporary books, in almost every magazine, in the daily papers, in the remarks, or the questions, or it may be in the sneers, of one's friends, requires no further demonstration. The only questions of importance to be answered are to what extent this criticism and this distrust are well founded, what are the remedies for such defects as exist, and how and by whom should they …

Popular Discontent With Law And Some Proposed Remedies, Henry M. Bates

Articles

That the practice of law and the administration of justice are under the fire of popular distrust and criticism of extraordinary intensity requires no proof. A fact of which there is evidence in numerous contemporary books, in almost every magazine, in the daily papers, in the remarks, or the questions, or it may be in the sneers of one's friends, requires no further demonstration. The only questions of importance to be answered are to what extent this criticism and this distrust are well founded, what are the remedies for such defects as exist, and what are we lawyers going to …