Law Commons^™

Toward A Better Criminal Legal System: Improving Prisons, Prosecution, And Criminal Defense, David A. Harris, Created And Presented Jointly By Students From State Correctional Institution - Greene, Waynesburg, Pa, And University Of Pittsburgh School Of Law, Chief Editor: David A. Harris

Articles

During the Fall 2023 semester, 15 law (Outside) students from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and 13 incarcerated (Inside) students from the State Correctional Institution – Greene, in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, took a full semester class together called Issues in Criminal Justice and Law. The class, occurring each week at the prison, utilized the Inside-Out Prison Exchange pedagogy, and was facilitated by Professor David Harris. Subjects include the purposes of prison, addressing crime, the criminal legal system and race, and issues surrounding victims and survivors of crime. The course culminated in a Group Project; under the heading “improving the …

How Do Prosecutors "Send A Message"?, Steven Arrigg Koh

Faculty Scholarship

The recent indictments of former President Trump are stirring national debate about their effects on American society. Commentators speculate on the cases’ impact outside of the courtroom — on the 2024 election, on political polarization, and on the future of American democracy. Such cases originated in the prosecutor’s office, begging the question of if, when, and how prosecutors should consider the societal effects of the cases they bring.

Indeed, prosecutors often publicly claim that they “send a message” when they indict a defendant. What, exactly, does this mean? Often, their assumption is that such messaging goes in one direction: indictment …

The Ethics Of Trump's Shadow Lawyers?, Peter A. Joy, Kevin C. Mcmunigal

Scholarship@WashULaw

The barrage of over sixty failed lawsuits filed by lawyers representing former President Donald Trump and his allies seeking to overturn the 2020 presidential election brought forth numerous calls to sanction these lawyers. So far, Rule 11 and disciplinary sanctions have reached one of the most public of the pro-Trump lawyers, Rudolph Giuliani, as well as some of the lawyers who filed and put their names on the complaints initiating the frivolous cases. This Essay discusses the need to impose sanctions on the lawyers behind the scenes—who directed and coordinated the bogus cases—but so far have largely evaded accountability.The authors …

Ethical Concerns In Court-Connected Online Dispute Resolution, Dorcas Quek Anderson

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This article examines the burgeoning trend of creating court ODR systems, focusing on the design aspects that are likely to raise ethical challenges. It discusses four salient questions to be considered when designing a court ODR system, and the resulting ethical tensions that are brought to the fore. As a fourth party, the ODR system not only replaces existing court functions, but enlarges the scope of the courts’ intervention in disputes and increases the courts’ interface with the user. Furthermore, certain ethical principles such as transparency, accountability, impartiality and fairness take on greater significance in the court context than in …

Collaboration And Coercion: Domestic Violence Meets Collaborative Law, Margaret B. Drew

Faculty Publications

‘Collaboration and Coercion’ addresses the systemic and individual concerns that arise when family members that have experienced abuse enter into the collaborative law process. A form of alternative dispute resolution, collaborative law is a method of resolving disputes without engagement of the legal system. The author addresses the structural and cultural difficulties that survivors of abuse encounter throughout the process as well as the ethical concerns that are raised when collaborative practitioners accept cases where the parties have a history of coercion within the intimate relationship.

Ensuring Public Trust At The Municipal Level: Inspectors General Enter The Mix, Patricia E. Salkin, Zachary Kansler

Scholarly Works

Although federal, state and local government officials are subject to applicable codes of ethical conduct and are under the jurisdiction of ethics enforcement agencies created pursuant to these laws, ethics oversight agencies are limited in the breadth and scope of covered activities. With an increase in reported allegations of corruption, particularly at the local government level, this article explores the addition of the audit function, through inspectors general, to ensure greater transparency and accountability of public officials.

The article begins with a very brief historical overview of the emergence of the inspector general concept in Europe and its adoption in …

(Re) Constructing Judicial Ethics In Canada, Richard Devlin Frsc

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Any discussion of judicial ethics and accountability -- whether it is at the state, national, or international level-inevitably requires engagement with two key ideals: impartiality and independence. Ideals are important because they can provide a trajectory for human action. But ideals can also be a problem because their generality and abstraction can cause one to prevaricate -- or even pontificate -- when it comes to the immediate and the pragmatic Indeed, there are times when ideals such as impartiality and independence can become false gods insofar as they promise salvation but ultimately, deliver little. Consequently, when one is asked to …

Prosecutorial Regulation Versus Prosecutorial Accountability, Stephanos Bibas

All Faculty Scholarship

No government official has as much unreviewable power or discretion as the prosecutor. Few regulations bind or even guide prosecutorial discretion, and fewer still work well. Most commentators favor more external regulation by legislatures, judges, or bar authorities. Neither across-the-board legislation nor ex post review of individual cases has proven to be effective, however. Drawing on management literature, this article reframes the issue as a principal-agent problem and suggests corporate strategies for better serving the relevant stakeholders. Fear of voters could better check prosecutors, as could victim participation in individual cases. Scholars have largely neglected the most promising avenue of …

Rewarding Prosecutors For Performance, Stephanos Bibas

All Faculty Scholarship

Prosecutorial discretion is a problem that most scholars attack from the outside. Most scholars favor external institutional solutions, such as ex ante legislation or ex post judicial and bar review of individual cases of misconduct. At best these approaches can catch the very worst misconduct. They lack inside information and sustained oversight and cannot generate and enforce fine-grained rules to guide prosecutorial decisionmaking. The more promising alternative is to work within prosecutors' offices, to create incentives for good performance. This symposium essay explores a neglected toolbox that head prosecutors can use to influence line prosecutors: compensation and other rewards. Rewards …

Globalization And Corporate Social Responsibility: Challenges For The Academy, Future Lawyers, And Corporate Law, Faith Stevelman

Articles & Chapters

Changes in information technology, in combination with changing popular and political opinion (including concern over climate change) are moving the subject of corporate social responsibility ('CSR') to the forefront of policy reform, consumer and investor behavior, and graduate business education. Nevertheless, up to the present, CSR has not thrived within law schools’ curricula, or mainstream graduate or undergraduate programs. First, the subject is too synthetic to fit neatly within the core, established framework of academic subject areas (e.g. history, economics, sociology and management), or law schools’ conventional teaching of corporate, securities, employment, administrative, or environmental law. CSR is relevant to …

Slides: Meaningful Engagement: The Public's Role In Resource Decisions, Mark Squillace

The Future of Natural Resources Law and Policy (Summer Conference, June 6-8)

Presenter: Mark Squillace, Director, Natural Resources Law Center, University of Colorado Law School

22 slides

Slides: Environmental Justice: Comprehensive Approach, Nicholas Targ

The Climate of Environmental Justice: Taking Stock (March 16-17)

Presenter: Nicholas Targ, Holland & Knight, former Associate Director for Environmental Justice Integration, Office of Environmental Justice, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

16 slides

The Proposed Code Of Legal Ethics For The American Bar Association, Henry M. Bates

Articles

The effort of the American Bar Association to frame and adopt a code of legal ethics is deserving of more attention from American lawyers than it is receiving. The adoption of such a code has been under consideration for several years. In 1905 the Association at its annual meeting instructed its committee to report at the meeting to be held in the next year upon "the advisability and practicability" of the adoption of such a code. In pursuance of these instructions the committee reported that in its judgment the adoption of such a code was not only advisable, but highly …