Law Commons^™

How Criminal Code Drafting Form Can Restrain Prosecutorial And Legislative Excesses: Consolidated Offense Drafting, Paul H. Robinson, Matthew Kussmaul, Muhammad Sarahne

All Faculty Scholarship

Solving criminal justice problems typically requires the enactment of new rules or the modification of existing ones. But there are some serious problems that can best be solved simply by altering the way in which the existing rules are drafted rather than by altering their content. This is the case with two of the most serious problems in criminal justice today: the problem of overlapping criminal offenses that create excessive prosecutorial charging discretion and the problem of legislative inconsistency and irrationality in grading offenses.

After examining these two problems and demonstrating their serious effects in perverting criminal justice, the essay …

What's Wrong With Sentencing Equality?, Richard A. Bierschbach, Stephanos Bibas

All Faculty Scholarship

Equality in criminal sentencing often translates into equalizing outcomes and stamping out variations, whether race-based, geographic, or random. This approach conflates the concept of equality with one contestable conception focused on outputs and numbers, not inputs and processes. Racial equality is crucial, but a concern with eliminating racism has hypertrophied well beyond race. Equalizing outcomes seems appealing as a neutral way to dodge contentious substantive policy debates about the purposes of punishment. But it actually privileges deterrence and incapacitation over rehabilitation, subjective elements of retribution, and procedural justice, and it provides little normative guidance for punishment. It also has unintended …

Booker's Ironies, Ryan W. Scott

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

How (Not) To Implement Cost As A Sentencing Factor, Ryan W. Scott

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Final Report Of The Maldivian Penal Law & Sentencing Codification Project: Text Of Draft Code (Volume 1) And Official Commentary (Volume 2), Paul H. Robinson, Criminal Law Research Group -- University Of Pennsylvania

All Faculty Scholarship

The United Nations Development Programme and the Government of the Maldives commissioned the drafting of a penal code based upon existing Maldivian law, which meant primarily a codification of Shari'a. This is the Final Report of that codification project. A description of the process that produced this Report and the drafting principles behind it, as well as a discussion of the special challenges of codifying Islamic criminal law, are contained in an article at http://ssrn.com/abstract=941443.

Symposium: Equality Versus Discretion In Sentencing, Ilene H. Nagel, Stephen Breyer, Terence Mccarthy

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

The Sentencing Of White-Collar Criminals In Federal Courts: A Socio-Legal Exploration Of Disparity, Ilene H. Nagel, John L. Hagan

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

White-Collar Crime, White-Collar Time: The Sentencing Of White-Collar Offenders In The Southern District Of New York, Ilene H. Nagel, John L. Hagan

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In this Article, Professors Hagan and Nagel report upon their study of sentencing patterns in white-collar cases tried in the Southern District of New York between 1963 and 1976. Using multiple regression analysis, the authors first demonstrate a strong correlation between lenient sentencing practices and white-collar offenses. The authors then focus their study upon various white-collar crimes, using multiple regression analysis to reveal that considerable variation exists between sentencing patterns for the different white-collar offenses and for the different types of defendants sentenced in the Southern District during the period under study.

The Differential Sentencing Of White-Collar Offenders In Ten Federal District Courts, Ilene Nagel Bernstein, John Hagan, Celesta Albonetti

Articles by Maurer Faculty

While sociologist have long debated the relationship between the status characteristics of criminal offenders and the sentences they receive, they have done so with data sets drawn from state courts whose prosecutorial resources are focused almost entirely on low status defendants. Qualitative and quantitative data analyzed in this paper are drawn from ten federal district courts whose statutes and resources provide greater potential for the prosecution of the white-collar crimes of higher status offenders. Three questions are addressed: (1) Are there substantial jurisdictional differences in the prosecution of white-collar cases? if so, (2) Are there corresponding jurisdictional differences in the …

The Prisoner's Dilemma And Mutual Trust: Comment, Robert L. Birmingam

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.