Law Commons^™

An Evaluation Of Operation Street Sweeper - 2006, Andrew Giacomazzi, Jeremy D. Ball

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications and Presentations

Operation Street Sweeper (OSS) was a multi-level, interagency collaboration with multiple purposes. According to OSS documents, Operation Street Sweeper goals included the following: (1) to reduce gang-related criminal and violent activity in Nampa and Caldwell, Idaho through aggressive, proactive, and coordinated street enforcement between the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) and local law enforcement; (2) to deter criminal activity through high profile enforcement activity; (3) to develop and/or increase the number of positive community contacts; (4) to show the community and gang members that law enforcement is serious about reducing gang and violent crime in the area; and …

Citizen And Officer Perceptions Of Community Policing In Ghana: Policing Of, By, And For The People, Or Just To The People?, Angela West Crews, Gordon A. Crews

Criminal Justice Faculty Research

This presentation presents initial results of an evaluation of citizen and officer perceptions of policing in Ghana. The Ghana Police Service (GPS) is attempting to transition from a para-militaristic philosophy to a more community-centered approach, developing a domestic violence unit in the past decade and, more recently, a community policing unit. Community policing philosophies, however, face unique challenges in Ghanaian society, such as a deep-rooted (and historically well-founded) mistrust of the police, and a culture with a well-established and trusted “traditional” system wherein matters are settled within communities and impacted by religion, spirituality, and mysticism. This project used official reported …

The Luck Of The Draw: Using Random Case Assignment To Investigate Attorney Ability, David S. Abrams, Albert H. Yoon

All Faculty Scholarship

One of the most challenging problems in legal scholarship is the measurement of attorney ability. Measuring attorney ability presents inherent challenges because the nonrandom pairing of attorney and client in most cases makes it difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish between attorney ability and case selection. Las Vegas felony case data, provided by the Clark County Office of the Public Defender in Nevada, offer a unique opportunity to compare attorney performance. The office assigns its incoming felony cases randomly among its pool of attorneys, thereby creating a natural experiment free from selection bias. We find substantial heterogeneity in attorney performance …

The Penetration Of The Criminal Justice System Into Communities Of Color: A Leadership Challenge For The Legal Profession. Address At The Convocation On The Face Of The Profession Iii: Leadership Of The Bar; Sponsored By The New York State Judicial Institute On Professionalism In The Law On April 27, 2007 In Albany, Ny., Jeremy Travis

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Researching Crime, Justice, And Social Control In Ghana: Evolving Issues In A Developing African Country, Gordon A. Crews, Angela West Crews, Kofi Boye-Doe, Ken Aikins

Criminal Justice Faculty Research

The purpose of this presentation is to discuss a recent research project which seeks to offer an examination of the unique relationship between the traditional Ghanaian indigenous justice system and the established state-administered justice system. This is an overview of the interesting blend of indigenous practices (rooted in religious practices and strongly associated with spirituality and mysticism) and state (formal justice and governmental systems) in the Ghanaian justice system. In addition the topics of the treatment of women and children within these systems and the use of alternative dispute resolution, restorative justice, and conflict resolution strategies inherent within the two …

Thinking With Wolves: Left Legal Theory After The Right's Rise (Review Essay), Martha T. Mccluskey

Book Reviews

Reviewing Wendy Brown & Janet Halley, Left Legalism/Left Critique (2001).

Left legal theory is in crisis. This crisis reflects a broader problem of contemporary U.S. politics: the lack of grand ideas capable of mobilizing meaningful opposition to the triumph of the political right. Right-wing legal theory has contributed to that dramatic political change by promoting ideas questioning the foundations of the twentieth century liberal welfare and regulatory state.

This review essay analyzes a rare recent attempt to revive left legal theory in the face of the right's triumph: the anthology Left Legalism/Left Critique edited by Wendy Brown and Janet Halley …

"Free" Religion And "Captive" Schools: Protestants, Catholics, And Education, 1945-1965, Sarah Barringer Gordon

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Forgiveness In Criminal Procedure, Stephanos Bibas

All Faculty Scholarship

Though forgiveness and mercy matter greatly in social life, they play fairly small roles in criminal procedure. Criminal procedure is dominated by the state, whose interests in deterring, incapacitating, and inflicting retribution leave little room for mercy. An alternative system, however, would focus more on the needs of human participants. Victim-offender mediation, sentencing discounts, and other mechanisms could encourage offenders to express remorse, victims to forgive, and communities to reintegrate and employ offenders. All of these actors could then better heal, reconcile, and get on with their lives. Forgiveness and mercy are not panaceas: not all offenders and victims would …

Back-End Sentencing A Practice In Search Of A Rationale, Jeremy Travis

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Mississippi River Stories: Lessons From A Century Of Unnatural Disasters, Sandi Zellmer, Christine Klein

Nebraska College of Law: Faculty Publications

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the nation pondered how a relatively weak Category 3 storm could have destroyed an entire region. Few appreciated the extent to which a flawed federal water development policy transformed this apparently natural disaster into a “man-made” disaster; fewer still appreciated how the disaster was the predictable, and indeed predicted, sequel to almost a century of similar disasters. This article focuses upon three such stories: the Great Flood of 1927, the Midwest Flood of 1993, and Hurricanes Katrina and Rita of 2005. Taken together, the stories reveal important lessons, including the inadequacy of engineered flood …

A Tale Of Two Imperiled Rivers: Reflections From A Post-Katrina World, Sandra Zellmer

Nebraska College of Law: Faculty Publications

Hurricanes are a natural, predictable phenomenon, yet the Gulf Coast communities were devastated by the hurricanes of 2005. One year after Hurricane Katrina struck, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers responded to a congressional request for an accounting by admitting culpability for the destruction of New Orleans. Its structural defenses failed not because Congress had authorized only moderate Category 3 protection, which in turn let floodwaters overtop the city's levees, but because levees and floodwalls simply collapsed. The so-called network of federal and local structures was a haphazard system in name only, where floodwalls and levees of varying heights utilized …

The Science Of Dna Identification: From The Laboratory To The Courtroom (And Beyond), David H. Kaye

Journal Articles

This article focuses on sequences of DNA base-pairs, which are becoming increasingly important in the field of law. These DNA sequences are used by forensic scientists to discover evidence such as blood stains, semen, saliva, and hair, and has become highly useful in the courtroom with regard to exonerating the innocent and convicting the guilty. Part I of the article examines how courts may (or may not) admit DNA evidence in court through four phases: uncritical acceptance; serious challenges to analytical methods and statistical interpretation of the results; renewed acceptance of DNA evidence; and acceptance of advance systems of DNA …

Fiduciary Duties And The Analyst Scandals, Jill E. Fisch

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Challenges In Law Making In Mass Societies, Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Originalism And Its Discontents (Plus A Thought Or Two About Abortion), Mitchell N. Berman

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Lexis V. Westlaw For Research - Better, Different, Or Same And The Qwerty Effect?, Jon R. Cavicchi

Law Faculty Scholarship

There are synchronistic moments when in the process of writing. While contemplating this article, an email message made its way to my desk, past Pierce Law Center's spam firewall with the following subject line: "Pepsi v. Coke-Tell Us--Get $10." Do IP researchers choose Lexis or Westlaw justified by taste? Surely you jest, some voice said to me. Repressing this message, I proceeded to compare platform content, perform literature searches, and poll students and IP professors.

Yet another synchronistic moment came as the email from those taking the poll steamed into my email. Many IP professors indicated that they made the …

Ip And The Global Public Interest: Challenges And Opportunities, Jon R. Cavicchi, Stanley P. Kowalski

Law Faculty Scholarship

[Excerpt from article] Intellectual property (IP) capacity is essential for economic development, particularly as countries transition into the higher technology sectors, for example biotechnology. For developing countries, a commitment to minimal IP rights protection will determine inclusion in the World Trade Organization (WTO), facilitate access to foreign-direct investment, and accelerate economic development. However, on a more fundamental level, capacity in IP management will affect whether a country can provide basic health and nutritional needs for its citizens. For example, sustainable food security presents a serious challenge in many developing countries; as their economies rapidly emerge, urban centers expand, arable land …

End Natural Life Sentences For Juveniles, Jeffrey A. Fagan

Faculty Scholarship

In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court in Roper v. Simmons (125 S. Ct. 1183) banned executions of persons who commit capital murder before they reach age 18. Roper overturned death sentences for 72 people in 18 states (Streib, 2005). Most (but not all) were resentenced to natural life or life in prison without the possibility of parole (or JLWOP). Juvenile justice advocates now want to extend Roper’s maturity heuristic, proportionality analysis, aversion to errors, and deference to international laws and norms to argue for a constitutional ban on natural life sentences for adolescent offenders. This move could have a far …

Development And Confirmatory Factor Analysis Of The Community Norms Of Child Neglect Scale, Rebecca Goodvin, David R. Johnson, Sam A. Hardy, Michelle Graef, Jeff M. Chambers

Center on Children, Families, and the Law: Faculty Publications

This article describes the development of the Community Norms of Child Neglect Scale (CNCNS), a new measure of perceptions of child neglect, for use in community samples. The CNCNS differentiates among four subtypes of neglect (failure to provide for basic needs, lack of supervision, emotional neglect, and educational neglect). Scenarios ranging in seriousness for each subtype were presented to a large community sample (N = 3,809). Confirmatory factor analyses indicated that a four-factor model provided a better fit to the data than did a model specifying only one overall neglect factor, suggesting this sample distinguished among the four subtypes of …

Privacy And Law Enforcement In The European Union: The Data Retention Directive, Francesca Bignami

Faculty Scholarship

This paper examines a recent twist in EU data protection law. In the 1990s, the European Union was still primarily a market-creating organization and data protection in the European Union was aimed at rights abuses by market actors. Since the terrorist attacks of New York, Madrid, and London, however, cooperation on fighting crime has accelerated. Now, the challenge for the European Union is to protect privacy in its emerging system of criminal justice. This paper analyzes the first EU law to address data privacy in crime-fighting—the Data Retention Directive. Based on a detailed examination of the Directive’s legislative history, the …

Reasonable Emissions Of Greenhouse Gases: Efficient Abatement For A Stock Pollutant, Howard F. Chang

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Rhetoric Of Anti-Relativism In A Culture Of Certainty, Howard Lesnick

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Effect Of Judicial Expedience On Attorney Fees In Class Actions, Eric Helland, Jonathan Klick

All Faculty Scholarship

Judges facing exogenous constraints on their pecuniary income have an incentive to reduce their workload to increase their private welfare. In the face of an increase in caseload, this incentive will induce judges to attempt to terminate some cases more rapidly. In class action cases, failing to grant an attorney fee request will delay termination. This conflict is likely to lead judges to authorize higher fees as court congestion increases. Using two data sets of class action settlements, we show that attorney fees are significantly and positively related to the congestion level of the court hearing the case.

Does Analyst Independence Sell Investors Short?, Jill E. Fisch

All Faculty Scholarship

Regulators responded to the analyst scandals of the late 1990s by imposing extensive new rules on the research industry. These rules include a requirement forcing financial firms to separate investment banking operations from research. Regulators argued, with questionable empirical support, that the reforms were necessary to eliminate analyst conflicts of interest and ensure the integrity of sell-side research.

By eliminating investment banking revenues as a source for funding research, the reforms have had substantial effects. Research coverage of small issuers has been dramatically reduced—the vast majority of small capitalization firms now have no coverage at all. The market for research …

Eliminating The Judicial Function In Consumer Bankruptcy, Rafael I. Pardo

Scholarship@WashULaw

The centerpiece of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 has been the means test, a formulaic statutory directive pursuant to which courts are to presume abuse of the bankruptcy system by Chapter 7 debtors who have an ability to repay past debts with future income. This Essay provides a new insight into means testing by arguing that, more than anything else, it has brought about a significant change in the institutional design of bankruptcy courts: namely, the increased blurring of administrative and judicial functions. The Essay concludes that this development should be cause for concern as …

Bad Nature, Bad Nurture, And Testimony Regarding Maoa And Slc6a4 Genotyping In Murder Trials, Nita A. Farahany, William Bernet, Cindy L. Vnencak-Jones, Stephen A. Montgomery

Faculty Scholarship

Recent research—in which subjects were studied longitudinally from childhood until adulthood—has started to clarify how a child’s environment and genetic makeup interact to create a violent adolescent or adult. For example, male subjects who were born with a particular allele of the monoamine oxidase A gene and also were maltreated as children had a much greater likelihood of manifesting violent antisocial behavior as adolescents and adults. Also, individuals who were born with particular alleles of the serotonin transporter gene and also experienced multiple stressful life events were more likely to manifest serious depression and suicidality. This research raises the question …

Criminalization Of Corporate Law: The Impact On Shareholders And Other Constituents, Jill E. Fisch

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Private Standards, Public Governance: A New Look At The Financial Accounting Standards Board, William W. Bratton

All Faculty Scholarship

The Financial Accounting Standards Board (the “FASB”) presents a puzzle: How has this private standard setter managed simultaneously (1) to remain independent, (2) to achieve institutional stability and legitimacy, and (3) to operate in a politicized context in the teeth of op-position from its own constituents? This Article looks to governance design to account for this institutional success. The FASB’s founders made a strategic choice to create a regulatory agency that sought independence rather than political responsiveness. The FASB also set out a coherent theory of accounting, the “Conceptual Framework,” to contain and direct its decisions. The Conceptual Framework contributed …

Ua12/8 Campus Security Report, Wku Police

WKU Archives Records

A statement of current campus policies regarding procedures for students and others to report criminal actions or other emergencies occurring on campus and policies concerning the institution's response to such reports.

Originalism And The Natural Born Citizen Clause, Lawrence B. Solum

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The enigmatic phrase "natural born citizen" poses a series of problems for contemporary originalism. New originalists, like Justice Scalia, focus on the public meaning of the constitutional text, but the notion of a "natural born citizen" was likely a term of art, derived from the idea of a "natural born subject" in English law--a category that most likely did not extend to persons, like John McCain, who were born outside sovereign territory. But the constitution speaks of "citizens" and not "subjects," introducing uncertainties and ambiguities that might (or might not) make McCain eligible for the presidency.

What was the original …