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Full-Text Articles in Law
How Criminal Code Drafting Form Can Restrain Prosecutorial And Legislative Excesses: Consolidated Offense Drafting, Paul H. Robinson, Matthew Kussmaul, Muhammad Sarahne
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 …
Mandatory Minimum Penalties: An Analysis Of Four State’S Penal Codes And Federal Court Policies, Cassie Geiken
Mandatory Minimum Penalties: An Analysis Of Four State’S Penal Codes And Federal Court Policies, Cassie Geiken
Honors Theses
In Nebraska, variations of bills attempting to amend mandatory minimum laws in the state have been introduced. The harshness of the mandatory sentences, as well as the looming state of emergency caused by prison overcrowding, have sustained the debate over sentencing laws. This essay identifies the core issues of mandatory minimum sentencing laws and analyzes the states of Nebraska, Texas, Alabama, California, and the federal system’s use of mandatory minimums for felony charges to identify potential solutions. Statute review found that Nebraska’s current sentencing codes are misaligned with the rest of the nation; not even Alabama with one of the …
Booker's Ironies, Ryan W. Scott
What's Wrong With Sentencing Equality?, Richard A. Bierschbach, Stephanos Bibas
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 …
Discretionary Death Penalty For Convicted Drug Couriers In Singapore: Reflections On High Jurisprudence Thus Far, Siyuan Chen
Discretionary Death Penalty For Convicted Drug Couriers In Singapore: Reflections On High Jurisprudence Thus Far, Siyuan Chen
Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law
For decades, drug trafficking was a serious offence in Singapore potentially punishable by mandatory death. In 2012, Singapore’s Misuse of Drugs Act (MDA) was amended to give the courts sentencing discretion if the accused can first prove that he was merely a courier, and to better reflect the moral culpability accorded as between mules and kingpins in the hierarchy of drug syndicates. However, there are some complications in proving this. Not only must the accused show that he was merely a courier, he must also show that he had substantively assisted the authorities in disrupting drugtrafficking activities in Singapore. This …
How (Not) To Implement Cost As A Sentencing Factor, Ryan W. Scott
How (Not) To Implement Cost As A Sentencing Factor, Ryan W. Scott
Articles by Maurer Faculty
No abstract provided.
Comments On [Israeli] Proposal For Structuring Judicial Discretion In Sentencing, Paul H. Robinson
Comments On [Israeli] Proposal For Structuring Judicial Discretion In Sentencing, Paul H. Robinson
All Faculty Scholarship
In this essay, Professor Robinson supports the current Israeli proposal for structuring judicial discretion in sentencing, in particular its reliance upon desert as the guiding principle for the distribution of punishment, its reliance upon benchmarks, or “starting-points,” to be adjusted in individual cases by reference to articulated mitigating and aggravating circumstances, and the proposal’s suggestion to use of an expert committee to draft the original guidelines.
Of Neocolonialism, Common Law And Uncodifiable Shari’A: A Reply To Professor An-Na’Im, Paul H. Robinson, Adnan Zulfiqar
Of Neocolonialism, Common Law And Uncodifiable Shari’A: A Reply To Professor An-Na’Im, Paul H. Robinson, Adnan Zulfiqar
All Faculty Scholarship
In an earlier article -- Robinson et al., Codifying Shari'a: International Norms, Legality & the Freedom to Invent New Forms, http://ssrn.com/abstract=941443 -- the authors report the challenges and opportunities that arose during their commission by the United Nations Development Programme and the Government of the Maldives to produce the first modern comprehensive criminal code based upon Shari'a. In this brief essay they respond to published criticisms of that project, which asserted, among other things, that Shari'a cannot be codified, that it should not be codified, that the project was a shameful exercise in neocolonialism, that the project was an act …
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
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
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
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
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
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
The Prisoner's Dilemma And Mutual Trust: Comment, Robert L. Birmingam
Articles by Maurer Faculty
No abstract provided.