Law Commons^™

Imprisoning Rationalities, Eileen Baldry, David Brown, Mark Brown, Chris Cunneen, Melanie Schwartz, Alex Steel

David C. Brown

Imprisonment is a growth industry in Australia. Over the past 30-40 years all state and territory jurisdictions have registered massive rises in both the absolute numbers of those imprisoned and the per capita use of imprisonment as a tool of punishment and control. Yet over this period there has been surprisingly little criminological attention to the national picture of imprisonment in Australia and to understanding jurisdictional variation, change and continuity in broader theoretical terms. This article reports initial findings from the Australian Prisons Project, a multi-investigator Australian Research Council funded project intended to trace penal developments in Australia since about …

Guilty By Proxy: Expanding The Boundaries Of Responsibility In The Face Of Corporate Crime, Amy J. Sepinwall

Amy J. Sepinwall

The BP oil spill and financial crisis share in common more than just profound tragedy and massive clean-up costs. In both cases, governmental commissions have revealed widespread wrongdoing by individuals and the entities for which they work. The public has demanded justice, yet the law enforcement response in both cases has been underwhelming. In particular, no criminal indictments have been sought for any of the corporations responsible for the Macondo oil rig explosion or the Wall Street banks involved in the financial meltdown.

This governmental restraint reflects a deep-seated ambivalence about corporate criminal liability. Though scholars have been debating the …

Violence On The Brain: A Critique Of Neuroscience In Criminal Law, Amanda C. Pustilnik

Amanda C Pustilnik

Is there such a thing as a criminally "violent brain"? Does it make sense to speak of "the neurobiology of violence" or the "psychopathology of crime"? Is it possible to answer on a physiological level what makes one person engage in criminal violence and another not, under similar circumstances? This Article first demonstrates parallels between certain current claims about the neurobiology of criminal violence and past movements that were concerned with the law and neuroscience of violence: phrenology, Lombrosian biological criminology, and lobotomy. It then engages in a substantive review and critique of several current claims about the neurological bases …

Prisons Of The Mind: Social Value And Economic Inefficiency In The Criminal Justice Response To Mental Illness, Amanda C. Pustilnik

Amanda C Pustilnik

Can constructs of social meaning lead to actual criminal confinement? Can the intangible value ascribed to the maintenance of certain social norms lead to radically inefficient choices about resource allocation? The disproportionate criminal confinement of people with severe mental illnesses relative to non-mentally ill individuals suggests that social meanings related to mental illness can create legal and physical walls around this disfavored group. Responding to the non-violent mentally ill principally through the criminal system imposes at least 6 billion dollars in costs annually on the public, above any offsetting public safety and deterrence benefits, and imposes terrible human costs on …

Understanding The Dennis Ferguson Debate: Part 2, Jodie O'Leary

Jodie O'Leary

Extract: Recently I received a cause invitation from an old school friend on Facebook. The cause was to support micro-chipping of all paedophiles. I rejected that invitation. All I could think of was the microchip embedded in my Labrador. The way I understand that chip to work is that if someone finds my dog wandering the streets they can take him to a vet or the RSPCA who will then scan the chip and return him to me. The obvious question seemed to be: how would such a measure help protect children? After all, protection of children is the goal …

Twelve Angry Peers Or One Angry Judge: An Analysis Of Judge Alone Trials In Australia, Jodie O'Leary

Jodie O'Leary

Recently, New South Wales amended its legislation to provide for judicial discretion when determining, upon request, whether an accused will face a trial by judge alone for indictable criminal matters. This article examines the application of those provisions and comparable legislation in Queensland and Western Australia, revealing an overarching tension as to the correct legal approach. Broadly, there is a dispute over the weight that should be afforded to the accused’s right to choose or whether a presumption of a jury trial exists. Such a conflict arises from the different justifications for jury trials. On the one hand the jury …

The Practice Of Criminal Defense: Principles Of Why We Fight, Beau James Brock, Andre Belanger

Beau James Brock

The eleven principles of why and how we are proud to professionally represent families in need in the practice of criminal law.

Getting To Know Some Of Baton Rouge's Young Public Defenders, Beau James Brock

Beau James Brock

Article interviewing some of East Baton Rouge Parish young Public Defenders. Published along with companion article interviewing some of the young Assistant District Attorneys in East Baton Rouge in the same issue of the Around the Bar magazine.

Getting To Know Some Of Baton Rouge's Young Prosecutors, Beau James Brock

Beau James Brock

Article on some of our young prosecutors in East Baton Rouge Parish.

An Analysis Of State Pretrial Diversion Statutes, Peter Zablotsky

Peter Zablotsky

No abstract provided.

Excluding Exclusion: How Herring Jeopardizes The Fourth Amendment's Protections Against Unreasonable Search And Seizure, Hariqbal Basi

Hariqbal Basi

For nearly a half-century, the exclusionary rule has remained an important mechanism for ensuring police compliance with the Fourth Amendment and deterring unconstitutional searches and seizures. In January 2009, the Supreme Court held in Herring v. United States that the exclusionary rule does not apply to good faith negligent police behavior. This significantly broadened the law, and severely limits the future application of the exclusionary rule. Furthermore, this holding has strong potential for abuse by police departments. By analogizing to Fifth Amendment jurisprudence and Miranda rights, I argue that the ruling in Herring needs to be limited in order to …

The Missing Miranda Warning: Why What You Don’T Know Really Can Hurt You, Geoffrey S. Corn

Geoffrey S. Corn

Abstract

The Missing Miranda Warning: Why What You Don’t Know Really Can Hurt You

Miranda – at least the core rule that statements made by suspects in response to custodial interrogation are admissible in the prosecution’s case-in-chief only following a knowing and voluntary waiver of the Miranda rights – has survived decades of attacks. While the “stormy seas” the decision navigated produced a wake of academic study of the wisdom of the decision, little attention has been focused on an equally logical question: did Miranda go far enough? If, as the Miranda Court emphasized, the purpose of Miranda’s warnings was …

Beyond Experience: Getting Retributive Justice Right, Dan Markel, Chad Flanders, David C. Gray

David C. Gray

How central should hedonic adaptation be to the establishment of sentencing policy? In earlier work, Professors Bronsteen, Buccafusco, and Masur (BBM) drew some normative significance from the psychological studies of adaptability for punishment policy. In particular, they argued that retributivists and utilitarians alike are obliged on pain of inconsistency to take account of the fact that most prisoners, most of the time, adapt to imprisonment in fairly short order, and therefore suffer much less than most of us would expect. They also argued that ex-prisoners don't adapt well upon re-entry to society and that social planners should consider their post-release …

Retributivism For Progressives: A Response To Professor Flanders, David C. Gray, Jonathan Huber

David C. Gray

In his engaging article "Retributivism and Reform," published in the Maryland Law Review, Chad Flanders engages two claims he ascribes to James Q. Whitman: 1) that American criminal justice is too "harsh," and 2) that Americans’ reliance on retributivist theories of criminal punishment is implicated in that harshness. In this invited response, to which Flanders subsequently replied, we first ask what "harsh" might mean in the context of a critique of criminal justice and punishment. We conclude that the most likely candidate is something along the lines of "disproportionate or otherwise unjustified." With this working definition in hand, we measure …

Self-Incrimination, Alex Stein

Alex Stein

This Chapter surveys the law & economics literature on self-incrimination and confessions.

Expert Evidence And The Ultimate Issue Rule, Siyuan Chen

Siyuan CHEN

No abstract provided.