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Full-Text Articles in Law

The Wolf We Feed: Democracy, Caste, And Legitimacy, Benjamin Justice, Tracey L. Meares Jan 2021

The Wolf We Feed: Democracy, Caste, And Legitimacy, Benjamin Justice, Tracey L. Meares

Michigan Law Review Online

Procedure is central to American public legal discourse. From the soaring rhetoric of the Declaration of Independence to the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the American legal tradition rests on the principle that law must be both derived and applied according to fair process. Consider that in the 2020 election the Trump Administration resorted to fervent and false allegations of widespread voter fraud—that the election process was fundamentally unfair—in order to weaponize Republican voters’ ostensible commitments to fairness against what was, objectively, one of the least procedurally unfair elections in history. Yet the four-year period of the Trump …


Redefining Reproductive Rights And Justice, Leah Litman May 2020

Redefining Reproductive Rights And Justice, Leah Litman

Michigan Law Review

Review of Reproductive Rights and Justice Stories edited by Melissa Murray, Katherine Shaw, and Reva B. Siegel.


Disability Rights And The Discourse Of Justice., Samuel Bagenstos Apr 2020

Disability Rights And The Discourse Of Justice., Samuel Bagenstos

Articles

Although the ADA has changed the built architecture of America and dramatically increased the visibility of disabled people, it has not meaningfully increased disability employment rates. And the statute continues to provoke a backlash. Disability rights advocates and sympathizers offer two principal stories to explain this state of affairs. One, the “lost-bipartisanship” story, asserts that disability rights were once an enterprise broadly endorsed across the political spectrum but that they have fallen prey to the massive rise in partisan polarization in the United States. The other, the “legal-change-outpacing-social- change” story, asserts that the ADA was essentially adopted too soon—that the …


Small Crimes, Big Injustices, Stephanos Bibas Jan 2019

Small Crimes, Big Injustices, Stephanos Bibas

Michigan Law Review

Review of Alexandra Natapoff's Punishment Without Crime: How Our Massive Misdemeanor System Traps the Innocent and Makes America More Unequal.


Which Radicals?, Cass R. Sunstein Jan 2019

Which Radicals?, Cass R. Sunstein

Michigan Law Review

Review of Jeremy McCarter's Young Radicals: In the War for American Ideals.


Access To Justice In The United Nations Human Rights Committee, Vera Shikhelman Oct 2018

Access To Justice In The United Nations Human Rights Committee, Vera Shikhelman

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Article has two main purposes. The first is to describe and evaluate empirically the right of individuals to access the HRC under the OP in light of the special goals of this procedure as perceived by the different stakeholders. The second is to recommend ways to improve individuals’ access to the HRC and thereby to international justice in general. In order to address the first question, the Article uses a mixed-methods approach—a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods.


The Aba Rule Of Law Initiative Celebrating 25 Years Of Global Initiatives, M. Margaret Mckeown Jan 2018

The Aba Rule Of Law Initiative Celebrating 25 Years Of Global Initiatives, M. Margaret Mckeown

Michigan Journal of International Law

Relying on extensive reports, program documentation, and interviews with important actors in the rule of law movement, this article will explore how one key player in the international-development field—the ABA—has furthered rule of law values through its global programs. The first half of the article surveys the ABA’s involvement in rule of law initiatives. Part I explores the origins of the ABA’s work in this field, which date back to the organization’s founding and took shape after the demise of the former Soviet Union. Part II surveys the expansion of the ABA’s programs beyond Eastern Europe to other regions—a growth …


Treating Wrongs As Wrongs: An Expressive Argument For Tort Law, Scott Hershovitz Nov 2017

Treating Wrongs As Wrongs: An Expressive Argument For Tort Law, Scott Hershovitz

Articles

The idea that criminal punishment carries a message of condemnation is as commonplace as could be. Indeed, many think that condemnation is the mark of punishment, distinguishing it from other sorts of penalties or burdens. But for all that torts and crimes share in common, nearly no one thinks that tort has similar expressive aims. And that is unfortunate, as the truth is that tort is very much an expressive institution, with messages to send that are different, but no less important, than those conveyed by the criminal law. In this essay, I argue that tort liability expresses the judgment …


Factors In Fairness And Emotion In Online Case Resolution Systems, Youyang Hou, Cliff Lampe, Maximilian Bulinski, J. J. Prescott May 2017

Factors In Fairness And Emotion In Online Case Resolution Systems, Youyang Hou, Cliff Lampe, Maximilian Bulinski, J. J. Prescott

Articles

Courts are increasingly adopting online information and communication technology, creating a need to consider the potential consequences of these tools for the justice system. Using survey responses from 209 litigants who had recently used an online case resolution system, we investigate factors that influenced litigants’ experiences of fairness and emotional feelings toward court officials. Our results show that ease of using the online case resolution system, the outcome of the case, and a litigant’s perceptions of procedural justice are positively associated both with whether the litigant views the process as fair and whether the litigant ultimately feels positive emotions toward …


Race And Wrongful Convictions In The United States, Samuel R. Gross, Maurice Possley, Klara Stephens Mar 2017

Race And Wrongful Convictions In The United States, Samuel R. Gross, Maurice Possley, Klara Stephens

Other Publications

African Americans are only 13% of the American population but a majority of innocent defendants wrongfully convicted of crimes and later exonerated. They constitute 47% of the 1,900 exonerations listed in the National Registry of Exonerations (as of October 2016), and the great majority of more than 1,800 additional innocent defendants who were framed and convicted of crimes in 15 large-scale police scandals and later cleared in “group exonerations.” We see this racial disparity for all major crime categories, but we examine it in this report in the context of the three types of crime that produce the largest numbers …


Postracial Remedies, Derrick Darby, Richard E. Levy Sep 2016

Postracial Remedies, Derrick Darby, Richard E. Levy

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The Supreme Court’s equal protection jurisprudence is decidedly postracial. The Court has restricted the Equal Protection Clause to intentional discrimination by the government, concluding that the Constitution does not prohibit private acts of discrimination and rejecting challenges based on disparate impact, even when rigorous statistical analysis indicates that race is likely a factor. It has held that remedying the effects of past societal discrimination is an insufficient basis for race-specific remedies such as affirmative action. It has also ended remedies of this sort designed to combat previous state-sponsored racial discrimination, such as court-ordered desegregation measures in the schools and the …


Who Is Responsible For The Stealth Assault On Civil Rights?, Samuel R. Bagenstos Apr 2016

Who Is Responsible For The Stealth Assault On Civil Rights?, Samuel R. Bagenstos

Michigan Law Review

Staszak’s book does a great service in demonstrating the extent of the stealth assault on civil-rights litigation. As Staszak shows, procedural and remedial decisions fly under the public’s radar, but they have exceptionally important consequences. Indeed, one can draw a clear line between judicial decisions on such obscure topics as standing and qualified immunity and the persistent acts of police misconduct that have aroused great public concern in recent months. Any effort to ensure that civil-rights protections make a concrete difference in people’s lives must attend to the procedural and remedial issues Staszak discusses.


Prosecuting Rape Victims While Rapists Run Free: The Consequences Of Police Failure To Investigate Sex Crimes In Britain And The United States, Lisa Avalos Jan 2016

Prosecuting Rape Victims While Rapists Run Free: The Consequences Of Police Failure To Investigate Sex Crimes In Britain And The United States, Lisa Avalos

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Imagine that a close friend is raped, and you encourage her to report it to the police. At first, she thinks that the police are taking her report seriously, but the investigation does not seem to move forward. The next thing she knows, they accuse her of lying and ultimately file charges against her. You and your friend are in shock; this outcome never entered your minds. This nightmare may seem inconceivable, but it has in fact occurred repeatedly in both the United States and Britain—countries that are typically lauded for their high levels of gender equality. In Britain, where …


Between The Ceiling And The Floor: Making The Case For Required Disclosure Of High-Low Agreements To Juries, Richard Lorren Jolly Apr 2015

Between The Ceiling And The Floor: Making The Case For Required Disclosure Of High-Low Agreements To Juries, Richard Lorren Jolly

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Parties are increasingly using high-low agreements to limit the risks of litigation. High-low agreements are contracts in which defendants agree to pay plaintiffs a minimum recovery in return for plaintiffs’ agreement not to execute on a jury award above a maximum amount. Currently no jurisdiction requires high-low agreements to be disclosed to the jury. This Note argues that disclosure should be required. It contends that non-disclosed high-low agreements are a type of procedural contract modifying the jury’s core adjudicative function. Drawing on theories of procedural justice, it suggests that by usurping the jury’s role these agreements undermine the legitimacy of …


From Prosecutorial To Reparatory: A Valuable Post-Conflict Change Of Focus, Nancy A. Combs Apr 2015

From Prosecutorial To Reparatory: A Valuable Post-Conflict Change Of Focus, Nancy A. Combs

Michigan Journal of International Law

The ICC is well known in international legal circles. Indeed, everyone who knows anything about international law knows that the ICC is the acronym for the International Criminal Court, the body charged with prosecuting international crimes around the globe. Created in 2002, the ICC was intended to “put an end to impunity” for the perpetrators of international crimes” and to affirm “that the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole must not go unpunished.”1 Imagine, however, a world where the “ICC” instead was an acronym for the International Compensation Court. That is, what if the …


Legal Pluralism In Tort Law Theory: Balancing Instrumental Theories And Corrective Justice, Benjamin Shmueli Apr 2015

Legal Pluralism In Tort Law Theory: Balancing Instrumental Theories And Corrective Justice, Benjamin Shmueli

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Unified-monistic theories of tort law focus on a single goal, usually corrective justice, distributive justice, or optimal deterrence. Unlike these approaches, mixedpluralistic theories attempt to balance between various goals of tort law by integrating several of the considerations underlying these different goals. These theories of legal pluralism reflect ideological diversity, in this case between different theories of the same legal system. This Article discusses the challenge of legal pluralism to settle the possible collision between different goals of tort law within the framework of tort law theory. Starting from a position of support for the mixed-pluralistic thesis, this Article first …


Justice And Law Journals, Gabriel "Jack" Chin, Adam B. Wolf Jan 2015

Justice And Law Journals, Gabriel "Jack" Chin, Adam B. Wolf

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

What is the role for a law journal in advancing justice? What is the role of a justice-minded practitioner in furthering legal scholarship? And what is the intersection—practically and normatively—for law journals, legal scholars, practitioners, and justice? This brief Article attempts to lay a foundation for answering these important, but oft-neglected, questions. In the following conversation, a frequent contributor to the Michigan Journal of Race & Law (MJRL) and a former Editor-in-Chief of the Journal posit some ideas on how legal scholarship engages with justice, and how race-conscious practitioners can interact with race-conscious legal scholars.


Gideon V. Wainwright A Half Century Later, Yale Kamisar Jan 2014

Gideon V. Wainwright A Half Century Later, Yale Kamisar

Reviews

When he was nearing the end of his distinguished career, one of my former law professors observed that a dramatic story of a specific case "has the same advantages that a play or a novel has over a general discussion of ethics or political theory." Ms. Houppert illustrates this point in her very first chapter.


Universalism And Civil Rights (With Notes On Voting Rights After Shelby), Samuel R. Bagenstos Jan 2014

Universalism And Civil Rights (With Notes On Voting Rights After Shelby), Samuel R. Bagenstos

Articles

After the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder, voting rights activists proposed a variety of legislative responses. Some proposals sought to move beyond measures that targeted voting discrimination based on race or ethnicity. They instead sought to eliminate certain problematic practices that place too great a burden on voting generally. Responses like these are universalist, because rather than seeking to protect any particular group against discrimination, they formally provide uniform protections to everyone. As Bruce Ackerman shows, voting rights activists confronted a similar set of questions—and at least some of them opted for a universalist approach—during the campaign …


What The Awards Tell Us About Labor Arbitration Of Employment Discrimination Claims, Ariana R. Levinson Apr 2013

What The Awards Tell Us About Labor Arbitration Of Employment Discrimination Claims, Ariana R. Levinson

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article contributes to the debate over mandatory arbitration of employment-discrimination claims in the unionized sector. In light of the proposed prohibition on union waivers in the Arbitration Fairness Act, this debate has significant practical implications. Fundamentally, the Article is about access to justice. It examines 160 labor arbitration opinions and awards in employment-discrimination cases. The author concludes that labor arbitration is a forum in which employment-discrimination claims can be-and, in some cases, are-successfully resolved. Based upon close examination of the opinions and awards, the Article recommends legislative improvements in certain cases targeting statutes of limitations, compulsory process, remedies, class …


Rights Lawyer Essentialism And The Next Generation Of Rights Critics, Alan K. Chen Apr 2013

Rights Lawyer Essentialism And The Next Generation Of Rights Critics, Alan K. Chen

Michigan Law Review

Richard Thompson Ford does not care much for the current state of civil rights. In his provocative new book, Rights Gone Wrong: How Law Corrupts the Struggle for Equality, Ford lends an original, if often misdirected, voice to the chorus of contemporary critics of the American legal regime of rights. Situating himself among "second generation" rights critics (p. 259), Ford lays out a comprehensive indictment of current approaches to civil rights litigation as well as civil rights activism. His work is both intriguing and provocative, and it raises a number of issues that are surely worth serious consideration and discussion. …


Criminal Justice, Local Democracy, And Constitutional Rights, Stephen J. Schulhofer Apr 2013

Criminal Justice, Local Democracy, And Constitutional Rights, Stephen J. Schulhofer

Michigan Law Review

Universally admired, and viewed with great affection, even love, by all who knew him, Harvard law professor Bill Stuntz died in March 2011 at the age of fifty-two, after a long, courageous battle with debilitating back pain and then insurmountable cancer. In a career that deserved to be much longer, Stuntz produced dozens of major articles on criminal law and procedure. He was a leader in carrying forward the work of scholars who had analyzed criminal justice through the lens of economic analysis, and he added his own distinctive dimension by insisting on the importance of political incentives, with their …


Review Of Corrective Justice, By E. Weinrib, Scott Hershovitz Jan 2013

Review Of Corrective Justice, By E. Weinrib, Scott Hershovitz

Reviews

I once heard it said of a famous philosopher of law that he never allowed his philosophy to be polluted by law. No one will ever say that about Ernie Weinrib. His latest book - Corrective Justice - is exceptional precisely because Weinrib is deeply informed about legal doctrine. Of course, he also has formidable philosophical skill, and in bringing that to bear on doctrine, he dismantles any thought that corrective justice is too abstract a concept to shed light on the practical problems that courts face. Along the way, he also demol­ ishes the instrumentalism that has recently dominated …


She Makes Me Ashamed To Be A Woman: The Genocide Conviction Of Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, 2011, Mark A. Drumbl Jan 2013

She Makes Me Ashamed To Be A Woman: The Genocide Conviction Of Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, 2011, Mark A. Drumbl

Michigan Journal of International Law

In the nearly twenty years since 1994, the international community and the Rwandan government have pushed to hold individual perpetrators accountable for the genocide. Judicialization has occurred at multiple levels. Over ninety persons-those deemed most responsible-have been indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), an ad hoc institution established by the U.N. Security Council in November 1994. Approximately ten thousand individuals have been prosecuted in specialized chambers of national courts in Rwanda. According to the Rwandan government, nearly two million people have faced neo-traditional gacaca proceedings conducted by elected lay judges throughout the country. Gacaca proceedings concluded in …


Courts Of Appeal And Colonialism In The British Caribbean: A Case For The Caribbean Court Of Justice, Ezekiel Rediker Jan 2013

Courts Of Appeal And Colonialism In The British Caribbean: A Case For The Caribbean Court Of Justice, Ezekiel Rediker

Michigan Journal of International Law

In recent years, a public debate on law and the colonial legacy has engaged people of all walks of life in the English Speaking Caribbean (ESC), from judges and politicians to young people in the streets. Throughout the ESC, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC)—based in London and composed of British jurists—has been the highest court of appeal since the colonial era. In the past decade, however, Caribbean governments have sought greater control over their legal systems. In 2005, they created the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) to supplant the British Privy Council as the Supreme Court for …


Is The Prosecution Of War Crimes Just And Effective? Rethinking The Lessons From Sociology And Psychology, Ziv Bohrer Jun 2012

Is The Prosecution Of War Crimes Just And Effective? Rethinking The Lessons From Sociology And Psychology, Ziv Bohrer

Michigan Journal of International Law

Should perpetrators of genocide, violent acts against civilians during war, or other massive violations of core human rights be punished? International criminal law (ICL) answers this question affirmatively, asserting that the punishment of such atrocities is just and that their effective prosecution can (and should) contribute to the prevention of such future acts. Moreover, an increasing attempt has been made in the international and domestic arenas to act in accordance with these assertions of ICL through the prosecution of war crimes. During the last two decades the role of ICL has become gradually more significant, and the fall of the …


Agency And Equity: Why Do We Blame Clients For Their Lawyers' Mistakes, Adam Liptak Apr 2012

Agency And Equity: Why Do We Blame Clients For Their Lawyers' Mistakes, Adam Liptak

Michigan Law Review

If you were to ask a child whether it would be fair to execute a prisoner because his lawyer had made a mistake, the answer would be no. You might even get a look suggesting that you had asked a pretty stupid question. But judges treat the issue as a hard one, relying on a theory as casually accepted in criminal justice as it is offensive to principles of moral philosophy. This theory holds that the lawyer is the client's agent. What the agent does binds the principal. But clients and lawyers fit the agency model imperfectly. Agency law is …


Facades Of Justice, Norman W. Spaulding Apr 2012

Facades Of Justice, Norman W. Spaulding

Michigan Law Review

Representing Justice is a book of encyclopedic proportions on the iconography of justice and the organization of space in which adjudication occurs. Professors Judith Resnik and Dennis Curtis have gathered a provocative array of images, ranging from the scales of the Babylonian god Shamash-"judge of heaven and earth"-on a 4,200-year-old seal (pp. 18- 19 & fig. 23), and a 600-year-old painting of Saint Michael weighing the souls at the Last Judgment with sword and scales in hand (p. 23 fig. 25) to the tiny Cook County Courthouse in Grand Marais, Minnesota, 110 miles north of Duluth (p. 372 fig. 226), …


Theorizing American Freedom, Anthony O'Rourke Apr 2012

Theorizing American Freedom, Anthony O'Rourke

Michigan Law Review

Some intellectual concepts once central to America's constitutional discourse are, for better and worse, no longer part of our political language. These concepts may be so alien to us that they would remain invisible without carefully reexamining the past to challenge the received narratives of America's constitutional development. Should constitutional theorists undertake this kind of historical reexamination? If so, to what extent should they be willing to stray from the disciplinary norms that govern intellectual history? And what normative aims can they reasonably expect to achieve by exploring ideas in our past that are no longer reflected in the Constitution's …


Remedying Wrongful Execution, Meghan J. Ryan Feb 2012

Remedying Wrongful Execution, Meghan J. Ryan

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The first legal determination of wrongful execution in the United States may very well be in the making in Texas. One of the state's district courts is in the midst of investigating whether Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in 2004, was actually innocent. The court's investigation has been interrupted by objections from Texas prosecutors, but if the court proceeds, this may very well become a bona fide case of wrongful execution. Texas, just like other jurisdictions, is ill equipped to provide any relief for such an egregious wrong, however. This Article identifies the difficulties that the heirs, families, and …