Law Commons^™

Prisoner's Rights And The Correctional Scheme: The Legal Controversy And Problems Of Implementation - A Symposium - Introduction, Donald W. Dowd

Donald W. Dowd

No abstract provided.

Skyjacking: Problems And Potential Solutions - Introduction, Donald W. Dowd

Donald W. Dowd

No abstract provided.

Who Should Own Police Body Camera Videos?, Laurent Sacharoff, Sarah Lustbader

Laurent Sacharoff

Should Agencies Enforce?, Max J. Minzner

Max Minzner

This Article explores an important but understudied structural choice: the decision to vest enforcement authority in administrative agencies. Each year, agencies routinely bring enforcement actions producing billions of dollars in civil penalties and industry-reshaping consent decrees. Where do they get this power? Congress grants enforcement authority to administrative agencies because it believes that agency subject matter expertise will generate appropriate enforcement choices. Similarly, the Supreme Court has strongly deferred to agency enforcement because it sees it as intimately intertwined with other agency regulatory decisions. Scholars have also generally taken for granted that specialist agencies will be enforcement experts because they …

Understanding Crime Under Capitalism: A Critique Of American Criminal Justice And Introduction To Marxist Jurisprudence, Steven E. Gilmore

Steven E Gilmore

Crashing Into The Unknown: An Examination Of Crash Optimization Algorithms Through The Two Lanes Of Ethics And Law, Jeffrey K. Gurney

Jeffrey K Gurney

Autonomous vehicles will encounter situations where an accident is truly unavoidable, requiring the vehicle to decide whom or what to hit. In such situations, the vehicle will make difficult ethical decisions based upon its programming — more specifically, how its crash-optimization algorithm is programmed.This Article examines crash-optimization algorithms from an ethical and legal standpoint through the lenses of six moral dilemmas. Ethically, the Article focuses specifically on utilitarian and Kantian ethics. Legally, the Article considers the tort and criminal law implications of crash-optimization algorithms.In addition, the Article discusses whether autonomous vehicles should even make ethical decisions. Concluding that they should …

Vilifying The Vigilante: A Narrowed Scope Of Citizen's Arrest, Ira P. Robbins

Ira P. Robbins

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 …

The Vanishing Female: The Decline Of Women In The Criminal Process, 1687-1912, Malcolm M. Feeley, Deborah L. Little

Malcolm Feeley

No abstract provided.

The New Penology: Notes On The Emerging Strategy Of Corrections And Its Implications, Malcolm M. Feeley, Jonathan Simon

Malcolm Feeley

The new penology argues that an important new language of penology is emerging. This new language, which has its counterparts in other areas of the law as well, shifts focus away from the traditional concerns of the criminal law and criminology, which have focused on the individual, and redirects it to actuarial consideration of aggregates. This shift has a number of important implications: It facilitates development of a vision or model of a new type of criminal process that embraces increased reliance on imprisonment and that merges concerns for surveillance and custody, that shifts away from a concern with punishing …

Mistaken Eyewitness Identifications In Maryland, David Aaronson, Julia Fox

David Aaronson

No abstract provided.

Unenumerated Rights And The Limits Of Analogy: A Critque Of The Right To Medical Self-Defense, O. Carter Snead

O. Carter Snead

Volokh’s project stands or falls with the claim that the entitlement he proposes is of constitutional dimension. If there is no fundamental right to medical self-defense, the individual must, for better or worse, yield to the regulation of this domain in the name of the values agreed to by the political branches of government. Indeed, the government routinely restricts the instrumentalities of self-help (including self-defense) in the name of avoiding what it takes to be more significant harms. This same rationale accounts for current governmental limitations on access to unapproved drugs and the current ban on organ sales. The FDA …

Privately Failing: Recidivism In Public And Private Prisons, Lee N. Gilgan

Lee N Gilgan

This study would add to available research regarding recidivism rates following incarceration in private prisons in contrast to incarceration in government-run prisons. This is a non-experimental meta-analysis viewing numerous studies discussing the effects of multiple covariants within public and private prisons. Based on the information and conclusion in these studies, we find that there is little overall consensus concerning the effects of increased privatization on recidivism. While many studies find certain aspects of privatization to have some potential effect on recidivism, there are many other aspects that either are out of scope or have a negative effect on recidivism. However, …

Designing Trial Avoidance Procedures For Post-Conflict, Civil Law Countries: Is German Absprachen An Appropriate Model For Efficient Criminal Justice In Afghanistan?, Nasiruddin Nezaami

Nasiruddin Nezaami

In Afghanistan, overflow of court dockets and lengthy trials persist despite recent reforms effected through a new Criminal Procedure Code. The new Code has solved some of the problems that existed prior to its ratification; however, it has failed to establish adequate trial avoidance procedures. This problem is further compounded by the dissatisfaction of parties with trial outcomes. This article suggests that Afghanistan could address both issues by adopting a mechanism similar to German Absprachen as an appropriate case disposing procedure, enabling party consensus, helping courts decrease their dockets, and reducing the length of trials. This analysis is not only …

Telling Tales In School: Youth Culture And Conflict Narratives, Calvin Morrill, Madelaine Adelman, Michael Musheno, Cindy Bejarano

Calvin Morrill

This study departs from mainstream criminology to approach youth conflict and violence from a youth-centered perspective drawn from cultural studies of young people and sociolegal research. To access youth orientations, we analyze experiential stories of peer conflict written by students at a multiethnic, low-income high school situated in an urban core of the western United States. We argue that youth narratives of conflict offer glimpses into how young people make sense of conflict in their everyday lives, as well as insights as to how the images and decisional bases embedded in their storytelling connect to adult-centered discourses found in popular …

Rapid Dna Testing, Robert M. Sanger

Robert M. Sanger

In 2010, the FBI began the process of encouraging the development of Rapid DNA testing. Rapid DNA testing involves a fully automated process of developing a “short tandem repeat” (STR) profile from a reference sample. The process consists of automated extraction, amplification, separation, detection and allele calling without human intervention. In other words, it is a quick, hands free method of obtaining a DNA profile.

In this article we will look at this new and expanding area of scientific technology. We will also look at the efforts to regulate it and maintain appropriate scientific standards as well as the issues …

Penal Policy And Penal Legislation In Recent American Experience, Franklin E. Zimring

Franklin E. Zimring

offers a look on the origins and careers of proposals for penal legislation in a time of radical change in the U.S. Descriptions of where penal policy is made in the U.S. governmental system; Information on issues of quality control in shaping, passing, implementing and reviewing penal legislation in recent U.S. experience; Role of penal legislation in changing penal practices in the past generation.

Interessi Corrispettivi E Moratori, Tasso-Soglia Usura E Clausola Penale, Valerio Sangiovanni

Valerio Sangiovanni

No abstract provided.

To Furman Or Not To Furman, Robert M. Sanger

Robert M. Sanger

In capital litigation, the United States Supreme Court in Furman v. Georgia and following cases required capital punishment systems to have a form of "narrowing" so that the death penalty was imposed only on the worst of the worst. The death penalty states have failed to successfully implement this concept. As a result, "narrowing" is currently raised in all capital cases by competent defense counsel both at trial and in post conviction litigation. It is raised in addition to all other issues, including issues related to the questions of whether exclusion from the death penalty should be expanded and whether …

Decisions Rules And Conduct Rules: On Acoustic Separation In Criminal Law, Meir Dan-Cohen

Meir Dan-Cohen

No abstract provided.

New Opportunities For Defense Attorneys: How Record Preservation Requirements In The 1996 Habeas Bill Expand Defense Strategies, Andrea Lyon

Andrea D. Lyon

No abstract provided.

In Case Of Confession, Andrea Lyon

Andrea D. Lyon

No abstract provided.

Giving Mental Culpability The Bird: How State V. Bird Secures The Presumption That Traffic Offenses Are Strict Liability, Jonathan R. Hornok, Mariah L. Hornok

Jonathan R. Hornok

The Utah Supreme Court, in its recent opinion in State v. Bird (Bird II), 2015 UT 7, 345 P.3d 1141, has put to rest a decade’s long error in Utah Traffic Code case law. Overturning prior Utah Court of Appeals precedent in State v. Vialpando, 2004 UT App 95, 89 P.3d 209, and State v. Bird (Bird I), 2012 UT App 239, 286 P.3d 11, the high court declared that traffic offenses are presumed to be strict liability.

Driving Into The Unknown: Examining The Crossroads Of Criminal Law And Autonomous Vehicles, Jeffrey K. Gurney

Jeffrey K Gurney

This Article examines the application of criminal law to autonomous vehicles. The Article applies the general purposes of punishment to criminal laws which intersect with autonomous vehicles. These laws include: (1) rules of the road; (2) driving under the influence; (3) reckless driving; (4) vehicular manslaughter; (5) location specific crimes; and (6) physical and virtual interference with a vehicle. This Article provides an overview of how a violation of these criminal laws will be treated under current criminal law, and then it argues that current law should be amended because the current application of criminal and traffic laws to autonomous …

Sections 299 And 300 Of The Penal Code: A Revisit And Further Suggested Amendments, Jonathan Muk, Rachel Chin

Jonathan Muk

Iq, Intelligence Testing, Ethnic Adjustments And Atkins, Robert M. Sanger

Robert M. Sanger

Dualism And Doctrine, Alex Stein, Dov Fox

Alex Stein

What kinds of harm among those that tortfeasors inflict are worthy of compensation? Which forms of self-incriminating evidence are privileged against government compulsion? What sorts of facts constitute a criminal defendant’s intent? Existing doctrine pins the answer to all of these questions on whether the injury, facts, or evidence at stake are “mental” or “physical.” The assumption that operations of the mind are meaningfully distinct from those of the body animates fundamental rules in our law.

A tort victim cannot recover for mental harm on its own because the law presumes that he is able to unfeel any suffering arising …

Catalogs, Alex Stein, Gideon Parchomovsky

Alex Stein

It is a virtual axiom in the world of law that legal norms come in two prototypes: rules and standards. The accepted lore suggests that rules should be formulated to regulate recurrent and frequent behaviors, whose contours can be defined with sufficient precision. Standards, by contrast, should be employed to address complex, variegated, behaviors that require the weighing of multiple variables. Rules rely on an ex ante perspective and are therefore considered the domain of the legislator; standards embody a preference for ex post, ad-hoc, analysis and are therefore considered the domain of courts. The rules/standards dichotomy has become a …

The Criminalization Of Walking, Michael Lewyn

Michael E Lewyn

Because walking improves human health and reduces pollution, one might think that the law should encourage walking and discourage driving But in fact, criminal law sometimes punishes walkers, in two major respects. First, state and city laws against something often referred to as “jaywalking” limit walkers’ ability to cross streets. As a result of these laws, police can fine (and even arrest) walkers. Second, bureaucrats and police sometimes interpret child neglect laws to mean that preteen children may never walk on their own, and have sometimes arrested child pedestrians' parents or sought to place the children in state care. This …

Crime Victims And Offenders Face To Face: An Overview Of The Tdcj Victim Offender Mediation/Dialogue, Richard B. Keeton

Richard B. Keeton, Esq.

This paper focuses on the Victim Offender Mediation/Dialogue program unique to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Victim offender mediation is "a process that provides interested victims an opportunity to meet their offender, in a safe and structured setting, and engage in a mediated discussion of the crime." The goal is to hold offenders directly accountable for their actions while providing support and assistance to the victims. With the assistance of a trained mediator, the victim is able to tell the offender about the crime's physical, emotional, and financial impact, while receiving answers to lingering questions about the crime and …