Law Commons^™

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.

Our Broken Misdemeanor Justice System: Its Problems And Some Potential Solutions, Eve Brensike Primus

Reviews

Although misdemeanors comprise an overwhelming majority of state criminal court cases, little judicial and scholarly attention has been focused on how misdemeanor courts actually operate. In her article, Misdemeanors, Alexandra Natapoff rights this wrong and explains how the low-visibility, highly discretionary decisions made by actors at the misdemeanor level often result in rampant discrimination, incredible inefficiency, and vast miscarriages of justice. Misdemeanors makes a significant contribution to the literature by refocusing attention on the importance of misdemeanor offenses and beginning an important dialogue about what steps should be taken going forward to fix our broken misdemeanor justice system.

Still Photographs In The Flow Of Time, Richard D. Friedman

Reviews

Rarely is an image of the actual moment of death captured and preserved. When it is, as in the famous photographs of President John F Kennedy's assassination or of the summary execution of a Viet Cong officer by a South Vietnamese police chief,4 it is haunting. Even photographs of the moment before sudden death have great power-whether death is totally unexpected (as in a photograph of Luis Donaldo Colosio campaigning for the presidency of Mexico just before his assassination'), planned (as in a photograph of a man bound in an electric chair awaiting execution6 ), or in doubt and anticipated …

Miranda: The Case, The Man, And The Players, Yale Kamisar

Reviews

On the eve of America's bicentennial, the American Bar Association told its members of a plan to publish a book about the "milestone events" in 200 years of American legal history, and invited them to vote on the milestones to be included. When the balloting was over, Miranda v. Arizona1 - "the high-water mark" of the Warren Court's revolution in American criminal procedure2 - had received the fourth highest number of votes.3 I venture to say that if members of the general public had been asked to list the "most regrettable" or "most unfortunate" milestones in American legal history, Miranda …

Review Of Criminology, By E. H. Sutherland, John B. Waite

Reviews

Professor Waite muses that "It seems rather unfair for a lawyer to review a textbook on criminology, especially as the author himself says, and quite truly, 'Little attention has been paid by law schools, lawyers, or judges to the improvement of the criminal law....'"

Happily: "...[T]he reviewer finds nothing but good to say of the book" (once he gets past how thin the paper is) and gives the reader a generous listing of chapters in the first paragraph.