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Full-Text Articles in Law

Prosecutors Matter: A Response To Bellin’S Review Of Locked In, John P. Pfaff Jan 2018

Prosecutors Matter: A Response To Bellin’S Review Of Locked In, John P. Pfaff

Michigan Law Review Online

In this year's Book Review issue, Jeffrey Bellin reviews my book, Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform, and he finds much to disagree with. I appreciate the editors of the Law Review providing me with the opportunity to correct a significant error he makes when discussing some of my data. In the book, I use data from the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) to show that prosecutors filed increasingly more felony cases over the 1990s and 2000s, even as crime fell. Bellin makes two primary claims about how I used …


Why Arrest?, Rachel A. Harmon Dec 2016

Why Arrest?, Rachel A. Harmon

Michigan Law Review

Arrests are the paradigmatic police activity. Though the practice of arrests in the United States, especially arrests involving minority suspects, is under attack, even critics widely assume the power to arrest is essential to policing. As a result, neither commentators nor scholars have asked why police need to make arrests. This Article takes up that question, and it argues that the power to arrest and the use of that power should be curtailed. The twelve million arrests police conduct each year are harmful not only to the individual arrested but also to their families and communities and to society as …


Search Incident To Probable Cause?: The Intersection Of Rawlings And Knowles, Marissa Perry Jan 2016

Search Incident To Probable Cause?: The Intersection Of Rawlings And Knowles, Marissa Perry

Michigan Law Review

The search incident to arrest exception authorizes an officer to search an arrestee’s person and his or her area of immediate control. This exception is based on two historical justifications: officer safety and evidence preservation. While much of search incident to arrest doctrine is settled, tension exists between two Supreme Court cases, Rawlings v. Kentucky and Knowles v. Iowa, and a crucial question remains unanswered: Must an officer decide to make an arrest prior to commencing a search? In Rawlings, the Supreme Court stated that a search may precede a formal arrest if the arrest follows quickly thereafter. In Knowles, …


Process Costs And Police Discretion, Charlie Gerstein, J. J. Prescott Apr 2015

Process Costs And Police Discretion, Charlie Gerstein, J. J. Prescott

Articles

Cities across the country are debating police discretion. Much of this debate centers on “public order” offenses. These minor offenses are unusual in that the actual sentence violators receive when convicted — usually time already served in detention — is beside the point. Rather, public order offenses are enforced prior to any conviction by subjecting accused individuals to arrest, detention, and other legal process. These “process costs” are significant; they distort plea bargaining to the point that the substantive law behind the bargained-for conviction is largely irrelevant. But the ongoing debate about police discretion has ignored the centrality of these …


Racial Disparity In Federal Criminal Sentences, M. Marit Rehavi, Sonja B. Starr Dec 2014

Racial Disparity In Federal Criminal Sentences, M. Marit Rehavi, Sonja B. Starr

Articles

Using rich data linking federal cases from arrest through to sentencing, we find that initial case and defendant characteristics, including arrest offense and criminal history, can explain most of the large raw racial disparity in federal sentences, but significant gaps remain. Across the distribution, blacks receive sentences that are almost 10 percent longer than those of comparable whites arrested for the same crimes. Most of this disparity can be explained by prosecutors’ initial charging decisions, particularly the filing of charges carrying mandatory minimum sentences. Ceteris paribus, the odds of black arrestees facing such a charge are 1.75 times higher than …


Did Booker Increase Sentencing Disparity? Why The Evidence Is Unpersuasive, Sonja B. Starr Jan 2013

Did Booker Increase Sentencing Disparity? Why The Evidence Is Unpersuasive, Sonja B. Starr

Articles

The Sentencing Commission’s recent report on the effects of United States v.Booker makes a number of very worri- some claims.The most alarming is that the gap in sen- tences between otherwise similar Black and White men has nearly quadrupled: from 4.5 percent before Booker, to 15 percent after it, to 19.5 percent after United States v. Kimbrough and United States v.Gall. 1 The Commission further claims that interjudge disparity has increased in two-thirds of the federal districts, and that interdistrict variation has also increased.2 If its findings were accurate, and if these changes could be causally attributed to Booker and …


Limiting A Constitutional Tort Without Probably Cause: First Amendment Retaliatory Arrest After Hartman, Colin P. Watson Jan 2008

Limiting A Constitutional Tort Without Probably Cause: First Amendment Retaliatory Arrest After Hartman, Colin P. Watson

Michigan Law Review

Federal law provides a cause of action for individuals who are the target of adverse state action taken in retaliation for their exercise of First Amendment rights. Because these constitutional torts are "easy to allege and hard to disprove," they raise difficult questions concerning the proper balance between allowing meaningful access to the courts and protecting government agents from frivolous and vexatious litigation. In its recent decision in Hartman v. Moore, the U.S. Supreme Court tipped the scales in favor of the state in one subset of First Amendment retaliation actions by holding that plaintiffs in actions for retaliatory …


Criminal Justice And The 1967 Detroit 'Riot', Yale Kamisar Jan 2007

Criminal Justice And The 1967 Detroit 'Riot', Yale Kamisar

Articles

Forty years ago the kindling of segregation, racism, and poverty burst into the flame of urban rioting in Detroit, Los Angeles, Newark, and other U.S. cities. The following essay is excerpted from a report by Professor Emeritus Yale Kamisar filed with the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (the Kerner Commission) regarding the disorders that took place in Detroit July 23-28, 1967. The report provided significant material and was the subject of one article in the series of pieces on the anniversary of the disturbances that appeared last summer in The Michigan Citizen of Detroit. Immediately after the disturbances ended, …


Article 36 Of The Vienna Convention On Consular Relations: A Search For The Right To Consul, Mark J. Kadish Jan 1997

Article 36 Of The Vienna Convention On Consular Relations: A Search For The Right To Consul, Mark J. Kadish

Michigan Journal of International Law

This paper addresses Article 36 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, a treaty provision which is often violated by the United States.


Israel's Forty-Five Year Emergency: Are There Time Limits To Derogations From Human Rights Obligations?, John Quigley Jan 1994

Israel's Forty-Five Year Emergency: Are There Time Limits To Derogations From Human Rights Obligations?, John Quigley

Michigan Journal of International Law

This article analyzes the permissibility of such a derogation under the Covenant and under general international law. Part I of this article outlines the historical development of Israel's declaration of a continuous state of emergency and its justification for detention without trial. Part II examines international rules on detention and derogation. Part III establishes a standard for declaring a state of emergency and applies this standard to Israel's declaration, with respect both to Israel's own territory and to the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel. Finally, Part IV inquires whether Israel will apply the Covenant as a matter of domestic law.


The Pretext Search Doctrine: Now You See It, Now You Don't, John M. Burkoff Apr 1984

The Pretext Search Doctrine: Now You See It, Now You Don't, John M. Burkoff

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

One can only hope, to put it bluntly, that the Supreme Court majority in Villamonte-Marquez did not mean what it seemed to have said. Indeed, there is some evidence that this is precisely the case. In the same Term Villamonte-Marquez was decided, the Court also decided Texas v. Brown. In Brown, the Supreme Court continued to recognize and respond to the problem of pretext searches. In other words, the Court still acts as if the pretext search doctrine remains vital, despite the apparent body blow delivered to it in Scott and Villamonte-Marquez. The remainder of this Article …


How To Use, Abuse—And Fight Back With—Crime Statistics, Yale Kamisar Jan 1972

How To Use, Abuse—And Fight Back With—Crime Statistics, Yale Kamisar

Articles

Statistics have an almost magical appeal in a "fact"-minded culture such as ours, among a people conditioned and accustomed to watch for-and attach great significance to-even the smallest fluctuations in say, the unemployment rate. Hence, as Darrell Huff graphically demonstrated in his famous little book, How to Lie with Statistics (1954), they can be-and have been-manipulated to terrorize or calm, inflate or depreciate, and above all, to sensationalize and over simplify. As Harvard criminologist Lloyd Ohlin noted recently, statistics are especially potent when "they give a sense of solid reality (usually false) to something people vaguely apprehend and when they …


Searches Without Warrants, Jerold H. Israel Jan 1971

Searches Without Warrants, Jerold H. Israel

Book Chapters

My primary area of concentration today is the search made without a warrant. Studies indicate that 95 percent or more of all searches are without warrants. It is quite understandable, then, that most of the search-and-seizure litigation concerns the validity of searches without warrants.


National Study Of The Aftermath Of Apprehension, Martin Gold, Jay R. Williams Dec 1969

National Study Of The Aftermath Of Apprehension, Martin Gold, Jay R. Williams

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

It appears, unfortunately, that what legal authorities now commonly do upon apprehending a juvenile for his delinquent behavior is worse than not apprehending him at all. Two independent studies demonstrate that apprehension itself encourages rather than deters further delinquency. Such a conclusion constitutes a serious indictment of current procedures. This article documents that conclusion and, together with the reactions to these data of men professionally concerned with the problem of delinquency, suggests what might be done about this problem.


Aftermath Of Apprehension: Juvenile Court Judge's Response, John P. Steketee Dec 1969

Aftermath Of Apprehension: Juvenile Court Judge's Response, John P. Steketee

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

It would appear that juveniles find apprehension to be a reinforcement of their delinquent behavior. Being apprehended and questioned by the police, referred to juvenile court, meeting a probation officer, and going before a judge, not to mention the status one gains in one's group from police and/or court contact, can be a very significant chain of events for many adolescents who have never known the excitement of personal recognition by parents, school officials or even friends. For the first time, they are recognized and listened to, albeit for the wrong reasons. The attention need not be positive; shouting, scolding, …


Aftermath Of Apprehension: Family Lawyer's Response, Robert F. Drinan S.J. Dec 1969

Aftermath Of Apprehension: Family Lawyer's Response, Robert F. Drinan S.J.

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

It is contended here that Gold and Williams' statement of their thesis in National Study of the Aftermath of Apprehension that "apprehension itself encourages rather than deters further delinquency" is not what their research proves. The research proves rather that the revelation of the apprehension to the delinquent's parents without the consent of the youth apprehended is the real cause of the youth's further delinquency. Stated more precisely, it is the attitude of the parents towards the youth who has been apprehended by the police which is the critical factor in encouraging or deterring the youth from further delinquency.


Aftermath Of Apprehension: Social Scientist's Response, Richard B. Stuart Dec 1969

Aftermath Of Apprehension: Social Scientist's Response, Richard B. Stuart

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Gold and Williams suggest in National Study of the Aftermath of Apprehension that "It appears, unfortunately, that what legal authorities commonly do upon apprehending a juvenile for his delinquent behavior is worse than not apprehending him at all." If this conclusion is correct, and it is the result of two interrelated studies, then it should influence sweeping programmatic reforms in the social institutions concerned with promoting and safeguarding the development of youth. The intent of this article is to suggest avenues available for this reform both within and beyond the juvenile justice system. Before addressing the implications of the research, …


The Administration Of Justice In The Wake Of The Detroit Civil Disorder Of July 1967, Michigan Law Review May 1968

The Administration Of Justice In The Wake Of The Detroit Civil Disorder Of July 1967, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Early Sunday morning, July 23, 1967, the Detroit Police Department raided a "blind pig" at the corner of Twelfth Street and Clairmont Street. An unexpectedly large number of patrons were present at the after-hours drinking establishment, and it took the police over an hour to remove them all from the scene. The weather was warm and humid-despite the time, many people were still on the streets. A crowd of about two hundred gathered while the police were occupied with the individuals arrested in the raid. The last of the arrestees were removed shortly after 5:00 a.m. At that moment an …


Criminal Law In Action- Carrying Concealed Weapons - Chicago Statistics, John Barker Waite Nov 1933

Criminal Law In Action- Carrying Concealed Weapons - Chicago Statistics, John Barker Waite

Michigan Law Review

Lawyers are beginning to recognize, though slowly, that enforcement and administration of law are affected more by the psychological conditioning and the character of its administrators than by the content of the law itself. This basis of difference is well demonstrated by some data of Chicago criminal court operations as compared with similar proceedings before Detroit judges.


Report On Criminal Statistics, Lent D. Upson Nov 1931

Report On Criminal Statistics, Lent D. Upson

Michigan Law Review

Among the reports of the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement, probably none received so little public attention as that on criminal statistics. Statistics, even of the criminal variety, are dull at the best, and not calculated to whet the imagination. One murder may be the basis of a printed volume of gory details and misleading clues with everybody suspected from the parish curate to the author himself. But murders by the gross or bale leave all unmoved except the most hardened editorial commentator.


The Collection Of Criminal Statistics In The United States, Raymond Moley May 1928

The Collection Of Criminal Statistics In The United States, Raymond Moley

Michigan Law Review

It is well known to those who have attempted to secure final reliable and significant statistical data concerning crime and the enforcement of the criminal law in the United States that only the barest outline of the American crime problem is shown by the data now obtainable. Such diversity exists among recording agencies that we can not safely compare cities and states in the amount of crime reported to the police; the characteristics of these crimes or of those arrested for their crimes are so inadequately kept that little sociological data are available; we can not from material now published …