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Full-Text Articles in Law

Notice(Ing) Ex-Offenders: A Case Study Of The Manifest Injustice Of Passively Violating A "Felon-In-Possession" Statute, S. David Mitchell Jan 2015

Notice(Ing) Ex-Offenders: A Case Study Of The Manifest Injustice Of Passively Violating A "Felon-In-Possession" Statute, S. David Mitchell

Faculty Publications

Changing a law and criminalizing formerly legal conduct without providing notice of the change and without providing a reasonable period of time for the offending individual to comply with the change not only violates due process but is also manifestly unjust, especially given the scope and breadth of the collateral consequences that attach upon a felony conviction, such as the loss of the right to vote, to serve on a jury, or to receive certain benefits. With the far-reaching impact of a felony conviction on all areas of an individual's life, the maxim that "ignorance of the law excuses no …


Systemic Barriers To Effective Assistance Of Counsel In Plea Bargaining, Rodney J. Uphoff, Peter A. Joy Jul 2014

Systemic Barriers To Effective Assistance Of Counsel In Plea Bargaining, Rodney J. Uphoff, Peter A. Joy

Faculty Publications

In a trio of recent cases, Padilla v. Kentucky, Missouri v. Frye, and Lafler v. Cooper, the U.S. Supreme Court has focused its attention on defense counsel's pivotal role during the plea bargaining process . At the same time that the Court has signaled its willingness to consider ineffective assistance of counsel claims at the plea stage, prosecutors are increasingly requiring defendants to sign waivers that include waiving all constitutional and procedural errors, even unknown ineffective assistance of counsel claims such as those that proved successful in Padilla and Frye. Had Jose Padilla and Galin Frye been forced to sign …


Limits Of Procedural Choice Of Law, S. I. Strong Jan 2014

Limits Of Procedural Choice Of Law, S. I. Strong

Faculty Publications

Commercial parties have long enjoyed significant autonomy in questions of substantive law. However, litigants do not have anywhere near the same amount of freedom to decide procedural matters. Instead, parties in litigation are generally considered to be subject to the procedural law of the forum court.

Although this particular conflict of laws rule has been in place for many years, a number of recent developments have challenged courts and commentators to consider whether and to what extent procedural rules should be considered mandatory in nature. If procedural rules are not mandatory but are instead merely “sticky” defaults, then it may …


Debacle: How The Supreme Court Has Mangled American Sentencing Law And How It Might Yet Be Mended, Frank O. Bowman Iii Jan 2010

Debacle: How The Supreme Court Has Mangled American Sentencing Law And How It Might Yet Be Mended, Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

This Article argues that the line of Supreme Court Sixth Amendment jury right cases that began with McMillan v. Pennsylvania in 1986, crescendoed in Blakely v. Washington and United States v. Booker in 2004-2005, and continued in 2009 in cases such as Oregon v. Ice, has been a colossal judicial failure. First, the Court has failed to provide a logically coherent, constitutionally based answer to the fundamental question of what limits the Constitution places on the roles played by the institutional actors in the criminal justice system. It failed to recognize that defining, adjudicating and punishing crimes implicates both the …


Function Over Formalism: A Provisional Theory Of The Constitutional Law Of Crime And Punishment, Frank O. Bowman Iii Oct 2004

Function Over Formalism: A Provisional Theory Of The Constitutional Law Of Crime And Punishment, Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

This Article is, in effect, the second half of the author's argument against the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Sixth Amendment in Blakely v. Washington. The first half appeared in "Train Wreck? Or Can the Federal Sentencing System Be Saved? A Plea for Rapid Reversal of Blakely v. Washington," 41 American Criminal Law Review 217 (2004), and made a pragmatic, consequentialist argument against the Blakely result. This Article takes the next step of providing an alternative constitutional model of criminal sentencing to that offered by Justice Scalia in Blakely. The model emphasizes that a good constitutional model should pay particular …


The Case Of A Lifetime, Richard C. Reuben Apr 1994

The Case Of A Lifetime, Richard C. Reuben

Faculty Publications

There is great difficulty in defining pro bono lawyering. The classic model is the practitioner who devotes time to representing a client in a civil or criminal matter. But some consider other legal relationships pro bono as well, such as service on the boards of directors of nonprofit organizations, legal work at reduced fees, and activities that improve the law and legal profession. In the case of organizations such as the ACLU and the NAACP LDF, pro bono means a mixture of much of the above, as public interest law firms work hand in hand with private lawyers and firms …


Statutory Prohibitions On The Negotiation Of Insurance Agent Commissions: Substantive Due Process Review Under State Constitutions, Robert H. Jerry Ii, Reginald L. Robinson Jan 1990

Statutory Prohibitions On The Negotiation Of Insurance Agent Commissions: Substantive Due Process Review Under State Constitutions, Robert H. Jerry Ii, Reginald L. Robinson

Faculty Publications

In Part I, this Article examines and categorizes the state statutes that prohibit an insurance agent from returning a portion of his commission for the sale of the policy to the consumer. Part II discusses substantive due process' in the state courts. After briefly summarizing the rise and fall of federal substantive due process, this part explores the use of state constitutions as independent constitutional authority in the area of economic regulation. This part concludes that two distinct models of substantive due process analysis exist in the state courts. Part III comments on two recent cases where the validity of …