Law Commons^™

Strengthening Democracy: The Challenge Of Public Interest Law, Scott Harshbarger

Maine Law Review

The Twelfth Annual Frank M. Coffin Lecture on Law and Public Service was held in the fall of 2003. Scott Harshbarger, former President of Common Cause and Massachusetts Attorney General, delivered the lecture. Established in 1992, the lecture honors Judge Frank M. Coffin, Senior Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, an inspiration, mentor, and friend to the University of Maine School of Law.

Clash Of The Titans: A Comparative Approach To Reform Of Judicial Accountability In Egypt, Shams Al Din Al Hajjaji

Seattle University Law Review

This Article argues for the reform of judicial accountability rules in Egypt. The lack of a real separation of powers and “checks and balances” between the three powers often leads the judiciary to become a periphery in the executive body, rather than an independent authority that invigilates and monitors any violation of the law. Judges who refuse to comply with executive wishes are often subjected to persecution from the Ministry of Justice and its Judicial Inspection Department, which can reach up to the level of impeachment. The Ministry of Justice uses judicial accountability as a tool of retribution over disobedient …

The Role Of Religiously Affiliated Law Schools In The Renewal Of American Democracy, Bruce Ledewitz

University of Massachusetts Law Review

American Democracy has broken down. This crisis was on dramatic display in the 2016 Presidential Campaign. Americans are resentful, distrustful and pessimistic. We find it easy to blame “the other side” for the deadlock, mendacity and irresponsibility in American public life. By virtue of their public role, American law schools have an obligation to address the breakdown in order to understand and try to ameliorate it. That task is currently unfulfilled by law schools individually and collectively. They are distracted by marketing and pedagogy. Religious law schools, which retain the traits of normative discourse, mission, Truth and tragic limit to …

Manifesto Of Democratic Criminal Justice, Joshua Kleinfeld

Northwestern University Law Review

It is widely recognized that the American criminal system is in a state of crisis, but views about what has gone wrong and how it could be set right can seem chaotically divergent. This Essay argues that, within the welter of diverse views, one foundational, enormously important, and yet largely unrecognized line of disagreement can be seen. On one side are those who think the root of the present crisis is the outsized influence of a vengeful, poorly informed, or otherwise wrongheaded American public and the primary solution is to place control over the criminal system in the hands of …

Local Democracy, Community Adjudication, And Criminal Justice, Laura I. Appleman

Northwestern University Law Review

Many of our criminal justice woes can be traced to the loss of the community’s decisionmaking ability in adjudicating crime and punishment. American normative theories of democracy and democratic deliberation have always included the participation of the community as part of our system of criminal justice. This type of democratic localism is essential for the proper functioning of the criminal system because the criminal justice principles embodying substantive constitutional norms can only be defined through community interactions at the local level. Accordingly, returning the community to its proper role in deciding punishment for wrongdoers would both improve criminal process and …

A Criminal Law We Can Call Our Own?, R A Duff

Northwestern University Law Review

This Essay sketches an ideal of criminal law—of the kind of criminal law that we can call our own as citizens of a democratic republic. The elements of that ideal include a republican theory of liberal democracy, as the kind of polity in which we can aspire to live; an account of the role of criminal law in such a polity, as defining a set of public wrongs and providing an appropriate formal, public response to the commission of such wrongs through the criminal process of trial and punishment; and a discussion of how the citizens of such a polity …

Fragmentation And Democracy In The Constitutional Law Of Punishment, Richard A. Bierschbach

Northwestern University Law Review

Scholars have long studied the relationship of structural constitutional principles like checks and balances to democracy. But the relationship of such principles to democracy in criminal punishment has received less attention. This Essay examines that relationship and finds it fraught with both promise and peril for the project of democratic criminal justice. On the one hand, by blending a range of inputs into punishment determinations, the constitutional fragmentation of the punishment power can enhance different types of influence in an area in which perspective is of special concern. At the same time, the potentially positive aspects of fragmentation can backfire, …

Three Principles Of Democratic Criminal Justice, Joshua Kleinfeld

Northwestern University Law Review

This Essay links criminal theory to democratic political theory, arguing that the view of criminal law and procedure known as “reconstructivism” shares a common root with certain culturally oriented forms of democratic theory. The common root is the valorization of a community’s ethical life and the belief that law and government should reflect the ethical life of the community living under that law and government. This Essay then specifies three principles that are entailed by the union of democracy and reconstructivism and that should therefore characterize a democracy’s approach to criminal justice: the “moral culture principle of criminalization,” the “principle …

Criminal Justice That Revives Republican Democracy, John Braithwaite

Northwestern University Law Review

Criminal justice seems an implausible vehicle for reviving democracy. Yet democracy is in trouble. It is embattled by money politics and populist tyrannies of majorities, of which penal populism is just one variant. These pathologies of democracy arise from democracy having become too remote from the people. A new democracy is needed that creates spaces for direct deliberative engagement and for spaces where children learn to become democratic. A major role for restorative justice is one way to revive the democratic spirit through creating such spaces.

Tracking Democratization: Insights For Planners, Stanley J. Wiechnik

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

No abstract provided.

A Taxonomy Of Independent Electoral Reapportionment Systems, James Ruley

Indiana Journal of Constitutional Design

This paper addresses a means of checking legislative gerrymandering, which I have called the Independent Electoral Reapportionment Commission (IERC). Its purpose is to prevent self-interested politicians from drawing biased constituency lines. While scholars have researched gerrymandering, few scholars have researched commissions designed to limit such gerrymandering, and no comprehensive work details the global means of accomplishing this goal.

Thus, the purpose of this paper is not to normatively prescribe the best practices for composing and empowering an IERC, but rather to descriptively show how different countries conduct this process. While Part II makes some determinations about which commissions may conceptually …

A Lawyer's Experience In K-12 Law-Related Education: Lessons And Opportunities, David A. Scott

Journal of Experiential Learning

No abstract provided.

Sunlight And Shadows: Louis D. Brandeis On Privacy, Publicity, And Free Expression In American Democracy, Erin Coyle

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.