Law Commons^™

“No Superior But God”: History, Post Presidential Immunity, And The Intent Of The Framers, Trace M. Maddox

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

This essay is directly responsive to one of the most pressing issues currently before the courts of the United States: the question of whether former Presidents enjoy immunity from criminal prosecution for acts they committed in office. Building upon the recent ruling of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in United States v. Trump, 91 F.4th 1173 (D.C. Cir. 2024) this essay argues that the clear answer to that question is a resounding “no”.

Former President Trump, who has now appealed the D.C. Circuit’s ruling to the Supreme Court, contends that post-presidential criminal immunity is …

The Post-Dobbs Reality: Privacy Expectations For Period-Tracking Apps In Criminal Abortion Prosecutions, Sophie L. Nelson

Pepperdine Law Review

The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey in June 2022 was met with waves of both support and criticism throughout the United States. Several states immediately implemented or began drafting trigger laws that criminalize seeking and providing an abortion. These laws prompted several period-tracking app companies to encrypt their users’ data to make it more difficult for the government to access period- and pregnancy-related information for criminal investigations. This Comment explores whether the Fourth Amendment and U.S. privacy statutes protect users of period-tracking apps from government surveillance. More specifically, this Comment argues that …

Progressive Facade: How Bail Reforms Expose The Limitations Of The Progressive Prosecutor Movement, Sarah Gottlieb

Washington and Lee Law Review

Progressive prosecutors have been acclaimed as the new hope for change in the criminal legal system. Advocates and scholars touting progressive prosecution believe that progressive prosecutors will use their power and discretion to address systemic racism and end mass incarceration. Just as this hope has arisen, however, so have concerns that meaningful change cannot be enacted within the criminal system by the very actors whose job it is to incarcerate. This Article highlights these concerns by looking at the bail reforms enacted by four different progressive prosecutors and analyzes the initial promises made, the actions taken to reform and eliminate …

The Reckless Tolerance Of Unsafe Autonomous Vehicle Testing: Uber's Culpability For The Criminal Offense Of Negligent Homicide, Helen Stamp

Journal of Law, Technology, & the Internet

When Elaine Herzberg was struck and killed by an Uber autonomous vehicle on a public road in Arizona in 2018, sole criminal responsibility fell on the Uber employee operating the vehicle. Uber escaped all criminal accountability despite evidence of flawed vehicle technology and Uber’s non-existent safety culture. This lack of accountability is confronting given that legislators and courts in Arizona, and in other States, have consistently supported criminal sanctions for corporations who are culpable for the offense of negligent homicide.

The criminal proceedings against the Uber vehicle operator were settled in July 2023, closing off the court’s ability to consider …

Facing The Music: How The Face Act Harms, Rather Than Helps, The Post-Dobbs Abortion Movement, Kyriaki "Kiki" Council

University of Colorado Law Review

No abstract provided.

Progressive Prosecution, Sherry Boston, Rachel Foran, Deborah Gonzalez

Georgia Criminal Law Review

No abstract provided.

To The Court Of Last Resort: A Prosecutorial Roadmap In The Aftermath Of State Violence In Chile And Colombia, David F. Scollan

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

A great deal of academic research and writing has been done on the most glaring examples of war crimes and crimes against humanity. But, only a small cadre of authors have endeavored to identify the ‘lower limit’ of when state action qualifies as these heinous acts. This Note strives to add to that area of legal scholarship aimed at bringing instances of in-country state perpetrated violence out from the behind the veil of sovereign police action and into the spotlight to call them what they are: crimes worthy of international condemnation and punishment. Specifically, this Note unpacks two spasms of …

Prosecuting The Mob: Using Rico To Create A Domestic Extremism Statute, Samuel D. Romano

Washington and Lee Law Review

In 2021, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas asserted that “[d]omestic violent extremism is the greatest terrorist-related threat” facing the United States. Although domestic extremism is often characterized as a lone wolf threat, it is frequently spurred on by white supremacist and neo-Nazi organizations that use the internet to radicalize their members and then avoid accountability by hiding behind constitutional protections—a strategy called “leaderless resistance.” This strategy results in devastating consequences. While the number of hate groups and hate crimes in the United States have risen to record highs, constitutional protections prevent domestic extremist organizations from being treated the same …

Sb 44 - Expanding The Street Gang Terrorism And Prevention Act, Aaron L. Brown, Anna C. Dillon

Georgia State University Law Review

The Act enhances penalties for violations of the Street Gang Terrorism and Prevention Act, including imposing mandatory minimums, and preserves the State’s right to appeal a court’s deviation from the mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines provided in the Act. The Act also imposes limits on the use of unsecured judicial release.

The Insider: Laura Coates’S Just Pursuit And Critiquing Prosecution From Within, Dana Mulhauser

Saint Louis University Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Sb 92 - Establishing A Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission, Abigail C. Sisson, Erica L. Welsh

Georgia State University Law Review

The Act establishes a Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission to discipline, remove, and require the involuntary retirement of appointed or elected state prosecutors found to be in violation of their duties, and adds additional duties for state prosecutors to conduct individual reviews of cases where probable cause exists.

K-Pop’S Secret Weapon: South Korea’S Criminal Defamation Laws, Rebecca Xu

San Diego International Law Journal

South Korea’s criminal defamation laws have long been considered an intrusion on the free speech rights of citizens, especially in regard to the usage by politicians against their opponents and journalists to suppress criticisms. This Comment considers the history and effects of these controversial defamation laws through the lens of recent scandals within the Korean entertainment industry, where regular citizens accusing Korean celebrities of past school violence are confronted with threats of defamation charges. To highlight the controversial nature of such laws, comparisons will be drawn between South Korea and other countries to highlight the restrictive nature of Korea’s laws.

Prosecution In Public, Prosecution In Private, Lauren M. Ouziel

Notre Dame Law Review

Criminal procedure has long set a boundary between public and private in criminal enforcement: generally speaking, enforcement decisions at the post-charging stage are exposed to some degree of public view, while those at the pre-charging stage remain almost entirely secret. The allocation of public and private is, at heart, an allocation of power—and the current allocation is a relic. When private prosecutors were the mainstay of criminal enforcement, public court processes effectively constrained them. But those processes do little to constrain the spaces where enforcement power today resides: in decisions by the servants of a state-run, professionalized enforcement apparatus on …

Nohwere, Peter A. Alces, Robert M. Sapolsky

William & Mary Law Review

Imagine the frustration of Samuel Butler’s protagonist, Higgs, with the strange society he encounters in Erewhon:

"Was there nothing which I could say to make them feel that the constitution of a person’s body was a thing over which he or she had had at any rate no initial control whatever, while the mind was a perfectly different thing, and capable of being created anew and directed according to the pleasure of its possessor? Could I never bring them to see that while habits of mind and character were entirely independent of initial mental force and early education, the body …

Hb 1134: Amendments To The Georgia Street Gang Terrorism And Prevention Act, Alex Norton, Sam Collier

Georgia State University Law Review

The Act amends the Georgia Street Gang Terrorism and Prevention Act to provide the attorney general with concurrent authority to prosecute criminal gang activity alongside local prosecuting attorneys in Georgia. Modeled after a similar act that created concurrent authority for the attorney general to prosecute human trafficking crimes, the Act seeks to enhance the government’s investigation and prosecution of gang crimes in the state by making the effort more corroborative, coordinated, and multi-jurisdictional.

Human Trafficking Of People With A Disability: An Analysis Of State And Federal Cases, Andrea Nichols, Erin Heil

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

The current academic discourse examining human trafficking is lacking in focus on survivors with a disability. The increased likelihood of abuse experienced by people with a disability is well documented in the research literature, and a small body of research indicates heightened sex trafficking victimization of minor girls with a disability. Yet, very little research specifically examines sex and/or labor trafficking of people with a disability, and no systematic research analyzes prosecuted cases of trafficking with disability as the focal point of analysis. Drawing from a content analysis of 18 federal and 17 state cases of human trafficking, the current …

Failed Interventions: Domestic Violence, Human Trafficking, And The Criminalization Of Survival, Alaina Richert

Michigan Law Review

Over the last decade, state legislators have enacted statutes acknowledging the link between criminal behavior and trauma resulting from domestic violence and human trafficking. While these interventions take a step in the right direction, they still have major shortcomings that prevent meaningful relief for survivor-defendants. Until now, there has been no systematic overview of the statutes that require courts to consider a defendant’s history of trauma in the contexts of domestic violence and human trafficking. There has also been no attempt to explore how these statutes relate to each other. This Note fills those gaps. It also identifies essential elements …

Southern Harm: Analyzing The Criminal Enforcement Of Environmental Law In The Southern United States, 1983-2019, Joshua Ozymy, Melissa L. Jarrell

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

When violations of environmental laws involve significant harm or culpable conduct, the application of criminal enforcement tools is required. Yet, our understanding of how environmental laws have been criminally enforced historically in the Southern United States remains poor. Our goal is to analyze historical charging and sentencing patterns and show the broader themes that emerge in environmental crime prosecutions over time in the region. Through content analysis of all 2,588 criminal prosecutions resulting from U.S. EPA criminal investigations, 1983–2019, we select all 799 prosecutions occurring in the Southern United States. Results show that 44% of prosecutions focus on water pollution, …

The Missing Algorithm: Safeguarding Brady Against The Rise Of Trade Secrecy In Policing, Deborah Won

Michigan Law Review

Trade secrecy, a form of intellectual property protection, serves the important societal function of promoting innovation. But as police departments across the country increasingly rely on proprietary technologies like facial recognition and predictive policing tools, an uneasy tension between due process and trade secrecy has developed: to fulfill Brady’s constitutional promise of a fair trial, defendants must have access to the technologies accusing them, access that trade secrecy inhibits. Thus far, this tension is being resolved too far in favor of the trade secret holder—and at too great an expense to the defendant. The wrong balance has been struck.

This …

Informed Consent: Disclosure Of The Presentence Investigation Report Before A Guilty Plea, George D. Bell

University of Miami Law Review

The Constitution bestows upon all accused persons the right to a trial by jury, the right to confront accusers, the right to remain silent, and the right to be presumed innocent. The law requires waiver of these rights to be done voluntarily, with the fullest possible knowledge of material consequences. Punishment is possibly the most material consequence of a guilty plea, yet criminal defendants who pleaded guilty are forced to relinquish their rights before punishment is determined. Our jurisprudence of due process prohibits this kind of practice, but it is routine in Federal court. For a guilty plea to comport …

Plea Bargains: Justice For The Wealthy And Fear For The Innocent, Emily Stauffer

Brigham Young University Prelaw Review

The Supreme Court has consistently recognized the hardships of the poor in the criminal justice system and has set a precedent that if a person cannot afford access to any level of the criminal justice system, the state must remove that financial barrier. Prosecutorial tactics in the plea-bargaining process coerce the poor into waiving their right to trial. The unequal access to trial between the poor and non-poor violates the Fourteenth Amendment, which requires that states remove any barrier that restricts the poor from the criminal justice system. The Court has left the states to decide which solutions will work …

Equal Prosecution For All: Violent Extremism At The Intersection Of Hate Crime And Terrorism, Gabrielle Leeman

American University National Security Law Brief

After a white supremacist used his vehicle as a weapon to purposefully attack anti-racism protestors in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017, federal officials called the incident domestic terrorism. The incident, in fact, met the definition of domestic terrorism. But the perpetrator was not prosecuted under any of the available terrorism statutes. The defendant was instead charged with, and later pled guilty to, committing hate crimes. It is imperative that we recognize all forms of terrorism as terrorism and use the legal system fairly to prosecute all terrorist attacks as terrorism. But the current terrorism statutory framework hinders the ability to prosecute …

Redefining Sex Offenders: The Fight To Break The Bias Of Female Sex Offenders, Norma Hamilton

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

Racial Bias Still Exists In Criminal Justice System? A Review Of Recent Empirical Research, Yu Du

Touro Law Review

The debate on whether racial bias is still embedded in the criminal justice (CJ) system today has reached its plateau. One recent article in the Washington Post has claimed an overwhelming evidence of racial bias in the CJ system. Whereas some scholars argue that racial disparity is an epitome of real crime rates, others indicate that implicit and/or explicit racial bias against Blacks held by law enforcement agents persists in the system. This review considers both supporting arguments and relevant counterarguments. After evaluating empirical and rigorous research during the past five years, the review maintains that racial bias still exists …

Preserving Due Process: Require The Frye And Daubert Expert Standards In State Gang Cases, Fareed Nassor Hayat

New Mexico Law Review

Police officers are almost universally offered and admitted as experts in gang prosecutions. Without being subjected to the stringent requirements of Frye and Daubert expert standards, criminal Defendants’ due process rights are violated. Once admitted, police officers are permitted to testify to the psychology, customs, motivations, social structures and subjective mental states of individual gang members and gang organizations. Police gang expert testimony should only be admitted after the underlying criminal matter has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt, and even then, only if the police gang expert testimony abides by clearly defined rules of evidence. This article advocates for …

Till Death Do Us Part: The Legal Remedies Of Sexual Assault In Marriage - Or Lack Thereof, Kaylyn Presley

The Arkansas Journal of Social Change and Public Service

No abstract provided.

In Re Government Attorney-Client Privilege: A Categorical Rule To Settle The Issue, Luke Charette

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

This Note explores the reasoning and factors used by each of the federal circuits in deciding whether or not to uphold attorney-client privilege between the government and the lawyers representing it. After considering those factors, this Note argues that there should be a categorical rule that neither a state nor the federal government may invoke the attorney-client privilege in response to a criminal grand jury subpoena. To justify this conclusion, this Note outlines how current government attorney-client privilege case law, as well as the policy underpinnings of the privilege itself, dictate that a categorical rule is appropriate.

Dalliances, Defenses, And Due Process: Prosecuting Sexual Harassment In The Me Too Era, Kenneth Lasson

University of Massachusetts Law Review

This Article will likewise examine the prosecution of sexual harassment in what has come to be called the Me Too Era, not only by analyzing the constitutional application and limitations of due process, the promulgation of Title IX policies4 on campuses and their effect on public students and employees, and the limited remedies available to workers in private entities, but to suggest as well ways by which academics can move their message beyond theory and into pragmatic solutions with greater impact.

Restorative Prosecution? Rethinking Responses To Violence, Olivia Dana, Sherene Crawford

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Hard Truths Of Progressive Prosecution And A Path To Realizing The Movement’S Promise, Seema Gajwani, Max G. Lesser

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.