Law Commons^™

Prison Abolition And Grounded Justice, Allegra M. Mcleod

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article introduces to legal scholarship the first sustained discussion of prison abolition and what I will call a “prison abolitionist ethic.” Prisons and punitive policing produce tremendous brutality, violence, racial stratification, ideological rigidity, despair, and waste. Meanwhile, incarceration and prison-backed policing neither redress nor repair the very sorts of harms they are supposed to address—interpersonal violence, addiction, mental illness, and sexual abuse, among others. Yet despite persistent and increasing recognition of the deep problems that attend U.S. incarceration and prison-backed policing, criminal law scholarship has largely failed to consider how the goals of criminal law—principally deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation, and …

Sexual Assaults Among University Students: Prevention, Support, And Justice, Rebecca B. Reingold, Lawrence O. Gostin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Sexual assault is common among college-aged women (18 to 25 years), with 1 in 5 reporting having experienced these crimes during their college years. Acute and long-term consequences of sexual assault may include physical trauma, sexually transmitted infections, posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, and substance abuse. Survivors have the option of reporting assaults to the university or to the police, but the goals of these 2 systems—and women’s experiences with them—can be quite different. The criminal justice system’s principal aim is to adjudicate guilt, but the university has the broader purpose of fostering a safe learning environment.

This article explores how …

Terrorism Trials In Article Iii Courts, Laura K. Donohue

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Some individuals reject Article III courts as a forum for bringing terrorist suspects to justice on the grounds that the ordinary judicial system cannot handle such cases. As an empirical matter, this claim is simply false. Since 2001, myriad terrorism trials have progressed through the criminal system. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) reports that between 2001 and 2010, there were 998 defendants indicted in terrorism prosecutions. Eighty-seven percent of the defendants were convicted on at least one charge. According to the Executive Office for the U.S. Attorneys, from FY 2004 to FY 2009, there were 3,010 terrorism prosecutions. It …

Ambiguous-Purpose Statements Of Children And Other Victims Of Abuse Under The Confrontation Clause, Paul F. Rothstein

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The author examines in this paper two kinds of ambiguous-purpose out-of-court statements that are especially problematic under current Confrontation law--problematic in ways that we hope will be solved directly or indirectly by the Supreme Court when it renders its decision in Ohio v. Clark. The statements he examines are:

(1) Statements made by abused children concerning their abuse, for example to police, physicians, teachers, welfare workers, baby sitters, or family members, some of whom may be under a legal duty to report suspected abuse to legal authorities. At least some of these statements will be directly addressed by the …

Comment: The Doctrine Of Chances, Brides Of The Bath And A Reply To Sean Sullivan, Paul F. Rothstein

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The ‘Doctrine of Chances’ is a doctrine of probability that purports to solve an apparent logical conundrum or contradiction in the law of Evidence.

It is the author's thesis in this article that the doctrine of chances—in any acceptable logical form including that described by Mr. Sullivan—does properly describe when this kind of ‘other wrongs’ evidence is relevant, and how probative it is, but that relevance and probative value where this kind of proof is offered does depend on propensity reasoning even under these theories even in the cases where they say it does not. He is not simply arguing …