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Full-Text Articles in Law

Prison’S Spoilt Identities: Racially Structured Realities Within And Beyond, Nafis Hanif Nov 2008

Prison’S Spoilt Identities: Racially Structured Realities Within And Beyond, Nafis Hanif

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article begins by seeking an explanation for the solidarity between Malay inmates and guards in perpetrating abusive and discriminatory treatment towards Malay transvestites. In the course of explaining an empirical phenomenon in the Singapore prison, this article has examined Singapore's history and ethnic demography, the ethnic Malay minority's lack of socio-economic development and modernisation vis-a-vis the ethnic Chinese majority, geo-politics, the ideology and strategic choices of the state's political elite and their implications for inter-ethnic interactions between Malays and Chinese. As this article will argue, prison culture, rather than being divorced from larger society, is in effect able to …


Torture, Truth Serum, And Ticking Bombs: Toward A Pragmatic Perspective Of Coercive Interrogation, Kenneth Lasson Jan 2008

Torture, Truth Serum, And Ticking Bombs: Toward A Pragmatic Perspective Of Coercive Interrogation, Kenneth Lasson

All Faculty Scholarship

The 'War on Terror' has prompted a great deal of discussion about the use of torture as a means of extracting information from those suspected of having perpetrated past acts of violence or planning future ones. Despite the years that have passed since the attacks of September 11, 2001, for both citizens and government officials there is still a strong tension between the competing emotions of anger, revenge, and desperation; it seems increasingly difficult to adhere to international norms governing a nation's moral and legal obligations to protect its citizens from grave danger while continuing to support individual freedoms. Among …


Jail Strip-Search Cases: Patterns And Participants, Margo Schlanger Jan 2008

Jail Strip-Search Cases: Patterns And Participants, Margo Schlanger

Articles

Among Marc Galanter’s many important insights is that understanding litigation requires understanding its participants. In his most-cited work, Why the “Haves” Come Out Ahead, Galanter pioneered a somersault in the typical approach to legal institutions and legal change: Most analyses of the legal system start at the rules end and work down through institutional facilities to see what effect the rules have on the parties. I would like to reverse that procedure and look through the other end of the telescope. Let’s think about the different kinds of parties and the effect these differences might have on the way the …


'The Devil Is In The Details': A Continued Dissection Of The Constitutionality Of Faith-Based Prison Units, Lynn S. Branham Jan 2008

'The Devil Is In The Details': A Continued Dissection Of The Constitutionality Of Faith-Based Prison Units, Lynn S. Branham

All Faculty Scholarship

Faith-based prison units can afford prisoners who choose to be housed in them the concentrated and sustained spiritual nourishment that they believe they need to grow spiritually or in other ways. But critics claim that these units abridge the Establishment Clause. This Article debunks two of the arguments most frequently asserted against the constitutionality of faith-based units. The first is that prisoners cannot exercise a "true private choice" in the "inherently coercive" environment of a prison to live in such a unit. But court decisions confirm that confinement does not abnegate the voluntariness of other decisions made by prisoners, such …


Preserving The Rule Of Law In America's Jails And Prisons: The Case For Amending The Prison Litigation Reform Act, Margo Schlanger, Giovanna Shay Jan 2008

Preserving The Rule Of Law In America's Jails And Prisons: The Case For Amending The Prison Litigation Reform Act, Margo Schlanger, Giovanna Shay

Articles

Prisons and jails pose a significant challenge to the rule of law within American boundaries. As a nation, we are committed to constitutional regulation of governmental treatment of even those who have broken society’s rules. And accordingly, most of our prisons and jails are run by committed professionals who care about prisoner welfare and constitutional compliance. At the same time, for prisons—closed institutions holding an ever-growing disempowered population—most of the methods by which we, as a polity, foster government accountability and equality among citizens are unavailable or at least not currently practiced. In the absence of other levers by which …