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Full-Text Articles in Law
Revisiting Beccaria's Vision: The Enlightenment, America's Death Penalty, And The Abolition Movement, John Bessler
Revisiting Beccaria's Vision: The Enlightenment, America's Death Penalty, And The Abolition Movement, John Bessler
All Faculty Scholarship
In 1764, Cesare Beccaria, a 26-year-old Italian criminologist, penned On Crimes and Punishments. That treatise spoke out against torture and made the first comprehensive argument against state-sanctioned executions. As we near the 250th anniversary of its publication, law professor John Bessler provides a comprehensive review of the abolition movement from before Beccaria's time to the present. Bessler reviews Beccaria's substantial influence on Enlightenment thinkers and on America's Founding Fathers in particular. The Article also provides an extensive review of Eighth Amendment jurisprudence and then contrasts it with the trend in international law towards the death penalty's abolition. It then discusses …
Aedpa, Saucier, And The Stronger Case For Rights-First Constitutional Adjudication, Stephen I. Vladeck
Aedpa, Saucier, And The Stronger Case For Rights-First Constitutional Adjudication, Stephen I. Vladeck
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
As part of a symposium on new affirmative visions of the judicial role, this essay takes on the Supreme Court's increasing unwillingness to resolve constitutional questions in post-conviction habeas cases under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), as seen in decisions such as Wright v. Van Patten, 128 S. Ct. 743 (2008). In most cases in which AEDPA applies, a petitioner is only eligible for relief if a state court's constitutional error was unreasonable based on prior Supreme Court decisions (and not dicta). As a result, the Court has repeatedly concluded that a state court did …
No Room Left For Doubt: New Revelation About Guantánamo, Marc D. Falkoff
No Room Left For Doubt: New Revelation About Guantánamo, Marc D. Falkoff
College of Law Faculty Publications
Recent release orders, statements by some military lawyers and judges, and the military’s own admission of detention mistakes all confirm that the only way for the Obama administration to restore our legal system’s legitimacy in the eyes of the world will be to close down Guantánamo, scrap the ill-conceived military commissions, and charge in federal court those prisoners we think committed crimes.... More revelations about the illegitimacy of the Bush administration’s war-on-terror detention system have cascaded into the public consciousness this week. This new round of disclosures and court decisions should give pause to those who have joined the fashionable …
Discrimination, Coercion, And The Bail Reform Act Of 1984: The Loss Of The Core Constitutional Protections Of The Excessive Bail Clause, Samuel R. Wiseman
Discrimination, Coercion, And The Bail Reform Act Of 1984: The Loss Of The Core Constitutional Protections Of The Excessive Bail Clause, Samuel R. Wiseman
Scholarly Publications
No abstract provided.
Rethinking The Federal Role In State Criminal Justice, Nancy J. King, Joseph L. Hoffmann
Rethinking The Federal Role In State Criminal Justice, Nancy J. King, Joseph L. Hoffmann
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This Essay argues that federal habeas review of state criminal cases squanders resources the federal government should be using to help states reform their systems of defense representation. A 2007 empirical study reveals that federal habeas review is inaccessible to most state prisoners convicted of non-capital crimes, and offers no realistic hope of relief for those who reach federal court. As a means of correcting or deterring constitutional error in non-capital cases, habeas is failing and cannot be fixed. Drawing upon these findings as well as the Supreme Court's most recent decision applying the Suspension Clause, the authors propose that …
Last Best Chance For The Great Writ: Equitable Tolling And Federal Habeas Corpus, Anne R. Traum
Last Best Chance For The Great Writ: Equitable Tolling And Federal Habeas Corpus, Anne R. Traum
Scholarly Works
This Article examines an important unsettled question in federal habeas law: whether equitable tolling is available under the statute of limitations applicable to federal habeas petitions filed by state prisoners. The answer to this question will determine access to federal judicial review of thousands of prisoners’ claims that their convictions resulted from violations of their federal constitutional rights in state courts. In twelve cases reviewing the statute of limitations under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (“AEDPA”), the Supreme Court has curtailed the availability of statutory tolling of the limitations period. Equitable tolling of the statute of …
Guantánamo, Habeas Corpus, And Standards Of Proof: Viewing The Law Through Multiple Lenses, Matthew C. Waxman
Guantánamo, Habeas Corpus, And Standards Of Proof: Viewing The Law Through Multiple Lenses, Matthew C. Waxman
Faculty Scholarship
The Supreme Court held in Boumediene v. Bush that Guantánamo detainees have a constitutional right to habeas corpus review of their detention, but it left to district courts in the first instance responsibility for working through the appropriate standard of proof and related evidentiary principles imposed on the government to justify continued detention. This article argues that embedded in seemingly straightforward judicial standard-setting with respect to proof and evidence are significant policy questions about competing risks and their distribution. How one approaches these questions depends on the lens through which one views the problem: through that of a courtroom concerned …
Procedural Obstacles To Reviewing Ineffective Assistance Of Trial Counsel Claims In State And Federal Postconviction Proceedings., Eve Brensike Primus
Procedural Obstacles To Reviewing Ineffective Assistance Of Trial Counsel Claims In State And Federal Postconviction Proceedings., Eve Brensike Primus
Articles
Ineffective assistance of trial counsel is one of the most frequently raised claims in state and federal postconviction petitions. This is hardly surprising given reports of trial attorneys who refuse to investigate their cases before trial, never meet with their clients before the day of trial, and fail to file any motions or object to inadmissible evidence offered at trial. Unfortunately, the current structure of indigent defense funding makes it impossible for many public defenders to provide effective representation to their clients.