Law Commons^™

The Case For Extending Pretrial Diversion To Include Possession Of Child Pornography, Sarah J. Long

University of Massachusetts Law Review

Pretrial diversion removes offenders with a low-risk of reoffending from the penal system and instead sends them to supervised treatment programs. The result is lower cost to the state and a second chance for those who successfully complete the program. Typically, violent crimes, such as murder and attempted murder, are exempt from pretrial diversion. Notably, sex related crimes are also ineligible in all jurisdictions. By excluding all sex-related crimes from pretrial diversion, possession of child pornography is adjudicated by the courts. As a result, young, first-time offenders who may be candidates for treatment are bundled with physical offenders, members of …

Passing The Torch But Sailing Too Close To The Wind: Congress’S Role In Authorizing Administrative Branches To Promulgate Regulations That Contemplate Criminal Sanctions, Reem Sadik

Legislation and Policy Brief

The Supreme Court has stated that Congress must simply “lay down by legislative act an intelligible principle” to which the agency must conform. If this is done, a court will find the delegation of broad authority to the agency to be constitutional. There is, however, an open issue regarding whether the “intelligible principle” standard applies to delegations of authority that allow for the promulgation of both civil and criminal penalties. In Touby v. United States, the Supreme Court was asked whether “something more than an ‘intelligible principle’ is required” when Congress authorizes an agency to issue regulations that contemplate …

Virginia's Gap Between Punishment And Culpability: Re-Examining Self-Defense Law And Battered Women's Syndrome, Kendall Hamilton

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Mexico's Legal Revolution: An Appraisal Of Its Recent Constitutional Changes, 1988-1995, Jorge A. Vargas

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Troubled Waters: Diana Nyad And The Birth Of The Global Rules Of Marathon Swimming, Hadar Aviram

Hadar Aviram

On September 3, 2013, Diana Nyad reported having completed a 110-mile swim from Cuba to Florida. The general enthusiasm about her swim was not echoed in the marathon swimming community, whose members expressed doubts about the integrity and honesty of the swim. The community debate that followed gave rise to the creation of the Global Rules of Marathon Swimming, the first effort to regulate the sport. This Article uses the community’s reaction to Nyad’s deviance to examine the role that crime and deviance plays in the creation and modification of legal structures. Relying on Durkheim’s functionalism theory, the Article argues …

Expressive Enforcement, Avlana Eisenberg

Scholarly Publications

Laws send messages, some of which may be heard at the moment of enactment. But much of a law’s expressive impact is bound up in its enforcement. Although scholars have extensively debated the wisdom of expressive legislation, their discussions in the context of domestic criminal law have focused largely on enactment-related messaging, rather than on expressive enforcement. This Article uses hate crime laws—the paradigmatic example of expressive legislation—as a case study to challenge conventional understandings of the messaging function of lawmaking. The Article asks: How do institutional incentives shape prosecutors’ enforcement decisions, and how do these decisions affect the message …

Friend Or Faux: The Trademark Counterfeiting Act's Inability To Stop The Sale Of Counterfeit Sporting Goods, Jennifer Riso

Jennifer Riso

The demand for counterfeit sporting goods, such as jerseys and other apparel, is on the rise as the prices of authentic goods continue to increase. The Trademark Counterfeiting Act of 1984 criminalizes the import and sale of counterfeit goods, but is ineffective at addressing the demand side of counterfeit goods. This paper analyzes the history behind the Act and recommends ways to ensure that the act will stay relevant as technology makes it easier to purchase counterfeit goods.

Racking Up The Money: A Solution To The Ongoing Battle Between Rico And The Revenue Rule, Kye C. Handy

Kye C Handy

The Revenue Rule, a common law rule from British court systems, prevents foreign countries from bringing claims in the United States to enforce or adjudicate tax claims that did not happen in the United States. The Supreme Court in Pasquantino v. United States held that Canada’s right to collect imported liquor taxes was not barred by the Revenue Rule. However, the Second Circuit in European Community v. RJR Nabisco Inc., ruled the European Union and Colombia could not recover lost tax money or enforcement costs from cigarette smuggling under RICO because of the Revenue Rule. The European Community petitioned the …

Catalogs, Gideon Parchomovsky, Alex Stein

All Faculty Scholarship

It is a virtual axiom in the world of law that legal norms come in two prototypes: rules and standards. The accepted lore suggests that rules should be formulated to regulate recurrent and frequent behaviors, whose contours can be defined with sufficient precision. Standards, by contrast, should be employed to address complex, variegated, behaviors that require the weighing of multiple variables. Rules rely on an ex ante perspective and are therefore considered the domain of the legislator; standards embody a preference for ex post, ad-hoc, analysis and are therefore considered the domain of courts. The rules/standards dichotomy has become a …

You Booze, You Bruise, You Lose: Analyzing The Constitutionality Of Florida’S Involuntary Blood Draw Statute In The Wake Of Missouri V. Mcneely, Francisco D. Zornosa

Francisco D Zornosa

No abstract provided.

Continuous Contamination: How Traditional Criminal Restitution Principles And Section 2259 Undermine Cleaning Up The Toxic Waste Of Child Pornography, Mary Margaret Giannini

Mary Margaret Giannini

Bounties For Bad Behavior: Rewarding Culpable Whistleblowers Under The Dodd-Frank Act And Internal Revenue Code, Jennifer M. Pacella

Jennifer M. Pacella, Esq.

In 2012, Bradley Birkenfeld received a $104 million reward or “bounty” from the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) for blowing the whistle on his employer, UBS, which facilitated a major offshore tax fraud scheme by assisting thousands of U.S. taxpayers to hide their assets in Switzerland. Birkenfeld does not fit the mold of the public’s common perception of a whistleblower. He was himself complicit in this crime and even served time in prison for his involvement. Despite his conviction, Birkenfeld was still eligible for a sizable whistleblower bounty under the IRS Whistleblower Program, which allows rewards for whistleblowers who are convicted …

Kaleidoscopic Chaos: Understanding The Circuit Courts’ Various Interpretations Of § 2255’S Savings Clause, Jennifer L. Case

Jennifer L. Case

More than 65 years ago, Congress enacted a short statute (codified at 28 U.S.C. § 2255) to even the habeas corpus workload among the federal courts. That statute included a “Savings Clause,” which allows prisoners to challenge their convictions and sentences in a federal habeas petition when § 2255 is “inadequate or ineffective” for the task. Since that time—and with increasing frequency—the U.S. Courts of Appeals have developed wildly varying tests to determine when and how § 2255’s Savings Clause applies to prisoners’ attempts to bring federal habeas petitions under 28 U.S.C. § 2241.

In their attempts to understand the …

The Evolution Of The Digital Millennium Copyright Act; Changing Interpretations Of The Dmca And Future Implications For Copyright Holders, Hillary A. Henderson

Hillary A Henderson

Copyright law rewards an artificial monopoly to individual authors for their creations. This reward is based on the belief that, by granting authors the exclusive right to reproduce their works, they receive an incentive and means to create, which in turn advances the welfare of the general public by “promoting the progress of science and useful arts.” Copyright protection subsists . . . in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or …

The Criminalization Of Consensual Adult Sex After Lawrence, Richard Broughton

Richard Broughton

Ten years after the Supreme Court’s supposedly momentous decision in Lawrence v. Texas, the case still confounds not merely constitutional law, but the criminal law of sex, as well. This Article seeks to advance the literature on both Lawrence and the criminal law by examining Lawrence’s impact upon sex crimes that involve consensual, private, non-prostitution conduct between adults. It positions Lawrence as a relatively conservative opinion as to sex crimes generally, especially in light of the “Exclusions Paragraph” on page 578 of the Court’s opinion. Still, Lawrence (albeit ambiguously) must protect some form of private, consensual, non-prostitution adult sexuality beyond …

Beyond Paroline: Ensuring Meaningful Remedies For Child Pornography Victims At Home And Abroad, W. Warren H. Binford

W. Warren H. Binford

This article considers how the United States could fulfill its international treaty obligations to support the full restoration of child pornography victims in the aftermath of the recent decision of the United States Supreme Court in Paroline v. United States. The article details how the United States provided leadership historically in creating a skeletal legal framework domestically and internationally to help combat child pornography and restore victims, and highlights how that framework is failing victims on a near-universal basis in an age dominated by technological innovation and globalization. The article proposes the adoption and implementation of effective domestic and international …

Grounding Drones: Big Brother’S Tool Box Needs Regulation Not Elimination, Melanie M. Reid

Melanie M. Reid

One of the most significant contemporary issues in privacy law relates to law enforcement’s new domestic surveillance tool: unmanned aerial vehicles, also known as, drones. Law enforcement’s use of aerial surveillance as an investigatory tool is currently under attack. In the past, if law enforcement chose to follow a suspect throughout the day, either on the ground or in the air, they need not worry about seeking a warrant or determining whether probable cause or reasonable suspicion exists to justify their surveillance. Aerial surveillance of criminal suspects has been considered outside the protections of Fourth Amendment law. In the 1980’s, …