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Full-Text Articles in Law
Punishment Without Culpability, John F. Stinneford
Punishment Without Culpability, John F. Stinneford
John F. Stinneford
For more than half a century, academic commentators have criticized the Supreme Court for failing to articulate a substantive constitutional conception of criminal law. Although the Court enforces various procedural protections that the Constitution provides for criminal defendants, it has left the question of what a crime is purely to the discretion of the legislature. This failure has permitted legislatures to evade the Constitution’s procedural protections by reclassifying crimes as civil causes of action, eliminating key elements (such as mens rea) or reclassifying them as defenses or sentencing factors, and authorizing severe punishments for crimes traditionally considered relatively minor. The …
Qualified Immunity And Statutory Interpretation, Ilan Wurman
Qualified Immunity And Statutory Interpretation, Ilan Wurman
Seattle University Law Review
Before the 1989 case of Graham v. Connor, excessive force cases were pursued under either state law or the insuperable “shocks the conscience” test of the Fourteenth Amendment. Only after Graham did excessive force cases—now under the Fourth Amendment and 42 U.S.C. § 1983—inundate the federal courts, which had by then granted far-reaching immunities to officers for their constitutional torts. As a result of federal qualified immunity doctrine, which many states have adopted for themselves, excessive force cases rarely get to trial, plaintiffs often cannot recover, and courts struggle to find principled distinctions from one qualified immunity case to the …
Taxing Judicial Restraint: How Washington's Supreme Court Misinterpreted Its Role And The Washington State Constitution, Nicholas Carlson
Taxing Judicial Restraint: How Washington's Supreme Court Misinterpreted Its Role And The Washington State Constitution, Nicholas Carlson
Seattle University Law Review
In the realm of constitutional interpretation, the judicial department reigns supreme. League of Education Voters v. State exemplifies the judiciary’s potential abuse of its interpretative role: The Washington Supreme Court misinterpreted its judicial function because it ignored the text of Washington State’s constitution and held a statute unconstitutional. The court, therefore, voided a statute because of judicial volition, not because Washington’s constitution demanded that outcome. This Note challenges the reasoning in League and makes a novel suggestion for Washington State constitutional analysis, an approach that may apply to other states. This Note details a new analytical framework for constitutional analysis …