Law Commons^™

Fifty State Survey Of Criminal Laws Prohibiting Sexual Abuse Of Individuals In Custody, Brenda V. Smith

The Project on Addressing Prison Rape - Surveys

This document provides information regarding enacting state, statute number, statute title, coverage, definition and notes, penalties, and defenses (if given) for criminal laws prohibiting sexual abuse of inmates by staff.

E Proper Remedy For Possession Of Child Pornography: Shifting From Restitution To A Victims Compensation Program, Michelle Minarcik

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Dilemma Of Piratical Ransoms: Should They Be Paid Or Not: On The Human Rights Of Kidnapped Seamen And Their Families, Barry H. Dubner, Kimberly Chavers

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Online Mental Disability Law Education, A Disability Rights Tribunal, And The Creation Of An Asian Disability Law Database: Their Impact On Research, Training And Teaching Of Law, Criminology Criminal Justice In Asia, Michael L. Perlin, Heather Ellis Cucolo, Yoshikazu Ikehara

Articles & Chapters

Two professors at New York Law School (NYLS) and the director of the Tokyo Advocacy Law Office are engaged in initiatives with the potential to have major influences on the study of law, criminology, and criminal justice: the creation of a Disability Rights Tribunal for Asia and the Pacific (DRTAP), and expansion of NYLS’s online mental disability law program (OMDLP) to include numerous Asian venues.

DRTAP seeks to create a sub-regional body (a Commission and eventually a Court) to hear violations of the UN’s Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. This will explicitly inspire scholarship about issues such …

Madness Alone Punishes The Madman: The Search For Moral Dignity In The Court's Competency Doctrine As Applied In Capital Cases, J. Amy Dillard

All Faculty Scholarship

The purposes of the competency doctrine are to guarantee reliability in criminal prosecutions, to ensure that only those defendants who can appreciate punishment are subject to it, and to maintain moral dignity, both actual and apparent, in criminal proceedings. No matter his crime, the “madman” should not be forced to stand trial. Historically, courts viewed questions of competency as a binary choice, finding the defendant either competent or incompetent to stand trial. However, in Edwards v. Indiana, the Supreme Court conceded that it views competency on a spectrum and offered a new category of competency — borderline-competent. The Court held …

Reflections From The International Criminal Court Prosecutor, Fatou B. Bensouda

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Today I would like to introduce the idea of a new paradigm in international relations, which was introduced by the work of the drafters of the Rome Statute and the establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC): this idea is that of law as a global tool to contribute to the world's peace and security. This idea first surfaced with the belief that the power of law has the capacity to redress the balance between the criminals who wield power and the victims who suffer at their hands. Law provides power for all regardless of their social, economic, or political …

Book Review: Gary Botting, Extradition Between Canada And The United States (Ardsley: Transnational Publishers, 2005), Robert Currie

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Both domestic and international laws regarding the extradition of fugitive criminal offenders are in a state of flux throughout the world. The current legal landscape reflects tension between the interest of state authorities in promoting “security,” on the one hand, and increasing recognition that human rights obligations are at play, on the other. Gary Botting’s book, Extradition Between Canada and the United States, successfully addresses this tension by way of a detailed examination of what is probably the most integrated extradition partnership outside the European Union.

Comparative Law And International Human Rights Law: Non-Retroactivity And Lex Certa In Criminal Law, Kenneth S. Gallant

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

And Death Shall Have No Dominion: How To Achieve The Categorical Exemption Of Mentally Retarded Defendants From Execution, J. Amy Dillard

All Faculty Scholarship

This article examines the Court’s categorical exclusion of mentally retarded defendants from execution and explores how trial courts should employ procedures to accomplish heightened reliability in the mental retardation determination; it maintains that if a mentally retarded defendant is subjected to a death sentence then the Atkins directive has been ignored. To satisfy the Atkins Court’s objective of protecting mentally retarded defendants from the “special risk of wrongful execution,” the article explores whether trial courts should engage in a unified, pre-trial competency assessment in all capital cases where the defendant asserts mental retardation as a bar to execution and how …

Advantaging Aggressors: Justice & Deterrence In International Law, Paul H. Robinson, Adil Ahmad Haque

All Faculty Scholarship

Current international law imposes limitations on the use of force to defend against unlawful aggression that improperly advantage unlawful aggressors and disadvantage their victims. The Article gives examples of such rules, governing a variety of situations, showing how clearly unjust they can be. No domestic criminal law system would tolerate their use.

There are good practical reasons why international law should care that its rules are perceived as unjust. Given the lack of an effective international law enforcement mechanism, compliance depends to a large degree upon the moral authority with which international law speaks. Compliance is less likely when its …

Alternatives To Criminalization Of Hiv Transmission And Exposure, Aziza Ahmed

Aziza Ahmed

No abstract provided.

Torture And The Interrogation Of Detainees, James P. Terry

Campbell Law Review

Following the September 11, 2001, attack on the United States by al Qaeda, the United States captured a number of "high value" detainees who were believed to have knowledge of imminent terrorist threats against our nation and its allies. CIA operatives, who understood that the use of torture is unlawful under both international and domestic law, and above all, is abhorrent to American values, interrogated the high value detainees. The United States rejects torture as a means to garner information - a fact reflected in our domestic criminal law, but also by the country's signature on the United Nations Convention …

Treaties As Law And The Rule Of Law: The Judicial Power To Compel Domestic Treaty Implementation, William M. Carter Jr.

Articles

The Supremacy Clause makes the Constitution, federal statutes, and ratified treaties part of the "supreme law of the land." Despite the textual and historical clarity of the Supremacy Clause, some courts and commentators have suggested that the "non-self-executing treaty doctrine" means that ratified treaties must await implementing legislation before they become domestic law. The non-self-executing treaty doctrine has in particular been used as a shield to claims under international human rights treaties.

This Article does not seek to provide another critique of the non-self-executing treaty doctrine in the abstract. Rather, I suggest that a determination that a treaty is non-self-executing …

“Aspectos Jurídicos Del Delito De Trata De Personas En Colombia: Aportes Desde El Derecho Internacional, Derecho Penal Y Las Organizaciones No Gubernamentales”, Andres Barreto, Beatriz Londoño, Antonio Varon, Andrea Mateus

Andres Barreto

La preocupación por el fenómeno de la trata de personas en el escenario internacional ha sido una constante para los Estados desde mediados del siglo XIX. En Colombia la legislación que condena el delito empezó su recorrido desde el Código Penal de 1980, en donde se castigaba con penas de prisión de 2 a 6 años a todo aquel que promoviere la entrada o salida del país de mujer o menor de edad para ejercer la prostitución. Sin embargo, la complejidad de las redes criminales de este crimen transnacional empezó a evidenciar que la trata no solo se cometía sobre …

The Witness Who Saw, He Left Little Doubt: A Comparative Consideration Of Expert Testimony In Mental Disability Law Cases, Michael L. Perlin, Astrid Birgden, Kris Gledhill

Articles & Chapters

The question of how courts assess expert evidence - especially when mental disability is an issue - raises the corollary question of whether courts adequately evaluate the content of the expert testimony or whether judicial decision making may be influenced by teleology (‘cherry picking’ evidence), pretextuality (accepting experts who distort evidence to achieve socially desirable aims), and/or sanism (allowing prejudicial and stereotyped evidence). Such threats occur despite professional standards in forensic psychology and other mental health disciplines that require ethical expert testimony. The result is expert testimony that, in many instances, is at best incompetent and at worst biased. The …

Globalization, Legal Transnationalization And Crimes Against Humanity: The Lipietz Case, Vivian Grosswald Curran

Articles

Decided in June, 2006, the Lipietz case marks the unofficial entry into the French legal system of a tort action for complicity in crimes against humanity. It both departs from prior, established French law and reflects numerous mechanisms by which national law is transnationalizing. The case illustrates visible, invisible, substantive and methodological changes that globalization is producing as law's transnationalization changes national law. It also suggests some of the difficulties national legal systems face as their transnationalization produces legal change at a rate that outpaces the national capacity for efficient adaptation. The challenges illustrated by Lipietz, characteristic of globalization, include …

International Standards For Detaining Terrorism Suspects: Moving Beyond The Armed Conflict-Criminal Divide, Monica Hakimi

Faculty Scholarship

Although sometimes described as war, the fight against transnational jihadi groups (referred to for shorthand as the "fight against terrorism") largely takes place away from any recognizable battlefield. Terrorism suspects are captured in houses, on street comers, and at border crossings around the globe. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the high-level Qaeda operative who planned the September 11 attacks, was captured by the Pakistani government in a residence in Pakistan. Abu Omar, a radical Muslim imam, was apparently abducted by U.S. and Italian agents off the streets of Milan. And Abu Baker Bashir, the spiritual leader of the Qaeda-affiliated group responsible for …

Fitness For Trial In The District Court: The Legal Perspective, Darius Whelan

Darius Whelan

Losing Control: Regulating Situational Crime Prevention In Mass Private Space, Robert E. Pfeffer

ExpressO

In this article the author puts forth an approach to regulating Situational Crime Prevention (SCP) (i.e. steps to preemptively eliminate or reduce crime, such as preemptive exclusion and closed circuit TV monitoring in Mass Private Space (i.e. private property that has characteristics normally associated with public spaces, such as a large shopping mall).

It has become increasingly common for owners of mass private space to employ SCP techniques such as close circuit television monitoring, exclusion of persons based upon behavior or risk factors and limits on attire, such as colors associated with gangs. While there has been a lively scholarly …

Superstition-Based Injustice In Africa And The United States: The Use Of Provocation As A Defense For Killing Witches And Homosexuals, Jennifer Dumin

ExpressO

This Article examines two different instances where strong cultural and religious beliefs suggest that an individual is justified in taking another’s life. Focusing primarily on South Africa and the United States, it argues that the rationale used to defend those who kill suspected witches and those who kill suspected homosexuals is the same – merely because a criminal holds a belief that the victim is evil, the criminal is somehow entitled to a lesser punishment. In the United States, those who readily recognize the absurdity of the witchcraft defense may have some difficulty in recognizing the same level of absurdity …

Reinvigorating First Year Criminal Law: Integrating Mental Disability Issues Into The Criminal Law Course, Linda C. Fentiman

ExpressO

This article explores how mental disability issues can be incorporated into a traditional criminal law class, in order to enrich student understanding of both mental disability law and criminal law doctrine. The intersection of mental disability with the doctrinal aspects of criminal law can be broken into five major categories: 1) the justifications for punishment; 2) the definition of crime in general, e.g., the requirements of a voluntary act, mens rea, and causation; 3) the definition of particular crimes, such as murder, manslaughter, rape, and burglary; 4) defenses to crime, including mistake of law and of fact, as well as …

International Human Rights Standards In International Organizations: The Case Of International Criminal Courts, Kenneth S. Gallant

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

How We Should Think About The Constitutional Status Of The Suspected Terrorist Detainees At Guantanamo Bay, Akash R. Desai

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

In the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, the United States has held suspected terrorist detainees captured during the military campaign in Afghanistan indefinitely at the United States military facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Among those currently detained are members of the al-Qaeda terrorist group and the Taliban. Currently the detainees are in the peculiar situation of generally being outside the scope of protections offered by both the international humanitarian law and the Unites States criminal law regimes.

This Note examines the extraterritorial scope of the United States Constitution as it applies to the suspected terrorist detainees at Guantanamo Bay. …

New Death Penalty Debate: What's Dna Got To Do With It, James S. Liebman

Faculty Scholarship

The nation is engaged in the most intensive discussion of the death penalty in decades. Temporary moratoria on executions are effectively in place in Illinois and Maryland, and during the winter 2001 legislative cycle legislation to adopt those pauses elsewhere cleared committees or one or more houses of the legislature, not only in Connecticut (passed the Senate Judiciary Committee) and Maryland (where it passed the entire House, and the Senate Judiciary Committee) but in Nevada (passed the Senate) and Texas (passed committees in both Houses). In the last year, abolition bills have passed or come within a few votes of …

The Problem Of Obtaining Evidence For International Criminal Courts, Jacob Katz Cogan

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

International criminal courts will be judged by their fairness to defendants as well as to victims. In a very practical way, such claims will hinge, inter alia, on the ability of prosecutors and defendants to have reasonable access to probative evidence. But international criminal courts depend on states to provide them with evidence or access to evidence. The obligation of states to cooperate with international criminal tribunals in the production of evidence was at issue in the recent decision of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Blaki case (1997). That judgment and the provisions of the …

The Reach Of Icc Jurisdiction Over Non-Signatory Nationals, Jordan J. Paust

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

A new International Criminal Court (ICC) was created on July 17, 1998 under the Rome Statute adopted by the United Nations Diplomatic Conference on Plenipotentiaries on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court. Under the Statute, the ICC will have jurisdiction over crimes of genocide, certain crimes against humanity, and certain war crimes, leaving the crime of aggression for further definition.

Nonetheless, there are certain preconditions to the exercise of such jurisdictional competence, as noted especially in Articles 12-14 of the Statute. In general, the Court can exercise jurisdiction if a "situation" or case (1) is referred to the Prosecutor …

La Preuve Pénale Et Des Tests Génétiques: United States Report, Christopher L. Blakesley

Scholarly Works

A major problem for those analyzing U.S. criminal law and procedure is that it does not fit the Continental or British mold. There is no one single system, but parallel federal and 50 state systems each with its own legislature, laws, courts (including trial, appellate, and supreme courts), police, prosecutors and prisons. The authorities who enact and implement these laws are sovereign within their respective jurisdictions. Each state has police power over its people. The 10th amendment to the U.S. Constitution controls allocation of federal and state authority. It provides that whatever the Constitution has not designated as being within …

Terrorism And Hostages In International Law: A Commentary On The Hostages Convention 1979, Christopher L. Blakesley

Scholarly Works

In this piece, Professor Blakesley reviews “Terrorism and Hostages in International Law: A Commentary on the Hostages Convention 1979” by Joseph J. Lambert.

Equal Protection And Sexual Orientation, Jack Tsen-Ta Lee

Jack Tsen-Ta LEE

Equality is the thread running through the fundamental liberties enshrined in our Constitution. ... Equality, expressed in Art 12 of the [Singapore] Constitution, is also a specific right enforceable by the court. The difficulty comes in applying this deceptively simple concept to real-life situations. ... In considering the validity of legislation, Singapore and Malaysian courts have generally favored rational review, a modest conception of equal protection, unlike their American counterparts which have adopted a more expansive reading in the form of strict and intermediate review. This article examines how these three levels of equal protection review operate, and argues that …

Books Received, Journal Staff

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Chile: The Balanced View

Edited by Francisco Orrego Vicuna

Santiago: The University of Chile, 1975. Pp. 298.

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Codification in the Communist World--Symposium in Memory of Zsolt Szirmai Organized by Donald Barry, F.J.M. Feldbrugge & Dominick Lasok

Leiden: A.W. Sijthoff, 1975. Pp. xv, 353. $42.50.

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Crimes against Internationally Protected Persons: Prevention and Punishment

By Louis M. Bloomfield & Gerald F. Fitzgerald.

New York: Praeger Publishers, 1975. Pp. xviii, 272. $16.50.

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Criminal Justice in Eighteenth Century Mexico

By Colin M. MacLachlan

Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974. Pp.viii, 141. $9.00.

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EEC Anti-Trust Law--Principles and Practice

By D. Barounos, …