Courts Commons^™

Protecting Our Pups At All Costs: Why Dogfighting Cases Require A Mandatory Restitution Assessment, Ayah Ighneim

Cleveland State Law Review

This Note recommends that Congress acknowledge the dangers behind dogfighting by updating the federal mandatory restitution statute to include “animals” within the definition of a “victim” eligible to receive restitution and by updating federal animal-cruelty laws. This recommendation stems from the popularization of dogfighting in the twenty-first century. Specifically, this Note articulates the link between the prevalence of dogfighting in America and the lack of deterrence targeted toward dogfighting in America. This Note then argues that this lack of deterrence is a result of the lack of Congressional guidance within both the federal restitution statute and within federal animal-cruelty laws. …

Revisiting Compassionate Release: The Sentencing Commission’S Compassionate Changes To The 2023 Compassionate Release Policy Statement, Rachel Wilson

Cleveland State Law Review

Compassionate release is a well-established exception to the Sentencing Reform Act’s requirement that a defendant’s sentence not be reduced after its final imposition. The Act requires the Sentencing Commission, through policy statement, to describe “extraordinary and compelling reasons” warranting compassionate release. However, the Sentencing Commission’s failure to convene as a quorum for nearly four years precluded any policy statement updates. In that time, the COVID-19 pandemic and the Bureau of Prisons’ internal issues further complicated the compassionate release process. This Note analyzes the 2023 amendment to the compassionate release policy statement, its potential implications, and suggests additional steps to be …

Dobbs And The Future Of Liberty And Equality, Kim Forde-Mazrui

Cleveland State Law Review

This lecture critiques Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and assesses its implications for liberty and equality. Dobbs’ immediate effect was major disruption to abortion rights. In the longer term, by discarding fifty years of precedent and by basing constitutional rights exclusively on long-standing history and tradition, Dobbs jeopardizes liberty and equality rights that the Court has recognized in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Such modern liberty rights include contraception, interracial marriage, adult sexual intimacy and same-sex marriage. Modern equality rights include strong bars on discrimination based on race and sex, and moderate protections for LGBTQ+ status. …

Taking The Gavel Away From The Executive Branch: The Indeterminate Sentencing Scheme Under S.B. 201 Is Ripe For Review And Unconstitutional, Jessica Crtalic

Cleveland State Law Review

In 2019, Senate Bill 201, also known as the Reagan Tokes Act, reintroduced an indeterminate sentencing scheme in Ohio whereby sentences are assigned in the form of a range. Under this sentencing scheme, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, through the parole board, has discretion to retain an inmate past the presumptive release date. This fails to afford the accused their guaranteed right to a jury trial, improperly places judiciary power in the hands of the executive branch, and scrutinizes the violation of due process such that the defendant is being denied a fair hearing and notice. Not only …

In Pursuit Of A Modern Standard: The Constitutional Proportions Of Collateral Harm From Pursuits And Police High-Speed Driving, Julian Gilbert

Cleveland State Law Review

Police chases and high-speed driving are common practices that pose a substantial amount of harm and are often unjustified. The benefits of such chases are questionable, and rapid police action at all costs is often unnecessary. When bystanders are injured as a result of police high-speed driving, there are few avenues to have their rights vindicated, and federal court cases require plaintiffs to meet an almost impossible burden. However, under the United States Supreme Court case of County of Sacramento v. Lewis, a plaintiff can put forth evidence that their substantive due process right to life under the Fourteenth …

Dignity And The Promise Of Conscience, Duane Rudolph

Cleveland State Law Review

This Article focuses on the relationship between three specific invocations of dignity in American law, whose emphases are different. The first appeared in the late eighteenth century and is concerned with the dignity of a state or sovereign. The second made its appearance at the beginning of the nineteenth century and is devoted to the dignity of the court. The third is concerned with the dignity of the human person. International instruments and foreign constitutions evoked dignity in this sense in the 1930s and 1940s. In the United States, the Restatement of Torts, First evoked this sense of the term …

Rolling The Dice On The Legality Of Gambling Devices: Why "Purpose" Has A Purpose, Stevie Holbrook

Cleveland State Law Review

Section 1955 of the United States Code (“Section 1955”), the federal law detailing prohibition on illegal gambling businesses, renders a defendant susceptible to prosecution if they are found to have violated the respective state’s gambling law and have a certain amount of people involved for a certain length of time. Today, the Sixth Circuit has identified Section 1955 as a general intent statute where it need not be shown that a defendant acted willfully in terms of intentionally violating state law. However, Ohio’s state gambling law has been interpreted as a specific intent statute that requires a purposeful act and, …

Rethinking Patent Law's Exclusive Appellate Jurisdiction, Christa Laser

Cleveland State Law Review

The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit was created in 1982 to unify and clarify patent law, inter alia. It was built from political compromise after the Hruska Commission, which studied the caseload crisis in the federal appellate courts in the 1970s, initially recommended creation of a new National Court of Appeals that would exist between the regional federal appellate circuits and the Supreme Court. The Federal Circuit judges admirably implemented these functions for four decades.

However, the initial function of the Federal Circuit might no longer be as needed in the current judicial climate. The environment …

Equal Access To Donate: Plasma Donation Centers And The Ada, Lucy Richman

Cleveland State Law Review

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) prohibits discrimination against disabled persons in employment, public services, and private entities operating public accommodations. Despite clear moral and social incentives for becoming disability-friendly outside of the legal mandate, many private entities have asserted that the ADA does not apply to them. In multiple cases, plasma donation centers, one particular type of entity, have strongly disputed whether they are subject to the ADA as public accommodations. The crux of these cases has hinged on whether plasma donation centers are “service establishments” under Title III of the ADA, and three such cases have reached the …

The Chancellors Are Alright: Nationwide Injunctions And An Abstention Doctrine To Salve What Ails Us, Ezra Ishmael Young

Cleveland State Law Review

This Article endeavors to reclaim the nationwide injunction as a valid exercise of federal equity power within the jurisdictional limits set by Article III. It posits that federal equity is expansive—it extends as far as necessary to provide a remedy where there is no adequate one at law. Historical and doctrinal context and critique are deployed to demonstrate that nationwide injunctions are not constitutionally ultra vires. This Article also posits that despite having expansive equity jurisdiction and powers, federal courts can and should in many cases exercise their constitutional discretion when sitting in equity to abstain in certain nationwide injunction …

"Clerical Mistake In A Judgment" Under Israeli And American Procedural Law – A New Model, Yitshak Cohen

Cleveland State Law Review

This Article examines the development and efficiency of the procedure for correction of a clerical mistake in a judgment in the Israeli law. As is well known, the procedure offers a short and simple way to correct an error in language within a decision. The litigants may file a motion to correct a decision in the same court that granted it, without having to file an appeal in the appellate court. The difficulty, however, is that this procedure contains three fundamental flaws that might even hinder its purpose: First, the law binds the parties and the court to the same …

Changing The Rule That Changes Nothing: Protecting Evicted Tenants By Amending Cleveland Housing Court Rule 6.13, James J. Scherer

Cleveland State Law Review

Renting is on the rise, with all households seeing an increase in the prevalence of renting a home versus owning one from 2006 to 2016. As rental rates rise, so too do the rates of eviction. The detrimental effects of eviction are numerous and can be self-reinforcing, with a single eviction decreasing one’s chances of securing decent and affordable housing, escaping disadvantaged neighborhoods, and benefiting from affordable housing programs. All this was before the coronavirus pandemic that devastated jobs and savings accounts across the nation.

One of the biggest impacts that eviction has on renters is a public court record. …

Hard Battles Over Soft Law: The Troubling Implications Of Insurance Industry Attacks On The American Law Institute Restatement Of The Law Of Liability Insurance, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Cleveland State Law Review

ALI Restatements of the Law have traditionally exerted significant influence over court decisions and the development of the common law. During the past two decades, however, the ALI has seen an upsurge in interest group activity designed to shape or even thwart aspects of the Institute’s work. Most recently, the Restatement of the Law of Liability Insurance (RLLI) has been the focus of not only criticism of particular provisions but a concerted effort by members of the insurance industry to demonize the project as a whole and bar use of the document by courts.

The vehemence of insurer opposition seems …

The Shifting Sands Of Cost Shifting, Andrew M. Pardieck

Cleveland State Law Review

The cost-shifting analysis employed by the federal courts in ruling on discovery disputes is flawed. There is tremendous variability in how courts interpret the factors guiding the analysis. There is tremendous variability in the information courts rely on in deciding whether to preclude the discovery or shift its costs. The result is waste for the litigants, courts, and society as a whole. This Article argues that there is a better way: mandate cooperation before cost shifting. The courts should condition proportionality and cost-shifting rulings on cooperation. The cooperation should be substantive: require disclosure of objective information about the disputed discovery …

The Ambiguity And Unfairness Of Dismissing Bad Writing, Benjamin D. Raker

Cleveland State Law Review

Courts routinely choose to explicitly dismiss arguments and issues raised by parties, regardless of their merit, based on unexplained determinations that the briefing was bad. This practice, which I call abandonment by poor presentation, is sometimes justified by practicality, by pointing to federal and local rules, by waiver and forfeiture doctrines, and by the norm of party presentation. None of these justifications hold water. I contend that the real reason judges find abandonment by poor presentation is agenda control: judges rely on the practice as a means of retaining control over how they decide cases. This unexplained, poorly justified, and …

An Open Letter To The Ohio Supreme Court: Setting A Uniform Standard On Anders Briefs, Matthew D. Fazekas

Cleveland State Law Review

Attorneys are faced with an ethical dilemma when they represent indigent defendants who wish to appeal a criminal sentence, but that appeal would be frivolous. In 1967, the United States Supreme Court, in Anders v. California, introduced a procedure protecting the rights of indigent defendants that balanced the ethical concerns of an attorney forced to file a frivolous appeal. In 2000, the Court in Smith v. Robbins held that the states can set their own procedure for the aforementioned ethical dilemma, so long as it protects the rights of indigent defendants in compliance with the Fourteenth Amendment. This has …

Decoding Judicial Reasoning In China: A Comparative Empirical Analysis Of Guiding Cases, Runhua Wang

Cleveland State Law Review

The judicial system in China recently started using legal precedents—known as guiding cases—as a new legal source to eliminate adjudicative inconsistency. Guiding cases (“GCs”) present the current judicial reasoning to some extent and can be used to predict the future of judicial reasoning in China. What are GCs? What legal issues do GCs address? How do they address legal issues? How do GCs affect the legal system and adjudication in China? This Article answers these questions with empirical evidence and comparisons to judicial reasoning in the United States. It is the first empirical research providing a systematic review of all …

Land Of The Free, If You Can Afford It: Reforming Mayor's Courts In Ohio, Lucia Lopez-Hisijos

Cleveland State Law Review

Unlike most states in America, Ohio has a unique system of punishing minor misdemeanors and ordinance violations through municipal institutions called mayor’s courts. In 2017, Ohio had 295 of these courts, and they heard nearly 300,000 cases. But these are not normal courts. Ohio’s mayor’s courts do not conduct ability to pay hearings and can jail defendants who fail to pay court fines. With the author’s original research into Ohio’s mayor’s courts, this Note argues that these institutions can function like modern-day debtor’s prisons and violate indigent defendants’ constitutional right to Due Process. Ultimately, this Note proposes a model bill …

The Federal Sentencing Guidelines: A Guideline To Remedy Ohio's Sentencing Disparities For White-Collar Criminal Defendants, Joelle Livorse

Cleveland State Law Review

Over the past few decades, white-collar crimes have significantly increased across the country, especially in Ohio. However, Ohio’s judges are ill-equipped to handle the influx of cases. Unlike federal judges who are guided by the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s Federal Sentencing Guidelines, Ohio’s judges have significantly more sentencing discretion because the Ohio legislature provides minimal guidance for these crimes. As a result, Ohio’s white-collar criminal defendants are experiencing dramatic sentencing variations. To solve this problem, Ohio should look to the Federal Sentencing Guidelines and neighboring states to adopt and create an innovative sentencing model tailored to white-collar crime. Unlike the federal …

A Call To Clarify The "Scope Of Authority" Question Of Qualified Immunity, Pat Fackrell

Cleveland State Law Review

It is no secret the doctrine of qualified immunity is under immense scrutiny. Distinguished jurists and scholars at all levels have criticized the doctrine of qualified immunity, some calling for it to be reconsidered or overruled entirely.

Amidst this scrutiny lies uncertainty in the doctrine’s application. Specifically, the federal courts of appeal are split three ways on the question of whether an official exceeding the official’s scope of authority under state law at the time of the alleged constitutional violation can successfully assert qualified immunity. Some courts of appeal do not require the official to demonstrate he acted within the …

Ohio's Targeted Community Alternative To Prison Program: How A Good Idea Is Implemented Through Bad Policy, Samantha Sohl

Cleveland State Law Review

Just because a legislature can make a law doesn’t mean that they should. The Ohio General Assembly enacted the Targeted Community Alternatives to Prison (T-CAP) program to decrease the number of convicted defendants sent to state prison and to increase funding for community control efforts. While the law may be upheld under the Ohio Constitution’s Uniformity Clause, the law should still be repealed because legislative control and financial influence have no place in the judicial branch, specifically the criminal sentencing process. However, the law is rooted in good intentions, and many judges have found the additional funding useful, but the …

Ohio's Modern Courts Amendment Must Be Amended: Why And How, Richard S. Walinski, Mark D. Wagoner Jr.

Cleveland State Law Review

A 1968 amendment to the Ohio Constitution granted the Supreme Court of Ohio the authority to promulgate “rules governing practice and procedure” for Ohio courts. The amendment also provided that “[a]ll laws in conflict with such rules shall be of no further force or effect after such rules have taken effect” and that no rule may “abridge, enlarge, or modify any substantive right.”

Although the amendment was explicit about automatic repeal of existing laws, it says nothing about whether the General Assembly may legislate on a procedural matter after a court rule takes effect. That silence has caused enduring confusion. …

How Big Money Ruined Public Life In Wisconsin, Lynn Adelman

Cleveland State Law Review

This Article discusses how Wisconsin fell from grace. Once a model good government state that pioneered many democracy-enhancing laws, in a very short time, Wisconsin became a state where special interest money, most of which is undisclosed, dominates politics. This Article identifies several factors as being critical to Wisconsin’s descent. These include the state’s failure to nurture and build on the campaign finance reforms enacted in the 1970s and both the state’s and the United States Supreme Court’s failure to adequately regulate sham issue ads. As evidence of Wisconsin’s diminished status, this Article describes how several of the state’s most …

Stuck In Ohio's Legal Limbo, How Many Mistrials Are Too Many Mistrials?: Exploring New Factors That Help A Trial Judge In Ohio Know Whether To Exercise Her Authority To Dismiss An Indictment With Prejudice, Especially Following Repeated Hung Juries, Samantha M. Cira

Cleveland State Law Review

Multiple mistrials following validly-prosecuted trials are becoming an increasingly harsh reality in today’s criminal justice system. Currently, the Ohio Supreme Court has not provided any guidelines to help its trial judges know when to make the crucial decision to dismiss an indictment with prejudice following a string of properly-declared mistrials, especially due to repeated hung juries. Despite multiple mistrials that continue to result in no conviction, criminal defendants often languish behind bars, suffering detrimental psychological harm and a loss of personal freedom as they remain in “legal limbo” waiting to retry their case. Furthermore, continuously retrying defendants cuts against fundamental …

The Role Of The Prosecutor And The Grand Jury In Police Use Of Deadly Force Cases: Restoring The Grand Jury To Its Original Purpose, Ric Simmons

Cleveland State Law Review

In deciding whether and what to charge in a criminal case, the prosecutor looks to three different factors. The first is legal: is there probable cause that the defendant committed this crime? The second is practical: if the case goes to trial, will there be sufficient evidence to convict the defendant beyond a reasonable doubt of this crime? And the third is equitable: should the defendant be charged with this crime? The prosecutor is uniquely qualified to answer the first and second question, but the third is a bit trickier. If it is used properly, the grand jury could provide …

The Duty To Charge In Police Use Of Excessive Force Cases, Rebecca Roiphe

Cleveland State Law Review

Responding to the problems of mass incarceration, racial disparities in justice, and wrongful convictions, scholars have focused on prosecutorial overcharging. They have, however, neglected to address undercharging—the failure to charge in entire classes of cases. Undercharging can similarly undermine the efficacy and legitimacy of the criminal justice system. While few have focused on this question in the domestic criminal law context, international law scholars have long recognized the social and structural cost for nascent democratic states when they fail to charge those responsible for the prior regime’s human rights abuses. This sort of impunity threatens the rule of law and …

Restoring Independence To The Grand Jury: A Victim Advocate For The Police Use Of Force Cases, Jonathan Witmer-Rich

Cleveland State Law Review

This Article proposes a grand jury victim advocate to represent the interests of the complainant before the grand jury in investigations into police use of excessive force. Currently, the prosecutor has near-exclusive access to the grand jury, and as a result, grand juries have become almost entirely dependent on prosecutors. Historically, however, grand juries exhibited much greater independence. In particular, grand juries have a long history in America of providing oversight over government officials, bringing criminal charges for official misconduct even when local prosecutors proved reluctant. Permitting the alleged victim of police excessive force to be represented before the grand …

Chief Justice William Howard Taft's Conception Of Judicial Integrity: The Legal History Of Tumey V. Ohio, Joshua Kastenberg

Cleveland State Law Review

In 1927, Chief Justice William Howard Taft led a unanimous Court to determine that, at minimum, the right to an impartial and independent judiciary meant that the judge had to lack a personal interest in the outcome of the trial. While the decision, Tumey v. Ohio, was based on a judge’s pecuniary interest, it was also part of Taft’s efforts to ensure that the nation’s judges, from the municipal courts to the Supreme Court had the public’s confidence in their integrity. Tumey, therefore, is not simply a decision on pecuniary interests. It can, and should, be applied to …

The Trial Lawyer And The Reptilian Brain: A Critique, Louis J. Sirico, Jr.

Cleveland State Law Review

This Article brings together neuroscience, cultural symbolism, and the strategies of practicing lawyers to critique the reptile strategy, now popular among trial lawyers. The strategy directs the lawyer to trigger the reptilian brains of jurors so that they react instinctively to threats to themselves and their communities. When humans feel threatened, the reptilian brain, the most primitive part of the brain, takes charge and instinctively controls human conduct. Therefore, if a lawyer can make a juror feel threatened, the lawyer makes an appeal to the juror’s reptilian brain and virtually assures a victory. Thus, a lawyer’s argument should intensify the …

The Empirics Of Child Custody, Margaret Ryznar

Cleveland State Law Review

Child custody issues are as American as apple pie, with only a quarter of children seeing their parents married until the end. The legal standard for custody is the best interests of the child, but the greyness of this inquiry allows courts to make difficult judgments. In family law, such discretionary standards govern factually diverse cases and make it difficult to draw conclusions from individual cases. This Article offers an objective measurement in family law by empirically examining a sample of Indiana divorce cases filed during three months in 2008 that involved children. The resulting analysis of child custody and …