Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Criminal Law Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 12 of 12

Full-Text Articles in Criminal Law

Consensus Statement From The Santa Cruz Summit On Solitary Confinement And Health Aug 2020

Consensus Statement From The Santa Cruz Summit On Solitary Confinement And Health

Northwestern University Law Review

No abstract provided.


Debt Bondage: How Private Collection Agencies Keep The Formerly Incarcerated Tethered To The Criminal Justice System, Bryan L. Adamson Apr 2020

Debt Bondage: How Private Collection Agencies Keep The Formerly Incarcerated Tethered To The Criminal Justice System, Bryan L. Adamson

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

This Article examines the constitutionality of statutes which allow courts to transfer outstanding legal financial obligations to private debt collection agencies. In Washington State, the clerk of courts can transfer the legal financial obligation of a formerly incarcerated person if he or she is only thirty days late making a payment. Upon transfer, the debt collection agencies can assess a “collection fee” of up to 50% of the first $100.000 of the unpaid legal financial obligation, and up to 35% of the unpaid debt over $100,000. This fee becomes part of the LFO debt imposed at sentencing, and like that …


Replacing Death With Life? The Rise Of Lwop In The Context Of Abolitionist Campaigns In The United States, Michelle Miao Jan 2020

Replacing Death With Life? The Rise Of Lwop In The Context Of Abolitionist Campaigns In The United States, Michelle Miao

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

On the basis of fifty-four elite interviews[1] with legislators, judges, attorneys, and civil society advocates as well as a state-by-state data survey, this Article examines the complex linkage between the two major penal trends in American society during the past decades: a declining use of capital punishment across the United States and a growing population of prisoners serving “life without the possibility of parole” or “LWOP” sentences. The main contribution of the research is threefold. First, the research proposes to redefine the boundary between life and death in relation to penal discourses regarding the death penalty and LWOP. LWOP …


Stepping Into The Shoes Of The Department Of Justice: The Unusual, Necessary, And Hopeful Path The Illinois Attorney General Took To Require Police Reform In Chicago, Lisa Madigan, Cara Hendrickson, Karyn L. Bass Ehler Jan 2020

Stepping Into The Shoes Of The Department Of Justice: The Unusual, Necessary, And Hopeful Path The Illinois Attorney General Took To Require Police Reform In Chicago, Lisa Madigan, Cara Hendrickson, Karyn L. Bass Ehler

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.


Private Prisons, Private Governance: Essay On Developments In Private-Sector Resistance To Privatized Immigration Detention, Danielle C. Jefferis Oct 2019

Private Prisons, Private Governance: Essay On Developments In Private-Sector Resistance To Privatized Immigration Detention, Danielle C. Jefferis

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.


Death In America Under Color Of Law: Our Long, Inglorious Experience With Capital Punishment, Rob Warden, Daniel Lennard May 2018

Death In America Under Color Of Law: Our Long, Inglorious Experience With Capital Punishment, Rob Warden, Daniel Lennard

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.


The Concept Of “Unusual Punishments” In Anglo-American Law: The Death Penalty As Arbitrary, Discriminatory, And Cruel And Unusual, John D. Bessler May 2018

The Concept Of “Unusual Punishments” In Anglo-American Law: The Death Penalty As Arbitrary, Discriminatory, And Cruel And Unusual, John D. Bessler

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

The Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, like the English Bill of Rights before it, safeguards against the infliction of “cruel and unusual punishments.” To better understand the meaning of that provision, this Article explores the concept of “unusual punishments” and its opposite, “usual punishments.” In particular, this Article traces the use of the “usual” and “unusual” punishments terminology in Anglo-American sources to shed new light on the Eighth Amendment’s Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause. The Article surveys historical references to “usual” and “unusual” punishments in early English and American texts, then analyzes the development of American constitutional law as …


Human Trafficking And Pornography: Using The Trafficking Victims Protection Act To Prosecute Trafficking For The Production Of Internet Pornography, Allison J. Luzwick Nov 2017

Human Trafficking And Pornography: Using The Trafficking Victims Protection Act To Prosecute Trafficking For The Production Of Internet Pornography, Allison J. Luzwick

Northwestern University Law Review

The Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA) was passed to “combat trafficking in persons, a contemporary manifestation of slavery whose victims are predominantly women and children, to ensure just and effective punishment of traffickers, and to protect their victims.”1 Since the passing of the Act, federal courts have construed the statute broadly to achieve this stated purpose. One way in which the TVPA has been underutilized, however, is in prosecuting pornography cases. Pornography enjoys wide latitude under the law, protected by a vast net of First Amendment protections. While these protections may preserve freedom of speech, they do nothing …


Fighting Back Against Revenge Porn: A Legislative Solution, Alex Jacobs Dec 2016

Fighting Back Against Revenge Porn: A Legislative Solution, Alex Jacobs

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.


The Evolving International Judiciary, Karen J. Alter Jan 2011

The Evolving International Judiciary, Karen J. Alter

Faculty Working Papers

This article explains the rapid proliferation in international courts first in the post WWII and then the post Cold War era. It examines the larger international judicial complex, showing how developments in one region and domain affect developments in similar and distant regimes. Situating individual developments into their larger context, and showing how change occurs incrementally and slowly over time, allows one to see developments in economic, human rights and war crimes systems as part of a longer term evolutionary process of the creation of international judicial authority. Evolution is not the same as teleology; we see that some international …


On Genocide, Anthony D'Amato Jan 2010

On Genocide, Anthony D'Amato

Faculty Working Papers

The crime of genocide is the newest international crime. It must be kept as a separate, distinct, and coherent concept. It is the first truly subjective crime; all other crime, though requiring mens rea, require only that the defendant consciously committed the criminal acts. In the case of genocide, however, the underlying criminal acts are no different from the acts required to prove ordinary crimes. The difference is one of motive. What is being punished by the crime of genocide is the selection of victims according to their involuntary membership in four kinds of groups: national, ethnical, racial, or religious. …


Courting Genocide: The Unintended Effects Of Humanitarian Intervention, Jide Nzelibe Jan 2008

Courting Genocide: The Unintended Effects Of Humanitarian Intervention, Jide Nzelibe

Faculty Working Papers

Invoking memories and imagery from the Holocaust and other German atrocities during World War II, many contemporary commentators and politicians believe that the international community has an affirmative obligation to deter and incapacitate perpetrators of humanitarian atrocities. Today, the received wisdom is that a legalistic approach, which combines humanitarian interventions with international criminal prosecutions targeting perpetrators, will help realize the post-World War II vision of making atrocities a crime of the past. This Article argues, in contrast, that humanitarian interventions are often likely to create unintended, and sometimes perverse, incentives among both the victims and perpetrators of atrocities. The problem …