Criminal Law Commons^™

The Female Face Of Misogyny: A Review Of Decriminalizing Domestic Violence: A Balanced Policy Approach To Intimate Partner Violence By Leigh Goodmark And The Feminist War On Crime: The Unexpected Role Of Women's Liberation In Mass Incarceration By Aya Gruber, Dianne L. Post

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Equal Protection Under Algorithms: A New Statistical And Legal Framework, Crystal S. Yang, Will Dobbie

Michigan Law Review

In this Article, we provide a new statistical and legal framework to understand the legality and fairness of predictive algorithms under the Equal Protection Clause. We begin by reviewing the main legal concerns regarding the use of protected characteristics such as race and the correlates of protected characteristics such as criminal history. The use of race and nonrace correlates in predictive algorithms generates direct and proxy effects of race, respectively, that can lead to racial disparities that many view as unwarranted and discriminatory. These effects have led to the mainstream legal consensus that the use of race and nonrace correlates …

The Weaponization Of The “Alien Harboring” Statute In A New-Era Of Racial Animus Towards Immigrants, Hannah Hamley

Seattle University Law Review

Federal law 8 U.S.C. § 1324(a)(1)(A)(iii), commonly referred to as the “Alien Harboring” statute, was passed sixty-eight years ago and has been used as a weapon against immigrants and their allies. Spanning back decades, numerous scholars, alarmed by the dangerous use of the statute, have written about its muddled congressional intent and the unclear definition of “harboring.” These issues continue to be relevant and are foundational concerns with the enforcement of the harboring statute. However, in the era of President Donald J. Trump, we are faced with a new danger. We are confronted with an Administration that is ferociously anti-immigrant …

Enough Is As Good As A Feast, Noah C. Chauvin

Seattle University Law Review

Ipse Dixit, the podcast on legal scholarship, provides a valuable service to the legal community and particularly to the legal academy. The podcast’s hosts skillfully interview guests about their legal and law-related scholarship, helping those guests communicate their ideas clearly and concisely. In this review essay, I argue that Ipse Dixit has made a major contribution to legal scholarship by demonstrating in its interview episodes that law review articles are neither the only nor the best way of communicating scholarly ideas. This contribution should be considered “scholarship,” because one of the primary goals of scholarship is to communicate new ideas.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor: The Court’S Premier Defender Of The Fourth Amendment, David L. Hudson Jr.

Seattle University Law Review

This essay posits that Justice Sotomayor is the Court’s chief defender of the Fourth Amendment and the cherished values it protects. She has consistently defended Fourth Amendment freedoms—in majority, concurring, and especially in dissenting opinions. Part I recounts a few of her majority opinions in Fourth Amendment cases. Part II examines her concurring opinion in United States v. Jones. Part III examines several of her dissenting opinions in Fourth Amendment cases. A review of these opinions demonstrates what should be clear to any observer of the Supreme Court: Justice Sotomayor consistently defends Fourth Amendment principles and values.

“Don’T Move”: Redefining “Physical Restraint” In Light Of A United States Circuit Court Divide, Julia Knitter

Seattle University Law Review

To reduce sentencing disparities and clarify the application of the sentencing guide to the physical restraint enhancement for a robbery conviction, this Comment argues that the United States Sentencing Commission (USSC) must amend the USSC Guidelines Manual to provide federal courts with a clearer and more concise definition of physical restraint. Additionally, although there are many state-level sentencing systems throughout the United States, this Comment only focuses on the federal sentencing guidelines for robbery because of the disparate way in which these guidelines are applied from circuit to circuit.

No Path To Redemption: Evaluating Texas’S Practice Of Sentencing Kids To De Facto Life Without Parole In Adult Prison, Lindsey Linder, Justin Martinez

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming.

It Is Time To Get Back To Basics On The Border, Donna Coltharp

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming.

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Racial Justice And Decriminalization Of Prostitution: No Protection For Women Of Color, Janice G. Raymond

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Criminal Law In Crisis, Benjamin Levin

University of Colorado Law Review Forum

In this Essay, I offer a brief account of how the COVID-19 pandemic lays bare the realities and structural flaws of the carceral state. I provide two primary examples or illustrations, but they are not meant to serve as an exhaustive list. Rather, by highlighting these issues, problems, or (perhaps) features, I mean to suggest that this moment of crisis should serve not just as an opportunity to marshal resources to address the pandemic, but also as a chance to address the harsh realities of the U.S. criminal system. Further, my claim isn’t that criminal law is in some way …

Mass Solitary And Mass Incarceration: Explaining The Dramatic Rise In Prolonged Solitary In America's Prisons, Jules Lobel

Northwestern University Law Review

In the last two decades of the twentieth century, prisons throughout the United States witnessed a dramatic rise in the use of solitary confinement, and the practice continues to be widespread. From the latter part of the nineteenth century until the 1970s and ’80s, prolonged solitary confinement in the United States had fallen into disuse, as numerous observers and the United States Supreme Court recognized that the practice caused profound mental harm to prisoners. The reasons for this dramatic rise in the nationwide use of solitary confinement and the development of new supermax prisons have not been explored in depth. …

A Wrong Without A Right? Overcoming The Prison Litigation Reform Act's Physical Injury Requirement In Solitary Confinement Cases, Maggie Filler, Daniel Greenfield

Northwestern University Law Review

This Essay argues against applying the so-called “physical injury” requirement of the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) to deny monetary compensation to solitary confinement survivors. The Essay identifies three ways in which misapplication of the PLRA’s physical injury requirement limits the ability of solitary confinement survivors to receive monetary compensation for psychological harm suffered. First, some courts applying the PLRA wrongly dismiss damages claims for alleging “de minimis” physical injury. Second, some courts have been reluctant to find that physical injury caused by psychological trauma satisfies the PLRA’s physical injury requirement. Third, courts do not distinguish between “garden …

Is Solitary Confinement A Punishment?, John F. Stinneford

Northwestern University Law Review

The United States Constitution imposes a variety of constraints on the imposition of punishment, including the requirements that the punishment be authorized by a preexisting penal statute and ordered by a lawful judicial sentence. Today, prison administrators impose solitary confinement on thousands of prisoners despite the fact that neither of these requirements has been met. Is this imposition a “punishment without law,” or is it a mere exercise of administrative discretion? In an 1890 case called In re Medley, the Supreme Court held that solitary confinement is a separate punishment subject to constitutional restraints, but it has ignored this …

How Do We Reach A National Tipping Point In The Campaign To Stop Solitary?, Amy Fettig

Northwestern University Law Review

The use and abuse of solitary confinement in American prisons, jails, and juvenile detention centers is at epidemic levels. On any given day 80,000 to 100,000 people in prisons are subjected to a practice considered inhumane and degrading treatment—even torture under international human rights standards. Despite widespread international condemnation, decades of research demonstrating the harm it inflicts on human beings, and a growing chorus from the medical community raising alarms about its impact on the brain, solitary confinement remains a routine prison-management strategy in correctional institutions nationwide. In the past decade, however, a growing movement has emerged to challenge the …

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

Northwestern University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Punishment In Prison: Constituting The "Normal" And The "Atypical" In Solitary And Other Forms Of Confinement, Judith Resnik, Hirsa Amin, Sophie Angelis, Megan Hauptman, Laura Kokotailo, Aseem Mehta, Madeline Silva, Tor Tarantola, Meredith Wheeler

Northwestern University Law Review

What aspects of human liberty does incarceration impinge? A remarkable group of Black and white prisoners, most of whom had little formal education and no resources, raised that question in the 1960s and 1970s. Incarcerated individuals asked judges for relief from corporal punishment; radical food deprivations; strip cells; solitary confinement in dark cells; prohibitions on bringing these claims to courts, on religious observance, and on receiving reading materials; and from transfers to long- term isolation and to higher security levels.

Judges concluded that some facets of prison that were once ordinary features of incarceration, such as racial segregation, rampant violence, …

Kidnapping Reconsidered: Courts Merger Tests Inadequately Remedy The Inequities Which Developed From Kidnapping's Sensationalized And Racialized History, Samuel P. Newton

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

The Eighth Amendment Power To Discriminate, Kathryn E. Miller

Washington Law Review

For the last half-century, Supreme Court doctrine has required that capital jurors consider facts and characteristics particular to individual defendants when determining their sentences. While liberal justices have long touted this individualized sentencing requirement as a safeguard against unfair death sentences, in practice the results have been disappointing. The expansive discretion that the requirement confers on overwhelmingly White juries has resulted in outcomes that are just as arbitrary and racially discriminatory as those that existed in the years before the temporary abolition of the death penalty in Furman v. Georgia.1 After decades of attempting to eliminate the requirement, conservative justices …

Decriminalizing Non-Appearance In Washington State: The Problem And Solutions For Washington’S Bail Jumping Statute And Court Nonappearance, Aleksandrea Johnson

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Narrative, Culture, And Individuation: A Criminal Defense Lawyer’S Race-Conscious Approach To Reduce Implicit Bias For Latinxs, Walter I. Goncalves Jr.

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Sentencing Disparities And The Dangerous Perpetuation Of Racial Bias, Jelani Jefferson Exum

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

This Article addresses the role that racial disparities—specifically sentencing disparities—play in perpetuating the racial bias that increases the daily danger of living as a Black American in the United States. As documented in the news and by sometimes humorous internet memes, White people have called the police many times to report Black people who were simply living as any other American. This trend highlights the manner in which the U.S. criminal justice system’s racial inequities feed into biased beliefs about Black criminality. This Article argues that instead of tackling implicit bias as a means to fight sentencing and other criminal …

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 …

Confession Obsession: How To Protect Minors In Interrogations, Cindy Chau

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

The Future Of Pretrial Detention In A Criminal System Looking For Justice, Gabrielle Costa

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

Remorse, Not Race: Essence Of Parole Release?, Lovashni Khalikaprasad

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

From Common Law To Constitution, Sanctioned Dispossession And Subjugation Through Otherization And Discriminatory Classification, Mobolaji Oladeji

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

As Pertains To The Criminal Justice System, Is Hindsight 20/20?, Syndie G. E. Molina, Cristina Negrillo

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

The Methodology Of Social Adaptation Following The Liberation Of A Wrongful Conviction, Ashantwa Jackman

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

Criminal Law—The Call For An Adequate Remedy: The Lack Of Deterrence And Judicial Consequences For Prosecutors Who Habitually Violate Batson, Altimease Lowe

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.