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Obstacles To Proving 24-Hour Lighting Is Cruel And Unusual Under Eighth Amendment Jurisprudence, Lauren Jaech Dec 2022

Obstacles To Proving 24-Hour Lighting Is Cruel And Unusual Under Eighth Amendment Jurisprudence, Lauren Jaech

Washington Law Review

Twenty-four-hour lighting causes sleep deprivation, depression, and other serious disorders for incarcerated individuals, yet courts often do not consider it to be cruel and unusual. To decide if prison conditions violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, courts follow a two-part inquiry that requires examining the intent of prison officials (known as the subjective prong) as well as the degree of seriousness of the alleged cruel or unusual condition (the objective prong). Incarcerated individuals often file complaints challenging 24-hour lighting conditions. Whether they succeed on these claims may depend on the circuit in which they reside. Judges …


Tribal Sovereignty And Economic Efficiency Versus The Courts, Robert J. Miller Oct 2022

Tribal Sovereignty And Economic Efficiency Versus The Courts, Robert J. Miller

Washington Law Review

American Indian reservations are the poorest parts of the United States, and a higher percentage of Indian families across the country live below the poverty line than any other ethnic or racial sector. Indian nations and Indian peoples also suffer from the highest unemployment rates in the country and have the highest substandard housing rates. The vast majority of the over three hundred Indian reservations and the Alaska Native villages do not have functioning economies. This lack of economic activity starves tribal governments of the tax revenues that governments need to function. In response, Indian nations create and operate business …


The Dignitary Confrontation Clause, Erin Sheley Mar 2022

The Dignitary Confrontation Clause, Erin Sheley

Washington Law Review

For seventeen years, the Supreme Court’s Confrontation Clause jurisprudence has been confused and confusing. In Crawford v. Washington (2004), the Court overruled prior precedent and held that “testimonial” out-of-court statements could not be admitted at trial unless the defendant had an opportunity to cross-examine the declarant, even when the statement would be otherwise admissible as particularly reliable under an exception to the rule against hearsay. In a series of contradictory opinions over the next several years, the Court proceeded to expand and then seemingly roll back this holding, leading to widespread chaos in common types of cases, particularly those involving …


Beyond “Children Are Different”: The Revolution In Juvenile Intake And Sentencing, Josh Gupta-Kagan Jun 2021

Beyond “Children Are Different”: The Revolution In Juvenile Intake And Sentencing, Josh Gupta-Kagan

Washington Law Review

For more than 120 years, juvenile justice law has not substantively defined the core questions in most delinquency cases—when should the state prosecute children rather than divert them from the court system (the intake decision), and what should the state do with children once they are convicted (the sentencing decision)? Instead, the law has granted certain legal actors wide discretion over these decisions, namely prosecutors at intake and judges at sentencing. This Article identifies and analyzes an essential reform trend changing that reality: legislation, enacted in at least eight states in the 2010s, to limit when children can be prosecuted …


“Unconstitutional Beyond A Reasonable Doubt” – A Misleading Mantra That Should Be Gone For Good, Hugh Spitzer Jan 2021

“Unconstitutional Beyond A Reasonable Doubt” – A Misleading Mantra That Should Be Gone For Good, Hugh Spitzer

Washington Law Review Online

For a century, Washington State Supreme Court opinions periodically have intoned that the body will not invalidate a statute on constitutional grounds unless it is “unconstitutional beyond a reasonable doubt.” This odd declaration invokes an evidentiary standard of proof as a rule of decision for a legal question of constitutionality, and it confuses practitioners and the public alike. “Unconstitutional beyond a reasonable doubt” is not peculiar to Washington State. Indeed, it began appearing in state court decisions in the early nineteenth century and, rarely, in opinions of the United States Supreme Court. But the use of the phrase rapidly increased …


Constitutional Fig Leaves In Asia, Po Jen Yap Jun 2016

Constitutional Fig Leaves In Asia, Po Jen Yap

Washington International Law Journal

Constitutional landscapes in Asia are littered with fig leaves. These proverbial fig leaves are legal principles, doctrines, and theories of interpretation that judges appeal to when resolving constitutional disputes. This article uncovers and examines three constitutional fig leaves that are prevalent and flourishing in Asia: 1) formalism and its conceptual variants; 2) the exercise of judicial review that is merely symbolic; and 3) the invocation of vacuous constitutional doctrines. This article further argues that judicial recourse to fig leaves is not intended to deceive anyone about what courts are doing; the fig leaves are on public display merely to demonstrate …


The Rise And Fall Of Historic Chief Justices: Constitutional Politics And Judicial Leadership In Indonesia, Stefanus Hendrianto Jun 2016

The Rise And Fall Of Historic Chief Justices: Constitutional Politics And Judicial Leadership In Indonesia, Stefanus Hendrianto

Washington International Law Journal

In the decade following its inception, the Indonesian Constitutional Court has marked a new chapter in Indonesian legal history, one in which a judicial institution can challenge the executive and legislative branches. This article argues that judicial leadership is the main contributing factor explaining the emergence of judicial power in Indonesia. This article posits that the newly established Indonesian Constitutional Court needed a strong and skilled Chief Justice to build the institution because it had insufficient support from political actors. As the Court lacked a well-established tradition of judicial review, it needed a visionary leader who could maximize the structural …


The "Chaudhry Court": Deconstructing The "Judicialization Of Politics" In Pakistan, Moeen H. Cheema Jun 2016

The "Chaudhry Court": Deconstructing The "Judicialization Of Politics" In Pakistan, Moeen H. Cheema

Washington International Law Journal

The Supreme Court of Pakistan underwent a remarkable transformation in its institutional role and constitutional position during the tenure of the former Chief Justice of Pakistan, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry (2005–2013). This era in Pakistan’s judicial history was also marked by great controversy as the court faced charges that it had engaged in “judicial activism,” acted politically, and violated the constitutionally mandated separation of powers between institutions of the state. This article presents an in-depth analysis of the judicial review actions of the Chaudhry Court and argues that the charge of judicial activism is theoretically unsound and analytically obfuscating. The notion …


Constitutional Law—Federal Recess Appointments, Theordore Roodner Jul 1963

Constitutional Law—Federal Recess Appointments, Theordore Roodner

Washington Law Review

Allocco, who had been convicted of a narcotics violation by a jury, petitioned a United States District Court to grant his motion for release under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, alleging that his conviction should be set aside because the judge who sat at his trial was not properly appointed to his office so as to be able to exercise the judicial power conferred by U.S. Const. art. III. The district court denied his motion and the court of appeals affirmed. This was the first federal decision in recent times to deal directly with the recess appointment power and the first …