Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Keyword
-
- Criminal law (6)
- Sentencing (4)
- Crime control (3)
- Failures of justice (3)
- Judges (3)
-
- Judicial discretion (3)
- Apprendi (2)
- Blakely (2)
- Booker (2)
- Courts (2)
- Crime (2)
- Criminal justice (2)
- Criminal sentences (2)
- Exclusionary rule (2)
- Federal Sentencing Guidelines (2)
- Juries (2)
- Law & society (2)
- Moral vigilantes (2)
- Overcharging (2)
- Punishment (2)
- Self help (2)
- Vigilantism (2)
- Accounting for disparities in judicial behavior (1)
- Aggravation (1)
- Asylum claims (1)
- Bail (1)
- Bias (1)
- Causes of behavior by judges (1)
- Condemnability (1)
- Conditions of release (1)
Articles 1 - 14 of 14
Full-Text Articles in Judges
Virtually Incredible: Rethinking Deference To Demeanor When Assessing Credibility In Asylum Cases Conducted By Video Teleconference, Liz Bradley, Hillary Farber
Virtually Incredible: Rethinking Deference To Demeanor When Assessing Credibility In Asylum Cases Conducted By Video Teleconference, Liz Bradley, Hillary Farber
All Faculty Scholarship
The COVID-19 pandemic forced courthouses around the country to shutter their doors to in-person hearings and embrace video teleconferencing (VTC), launching a technology proliferation within the U.S. legal system. Immigration courts have long been authorized to use VTC, but the pandemic prompted the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) to expand video capabilities and encourage the use of video “to the maximum extent practicable.” In this technology pivot, we must consider how VTC affects cases for international humanitarian protections, where an immigration judge’s ability to accurately gauge an applicant’s demeanor can have life-or-death consequences.
This Article takes a deep dive …
The Subversions And Perversions Of Shadow Vigilantism, Paul H. Robinson, Sarah M. Robinson
The Subversions And Perversions Of Shadow Vigilantism, Paul H. Robinson, Sarah M. Robinson
All Faculty Scholarship
This excerpt from the recently published Shadow Vigilantes book argues that, while vigilantism, even moral vigilantism, can be dangerous to a society, the real danger is not of hordes of citizens, frustrated by the system’s doctrines of disillusionment, rising up to take the law into their own hands. Frustration can spark a vigilante impulse, but such classic aggressive vigilantism is not the typical response. More common is the expression of disillusionment in less brazen ways by a more surreptitious undermining and distortion of the operation of the criminal justice system.
Shadow vigilantes, as they might be called, can affect the …
Pretrial Detention And Bail, Megan Stevenson, Sandra G. Mayson
Pretrial Detention And Bail, Megan Stevenson, Sandra G. Mayson
All Faculty Scholarship
Our current pretrial system imposes high costs on both the people who are detained pretrial and the taxpayers who foot the bill. These costs have prompted a surge of bail reform around the country. Reformers seek to reduce pretrial detention rates, as well as racial and socioeconomic disparities in the pretrial system, while simultaneously improving appearance rates and reducing pretrial crime. The current state of pretrial practice suggests that there is ample room for improvement. Bail hearings are often cursory, with no defense counsel present. Money-bail practices lead to high rates of detention even among misdemeanor defendants and those who …
How Being Right Can Risk Wrongs, Paul H. Robinson, Sarah M. Robinson
How Being Right Can Risk Wrongs, Paul H. Robinson, Sarah M. Robinson
All Faculty Scholarship
This is a chapter from the new book The Vigilante Echo. Previous chapters have made clear that some vigilantism can be morally justified where the government has failed in its promise under the social contract to protect and to do justice. But this chapter explains how even moral vigilante action can be problematic for the larger society. Vigilantes may try to do the right thing but are likely to lack the training and professional neutrality of police. They may be successful, but only on pushing the crime problem to an adjacent neighborhood. Because their open lawbreaking may seem admirable …
Shadow Vigilante Officials Manipulate And Distort To Force Justice From An Apparently Reluctant System, Paul H. Robinson, Sarah M. Robinson
Shadow Vigilante Officials Manipulate And Distort To Force Justice From An Apparently Reluctant System, Paul H. Robinson, Sarah M. Robinson
All Faculty Scholarship
The real danger of the vigilante impulse is not of hordes of citizens, frustrated by the system’s doctrines of disillusionment, rising up to take the law into their own hands. Frustration can spark a vigilante impulse but such classic aggressive vigilantism is not the typical response. More common is the expression of disillusionment in less brazen ways, by a more surreptitious undermining and distortion of the operation of the criminal justice system.
Shadow vigilantes, as they might be called, can affect the operation of the system in a host of important ways. For example, when people act as classic vigilantes …
The Moral Vigilante And Her Cousins In The Shadows, Paul H. Robinson
The Moral Vigilante And Her Cousins In The Shadows, Paul H. Robinson
All Faculty Scholarship
By definition, vigilantes cannot be legally justified – if they satisfied a justification defense, for example, they would not be law-breakers – but they may well be morally justified, if their aim is to provide the order and justice that the criminal justice system has failed to provide in a breach of the social contract. Yet, even moral vigilantism is detrimental to society and ought to be avoided, ideally not by prosecuting moral vigilantism but by avoiding the creation of situations that would call for it. Unfortunately, the U.S. criminal justice system has adopted a wide range of criminal law …
Commentary: Reflections On Remorse, Stephen J. Morse
Commentary: Reflections On Remorse, Stephen J. Morse
All Faculty Scholarship
This commentary on Zhong et al. begins by addressing the definition of remorse. It then primarily focuses on the relation between remorse and various justifications for punishment commonly accepted in Anglo-American jurisprudence and suggests that remorse cannot be used in a principled way in sentencing. It examines whether forensic psychiatrists have special expertise in evaluating remorse and concludes that they do not. The final section is a pessimistic meditation on sentencing disparities, which is a striking finding of Zhong et al.
Comments On [Israeli] Proposal For Structuring Judicial Discretion In Sentencing, Paul H. Robinson
Comments On [Israeli] Proposal For Structuring Judicial Discretion In Sentencing, Paul H. Robinson
All Faculty Scholarship
In this essay, Professor Robinson supports the current Israeli proposal for structuring judicial discretion in sentencing, in particular its reliance upon desert as the guiding principle for the distribution of punishment, its reliance upon benchmarks, or “starting-points,” to be adjusted in individual cases by reference to articulated mitigating and aggravating circumstances, and the proposal’s suggestion to use of an expert committee to draft the original guidelines.
On The Study Of Judicial Behaviors: Of Law, Politics, Science And Humility, Stephen B. Burbank
On The Study Of Judicial Behaviors: Of Law, Politics, Science And Humility, Stephen B. Burbank
All Faculty Scholarship
In this paper, which was prepared to help set the stage at an interdisciplinary conference held at the University of Indiana (Bloomington) in March, I first briefly review what I take to be the key events and developments in the history of the study of judicial behavior in legal scholarship, with attention to corresponding developments in political science. I identify obstacles to cooperation in the past – such as indifference, professional self-interest and methodological imperialism -- as well as precedents for cross-fertilization in the future. Second, drawing on extensive reading in the political science and legal literatures concerning judicial behavior, …
Do Judges Vary In Their Treatment Of Race?, David S. Abrams, Marianne Bertrand, Sendhil Mullainathan
Do Judges Vary In Their Treatment Of Race?, David S. Abrams, Marianne Bertrand, Sendhil Mullainathan
All Faculty Scholarship
Are minorities treated differently by the legal system? Systematic racial differences in case characteristics, many unobservable, make this a difficult question to answer directly. In this paper, we estimate whether judges differ from each other in how they sentence minorities, avoiding potential bias from unobservable case characteristics by exploiting the random assignment of cases to judges. We measure the between-judge variation in the difference in incarceration rates and sentence lengths between African-American and White defendants. We perform a Monte Carlo simulation in order to explicitly construct the appropriate counterfactual, where race does not influence judicial sentencing. In our data set, …
Judicial Fact-Finding At Sentencing, Stephanos Bibas
Judicial Fact-Finding At Sentencing, Stephanos Bibas
All Faculty Scholarship
This encyclopedia entry summarizes the pendulum-swings that led the Supreme Court in Apprendi v. New Jersey, Blakely v. Washington, and United States v. Booker to limit judges' ability to find facts at sentencing. Paradoxically, the much-criticized Federal Sentencing Guidelines have survived; a line of cases that began as an effort to restore juries' role has turned into a guarantor of judicial discretion; and the doctrine has quickly moved far from its Sixth Amendment roots to a policy balancing test. The Court could instead have pursued a different, more fruitful path. The Court did not have to force sentencing factors into …
White-Collar Plea Bargaining And Sentencing After Booker, Stephanos Bibas
White-Collar Plea Bargaining And Sentencing After Booker, Stephanos Bibas
All Faculty Scholarship
This symposium essay speculates about how Booker's loosening of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines is likely to affect white-collar plea bargaining and sentencing. Prosecutors' punishment intuitions and the strong white-collar defense bar will keep white-collar sentencing from growing as harsh as drug sentencing, but the parallels are nonetheless ominous. The essay suggests that the Sentencing Commission revise its loss-computation rules, calibrate white-collar sentences to their core purpose of expressing condemnation, and adding shaming punishments and apologies to give moderate prison sentences more bite.
Political Representation And Accountability Under Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Tobias Barrington Wolff
Political Representation And Accountability Under Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Tobias Barrington Wolff
All Faculty Scholarship
The U.S. military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy constitutes a singular type of speech regulation: an explicit prohibition on identity speech by a defined population of individuals that mandates a state of complete social invisibility in both military and civilian life. The impact of such a regulation upon the public speech values protected by the First Amendment should not be difficult to apprehend. And yet, as the tenth anniversary of the policy approaches, First Amendment scholars have largely ignored this seemingly irresistible subject of study, and the federal courts have refused to engage with the policy's implications for public speech …
Judicial Fact-Finding And Sentence Enhancements In A World Of Guilty Pleas, Stephanos Bibas
Judicial Fact-Finding And Sentence Enhancements In A World Of Guilty Pleas, Stephanos Bibas
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.