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Full-Text Articles in Jurisprudence

Understanding Crime Under Capitalism: A Critique Of American Criminal Justice And Introduction To Marxist Jurisprudence, Steven E. Gilmore Apr 2016

Understanding Crime Under Capitalism: A Critique Of American Criminal Justice And Introduction To Marxist Jurisprudence, Steven E. Gilmore

Steven E Gilmore

Following the highly publicized deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown at the hands of white local law enforcement officers, along with the subsequent failure of the justice system to address this repugnant state of affairs, it has become essential for left-legal activists and advocates of social justice to begin crafting a model of criminal justice that is capable of withstanding the bias of perceived class, gender, and racial supremacy.  Further, it seems necessary to express these ideas in a manner that is amenable to implementation, rather than conveyed in the abstract terms of bourgeois ideology.  Such a design of …


The Emerging Neoliberal Penality: Rethinking Foucauldian Punishment In A Profit-Driven Carceral System, Kevin Crow Dec 2015

The Emerging Neoliberal Penality: Rethinking Foucauldian Punishment In A Profit-Driven Carceral System, Kevin Crow

Kevin Crow

This paper argues that there is a new neoliberal penality emerging in the United States that exhibits four primary characteristics: (1) the death of rehabilitation, (2) the de-individualization of the criminal, (3) the emergence of a market for deviance, and (4) the managerialistic approach. The prison-industrial complex in the United States illustrates these characteristics, but the characteristics are not limited to the prison-industrial complex.

The paper draws on Foucault's concept of the prison as an institution primarily of individual normalization, but notes that it presupposes rehabilitation as the primary goal of the institution. Using Foucault's work in Discipline and Punish …


Cruelty In Criminal Law: Four Conceptions, Paulo Barrozo Dec 2014

Cruelty In Criminal Law: Four Conceptions, Paulo Barrozo

Paulo Barrozo

This Article defines four distinct conceptions of cruelty found in underdeveloped form in domestic and international criminal law sources. The definition is analytical, focusing on the types of agency, victimization, causality, and values in each conception of cruelty. But no definition of cruelty will do justice to its object until complemented by the kind of understanding practical reason provides of the implications of the phenomenon of cruelty. No one should be neutral in relation to cruelty. Eminently, cruelty in criminal law, a human-created phenomenon, vigorously calls for responses in the form of preventive and corrective action on the part of …


The Right To Quantitative Privacy, David C. Gray, Danielle Keats Citron Dec 2012

The Right To Quantitative Privacy, David C. Gray, Danielle Keats Citron

Danielle Keats Citron

We are at the cusp of a historic shift in our conceptions of the Fourth Amendment driven by dramatic advances in surveillance technology. Governments and their private sector agents continue to invest billions of dollars in massive data-mining projects, advanced analytics, fusion centers, and aerial drones, all without serious consideration of the constitutional issues that these technologies raise. In United States v. Jones, the Supreme Court signaled an end to its silent acquiescence in this expanding surveillance state. In that case, five justices signed concurring opinions defending a revolutionary proposition: that citizens have Fourth Amendment interests in substantial quantities of …


The Relational Contingency Of Rights, Alex Stein, Gideon Parchomovsky Dec 2011

The Relational Contingency Of Rights, Alex Stein, Gideon Parchomovsky

Alex Stein

In this Article, we demonstrate, contrary to conventional wisdom, that all rights are relationally contingent. Our main thesis is that rights afford their holders meaningful protection only against challengers who face higher litigation costs than the rightholder. Contrariwise, challengers who can litigate more cheaply than a rightholder can force the rightholder to forfeit the right and thereby render the right ineffective. Consequently, in the real world, rights avail only against certain challengers but not others. This result is robust and pervasive. Furthermore, it obtains irrespectively of how rights and other legal entitlements are defined by the legislator or construed by …


A Theory Of The Perverse Verdict, Bethel G.A Erastus-Obilo Aug 2011

A Theory Of The Perverse Verdict, Bethel G.A Erastus-Obilo

Bethel G.A Erastus-Obilo

The concept of a perverse verdict is one that pervades the Criminal justice system of nearly all common law jurisdictions. The English Criminal Justice system is no exception and the concept has become institutionalised as if it were a true occurrence. This paper challenges the idea and argues that it is, technically, a legal non-event given the system of trial by jury. The theory is that besides the jury, no one else is invested with the power and authority to declare a verdict and this position is supported both by legal custom and the mechanism of the criminal justice system. …


Magistrate Judges, Article Iii, And The Power To Preside Over Federal Prisoner Section 2255 Proceedings, Ira P. Robbins Dec 2001

Magistrate Judges, Article Iii, And The Power To Preside Over Federal Prisoner Section 2255 Proceedings, Ira P. Robbins

Ira P. Robbins

In 1968, Congress enacted the Federal Magistrates Act to enhance judicial efficiency in the federal courts. Since then, some judicial functions delegated to magistrate judges have been challenged on constitutional grounds: while federal district judges, appointed pursuant to Article III of the United States Constitution, are protected with life tenure and undiminishable salary, thereby enhancing judicial independence, federal magistrate judges, appointed pursuant to Article I, have no such protection. The most recent major challenge to magistrate judge authority came in 2001, when the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in United States v. Johnston, decided that referral …


Attempting The Impossible: The Emerging Consensus, Ira P. Robbins Dec 1985

Attempting The Impossible: The Emerging Consensus, Ira P. Robbins

Ira P. Robbins

Impossible attempts are situations in which an actor fails to consummate a substantive crime because he is mistaken about attendant circumstances. Professor Robbins divides mistakes regarding circumstances into three categories: mistakes of fact, mistakes of law, and mistakes of mixed fact and law. Courts and commentators disagree primarily over the identification and treatment of mixed fact law cases. Professor Robbins surveys each category of mistake. He then examines the objective, subjective, and hybrid approaches to dealing with the mixed fact/law category. The objective approach requires an objective manifestation of the actor's intent before conviction is allowed. The subjective approach permits …