Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Keyword
Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Jurisprudence
The Jury's Constitutional Judgment, Nathan Chapman
The Jury's Constitutional Judgment, Nathan Chapman
Scholarly Works
Despite the early American jury’s near-mythical role as a check on overreaching government agents, the contemporary jury’s role in constitutional adjudication remains opaque. Should the jury have the right to nullify criminal statutes on constitutional grounds? Should the jury apply constitutional doctrine in civil rights suits against government officers? Should courts of appeals defer to the jury’s application of constitutional law, or review it de novo?
This Article offers the first holistic analysis of the jury’s role in constitutional adjudication. It argues that the Constitution’s text, history, and structure strongly support the jury’s authority to apply constitutional law to the …
Causing Constitutional Harm: How Tort Law Can Help Determine Harmless Error In Criminal Trials, Jason M. Solomon
Causing Constitutional Harm: How Tort Law Can Help Determine Harmless Error In Criminal Trials, Jason M. Solomon
Scholarly Works
This Article proceeds in four parts. Part II is a brief overview of harmless-error doctrine in the context of habeas challenges to state criminal convictions, focusing on the nature of the inquiry and the doctrinal deadlock described above. Part III is an empirical analysis of the post-Brecht cases in the federal courts of appeals. To search for a way out of the doctrinal deadlock, I started with a relatively straightforward question: what has happened to harmless-error analysis since Brecht? To answer this question, I reviewed and, with the help of a research assistant, coded all of the 315 …