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Full-Text Articles in Law and Society

Don't Take His Eye, Don't Take His Tooth, And Don't Cast The First Stone: Limiting Religious Arguments In Capital Cases, John H. Blume, Sheri Lynn Johnson Dec 2000

Don't Take His Eye, Don't Take His Tooth, And Don't Cast The First Stone: Limiting Religious Arguments In Capital Cases, John H. Blume, Sheri Lynn Johnson

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Professors John H. Blume and Sheri Lynn Johnson explore the occurrences of religious imagery and argument invoked by both prosecutors and defense attorneys in capital cases. Such invocation of religious imagery and argument by attorneys is not surprising, considering that the jurors who hear such arguments are making life and death decisions, and advocates, absent regulation, will resort to such emotionally compelling arguments. Also surveying judicial responses to such arguments in courts, Professors Blume and Johnson gauge the level of tolerance for such arguments in specific jurisdictions. Presenting proposed rules for prosecutors and defense counsel who wish to employ religious …


Coercion, Pop-Psychology, And Judicial Moralizing: Some Proposals For Curbing Judicial Abuse Of Probation Conditions, Andrew Horwitz Jan 2000

Coercion, Pop-Psychology, And Judicial Moralizing: Some Proposals For Curbing Judicial Abuse Of Probation Conditions, Andrew Horwitz

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Prosecuting Violence/Reconstructing Community, Anthony V. Alfieri Jan 2000

Prosecuting Violence/Reconstructing Community, Anthony V. Alfieri

Articles

For two centuries, the private violence of American history has paraded into courts for public trial. Often dramatized by the spectacle of rape and murder, the public trials of private violence increasingly are seen to decide the fates of both the accused and the victim of crime. The fate of community, whether the community of the victim, the accused, or the public, seems at first blush untouched by such trials. Like victims and their families, however, communities struck by violence suffer profound loss. That loss is expressed in the destruction of public discourse, reason, and citizenship. This public ruin is …


Structuring Criminal Codes To Perform Their Function, Paul H. Robinson Jan 2000

Structuring Criminal Codes To Perform Their Function, Paul H. Robinson

All Faculty Scholarship

This paper argues that criminal codes have two distinct functions. First, a code must ex ante announce the rules of conduct. Second, it must set out the principles of for adjudicating, ex post, violations of those rules. These two functions often are in tension with one another. Each calls for a different kind of code, addressed to a different audience, with different objectives: To be effective ex ante, the rules of conduct must be formulated in a way that they will be understood, remembered, and able to be applied in daily life by lay persons with a wide range of …


Shifting Power For Battered Women: Law, Material Resources, And Poor Women Of Color, Donna Coker Jan 2000

Shifting Power For Battered Women: Law, Material Resources, And Poor Women Of Color, Donna Coker

Articles

No abstract provided.


The Inefficiency Of Mens Rea, Claire Oakes Finkelstein Jan 2000

The Inefficiency Of Mens Rea, Claire Oakes Finkelstein

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Positivism And The Notion Of An Offense, Claire Oakes Finkelstein Jan 2000

Positivism And The Notion Of An Offense, Claire Oakes Finkelstein

All Faculty Scholarship

While the United States Supreme Court has developed an elaborate constitutional jurisprudence of criminal procedure, it has articulated few constitutional doctrines of the substantive criminal law. The asymmetry between substance and procedure seems natural given the demise of Lochner and the minimalist stance towards due process outside the area of fundamental rights. This Article, however, argues that the "positivistic" approach to defining criminal offenses stands in some tension with other basic principles, both constitutional and moral. In particular, two important constitutional guarantees depend on the notion of an offense: the presumption of innocence and the ban on double jeopardy. Under …


When The Rule Swallows The Exception, Claire Oakes Finkelstein Jan 2000

When The Rule Swallows The Exception, Claire Oakes Finkelstein

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.