Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Law Enforcement and Corrections Commons™
Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Discipline
-
- Criminal Procedure (5)
- Courts (4)
- Social and Behavioral Sciences (3)
- Civil Rights and Discrimination (2)
- Constitutional Law (2)
-
- Criminology and Criminal Justice (2)
- Human Rights Law (2)
- Jurisprudence (2)
- Legal History (2)
- Legal Studies (2)
- Public Law and Legal Theory (2)
- Social Welfare Law (2)
- Comparative and Foreign Law (1)
- Criminology (1)
- Evidence (1)
- Fourteenth Amendment (1)
- Judges (1)
- Law and Economics (1)
- Law and Psychology (1)
- Law and Society (1)
- Legislation (1)
- Social Control, Law, Crime, and Deviance (1)
- Sociology (1)
- Institution
- Publication
- File Type
Articles 1 - 9 of 9
Full-Text Articles in Law Enforcement and Corrections
Law Enforcement And Criminal Law Decisions, Erwin Chemerinsky
Law Enforcement And Criminal Law Decisions, Erwin Chemerinsky
Erwin Chemerinsky
No abstract provided.
Do We Know How To Punish?, Benjamin L. Apt
Do We Know How To Punish?, Benjamin L. Apt
Benjamin L. Apt
A number of current theories attempt to explain the purpose and need for criminal punishment. All of them depend on some sort of normative basis in justifying why the state may penalize people found guilty of crimes. Yet each of these theories lacks an epistemological foundation; none of them explains how we can know what form punishments should take. The article analyses the epistemological gaps in the predominant theories of punishment: retributivism, including limited-retributivism; and consequentialism in its various versions, ranging from deterrence to the reparative theories such as restorative justice and rehabilitation. It demonstrates that the common putative epistemological …
Rate Of False Conviction Of Criminal Defendants Who Are Sentenced To Death, Samuel Gross, Barbara O'Brien, Chen Hu, Edward Kennedy
Rate Of False Conviction Of Criminal Defendants Who Are Sentenced To Death, Samuel Gross, Barbara O'Brien, Chen Hu, Edward Kennedy
Edward H. Kennedy
The rate of erroneous conviction of innocent criminal defendants is often described as not merely unknown but unknowable. There is no systematic method to determine the accuracy of a criminal conviction; if there were, these errors would not occur in the first place. As a result, very few false convictions are ever discovered, and those that are discovered are not representative of the group as a whole. In the United States, however, a high proportion of false convictions that do come to light and produce exonerations are concentrated among the tiny minority of cases in which defendants are sentenced to …
Beyond Finality: How Making Criminal Judgments Less Final Can Further The Interests Of Finality, Andrew Chongseh Kim
Beyond Finality: How Making Criminal Judgments Less Final Can Further The Interests Of Finality, Andrew Chongseh Kim
Andrew Chongseh Kim
Courts and scholars commonly assume that granting convicted defendants more liberal rights to challenge their judgments would harm society’s interests in “finality.” According to conventional wisdom, finality in criminal judgments is necessary to conserve resources, encourage efficient behavior by defense counsel, and deter crime. Thus, under the common analysis, the extent to which convicted defendants should be allowed to challenge their judgments depends on how much society is willing to sacrifice to validate defendants’ rights. This Article argues that expanding defendants’ rights on post-conviction review does not always harm these interests. Rather, more liberal review can often conserve state resources, …
An Anachronism Too Discordant To Be Suffered: A Comparative Study Of Parliamentary And Presidential Approaches To Regulation Of The Death Penalty, Derek R. Verhagen
An Anachronism Too Discordant To Be Suffered: A Comparative Study Of Parliamentary And Presidential Approaches To Regulation Of The Death Penalty, Derek R. Verhagen
Derek R VerHagen
It is well-documented that the United States remains the only western democracy to retain the death penalty and finds itself ranked among the world's leading human rights violators in executions per year. However, prior to the Gregg v. Georgia decision in 1976, ending America's first and only moratorium on capital punishment, the U.S. was well in line with the rest of the civilized world in its approach to the death penalty. This Note argues that America's return to the death penalty is based primarily on the differences between classic parliamentary approaches to regulation and that of the American presidential system. …
Foreword: A Global Perspective On Sentencing Reforms, Oren Gazal-Ayal
Foreword: A Global Perspective On Sentencing Reforms, Oren Gazal-Ayal
Oren Gazal-Ayal
The articles published in this issue of Law and Contemporary Problems examine the effects of different sentencing reforms across the world. While the effects of sentencing reforms in the United States have been studied extensively, this is the first symposium that examines the effects of sentencing guidelines and alternative policies in a number of western legal systems from a comparative perspective. This issue focuses on how different sentencing policies affect prison population rates, sentence disparity, and the balance of power between the judiciary and prosecutors, while also assessing how sentencing policies respond to temporary punitive surges and moral panics. The …
Do Sentencing Guidelines Increase Prosecutorial Power? An Empirical Study, Oren Gazal-Ayal, Hagit Turjeman, Gideon Fishman
Do Sentencing Guidelines Increase Prosecutorial Power? An Empirical Study, Oren Gazal-Ayal, Hagit Turjeman, Gideon Fishman
Oren Gazal-Ayal
Traditionally, judges have had tremendous flexibility in sentencing. Offering judges maximum discretion in the sentencing process allows them to consider not only an offender’s criminal history and the severity of the crime committed, but also the complex web of mitigating and aggravating factors present in each case and additional qualitative factors, such as a defendant’s testimony or selfpresentation in a courtroom. When judges are empowered with more discretion, however, there is heightened potential for inter-judge variability in sentencing. In order to reduce sentencing disparities caused by individual sentencers, several countries and jurisdictions, most notably in the United States, have enacted …
Bargained Justice: Plea Bargaining's Innocence Problem And The Brady Safety-Valve, Lucian Dervan
Bargained Justice: Plea Bargaining's Innocence Problem And The Brady Safety-Valve, Lucian Dervan
Lucian E Dervan
If any number of attorneys were asked in 2004 whether Lea Fastow’s plea bargain in the Enron case was constitutional, the majority would respond with a simple word – Brady. Yet while the 1970 Supreme Court decision Brady v. United States authorized plea bargaining as a form of American justice, the case also contained a vital caveat that has been largely overlooked by scholars, practitioners, and courts for almost forty years. Brady contains a safety-valve that caps the amount of pressure that may be asserted against defendants by prohibiting prosecutors from offering incentives in return for guilty pleas that are …
The Eleventh Circuit's Selective Assault On Sentencing Discretion, Adam Shajnfeld
The Eleventh Circuit's Selective Assault On Sentencing Discretion, Adam Shajnfeld
Adam Shajnfeld
Ever since the Supreme Court declared that the sentences which district courts impose on criminal defendants are to be reviewed on appeal for “unreasonableness,” the standard’s contours have remained elusive and mired in controversy, despite the Court’s repeated attempts at elucidation. In few instances is this confounding state of affairs more apparent and acute than in the Eleventh Circuit’s recent lengthy and factious en banc decision in United States v. Irey. This article explores Irey’s merits, mistakes, and lessons, trying to locate each within the broader context of the Eleventh Circuit’s sentencing jurisprudence. In doing so, the article advances three …