Rule of Law Commons^™

The Banality Of Wrongful Executions, Brandon L. Garrett

Michigan Law Review

What is so haunting about the known wrongful convictions is that those cases are the tip of the iceberg. Untold numbers of unnoticed errors may send the innocent to prison — and to the death chamber. That is why I recommend to readers a trilogy of fascinating new books that peer deeper into this larger but murkier problem. Outside the rarified group of highly publicized exonerations, which have themselves done much to attract attention to the causes of wrongful convictions, errors may be so mundane that no one notices them unless an outsider plucks a case from darkness and holds …

The Legal Context And Contributions Of Dostoevsky's Crime And Punishment, William Burnham

Michigan Law Review

Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment is of more than average interest to lawyers. The title perhaps says it all in terms of content. The chief protagonist, the murderer Raskolnikov, is a law student on a break from his studies. And the pursuer of the murderer is a lawyer, an examining magistrate. But the more subtle and more important legal aspects of Crime and Punishment concern the time period in Russian legal history in which the novel was written and is set. The 1860s in Russia were a time of tremendous legal change. Among other things, an 1861 decree emancipated the serfs …

Social Scientists Take The Stand: A Review And Appraisal Of Their Testimony In Litigation, Jack Greenberg

Michigan Law Review

"How to inform the judicial mind, as you know, is one of the most complicated problems,'' said Justice Frankfurter during argument of the school segregation cases. And as law deals more and more with issues of great public consequence the judiciary's need for knowledge increases. Much of this knowledge is within the realm of what are called the social sciences.

Although jurisprudents and social scientists have long complained of a gulf between law and social science, little notice has been given to the recent, recurrent collaboration between the two at the trial level. In a variety of cases social scientists' …

Evidence - Presumptions - Continuting Life During Seven-Year Absence, Douglas Peck S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

Deceased, a wage earner, disappeared on December 28, 1943, and was unreported for more than seven years. Evidence was conflicting as to whether he had suicidal tendencies. He was adjudged dead in December 1950 by probate court, and plaintiff, as administratrix, filed a claim for monthly social security benefits to which deceased would have been entitled for the period from December 1943 to December 1950. The referee made a finding that deceased died in December 1943. On appeal to the United States District Court from a decision of the Appeals Council of the Federal Security Agency affirming the referee's finding …