The Law And Politics Of The Charles Taylor Case, 2015 Florida International University College of Law
The Law And Politics Of The Charles Taylor Case, Charles Chernor Jalloh
Faculty Publications
This article discusses a rare successful prosecution of a head of state by a modern international criminal court. The case involved former Liberian president Charles Taylor. Taylor, who was charged and tried by the United Nations-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone (“SCSL”), was convicted in April 2013 for planning and aiding and abetting war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other serious international humanitarian law violations. He was sentenced to 50 years imprisonment. The SCSL Appeals Chamber upheld the historic conviction and sentence in September 2013. Taylor is currently serving his sentence in Great Britain. This article, from an insider who …
Mitigating Foul Blows, 2015 Seattle University School of Law
Mitigating Foul Blows, Mary Bowman
Faculty Articles
For nearly eighty years, courts have offered stirring rhetoric about how prosecutors must not strike foul blows in pursuit of convictions. Yet while appellate courts are often quick to condemn prosecutorial trial misconduct, they rarely provide any meaningful remedy. Instead, courts routinely affirm convictions, relying on defense counsel's failure to object or concluding that the misconduct was merely harmless error. Jerome Frank summed up the consequences of this dichotomy best when he noted that the courts' attitude of helpless piety in prosecutorial misconduct cases breeds a deplorably cynical attitude toward the judiciary. Cognitive bias research illuminates the reasons for, and …
The Surprising Acquittals In The Gotovina And Perišić Cases: Is The Icty Appeals Chamber A Trial Chamber In Sheep’S Clothing?, 2015 Barry University, Dwayne O. Andreas School of Law
The Surprising Acquittals In The Gotovina And Perišić Cases: Is The Icty Appeals Chamber A Trial Chamber In Sheep’S Clothing?, Mark A. Summers
Richmond Journal of Global Law & Business
No abstract provided.
2014 International Trade Law Decisions Of The Federal Circuit, 2015 Fluet Huber & Hoang, PLLC
2014 International Trade Law Decisions Of The Federal Circuit, Jennifer S. Huber, Simon G. Courtman
American University Law Review
No abstract provided.
Labor And Employment Law-Disparate Treatment And Disparate Impact-Assessing A Pregnant Employee's Ability To Bring Suit Under The Second Clause Of The Pregnancy Discrimination Act, 2015 University of Tennessee College of Law
Labor And Employment Law-Disparate Treatment And Disparate Impact-Assessing A Pregnant Employee's Ability To Bring Suit Under The Second Clause Of The Pregnancy Discrimination Act, Alex Thomason
Tennessee Law Review
No abstract provided.
The Marrying Kind, 2015 University of Tennessee College of Law
The Marrying Kind, Zachary Herz
Tennessee Law Review
We are living in a Constitutional moment. In the span of half a century, LGBT people have been cast out, tolerated, accepted, and finally celebrated: In time with that shift, same-sex marriage has gone from absurdity, to threat, to fundamental right. This Article queries the links between those two processes and their potential implications for constitutional anti-discrimination law more broadly.
Specifically, this Article considers two features of equal protection jurisprudence that have entered into strange, silent conflict: the discriminatory purpose doctrine established in Washington v. Davis and Personnel Administrator of Massachusetts v. Feeney, and the tendency of courts to treat …
The Patented Design, 2015 University of Tennessee College of Law
The Patented Design, Sarah Burstein
Tennessee Law Review
The design patent system is over 170 years old; however, the law of design patents is woefully underdeveloped and undertheorized. One particularly important open question has to do with the very nature of the protected subject matter-what, exactly, is "the patented design'? Accordingly, it is not clear whether the use of a claimed shape on a different type of product or a visual representation of a patentee's commercial embodiment constitutes infringement. This Article argues that neither use should be deemed to be infringing because the patented design should be conceptualized as the design as applied to a specific type of …
Ordering Proof: Beyond Adversarial And Inquisitorial Trial Structures, 2015 University of Tennessee College of Law
Ordering Proof: Beyond Adversarial And Inquisitorial Trial Structures, Mark Spottswood
Tennessee Law Review
In typical trials, judges and juries will find it easier to remember the proof that occurs early in the process over than what comes later. Moreover, once a fact-finder starts to form a working hypothesis to explain the facts of the case, they will be biased towards interpreting new facts in a way that confirms that theory. These two psychological mechanisms will often combine to create a strong "primacy effect," in which the party who goes first gains a subtle, but significant, advantage over the opposing party. In this article, I propose a new method of ordering proof, designed to …
Judicial Priorities, 2015 Columbia Law School
Judicial Priorities, Bert I. Huang, Tejas N. Narechania
Faculty Scholarship
In an unprecedented move, the Illinois Supreme Court in the mid-1990s imposed hard caps on the state's appeals courts, drastically reducing the number of opinions they could publish, while also narrowing the formal criteria for opinions to qualify for publication. The high court explained that the amendment's purpose was to reduce the "avalanche of opinions emanating from [the] Appellate Court," which was causing legal research to become "unnecessarily burdensome, difficult and costly." This unusual and sudden policy shift offers the chance to observe the priorities of a common law court in its production of published opinions. The method we introduce …
A Conversation With Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Associate Justice Of The Supreme Court Of The United States, 2015 University of Michigan Law School
A Conversation With Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Associate Justice Of The Supreme Court Of The United States, University Of Michigan Law School
Event Materials
Program for the 2015 Tanner Lecture on Human Values on February 6, 2015, sponsored by the University of Michigan Law School and the University of Michigan LSA Department of Philosophy.
The Procedural Aspect Of The Rule Of Law: India As A Case Study For Distinguishing Concept From Conception, 2015 Claremont McKenna College
The Procedural Aspect Of The Rule Of Law: India As A Case Study For Distinguishing Concept From Conception, Karina T. Hwang
CMC Senior Theses
In this thesis, the concept of the procedural aspect of the Rule of Law will be distinguished from what I argue are conceptions that are falsely promulgated as concept. The different aspects of the Rule of Law—form, substance, and procedure— are helpful in making the distinction between concept and conception. Examining procedure within the Rule of Law is particularly important, and I define a broader set of requirements of the concept of the procedural aspect of the Rule of Law. This concept is applied to understand the Indian conception of the Rule of Law, a particularly interesting case that brings …
Reimagining Access To Justice In The Poor People’S Courts, 2015 University of Nevada, Las Vegas -- William S. Boyd School of Law
Reimagining Access To Justice In The Poor People’S Courts, Elizabeth L. Macdowell
Scholarly Works
Access to justice efforts have been focused more on access than justice, due in part to the framing of access to justice issues around the presence or absence of lawyers. This article argues that access to justice scholars and activists should also think about social justice and provides a roadmap for running a legal services program geared toward making court systems more just. The article also further develops the concept of “poor people’s courts,” a term that has been used to describe courts serving large numbers of low-income people without representation. The article argues that access to justice efforts can …
Excusing Murder? Conservative Jurors’ Acceptance Of The Gay Panic Defense, 2015 University at Albany, State University of New York
Excusing Murder? Conservative Jurors’ Acceptance Of The Gay Panic Defense, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Jessica Salerno, Bette L. Bottoms, B. L. Harrington, Dave Kemner
Psychology Faculty Scholarship
We conducted a simulated trial study to investigate the effectiveness of a “gay-panic” provocation defense as a function of jurors’ political orientation. Mock jurors read about a murder case in which a male defendant claimed a victim provoked the killing by starting a fight, which either included or did not include the male victim making an unwanted sexual advance that triggered a state of panic in the defendant. Conservative jurors were significantly less punitive when the defendant claimed to have acted out of gay panic as compared to when this element was not part of the defense. In contrast, liberal …
Are Houses Of Worship "House[S]" Under The Third Amendment?, 2015 University of Tennessee College of Law
Are Houses Of Worship "House[S]" Under The Third Amendment?, Eric Rassbach
Tennessee Law Review
No abstract provided.
Issue 2: Table Of Contents, 2015 University of Richmond
Frenemies Of The Court: The Many Faces Of Amicus Curiae, 2015 University of Washington School of Law
Frenemies Of The Court: The Many Faces Of Amicus Curiae, Helen A. Anderson
University of Richmond Law Review
No abstract provided.
Marriage Equality Comes To Virginia, 2015 University of Richmond
Marriage Equality Comes To Virginia, Carl W. Tobias
Law Faculty Publications
Part I of this article chronicles marriage equality's rise and development nationally. It ascertains that challenges, which fos- tered the invalidation of marriage prohibitions that essentially govern nearly all jurisdictions, including Virginia, have triggered some controversy. Part II scrutinizes Judge Wright Allen's resolu- tion of the Virginia litigation and the United States Court of Ap- peals for the Fourth Circuit determination, which affirmed her ruling. This portion finds that the district jurist comprehensively assessed the relevant legal and factual issues when striking down the proscription while the Fourth Circuit appropriately upheld her opinion. Part III then derives lessons from the …
The Relationship Between Inter-American Jurisdiction And States (National Systems): Some Pertinent Questions, 2015 Inter-American Court of Human Rights
The Relationship Between Inter-American Jurisdiction And States (National Systems): Some Pertinent Questions, Sergio GarcíA RamíRez
Notre Dame Journal of International & Comparative Law
In this Article, Judge Sergio García Ramírez of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights explores the complex and often vexing relationship between the Inter-American Human Rights system and the domestic human rights protections within the system's member states. García Ramírez identifies a number of challenges to implementing human rights protections in Latin America, many of which are rooted in a history of authoritarianism in the twentieth century and the nascent nature of the region's democratic institutions. Yet he sees solutions in the role of the Inter-American Court in the region. García Ramírez highlights the Court's role in interpreting international human …
The Rules And The Reality Of Petition Procedures In The Inter-American Human Rights System, 2015 George Washington University Law School
The Rules And The Reality Of Petition Procedures In The Inter-American Human Rights System, Dinah Shelton
Notre Dame Journal of International & Comparative Law
In this Essay, Professor Dinah Shelton draws on her personal experience as a member of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to discuss the underlying causes of a "crisis of commitment" to the Inter-American system of human rights. Shelton traces the roots of this crisis in large part to the Inter-American petition procedures. Giving an in-depth account of the structure of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the details of the petition procedures, Shelton explores the issues of legitimacy, transparency, effectiveness, and efficiency raised by various aspects of the petitioning process, and discusses the various ways in which these …
Death Penalty, Amnesty Laws, And Forced Disappearances: Three Main Topics Of The Inter-American Corpus Juris In Criminal Law, 2015 Inter-American Court of Human Rights
Death Penalty, Amnesty Laws, And Forced Disappearances: Three Main Topics Of The Inter-American Corpus Juris In Criminal Law, Eduardo Ferrer Mac-Gregor, Pablo GonzáLez DomíNguez
Notre Dame Journal of International & Comparative Law
In this Article, Judge Eduardo Ferrer Mac-Gregor of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and International Human Rights Researcher Pablo González Domínguez explore three of the richest and most contentious areas of the jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights: death penalty cases, amnesty law, and cased regarding forced disappearance. These topics encompass some of the most pressing human rights issues in the Inter-American System. For each topic, Ferrer Mac-Gregor and González Domínguez provide a succinct but comprehensive view of the Inter-American Court's jurisprudence, discuss the ways in which the core principles of this jurisprudence have been applied in …