Digital Commons Network^™

Jane Crow Constitutionalism, Evan D. Bernick

College of Law Faculty Publications

On June 24, 2022 The United States Supreme Court issued its decision on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization; overturning Roe v. Wade, and destroying fifty years of precedent to protect the constitutional right to abortion in the United States. This overturning sets a dangerous, new precedent that reinforces the State’s control of reproduction, and criminalizes a woman’s right to choose, with very few exceptions. In states like Mississippi, Black women are already experiencing the highest rates of maternal mortality, incarceration, and poverty.

This article posits that Dobbs operates to maintain a racialized and gendered underclass, and names this phenomenon …

After Mccleskey, Robert L. Tsai

Faculty Scholarship

In the 1987 decision, McCleskey v. Kemp, the Supreme Court rejected a black death row inmate's argument that significant racial disparities in the administration of Georgia's capital punishment laws violated the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. In brushing aside the most sophisticated empirical study of a state 's capital practices to date, that ruling seemingly slammed the door on structural inequality claims against the criminal justice system. Most accounts of the case end after noting the ruling's incompatibility with more robust theories of equality and meditating on the deep sense of demoralization felt by social justice advocates. One might …

Democratizing Tthe Eighth Amendment, Erin E. Braatz

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Stacking The Deck: How The Eighth Circuit's Decision In United States V. Crandall Threatens The First Step Act's Bipartisan Criminal Justice Reforms, Anthony Passela

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Drug Ideologies Of The United States, Macy Montgomery

Helm's School of Government Conference - 2021-2024

The United States has been increasingly creating lenient drug policies. Seventeen states and Washington, the District of Columbia, legalized marijuana, and Oregon decriminalized certain drugs, including methamphetamine, heroin, and cocaine. The medical community has proven that drugs, including marijuana, have myriad adverse health side effects. This leads to two questions: Why does the United States government continue to create lenient drug policies, and what reasons do citizens give for legalizing drugs when the medical community has proven them harmful? The paper hypothesizes that the disadvantages of drug legalization outweigh its benefits because of the numerous harms it causes, such as …

Removing A Log From The Nation’S Eye: A National Self-Analysis Of The Domestic Terrorism Question, Katherine R. Doan

Helm's School of Government Conference - 2021-2024

Terroristic values are easy to be ascribed to foreign enemies, but it is far more difficult to admit that domestic citizens could be extremist to the point of being labeled a terrorist. Terrorists are not born; they are made. The following research focuses on the commonalities of upbringing in known domestic terrorists within the United States of America that may reveal noticeable similarities in education, radicalization, and identity. The criminal justice system has yet to discover a perfect method of administering retribution to terrorists. While they have broken the law, their intentions and results are not the same as an …

Voting Rights And The Electoral Process: Resolving Representation Issues Due To Felony Disenfranchisement And Prison Gerrymandering, Andrew Calabrese, Tim Gordon, Tianyi Lu

Fordham Law Voting Rights and Democracy Forum

Felony disenfranchisement and prison gerrymandering distort democratic representation by excluding incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals from political participation while artificially inflating representation in prison-hosting districts. In this report, the Fordham Law School Rule of Law Clinic recommends restoring voting rights to individuals with felony convictions once they are released from prison and ending prison-based gerrymandering by counting incarcerated persons with a certain number of years left in their sentences as residents of the districts where they intend to reside after their release, in addition to other reforms to effectively carry out these policies.

Conviction On Interpretation, Advocate Adaptability, And The Future Of Emojis And Emoticons As Evidence, Samantha Lyons

Seattle Journal of Technology, Environmental, & Innovation Law

The dawning of the digital age introduced new and unique interpretive quandaries for judges and litigators alike. These quandaries include (but are not limited to) misinterpretation of pictorial slang as used in instant messaging, new or collateral meanings invented by phrases paired with specific emoticons or emojis, and the existence of emojis alone as communicative accessories.

This Note analyzes how lawyers and judges have essential free reign to treat emojis as they see fit: a prosecutor can argue, even in good faith, that the inclusion of an emoji depicting an open flame means the sender knew the heroin he sold …

Covid-19, Pemenjaraan Berlebihan, Dan Potensi Katastrofe Kemanusiaan, Iqrak Sulhin

Jurnal Hukum & Pembangunan

On March 2, 2020 Indonesia recorded the Covid-19 case for the first time. Since then the trend in the number of infections has continued to increase. Likewise, the number of deaths. To anticipate the spread within the Penitentiary (Lapas), the Ministry of Law and Human Rights is releasing prisoners, through accelerating assimilation and parole. Similar policies have also been carried out by other countries in the world and are recommended by international institutions, such as the World Health Organization and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes. However, the main problem behind this policy is the overcrowding condition in …

Innocent Until Presented, Aristo Pangaribuan

Jurnal Hukum & Pembangunan

This paper analyzes a practice of presenting suspects, which is a ritual that displays a suspect before the media. Until now, although it is frequently used by the police, there has been no attempt to examine such practices in Indonesia. In the criminal procedure scholarship, there is no standard term to describe it. This article will refer to such ritual as a presentation of suspects. This ritual has also been practiced around the world with different methods and has a long history, especially in the United States. This article discusses the presentation of suspects and question whether such a ritual …

Penjatuhan Kebiri Kimia Bagi Pelaku Kejahatan Seksual Terhadap Anak Dalam Perspektif Falsafah Pemidanaan, Tunggal S, Nathalina Naibaho

Jurnal Hukum & Pembangunan

Sexual assault against children is an phenomenon that often occurs in Indonesia. The statistic shows that the number of sexual assault against children doesn't decrease significantly. Punishment is not the only way to control the number of sexual assault against children. Then, the goverment passed new regulation that regulating of chemical castration in hope of reducing the number of sexual crimes against children. However, the presence of chemical castration raises objections and differences of opinion in various circles. This research aims to determine the sentencing purpose of chemical castration and the proper sanction for imposing chemical castration in Indonesia. This …

Was Atwater V. Lago Vista Decided Correctly? The Fourth Amendment's Shadow And Simulacra Of Police Brutality And The American Dream, Charles Lincoln

Barry Law Review

No abstract provided.

Death By Detox: Substance Withdrawal, A Possible Death Row For Individuals In Custody, Dorothea R. Carleton

Journal of Law and Health

Suffering through substance withdrawal is a major problem for the majority of individuals in custody, yet there are no guidelines or standards to ensure their safety. Instead, individuals in custody are having their Constitutional rights violated and many die at the hands of the justice system. When their families seek accountability for the lack of adequate care provided by correctional facilities and employees, families are faced with a lack of consistency from one circuit to the next for knowing as to the correct standard to have a successful claim. Strain v. Regalado was a chance for the Supreme Court to …

Batson V. Kentucky Guidelines And The Use Of Peremptory Challenges In Arkansas Courts: A Case Study, Abigail Lindsey

Political Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

The peremptory challenge is a method by which attorneys can strike a potential juror from the jury pool without a valid reason. With Batson v. Kentucky (1986), the Supreme Court ruled that peremptory challenges cannot be issued on the basis of race, however, there are many problems with the way this precedent has been followed in various states. The goal of this research is to analyze how Arkansas courts implement the Batson precedent. This research also studies whether the way in which Arkansas courts utilize the peremptory challenge creates ideologically imbalanced juries.

Let My People Go, Part Two: The Second Amendment Political Necessity Defense And The Storming Of Capital Hill, Kindaka Sanders

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

The Article examines the traditional political necessity defense, extracting elements that are compatible with the Second Amendment and discarding elements that are not. The Article also explores the historical and legal background of the right to rebel and then uses the right to rebel to define the contours of the Second Amendment political necessity defense. Finally, the Article applies the Second Amendment political necessity defense to the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2020.

Part I of this Article discusses the constitutional basis for the political necessity defense. Part II articulates the political necessity doctrine refined by its Second …

Promotion Of Citizenship Through Migration: Taking Into Cognizance The Peculiarities Of Migrant, Uche Nnawulezi, Hilary Nwaechefu

Indonesia Law Review

This study arose out of the growing interest in citizenship issues that have remained an intractable problem in the global migration community. The main objective this study is to examine the realities of global migration which has necessitated expansion on citizenship policies of admission, acquisition of rights, responsibilities, and interest of migrants or residents contained in statutory provisions or frameworks of migrant's country of residence. This is against the backdrop driven by the desire to create stability in the international migration system. It becomes imperative to examined the benefits and protections accorded to migrant in his place of residence which …

Contradiction Over The Application Of Corporate Liability In Corruption Court Decisions In Indonesia, Budi Suhariyanto, Cecep Mustafa

Indonesia Law Review

This paper presents and critically analyses the application of corporate criminal liability in the decisions of corruption crimes in Indonesia from 1999 to 2019. Of the seven corporate cases that have been prosecuted and convicted in this period. We identify 4 (four) corporate criminal liability models as follows. First, the corporation is accused, prosecuted, and convicted after the management has been convicted through a final and binding decision. Secondly, the corporation is excluded from the indictment but included in the sentencing. Third, the prosecution of corporate crimes negates the criminal liability of its management. Fourth, a portion of corporate criminal …

Defendants In The Dark: How The Jencks Act Is Incompatible With The Adversarial Legal System, Eli J. Esakoff

Journal of Law and Policy

The Jencks Act is a McCarthy Era law that prohibits compelling the disclosure of any statement made by a government witness in a federal criminal prosecution until after the witness has testified at trial. Passed in 1957 in response to the Supreme Court’s decision in Jencks v. United States, the Act’s life in Congress was “nasty, brutish, and short.” In prosecuting its anti-communist “witch hunts” of the era, the government strove to keep hidden as much of its case against those accused as possible. Against this backdrop of the desire for secrecy, the Supreme Court held that a criminal defendant …

A More Perfect Union For Whom?, Emmanuel Hiram Arnaud

Faculty Scholarship

Amending the federal Constitution has been instrumental in creating and developing the North American constitutional project. The difficult process embedded in Article V has been used by “The People” to expand rights and democracy, fix procedural deficiencies, and even overturn Supreme Court precedent. Yet, it is no secret that the amendment process has fallen to the wayside and that a constitutional amendment in our present age of extreme political polarization feels impossible.

Our nation’s history suggests otherwise. In John F. Kowal and Wilfred U. Codrington III’s exciting and inspirational new book, they explain that interest in constitutional amendments has coincided …

A More Perfect Union For Whom?, Emmanuel Hiram Arnaud

Articles

Amending the federal Constitution has been instrumental in creating and developing the North American constitutional project. The difficult process embedded in Article V has been used by “The People” to expand rights and democracy, fix procedural deficiencies, and even overturn Supreme Court precedent. Yet, it is no secret that the amendment process has fallen to the wayside and that a constitutional amendment in our present age of extreme political polarization feels impossible.

Our nation’s history suggests otherwise. In John F. Kowal and Wilfred U. Codrington III’s exciting and inspirational new book, they explain that interest in constitutional amendments has coincided …

Primacy In Theory And Application: Lessons From A Half-Century Of New Judicial Federalism, Catherine R. Connors, Connor Finch

Maine Law Review

In his 1977 article, State Constitutions and the Protection of Individual Rights, Justice Brennan famously reminded jurists that our governmental system includes two constitutions applicable to each state, and New Judicial Federalism was born. Since then, state courts have applied their own Bills of Rights using different approaches with varying degrees of enthusiasm. The primacy approach, requiring state courts to consider the state constitution first, and turning to the federal constitution only if needed to resolve the case, is theoretically optimal but inconsistently followed, even in the few jurisdictions professing to adopt that approach. This Article posits that the reason …

Law School News: Joyce And Bill Cummings Of Cummings Foundation To Deliver Keynote Address At Rwu Commencement 4-20-2023, Jill Rodrigues

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Privacy And Property: Constitutional Concerns Of Dna Dragnet Testing, E. Wyatt Jones

Honors Projects

DNA dragnets have attracted both public and scholarly criticisms that have yet to be resolved by the Courts. This review will introduce a modern understanding of DNA analysis, a complete introduction to past and present Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence, and existing suggestions concerning similar issues in legal scholarship. Considering these contexts, this review concludes that a focus on privacy and property at once, with a particular sensitivity to the inseverable relationship between the two interests, is Constitutionally consistent with precedent and the most workable means of answering the question at hand.

The Court And Capital Punishment On Different Paths: Abolition In Waiting, Carol S. Steiker, Jordan M. Steiker

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

The American death penalty finds itself in an unusual position. On the ground, the practice is weaker than at any other time in our history. Eleven jurisdictions have abandoned the death penalty over the past fifteen years, almost doubling the number of states without the punishment (twenty-three). Executions have declined substantially, totaling twenty-five or fewer a year nationwide for the past six years, compared to an average of seventy-seven a year during the six-year span around the millennium (1997-2002). Most tellingly, death sentences have fallen off a cliff, with fewer the fifty death sentences a year nationwide over the past …

The Gross Injustices Of Capital Punishment: A Torturous Practice And Justice Thurgood Marshall’S Astute Appraisal Of The Death Penalty’S Cruelty, Discriminatory Use, And Unconstitutionality, John D. Bessler

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

Through the centuries, capital punishment and torture have been used by monarchs, authoritarian regimes, and judicial systems around the world. Although torture is now expressly outlawed by international law, capital punishment—questioned by Quakers in the seventeenth century and by the Italian philosopher Cesare Beccaria and many others in the following century—has been authorized over time by various legislative bodies, including in the United States. It was Beccaria’s book, Dei delitti e delle pene (1764), translated into French and then into English as An Essay on Crimes and Punishments (1767), that fueled the still-ongoing international movement to outlaw the death penalty. …

Human Rights, Trans Rights, Prisoners’ Rights: An International Comparison, Tom Butcher

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

In this Note, I conduct an international comparison of the state of trans prisoners’ rights to explore how different national legal contexts impact the likelihood of achieving further liberation through appeals to human rights ideals. I examine the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, India, Argentina, and Costa Rica and show the degree to which a human rights framework has been successful thus far in advancing trans prisoners’ rights. My analysis also indicates that the degree to which a human rights framework is likely to be successful in the future varies greatly between countries. In countries that are hesitant …

Beating Justice: Corporal Punishment In American Schools And The Evolving Moral Constitution, Timothy D. Intelisano

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

This Note will discuss the Supreme Court’s holding in Ingraham v. Wright, and the subsequent developments in public school corporal punishment practices. Rather than focus exclusively on the case law, this Note will dive into the statistical data outlining which students are most often subjected to corporal punishment. Often, it is Black students and Autistic students who are subject to the harshest treatment.

This Note will outline the different avenues that courts could and should take to overrule Ingraham. Because a circuit split exists—on the issue of how to resolve these claims—overturning Ingraham and declaring corporal punishment per …

Kids, Cognition, And Confinement: Evaluating Claims Of Inadequate Access To Mental Health Care In Juvenile Detention Facilities, Lydia G. Mrowiec

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

In the United States, almost 60,000 juveniles are incarcerated in juvenile jails and prisons every day, and, as of March 2021, at least seventy percent of juveniles in the juvenile justice system have a mental health condition. For many young adults, prison and detention centers have “become the avenue of last resort” for treatment of those mental health conditions. However, juvenile detention facilities lack the support and resources to provide adequate care, which has led to high recidivism in the juvenile population. Juveniles, and individuals on their behalf, can challenge inadequate access to mental health resources by bringing claims under …

Death After Dobbs: Addressing The Viability Of Capital Punishment For Abortion, Melanie Kalmanson

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

Pre-Dobbs legislative efforts and states’ reactions in the immediate aftermath of Dobbs indicate the post-Dobbs reality that deeply conservative states will seek to criminalize abortion and impose extremely harsh sentences for such crimes, up to and including death. This Article addresses that reality. Initially, this Article illustrates that abortion and capital punishment are like opposite sides of the same coin, and it is a handful of states leading the counter majoritarian efforts on both topics. After outlining the position of each state in the nation that retains capital punishment on capital sentencing and abortion, the Article identifies the …

Just Choices? Judicial Selection, Ideology, And Partisanship In The Ohio Supreme Court, Margo D'Agostino

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Projects

This thesis joins the conversation on judicial selection and impacts on judicial ideology. This is a multifaceted question that engages with the history of judicial selection, differences between states, growing polarization and partisanship, and an influx in campaign spending that can all influence Justices’ behavior while on the bench. While other theorists have used more quantitative or statistical analytics, more research is still needed on the nuanced and qualitative questions surrounding the judiciary in the United States, especially on the state level. I look at three Ohio Supreme Court Justices—Maureen O’Connor, Jennifer Brunner, and Sharon Kennedy—and decisions they have penned …