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Brief Of Criminal Law Professors Andrea Roth And J.D. King As Amici Curiae In Support Of Petitioner, Lesh V. United States, U.S. Supreme Court Docket No. 24-654, David B. Owens

Court Briefs

QUESTION PRESENTED

Article III of the Constitution provides that “[t]he Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury.” And the Sixth Amendment provides that “[i]n all criminal prosecutions,” the accused shall enjoy the right to trial by jury.

The question presented is: Whether the Constitution’s dual guarantee of trial by jury contains an unstated exception for “petty” offenses.

Mugshots In Oklahoma: Stigmatizing Native American Individuals And Communities, Karly L. Fisher

Tulsa Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Next Wave Of Legal Drug Production: What The Psychedelics Legalization Movement Can Learn From A Decade Of Cannabis Regulation, Ryan Stoa

Tulsa Law Review

No abstract provided.

Policymaking And Pretrial Fairness: Evaluating Illinois' Ban On Cash Bail Beyond Chicago, Kaitlyn M. Sims

Global and Public Affairs: Faculty Scholarship

Over 400,000 people are incarcerated awaiting trial each day in the United States. Many of these individuals are held because they are unable to post cash bail, generating substantial economic inequality between those who are able to be released and those who must wait. Illinois's Pretrial Fairness Act (PFA) banned cash bail in 2023 to reduce economic inequity and remove judicial discretion in pretrial decisions. I use daily roster data from multiple suburban and rural Illinois jails and a regression-discontinuity-in-time (RDiT) approach to test for changes to jail composition after the law went into effect. Jail population sizes decreased, though …

State Of Utah, Plaintiff/ Appellee V. Celestine Anastacia Torstenson, Defendant/ Appellant : Brief Of Appellee, Utah Court Of Appeals

Utah Court of Appeals Briefs (2020 –)

Appeal from a conviction for aggravated assault, a third - degree felony, in the Second Judicial District, Weber County, the Honorable Joseph M. Bean presiding

WILLIAM M. HAINS, DEREK BROWN, MATTHEW EARL, Counsel for Appellee

Public Trials And Plain Error, Stephen Smith

Faculty Publications

Courts are divided on the question of how Sixth Amendment public trial violations should be evaluated on appeal when a criminal defendant fails to object at trial to a courtroom closure. Typically, failing to object triggers plain error review on appeal, which demands a higher threshold of harm to obtain reversal compared to when an objection has been made at trial. Should this type of review also apply in its usual form to public trial errors? The article concludes that it should, despite the fact that public trial violations are considered “structural,” and, when properly preserved, do not require a …

The Role Of Criminal Mediation In Achieving Criminal Justice For Juveniles (A Comparative Analytical Study Between Palestinian And Jordanian Legislations), Issam Al-Atrash

Journal of the Arab American University مجلة الجامعة العربية الامريكية للبحوث

This study aimed to identify the role of criminal mediation in achieving criminal justice for juveniles. To achieve this purpose, the researcher used the descriptive analytical approach, the comparative approach and the historical approach. The study also addressed the provisions of criminal mediation in the Palestinian Juvenile Law No. 4 of 2015, and the Jordanian Juvenile Law No. 32 of 2014 regarding the parties of the criminal mediation of the juveniles, the conditions of criminal mediation for the juveniles, and the consequences thereof. The study concluded that the most prominent result was that the criminal mediation of juveniles in the …

Discretionary Immigration Detention, Mary Holper

Duke Law Journal

Immigration detainees challenging immigration judges’ bond decisions are hitting a jurisdictional wall—federal courts are given license to ignore errors that immigration judges make in determining dangerousness and flight risk, because such decisions can be categorized as “discretionary.” This license comes from a 1996 amendment to the Immigration and Nationality Act that removed federal courts’ jurisdiction over discretionary decisions to detain for immigration purposes. Detainees’ important liberty interests are left to the whims of a single immigration judge, who determines bond under conditions representing an implicit bias minefield.

This Article explores the justifications for unreviewable discretion and for stripping federal court …

Hell Comes With High Water: Hurricanes, Climate Change, And Louisiana's Dire Warning About The Erosion Of Our Speedy Trial Right, Robert F. Cerise

Duke Law Journal

The Sixth Amendment Speedy Trial Clause purportedly protects against undue delays in criminal cases. In order to obtain relief for a speedy trial violation, a defendant must show that a delay has lasted so long as to trigger the four-factor test in Barker v. Wingo (1972). Over time, however, states have codified procedural barriers to this speedy trial analysis. Simultaneously, courts have eroded Barker itself, namely by excusing “neutral” delays and by shifting the burden of proving prejudice resulting from such delays onto defendants. Louisiana is a particularly egregious example of these concerning trends, partly because hurricanes regularly disrupt the …

Access To Algorithmic Justice: Defending A Right To Expert Assistance For Indigent Defendants, Meghna Melkote, Madhavi Nambiar

Duke Law Journal Online

No abstract provided.

From Cypherpunks To Decentralized Finance: How Crypto-Anarchy Is Redefining Legal And Economic Systems, Alesia Zhuk

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

This article explores the evolution of crypto-anarchy, tracing its origins from the cypherpunk movement to the rise of decentralized finance (DeFi) and its transformative effects on legal and economic systems. Central to crypto-anarchy is the belief in individual empowerment through privacy, financial autonomy, and decentralization, which allows users to bypass traditional intermediaries like banks. While these technologies offer increased freedom and financial inclusion, they also introduce significant risks such as money laundering, tax evasion, and the facilitation of illegal activities, posing challenges to current regulatory frameworks. The article examines the socio-economic implications of decentralization, including both the democratization of finance …

Law School News: Community Building Third-Year Gina George Takes Helm Of Student Bar Association 01-06-2025, Suzi Morales, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Changemakers: Gina George: 3l: Community Building Third-Year Gina George Takes Helm Of Student Bar Association, Suzi Morales, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

The Case For Prison Education Reform, Natasha Yousefi

DePaul Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Transforming Constitutional Doctrine Through Mandatory Appeals From Three-Judge District Courts: The Warren And Burger Courts And Their Contemporary Lessons, Michael E. Solimine

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Judicial interpretations of the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment underwent significant change, both expanding and retrenching in various ways, in Supreme Court doctrine during the Warren and Burger Courts. An underappreciated influence on the change is the method by which those cases reached the Court’s docket. A significant number of the cases reached the Court’s docket not by discretionary grants of writs of certiorari, as occurred in most other cases, but by mandatory appeals directly from three-judge district courts. This article makes several contributions regarding the important changes in these doctrines during the Warren Court …

Interference With The Democratic Process As Public Nuisance, Richard C. Boldt, Donald G. Gifford

Faculty Scholarship

This Article argues that the tort of public nuisance provides a vehicle for holding accountable those engaged in antidemocratic conduct. Recent history suggests that neither the criminal justice system nor Constitutional checks and balances are always up to the task. Following the 2020 election, some supporters of President Trump stormed the Capitol to prevent the counting of the electoral votes, tampered with election machines, and intimidated election workers and voters. Depending on the results of the 2024 election, criminal charges against Trump and some of his followers may be dismissed. The Senate failed to convict the President on articles of …

Not Demented Enough: Dementia And Competency To Stand Trial, Rashmi Goel

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Although competency to stand trial holds a vaunted position among the due-process rights in our criminal justice system, its current application is a mere shadow of the original promise articulated in Dusky v. United States. The competency-to-stand-trial requirement is supposed to protect the mentally ill and the mentally impaired from criminal trial, but the requirement has been continually chipped away, both doctrinally and practically. As a result, it no longer protects the most vulnerable. People with dementia, most often elderly with cognitive impairments, face a perilous ordeal when caught in the criminal justice system. And, as dementia rates increase, more …

Policing As General Warrants, Warren Buff, Brandon Hasbrouck

Scholarly Articles

The drafters of the Bill of Rights and its proponents envisioned a document constitutionalizing protections against some of the worst abuses they had experienced under English rule. Prominent businessmen—many of them engaged in smuggling— found their homes ransacked in search of contraband on flimsy evidence and without any reason given for the disruption of their business and consequent enrichment of government agents. The Fourth Amendment addressed the use of general warrants and writs of assistance to allow government agents to conduct broad searches with limited scrutiny. In the early years of the Constitution, this had little practical effect, because public …

The Worst Collateral Consequence: Rethinking The Best Interests Standard In The Context Of Racism, Classism, And Mass Incarceration, Abigail Hean

Children's Legal Rights Journal

The United States incarcerates more people than any other country. In recent years, mandatory minimums, probation revocation, and other laws have led to increased periods of incarceration, even for low-level offenses. When a parent becomes incarcerated, their children are often left in the hands of the state, and a countdown to the termination of parental rights begins. Even if the parent has never been accused of child abuse or neglect, parental rights can be terminated on the grounds that the parent is unable to care for their children while incarcerated. Increasingly, states have placed more emphasis on permanent placement for …

Criminal Background Checks: Gatekeepers Of Discrimination In Housing And The Federal Housing Administration's Accountability, Reginald A. Merilus

Nova Law Review

No abstract provided.

Battered Woman Syndrome: A Legal Defense To Homicide, Savannah Plaisted

Northwestern Law Journal des Refusés

No abstract provided.

Winning Project: Sexual Assault Case Attrition, Kelsie Winter

2025 Lynn Haggard Undergraduate Library Research Award

Sexual assault cases experience extremely high rates of case attrition, especially in early stages (Morabito et al., 2019). Unlike in other criminal cases, in sexual assault cases survivors are judged harshly, evaluating their background and sexual history (Pattavina et al., 2021). Survivors of sexual assaults often are deterred from even reporting their assaults due to the stigma and treatment they receive after reporting. Law enforcement officers have been reported as acting uninterested or blame the survivors for their assault (Murphy-Oikonen et al., 2022). Victim-blaming is often a main reason behind survivors not reporting their assaults, for the fear of being …

Insurrection And Black Political Participation, Brandon Hasbrouck

Scholarly Articles

The Reconstruction Congress envisioned a comprehensive set of rights and structural protections in the Fourteenth Amendment to establish and preserve a multiracial democracy. The Fourteenth Amendment’s third section, the Insurrection Clause, may seldom have been enforced in recent memory, but it remains a vital part of the Amendment’s framework. The Insurrection Clause bars any state or federal government official who participates in a rebellion or insurrection after taking an oath to support the Constitution from serving in such a position again. In Trump v. Anderson, the Supreme Court was given a choice to either enforce the Insurrection Clause’s protection …

And I'M Pleading Out: The Need For A Higher Standard On Padilla Claims, Michael Russo

Hofstra Law Student Works

No abstract provided.

Involuntary: How A Lack Of Analysis Of Age Under The Fifth Amendment Highlights The Intersectionality Of Age And Race, Julia De La Fuente, Tonelli Anderson

Washington Law Review Online

In the wake of Miller v. Alabama and its progeny, there has been a wider acceptance that juvenile’s need more protections in our judicial system. This is a result of a growing body of research stating that young people’s brains do not fully develop until the age of twenty-five. States across the country are trying to implement this science to protect juvenile rights, especially when it comes to sentencing. However, it has yet to be incorporated in other respects, such as juveniles relinquishing their Fifth Amendment rights. Little attention has been paid to whether a juvenile’s statement in police custody …

Fragmentation Of International Cybercrime Law, Mailyn Fidler

Law Faculty Scholarship

Cybercrime is global. But legal approaches to combating cybercrime have been fragmented. The first such multilateral legal mechanism, the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime, was launched in 2001 and positioned by its primarily Western drafters as a global instrument. But it has struggled to achieve full international uptake. Instead, many states have used regional organizations to create their own legal mechanisms addressing cybercrime and cybersecurity threats. More recently, the UN Convention on Cybercrime has emerged as an alternative to this fragmented landscape. But the emergence and significance of this “convergent” option cannot be understood without the context of the deep fragmentation …

Kennedy V. Louisiana And The Future Of The Eighth Amendment, Alexandra L. Klein

Scholarly Articles

In 2023, Florida passed a law permitting the imposition of the death penalty for the rape of a child under twelve. Tennessee enacted a similar law in 2024. These laws conflict with Kennedy v. Louisiana, a 2008 decision in which the Supreme Court held that imposing the death penalty for the rape of a child violated the Eighth Amendment’s Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause because it was inconsistent with the evolving standards of decency. Legislators in Florida and Tennessee have expressed their hope that the Supreme Court will overrule Kennedy v. Louisiana. These laws, which resemble state attempts …

Navahine V. Hawai'i Dept. Of Transportation: The Keiki Will Lead Us, Catherine Smith

Scholarly Articles

The author analyzes the landmark case Navahine v. Hawaiʻi Department of Transportation, which culminated in the world’s first constitutional climate settlement. Catherine Smith, serving as an expert for the youth plaintiffs, situates the case within Hawaiʻi’s legal tradition of prioritizing children’s rights and intergenerational equity. She explores the evolution of children’s constitutional protections, contrasting Hawaiʻi’s progressive jurisprudence with the dominant adult-centric legal framework on the mainland. She critiques four recurring analytical missteps in U.S. courts that marginalize children’s interests and highlights Hawaiʻi’s public trust doctrine and cultural values, such as the Aloha Spirit, as models for addressing climate-related harms. …

Law And Disorder: The Need For An Amendment To Rule 3.8 Addressing The Accuracy Of Dna Evidence, Sydney Albert

Hofstra Law Student Works

No abstract provided.

The Prosecutor's Discretionary Power: Ethical Challenges In Charging Decisions, Yarin Kourehjan

Hofstra Law Student Works

No abstract provided.