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Policing, Prejudice And Change: Confronting Racial Bias In Policing, Aliya Ross

A with Honors Projects

Exploring racism, and discrimination within the Justice System and recommendation for reform.

Celebrating The Fiske Fellowship Program: 2001-2025, University Of Michigan Law School

Event Materials

This program contains statements of impact from the 2001-2025 recipients of Fiske Fellowships.

Some information was shared in 2022 and may not reflect current roles and/or responsibilities of Fiske Fellows.

A More Luminous Beacon, William M.M. Kamin

Scholarly Articles

Over the Supreme Court’s past four Terms, federal post conviction habeas corpus has been placed on the chopping-block. Its fate hangs in the balance of an historical debate over the maxim, oft recited by the Court between 1830–1953, that post conviction habeas reaches only “jurisdictional defects” — as opposed to “mere error” — on the part of the convicting court. Justices Gorsuch and Thomas maintain that “jurisdiction” carried then the same narrow meaning it does now: power ab initio over the offense charged and the defendant’s person. Justices Kagan and Jackson contend that, in this context, “jurisdictional defect” was understood …

The Challenge That The Advent Of Artificial Intelligence (Ai) Tools Poses To The Procedures For Determining The Existence Of The Preliminary Facts That Condition The Admissibility Of Items Of Evidence, Edward J. Imwinkelried

Marquette Law Review

“[A]d quæstionem facti non respondent judices; . . . ad quæstionem juris not respondent juratores.” Judges do not answer questions of fact; jurors do not answer questions of law.

The jury is a central institution in the American level infrastructure. The Sixth and Seventh Amendments elevate the jury trial right to constitutional status. Of course, when a judge presides at a jury trial, the question that naturally arises is the division of decision-making labor between judge and jury. In the past few decades, the Supreme Court’s Apprendi v. New Jersey line of authority has expanded the jury’s authority to decide …

Substituting One Judge For Another: The Lax Standard Of Review In Involuntary Commitment, Caitlin Riordan

Marquette Law Review

Wisconsin involuntarily commits individuals at a rate nearly five times the national average, stripping them of core constitutional rights—including liberty, the ability to refuse treatment, and firearm possession. Yet, when these life-altering orders are appealed, they are almost always reviewed by a single appellate judge. This Comment argues that such a limited review undermines the constitutional weight of involuntary commitments, which closely mirror criminal convictions in the scope of rights deprived. Tracing the historical development of Wisconsin’s civil commitment statutes, this Comment demonstrates how commitments implicate both substantive and procedural due process concerns. It then compares Wisconsin’s one-judge review framework …

Court Review: Journal Of The American Judges Association, Vol. 61, No. 1, Eve M. Brank, David J. Dreyer, Reba Page

Court Review: Journal of the American Judges Association

Contents

We Need Cvility Now More Than Ever, Benes Z. Aldana

Bias of Work-Related Psychological Claims, Melissa Lin Jones

An AI Primer for Judges, Joseph Regalia

Editor’s Note

President’s Column, Vincent L. Johnson

Thoughts from Canada: The Supreme Court of Canada Considers the Application of the Common Law “Exigent Circumstances” Doctrine to the Warrantless Searches of Electronic Devices, Wayne K. Gorman

Crossword: Four 38-acrosses, Victor Fleming

Court Review Author Submission Guidelines

The Resource Page

What Judges Can Do about Implicit Bias: Evidence-based Recommendations and Practices, Jerry Kang

What’S Left Of The New Deal State?, Sandeep Singh Dhaliwal

Michigan Law Review Online

A vast body of scholarship situates itself in the New Deal era. Another extensive collection explores the history of criminal justice in the United States. To date, however, there has been little effort to bring these conversations together. New Deal Law and Order, written by legal historian Anthony Gregory, fills this conspicuous gap. Gregory remarkably narrates the New Deal era through the lens of President Franklin Roosevelt’s “war on crime” (p. 1), challenging how we think about both the New Deal’s legacy and the foundations of the modern security state.

Tonry’S Blueprint For The Comparative Study Of Sentencing Law And Policy, Kevin R. Reitz

Articles

This essay explores Michael Tonry’s treatment of sentencing law and policy within the U.S. as an inherently comparative project. The essay draws from Tonry’s “early period” in comparative sentencing from the late 1970s to the middle 1990s, when his writing was largely U.S.-centric, focued on quickly changing conditions in dozens of states and the federal system. Tonry classified the several models of “sentencing reform” that were being tried across the country, drew contrasts in the legal architectures of the new systems, collected data and evaluation research for as many states as possible, and treated the reform-active states as “laboratories” whose …

True Law As Genre: Narrative Nonfiction And The Law, Jorge L. Contreras

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

The Genome Defense, which offers a book-length narrative nonfiction account of the civil litigation that led to the elimination of patents on human genes in the United States, is a member of a distinct literary subgenre that I term True Law. Like the older and better-known True Crime genre, True Law narratives blend the conventions of journalism and novelistic writing to describe complex legal disputes in a manner that is engaging and accessible to the general public. True Law accounts, which have increased in number and popularity since the publication of Jonathan Harr’s A Civil Action in 1995, serve …

Protecting Older Adults Who Are Incarcerated: Does The 8th Amendment Work?, Jalayne J. Arias

Health Matrix: The Journal of Law-Medicine

Older adults in prison and within other carceral systems (i.e. jails, parole) are uniquely at risk for elder mistreatment. Emerging research has begun to consider the experiences of older adults within carceral settings, including aging in prison, chronic conditions and medical care, compassionate release, and end-of-life care. This research exposes evidence that prisons and other carceral settings lack resources and services for older adults. Given increased vulnerability and a lack of protective resources, older adults experiencing incarceration may experience disproportional rates and consequences of elder mistreatment. A public health approach to develop tools and resources that would prevent, detect, and …

Table Of Contents, Loyola University Chicago Law Journal

Loyola University Chicago Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Applicability Of Multilateral Environmental Agreements During International Armed Conflicts, Beatrice L. Hamilton

Loyola University Chicago Law Journal

Armed conflicts increasingly contribute to environmental damage and climate change, yet, as proven by recent and ongoing conflicts, the legal framework for the protection of the environment under the law of armed conflict (LOAC) fails to effectively mitigate these damages. With rising temperatures, already diminishing resources, the counter-acting of mitigation and adaptation efforts due to warfare and geo-political tensions on the rise, there is a strong case for considering the potential for enhancing the protection of the environment during armed conflicts.

This Article examines the terms of applicability of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) during international armed conflicts. The article draws …

Table Of Contents, Loyola University Chicago Law Journal

Loyola University Chicago Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Temporary/Forever: The Fissured Economy, Obstacles To Employment, And Regulating The Future Of Exploitation In Temp Work, Kevin Herrera

Loyola University Chicago Law Journal

Among workers in United States, contingent and temporary work arrangements have grown to represent a substantial segment of available jobs, with spikes in their predominance corresponding to major economic shake ups like the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic. These arrangements are part of a larger trend of the “fissuring” of United States employment, wherein applicants are hired by one company and then sent to do their job at another, obscuring who actually employs the worker. Jobs through temp staffing agencies are a particularly dominant form of fissuring among low-wage workers and create conditions under which accountability for workplace abuses …

Fairness Writ Large Or Writ Small In International Criminal Justice, Nancy Combs

FIU Law Review

This article highlights the various, sometimes competing conceptions of fairness in international criminal law.

Abuse Of Power In The Workplace: The New Gender Discrimination Claims, June R. Carbone, Nancy Levit, Naomi Cahn

Articles

This article draws on our book, Fair Shake: Women and the Fight to Build a Just Economy, to show how the fight for gender equality has changed. Antidiscrimination laws took hold during an era of relative economic equality; the fight for gender equality was a fight to gain access to the rights of white men. Today’s economy creates much greater inequality and reserves the greatest rewards for a much smaller group, again predominately white and male, who can defy the rules and get away with it. In such contexts, anti-discrimination law premised on a fight for equality can provide only …

Executive Clemency And Immigration Federalism: Reconsidering Presidential Power Over Deportation Orders, Linus Chan, Emma Wittmer, Lauren Butler

Articles

No abstract provided.

Coerced Into Confession: Prosecutorial Pressure And The Misuse Of Plea Bargaining, Molly Mceachern

Belmont Law Review

This Note examines the coercive dynamics embedded in modern plea bargaining and argues that prosecutors’ reliance on conviction rates as a primary measure of success distorts the administration of justice. Tracing the historical evolution of plea bargaining from early English common law skepticism to its constitutional legitimization in Brady v. United States, the article demonstrates how plea bargaining has shifted from a pragmatic case-management tool to a dominant and often coercive mechanism of criminal adjudication,

Conference Speakers, Canada-United States Law Journal

Canada-United States Law Journal

Proceedings…48th CUSLI annual conferrence

2025 Shepard Broad College Of Law Admissions Viewbook, Nova Southeastern University

Shepard Broad College of Law Viewbook

No abstract provided.

Looking Beyond The Blue: Exploring The Experiences Of Black Female Police Officers During Training, Stephanie M. Almodovar

West Chester University Doctoral Projects

This study employed a basic qualitative approach to explore the experiences of Black cisgender female police officers during the field-training segment of their police academy experience. Individual interviews were conducted using semi-structured questions to gain insight into how these officers interpreted and made sense of their experiences. The sample consisted of five Black female officers employed at accredited law enforcement agencies in the United States who had completed field training within the past decade. Data was collected through interviews and a demographic questionnaire. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed using both inductive and deductive coding. Four key themes emerged from …

"Not A Victimless Crime": A Comparison Of Global Regulatory Frameworks And The Future Of The International Community's Response To Artificial Intelligence Crime, Blake Morrow

Loyola University Chicago International Law Review

The international community continues to implement regulations on artificial intelligence (Al). Fueled by AI's burgeoning generative ability, the technology's growth presents a heightened risk that bad actors will use Al systems to facilitate crimes or produce harmful content, including the production of child sex abuse materials (CSAM).

Despite this heightened risk, countries and other regulatory bodies struggle to balance the benefits of Al innovation against limiting any potential dangers. Moreover, with no uniform international regulations on Al and very little guidance from international leaders, the global Al regulatory landscape remains a fragmented patchwork of domestic approaches that limit international cooperation. …

Historical Perspectives On Family Law: An Annotated Bibliography, Allen Roston

Faculty Works

This bibliography lists articles and books that provide historical perspectives on major aspects of family law. It focuses on legal history, but it includes some works that look at family relationships and issues through the broader lenses of social history, cultural history, or other historical approaches.

Conference Speakers, Speakers

Canada-United States Law Journal

Proceedings of the 2nd Wilson Canada-United States Legal Issues Symposium

The Dangers Of Denying Prosecutorial Independence: Wrongful Convictions, Official Misconduct, And Public Corruption, Meagan R. Hurley

Articles

In recent years, desires to limit prosecutorial discretion have become the focus of a national dialogue on the authority of the elected officials, allegations of their misconduct, and the need for stronger accountability measures. Legislatures across the country have considered a slew of bills aimed at diminishing prosecutorial power by prohibiting “progressive” office policies, creating oversight commissions, and promulgating simplified processes to recall or remove prosecutors entirely. In various jurisdictions, those proposals are now coming to fruition. While heightened scrutiny for some of the legal system’s most powerful leaders may seem attractive, an analysis of national trends aimed at curtailing …

The Disparity In Litigating Racial Disparity Claims: The Need For California Courts To Articulate A Framework For Assessing Racial Justice Act Challenges To Charging, Conviction, And Sentencing, Romo, Lisa M.

Santa Clara Law Review

Under California’s Racial Justice Act (RJA)—codified in Penal Code section 745—the state may not seek or obtain a criminal conviction or sentence on the basis of race, ethnicity, or national origin. There are four pathways to establishing an RJA violation. Two of the pathways proscribe discriminatory or biased conduct or language inside or outside the courtroom by specified criminal legal system actors, including judges, attorneys, law enforcement officers, and expert witnesses. The other two are based on disparities in charging, conviction, or sentencing associated with defendant race, ethnicity, or national origin and alternatively, in the case of sentencing, that of …

Measuring The Rapidly Increasing Use Of Artificial Intelligence In Legal Scholarship, Michael Conklin, Christopher Houston

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) has had a profound impact on nearly every industry, including legal academia. As AI-driven tools like ChatGPT become more prevalent, they raise critical questions about authorship, academic integrity, and the evolving nature of legal writing. While AI offers promising benefits—such as improved efficiency in research, drafting, and analysis—it also presents ethical dilemmas related to originality, bias, and the potential homogenization of legal discourse.

One of the challenges in assessing AI’s influence on legal scholarship is the difficulty of identifying AI-generated content. Traditional plagiarism-detection methods are often inadequate, as AI does not merely copy …

Curb Their Enthusiasm: Controlling The Discretion Of Creative Prosecutors, Scott Schumacher

Articles

On January 6, 2021, a mob of supporters of then-president Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol Building to disrupt the certification by Congress of the presidential election. Joseph Fischer was a member of that mob, and he was one of the individuals who forced his way into the Capitol Building. He was charged with multiple criminal counts, including obstruction of an official proceeding, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c) for allegedly attempting to delay Congress’ election certification. In Fischer v. United States, the United States Supreme Court reversed the obstruction charge, holding that section 1512(c) did not apply to …

An Eye For An Eye Makes A Vigilant Society, Liam C. Preyer

Capstone Showcase

Vigilantism is one of the oldest practices of mankind; for as long as there have been moral and legal laws to govern us and live by, there have been individuals who have sought justice outside these systems. Vigilantism is the response to failures in the justice system, and in the United States in particular, we have seen examples from the Western Frontier to the modern-day digital landscape. This paper will explore the nature of vigilante justice through historical, psychological, media-driven, legal, and digital lenses. We will explore how cultural narratives, media influences, government actions, and psychological motivations have shaped the …

Informative Jury Disagreement, Roy Baharad

Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper Series

The article introduces a counterintuitive argument, contending that jury disagreement on the defendant’s guilt—a nonunanimous conviction—may well provide a more informative signal, compared to consensus. Because stronger consensus implies higher likelihood of herding, it is shown that beyond some threshold, further accumulation of votes to convict would carry negligible epistemic contribution, barely enhancing the posterior probability of guilt. On the other hand, while dissenting votes provide a direct signal of innocence, they indicate that herding has not been involved in the decision-making process, hence increase the epistemic contribution of any vote generated by said process— including votes to convict—and may …