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Trauma-Informed Judicial Practice Meets Therapeutic Jurisprudence: Compassionate Written Judgments In Child Protection Cases, Shelley Kierstead

All Papers

Society has become acutely aware that trauma arises from many life events and manifests in a range of physical and psychological symptoms. The legal community is increasingly recognizing that clients living with trauma effects would be much better served with trauma-informed services. While much of the emerging literature in the legal field focuses on lawyers’ work, there is growing recognition that judges can also play a role in responding effectively to trauma.

In child protection cases, trauma frequently exists at different yet related levels – for the child who is the subject of protection proceedings, and for one or more …

Carceral Bonds, Tyler E. Dougherty

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Over the past 50 years, the U.S. financed a massive physical and fiscal expansion of prisons via the municipal bond market—with devastating results. This project is the first to shine a light on the role of municipal debt in state-level carceral decision making, spotlighting the ways that the municipal bond market affects states’ capacities to incarcerate.

This Article argues that the two primary controls of states’ use of the carceral bond market—(1) market discipline and (2) states’ fiscal constitutions—are particularly ineffective at limiting states’ spending on prisons. This failure to restrain states’ spending through the carceral bond market enables private …

Video Analytics And Fourth Amendment Vision, Andrew Guthrie Ferguson

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

What does the Fourth Amendment have to say about video analytics running on citywide camera systems? Video analytics (also known as computer vision) involves hardware and software in cameras that turns video surveillance streams into useful data, identifying, categorizing, matching, and alerting police about objects, people, and incidents. Video analytics can identify objects (e.g., hat, backpack, person, car) and track that person or thing back in time and through the streets using video surveillance footage. For police officers conducting virtual patrols or retrospective investigations, video analytics lets police scan thousands of linked cameras for suspicious behavior or a particular suspect, …

Criminal Law: Felons, Firearms, And The “Federalization” Of Crime, Jonathan Abel

The Judges' Book

No abstract provided.

Prosecutorial Reform And The Myth Of Individualized Enforcement, Justin Murray

Articles & Chapters

The American prosecutor’s legitimacy faces unprecedented challenges. A new wave of reformist prosecutors has risen to power promising to transform the criminal justice system from within, sparking fierce backlash from defenders of the prosecutorial status quo. Central to this conflict is a debate over the nature of prosecutorial discretion, influenced by a set of claims and assumptions that this Article terms the myth of individualized enforcement. This myth posits that prosecutors base discretionary decisions on case-specific facts and equitable circumstances rather than generalizable criteria or categorical nonenforcement practices, such as the policies some reformist prosecutors have adopted that disfavor prosecuting …

Abolitionism, Artificial Intelligence, And Non-Reformist Reform, Youngjae Lee

Faculty Scholarship

Prison abolitionism has gained significant prominence in criminal law scholarship, while artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a transformative force across society. Two schools of thought have arisen regarding their intersection. Some scholars contend abolitionists should welcome AI technologies to reduce the carceral state’s reach. Critics view these tools skeptically, arguing that they lead to biased surveillance and incarceration practices. Using this debate as an example, this article seeks to illuminate the distinction between reformist and non-reformist reforms. The article argues that abolitionists’ criticism of reformists as agents of oppression risks alienating potential allies and discouraging progressive interventions in pivotal, …

Why Domestic Violence Offenders Don't Give Up Their Guns, Natalie Nanasi

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Perpetrators of intimate partner violence are barred by federal law and many states' laws from possessing firearms. While such prohibitions enjoy popular support, they are sporadically and inconsistently enforced, placing the lives of survivors at risk when offenders do not voluntarily comply. Many experts, including this author, have offered legal and policy solutions to increase the likelihood that perpetrators of domestic violence will either willingly relinquish their guns or otherwise be dispossessed of them. But these proposals may have been premature.

This Article is the first to take a step back and inquire why offenders do not surrender their firearms …

The Miserly Message Of Grants Pass, Meghan J. Ryan

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

The Supreme Court’s recent opinion in Grants Pass v. Johnson condoned states’ attempts to police homeless encampments. This was a significant blow to unhoused individuals and their allies. But the Court’s opinion also continued its march away from the longstanding evolving-standards-of-decency approach in Eighth Amendment cases. Grants Pass was something of an odd case in which to grant certiorari, but it served as an opportunity for the Court to send a quiet message that it would continue narrowing the Eighth Amendment’s scope. As in other recent cases, the Court applied a more historical approach than the one traditionally used in …

Percepción De La Policía De Puerto Rico Sobre La Utilización De Las Cámaras Corporales, Vicente Villegas Laboy

Theses and Dissertations

En Puerto Rico, según la literatura revisada, la investigación sobre el tema de las cámaras corporales policiacas apenas está comenzando. A pesar de esto, en lugares como en los Estados Unidos de América y Europa, si hay estudios relacionados con las cámaras corporales. Estas investigaciones, en su mayoría, se han concentrado en el efecto que causa esta tecnología en los policías que las utilizan, así como, en los ciudadanos que interactúan con estos policías. Este estudio de disertación doctoral explora este tema, pero, desde la percepción del policía que utiliza la cámara corporal, día a día, como parte de su …

Can States Force Ice To Take Off The Masks?, Noah C. Chauvin

Faculty Articles

No. But that does not mean they are entirely powerless to combat the practice.

An Empirical Exploration Of A Jury Veto, Stephen E. Henderson, Vanessa A. Edkins, Matthew L. Jensen

Faculty Articles

Among the many contemporary dissatisfactions with American criminal justice are longstanding concerns relating to the scarcity of jury trials and the resulting lack of democratic oversight and control in the adjudicative process. A novel solution has recently been proposed in the form of a ‘jury veto’: perhaps a jury could be empaneled, prototypically if not exclusively by defense request, that would be empowered to select between the judicially-imposed sentence and a prosecutorial and defense alternative. We conduct the first empirical exploration of such a structure and find reason to believe it could lessen the disconnect between the American framing vision …

Menstruation, Menopause, And The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, Marcy L. Karin, Deborah Widiss

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Some workplaces are extraordinarily inhospitable to menstruators, especially those in low-wage jobs. Workers have been denied restroom breaks and then harassed or fired after menstrual blood leaked onto their clothes or their employer’s property. Employers routinely refuse to provide accommodations for menopause symptoms or time off for menstruation-related medical care. The failure to support menstruators is a significant barrier to ensuring workplace equality. This Article explains how federal laws, including the landmark Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA), can—and should—be interpreted to help address these inequities. PWFA requires employers to provide “reasonable accommodations” for “pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions.” Menstruation …

Data Injustice In Global Justice, Asaf Lubin, Cherry Tang

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In May 2020, the United Nations Secretary-General unveiled a sweeping “Data Strategy for Action by Everyone, Everywhere,” seeking to unlock the UN’s “full data potential.” The International Criminal Court’s Office of the Prosecutor followed suit, declaring in 2023 its intent to acquire advanced cyber forensic tools so as to hold the “widest range of digital evidence globally.” Across international institutions, data-driven governance has become the norm, with humanitarian agencies and tribunals transforming into “data hubs and information clearinghouses.” This Article critiques the unfettered datafication of global justice by international courts and organizations. These entities have aggressively expanded their data-driven operations …

Conference Speakers, Canada-United States Law Journal

Canada-United States Law Journal

Proceedings…48th CUSLI annual conferrence

The Legacy Of Ferguson: Building Worker, Community, And Student Power To Respond To The Carceral State, Donna Coker, Melody Sinckler, Kira Mikes

Articles

The 2014 killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri sparked national outrage regarding police violence in Black communities. But as time passed, Ferguson came to symbolize more than another episode of law enforcement violence. A Department of Justice (DOJ) report revealed that Ferguson's city coffers relied on an intentionally extractive criminal legal system that aggressively levied fines and fees in a racially discriminatory manner. As the DOJ findings illustrate, advocates seeking to transform or abolish the criminal legal system must rigorously analyze the political economy of the carceral system in their locale.

We describe a law school course aimed at …

The Shadow Defendants, Mariam A. Hinds

Faculty Scholarship

Although the overrepresentation of men, specifically Black men and men of color, in the criminal legal system is well documented, the people who support these men, especially women, have garnered less attention. Women who are proximate to system-involved men—mothers, grandmothers, sisters, daughters, girlfriends, and wives—are invisible actors in the criminal legal system who perform critical tasks and provide essential support. They appear in court to demonstrate a person’s family and community ties, use their assets as collateral for bail, deposit money in commissary accounts, maintain social ties during imprisonment through letters and visits, and bear the burden of filling the …

A Conviction In Jeopardy: The Mysterious Case Against Scott Peterson, Jolie Bodner Zangari

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Perceptions And Treatment Decisions For A Drug Offender Based On Social Class, Cocaine Type, Personal Characteristics, And Compassionate Love: A Vignette Study, Yasmin A. Odeh

Theses and Dissertations

Problem: The shift from a focus on rehabilitation to the more punitive, “tough on crime” approach to illegal behavior in the U.S. has been enacted in no small way by policies connected to the use and abuse of drugs. The disparities between crack and powder cocaine—two chemically similar substances—have headlined this shift (Vagins and McCurdy 2006). However, research is scarce on laypeople’s approval of deterrence approaches for drug offenses, including as a function of types (e.g., powder vs. cocaine possession). This study examined people’s perceptions of prosecutorial decisions for drug offenders—whether they are punished, rehabilitated, or both—and whether people perceived …

Special Issues Facing People Who Use Drugs And How Sensitive Lawyers Can Help: Three Case Studies From Rutgers Law Associate, Andrew J. Rothman

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Unboxing The Box: A Deep Dive Into Solitary Confinement And When It May Violate The First And Eighth Amendments, Madison Scarfaro

Touro Law Review

Solitary confinement has been a practice used for those who are incarcerated in our criminal justice system for hundreds of years. Our nation, as well as our society have evolved and continue to evolve over the course of hundreds of years. However, the use of solitary confinement has not. Even with all of the research and literature surrounding the monstrosities that come about from solitary confinement, it is still used in most of our jails and prisons to this day. The Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides: “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel …

The False Evidence Ploy: A Coercive, Not Just Deceptive, Police Tactic, Alexa D. Sondey

Touro Law Review

Why would people confess to a crime they did not commit? It may seem hard to imagine that an innocent person would confess but as this Note will show, false confessions are a real and serious issue. One cause of false confessions is the False Evidence Ploy - a police interrogation tactic where police falsely tell a suspect they have some sort of incriminating evidence against them. This Note argues that the Ploy is psychological coercion, as it may cause innocent suspects to believe they actually committed the crime and then confess. N.Y. Bill S324A presented a solution, banning the …

The Forgotten Victims: A Case For Children’S Compensation Amidst Parental Wrongful Incarceration, Mackenzie Crabbe

Touro Law Review

Wrongful incarceration is a tragedy that occurs far more often than most would care to admit. However, it is not only the wrongfully convicted person who suffers from this phenomenon. Most innocent people who are incarcerated have a family who is then affected and suffers immensely. Many wrongfully incarcerated individuals have children who then grow up without their parents, or with a significant barrier hindering their relationship with their parents. Typically, incarceration, and the separation of families that comes along with it, is justified by the need to regulate crime and keep communities safe. How[1]ever, when innocent people are serving …

Pozen And The Puzzle Of Counterfactuals, Louis Michael Seidman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Constitution and the War on Drugs, David Pozen’s carefully researched and brilliantly argued book, is both illuminating and disturbing: illuminating because it unearths forgotten moments when judicially formulated constitutional doctrine that could have ended or sharply restricted the War on Drugs were well within the Overton Window, and disturbing because it surfaces hard questions about historical contingency and the scope of the change that might have occurred in a counterfactual world. In this review, the author argues that the failure to specify both the nature of the counterfactual and the breadth of the alternative possibility have confused discussions …

Promoting Public Health And Public Safety By Ending The Exclusion Of Incarcerated Children From Access To Medicaid, Eduardo R. Ferrer

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay is a response to Professor Den Houter's article entitled Children are Not Inmates in which she effectively calls eliminating the exclusion of indigent incarcerated children from Medicaid coverage pursuant to the Medicaid Inmate Exclusion Policy (MIEP). This essay affirms and builds upon Professor Den Houter's recommendation. Part I of this response provides additional support for why ensuring system-involved youth receive timely, uninterrupted, high-quality behavioral health services is critical to improving both public health and public safety. Part II analyzes the benefits and risks attendant to excluding indigent incarcerated children from the MIEP. Part III proposes the implementation of …

De/Reconstructing Delinquency, Eduardo R. Ferrer

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Hundreds of thousands of children are brought under the jurisdiction of delinquency courts every year in the United States. Despite the reality that most children engage in delinquent behavior during their adolescence, poor children, children of color, children with disabilities, and children who identify as LGBTQIA+ comprise a disproportionate number of those who become delinquency system-involved. These disparities exist by design. Their origins can be traced back to the flawed first principles upon which the juvenile court was built and, specifically, to the unduly expansive legal definition of delinquency that has undergirded the jurisdiction and power of the juvenile court …

I Hate Self-Care: A Criminal Defense Lawyer’S Lament, Abbe Smith

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Don’t get me wrong—I think people should take care of themselves. They should eat well, exercise regularly, and get a good night’s sleep. They should spend time with friends and family. They should have hobbies and interests. With any luck, they should find true love. But in the past decade or two, and especially since the COVID pandemic, there has been a disturbing turn inward. I’m talking about the “self-care” craze, which has become its own pandemic, or at least epidemic.

…

In this Essay, I share my concerns about what I regard to be an excessive focus on self-care …

You Get The Jury You Get And You Don’T Throw A Fit, Taurus Myhand

Scholarly Works

The proliferation of deepfake videos has resulted in rapid improvements in the technology used to create them. Although the use of fake videos and images is not new, advances in artificial intelligence have made deepfakes easier to make and harder to detect. Basic human perception is no longer sufficient to detect deepfakes. Yet, under the current construction of the Federal Rules of Evidence, trials judges are expected to do just that. Trial judges face a daunting challenge when applying the current evidence authentication standards to video evidence in this new reality of widely available deepfake videos. This article examines the …

Tribal Authority To Issue Search Warrants To Non-Tribal Entities Or On Non-Indian Land Within Reservation Boundaries, Ivy K. Chase

American Indian Law Review

No abstract provided.

Into The Jurisdictionverse: How Tangled Jurisdictional Lines Around Indian Country Thwart Attempts To End The Crisis Of Missing And Murdered Indigenous Women, Evan Gamble

American Indian Law Review

No abstract provided.

Sealed Justice: Federal Courts' Inconsistent Record-Sealing Rules And Their Impact On Judicial Transparency, David S. Ardia

Faculty Publications

Public access to court records is a cornerstone of democratic governance, enabling public oversight of the judiciary and fostering confidence in the rule of law. Despite a strong presumption in favor of openness under both the First Amendment and common law, the sealing of federal court records has become widespread, often with minimal judicial scrutiny. Re-cent investigations have revealed that excessive court secrecy shields government and corporate misconduct, conceals vital public-safety information, and erodes public confidence in the courts.

This Article presents the first comprehensive analysis of the local rules governing sealing in all 94 federal districts, reviewing more than …