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Ten Years And Ten Miles: Reflecting On "Ferguson", Benjamin Levin

Scholarship@WashULaw

This Essay serves as the introduction to a symposium on the ten-year anniversary of Michael Brown's death in Ferguson, Missouri and the subsequent protests and uprisings across the country. The authors look back on the past decade—their own experiences and our experiences as a nation—to consider the impacts of the Ferguson uprisings and the landscape of criminal justice and racial justice advocacy, scholarship, and teaching today. In this Essay, I provide a brief introduction to the Volume and essays that follow. In Part I, I situate the Ferguson uprisings in the broader context of activism responsive to racial injustice in …

A Liberty-Balancing Approach To Crime, Sheldon Evans

Scholarship@WashULaw

At its core, the criminal legal system is an ecosystem of institutions that seek to balance liberty interests. The insightful theories and complex practices of crime policy coalesce around questions on how crime impacts the liberties of individuals and communities to be safe, and how this correlates with the deprivation of liberty from offenders through our punishment system. But modern criminal policy, most often associated with the problems of overcriminalization and mass incarceration, has wholly abandoned any such delicate and nuanced balancing. Instead, the system thrives on sacrificing the liberties of offenders in a perverse and ineffective regime that leads …

How Does The Modern Supreme Court Treat The Idea Of Retribution In The Context Of Capital Punishment?, Paige Forsberg

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This thesis explores the modern U.S. Supreme Court's treatment of retribution in the context of capital punishment, analyzing how justices have framed and justified the death penalty as a form of justice. Through the examination of key Supreme Court rulings and legal arguments, this study evaluates the evolving role of retribution in the Court’s decisions on death penalty cases, highlighting how judicial reasoning has shifted over time in response to legal, philosophical, and societal developments.

Retribution, long considered one of the primary justifications for capital punishment, is examined through a nuanced lens in this study. While historically viewed as a …

Jurisprudence Of Problem-Solving Courts: A Study Of Structure, Success, And Sociological Theory, Lauren M. Boos

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In response to the failures of mass incarceration and its disproportionate impact on marginalized communities, Problem-Solving Courts (PSCs) have emerged as alternatives to traditional prosecution. These courts employ therapeutic-informed and rehabilitative practices aimed at addressing the root causes of criminal behavior. While widely regarded as more effective than traditional courts, PSCs have developed largely without a formal theoretical foundation. This is notable given their alignment with Sociological Jurisprudence (SJ) and Therapeutic Jurisprudence (TJ), which view the legal system as a vehicle for promoting individual and community well-being.

Despite being celebrated as therapeutic innovations, PSCs often embody these principles unevenly. Using …

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 …

Values-Ambiguous Clinics, Willow Tracy

Scholarly Works

As law school clinical programs have grown in recent decades, many of the newer offerings focus on business law, entrepreneurship, intellectualproperty, and technology. It is commonly presumed that social justice values, such as the amelioration ofpoverty or theprotection offundamental rights, are notfoundational goals of these non-traditional clinics. This Article calls these clinics "values-ambiguous" to highlight the frequent uncertainty and skepticism about their relationship to traditional clinical social justice values. Importantly, "values-ambiguous"does not describe a quality of the clinic itself it describes a quality ofperception of the clinic. In other words, "values-ambiguous clinics" are clinics that are typically not perceived as …

Reevaluating Felon-In-Possession Laws After Bruen And The War On Drugs, Laura Ginsberg Abelson

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

The legal landscape surrounding firearm possession is evolving rapidly. In 2022, the Supreme Court accelerated its expansion of the individual right to bear arms under the Second Amendment in New York Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen. Since Bruen, courts around the country have struck down nearly all types of firearm regulations, with a notable exception: felon-in-possession laws. This Article examines the implications of a legal landscape where those who have prior felony convictions, and especially prior drug convictions, are punished harshly for the same behavior—possession of a firearm—that is constitutionally protected for nearly everyone else. I argue …

Response: Diagonal Representation, Alma Magaña

Articles

A lot has been written about the crisis of indigent defense and the plethora of factors that have led to the crisis, like the lack of guidance on how indigent defense providers can most efficiently distribute their insufficient resources. This lack of guidance has left jurisdictions across the country to their own devices, resulting in a national landscape of very different models, each with its own variations of the same problems plaguing indigent defense.

"Replace The Jew"--The Visible Invisibility Of American Antisemitism And Spoken Beliefs, Kerri Stone

FIU Law Review

This is an essay that attempts to provide a contemporary take on antisemitism from the perspective of a professor of employment discrimination.

The Prosecutor Vacancy Crisis, Adam M. Gershowitz

BYU Law Review

There is a prosecutor vacancy crisis in the United States. Prosecutors are quitting in droves and there are few applicants to replace them. In Houston and Los Angeles, more than 15% of prosecutor positions are open. In Detroit, the vacancy rate exceeds 20%. In Alameda, 25% of prosecutor positions are empty. And in Miami, a staggering 33% of prosecutor positions are unfilled. The situation is equally dire in many large and small counties across the nation.

Drawing on data and interviews from more than two-dozen district attorney’s offices, this Article documents how low salaries, massive caseloads, lack of remote work …

New Legal Realism At 20: Rethinking Law In An Era Of Populism And Social Movements, Jeffrey Omari, Pablo Rueda-Saiz, Richard Ashby Wilson

Connecticut Law Review

This Article critically examines the New Legal Realism (NLR) movement on its twentieth anniversary and illuminates its distinctive intellectual contributions. In evaluating NLR’s unique methodological and substantive contributions, we explore the movement's relationship to other interdisciplinary theories and empirical approaches to law. NLR approaches show a commitment to a comparative, crossnational exploration of legal phenomena while allowing for grounded generalizations about the relationship between law and society. NLR approaches embrace a diverse range of methods and emphasize the importance of “looking up, down, and sideways.” Notably, NLR embraces both “top-down” and “bottom-up” methods, providing comprehensive insights into the intricate interactions …

New Legal Realism At 20: Rethinking Law In An Era Of Populism And Social Movements, Jeffrey Omari, Pablo Rueda-Saiz, Richard Ashby Wilson

Articles

This Article critically examines the New Legal Realism (NLR) movement on its twentieth anniversary and illuminates its distinctive intellectual contributions. In evaluating NLR's unique methodological and substantive contributions, we explore the movement's relationship to other interdisciplinary theories and empirical approaches to law. NLR approaches show a commitment to a comparative, cross-national exploration of legal phenomena while allowing for grounded generalizations about the relationship between law and society. NLR approaches embrace a diverse range of methods and emphasize the importance of "looking up, down, and sideways." Notably, NLR embraces both "top-down" and "bottom-up" methods, providing comprehensive insights into the intricate interactions …

Roger Williams University 2024 President's Report: A Message From President Miaoulis, Roger Williams University

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Colonizing By Contract, Emmanuel H. Arnaud

Articles

Since 1898, Puerto Rico has been a territory of the United States, meaning that Congress wields plenary power over the Island. Although scholars have highlighted the history and some modern manifestations of this power, conversations about how plenary power affects the territories have largely ignored constitutional criminal procedure.

This Article is the first to center the territory’s criminal legal system within the broader debate over the exercise of plenary power. In doing so, it fills significant gaps in the constitutional and criminal law literature on the territories by uncovering how the federal government’s plenary power affects local criminal adjudication. This …

Regulating Social Media Through Family Law, Katharine B. Silbaugh, Adi Caplan-Bricker

Faculty Scholarship

Social media afflicts minors with depression, anxiety, sleeplessness, addiction, suicidality, and eating disorders. States are legislating at a breakneck pace to protect children. Courts strike down every attempt to intervene on First Amendment grounds. This Article clears a path through this stalemate by leveraging two underappreciated frameworks: the latent regulatory power of parental authority arising out of family law, and a hidden family law within First Amendment jurisprudence. These two projects yield novel insights. First, the recent cases offer a dangerous understanding of the First Amendment, one that should not survive the family law reasoning we provide. First Amendment jurisprudence …

"Legally Magic" Words: An Empirical Study Of The Accessibility Of Fifth Amendment Rights, Roseanna Sommers, Kate Weisburd

Northwestern University Law Review

Fifth Amendment case law (including Miranda v. Arizona) requires that individuals assert their right to counsel or silence using “explicit,” “clear,” and “unambiguous” statements—or, as some dissenting judges have lamented, using “legally magic” words. Through a survey of 1,718 members of the U.S. public, we investigate what ordinary people believe it takes to assert the right to counsel and the right to silence. We then compare their perceptions against prevailing legal standards governing invocation.

With respect to the right to counsel, the survey results indicate that members of the public have a uniformly lower threshold for invocation than do …

Criminal Juror Challenges And Csli: A Rule 16 Revision To Maintain Impartial Juries, Ivy Kaplan

Northwestern University Law Review

The Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees criminal defendants “the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury of the State.” Voir dire, the procedure during which the prosecution and the defense may challenge prospective jurors for cause or exercise peremptory challenges, purports to uphold this right. When the prosecution has access to cellular geolocation data on prospective jurors that the defense lacks, however, it may jeopardize the defendant’s Sixth Amendment rights.

This Note proposes a solution to that problem in the form of an addition to Rule 16 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. …

Rising Temperatures, The Prison Litigation Reform Act, And The Heat Death Of Human Dignity In Texas Prisons, Brianne Wylie

Northwestern University Law Review

This Note seeks to shed light on the life-threatening danger of extreme heat in un-air-conditioned Texas prisons. The Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) starkly limits the relief available to those suffering and dying in these prisons. This Note proposes an amendment to the legislation that could create a path toward lasting relief for incarcerated people. After analyzing the effects of increasing heat on the particularly vulnerable prison population, this Note analyzes how the Supreme Court and the Fifth Circuit have handled claims alleging constitutionally violative prison conditions under the Eighth Amendment—in short, ineffectively, if at all. This Note then details …

Rwu Law Alumni Newsletter November 2024, Roger Williams University School Of Law

RWU Law

No abstract provided.

Facial Recognition Technology And The Dire Need To Regulate It, Michael Mellon

SMU Law Review Forum

Facial recognition technology enables the identification of subjects in digital recordings through the use of biometrics. This technology is increasingly used by both state and private actors for crime prevention, criminal investigations, crowd monitoring, and more. Its use continues despite the fact that the technology itself has been shown to have a propensity for bias and misidentification. The flaws inherent in the technology are not the only cause for concern either. There is reason to believe that nefarious actors could intentionally use facial recognition technology to achieve illegitimate ends. Meanwhile, facial recognition technology remains unregulated at the federal level in …

Revisiting Marcuse On Repressive Tolerance: A Twenty-First Century Retrospective, David Ingram

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Herbert Marcuse’s essay Repressive Tolerance (RP) has been praised by the Left and vilified by the Right for its alleged promotion of censorship targeting reactionary opinions and actions. I argue that this interpretation of the text is mistaken. According to my alternative reading of the text, RP should be understood as an exercise in provocation and irony aimed at defending civil disobedience and dissent. Marcuse’s defense of dissent, however, appeals to a critique of pure tolerance that exposes the unavoidably partisan practice of tolerance, which invariably favors the reigning undemocratic status quo. The choice whether to tolerate in a manner …

Rehabilitation Over Retribution: Rethinking Juvenile Justice For Traumatized Youth, Brian L. Traub

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Legal Landscape After Roe's Reversal, Rachel Rebouché

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Defendant's Right To Counsel In Commitment Hearings For Nonpayment Of A Criminal Fine, Barbara A. Appleby

Maine Law Review

The federal constitutional right of an indigent defendant to appointed counsel in state court proceedings derives from two constitutional provisions. First, the sixth amendment, as incorporated by the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment, provides the basis for an absolute right to counsel in criminal prosecutions leading to actual imprisonment. Second, the due process clause, as an independent source of individual rights, provides the basis for the right to counsel in civil proceedings. Both the sixth amendment and the due process rights may be implicated in a hearing for non-payment of a criminal fine. Title 17-A, section 1304 of …

Maine's Unintentional Murder Statute: Depraved Indifference On Trial, Louis B. Butterfield

Maine Law Review

Perhaps nowhere in the law is the demand for reason and justice more compelling than in the penal law, and nowhere in the penal law is the need for fairness greater than in the law defining murder. The notion of fairness in Anglo-American criminal law is embodied in the concept of mens rea. For over three hundred years, the basic tenet of penal law has been that "actus non facit reum, nisi mens sit rea." A mens rea element serves to define a crime in positive terms and also provides the basis for defenses that negate the subjective culpability element. …

The Child Witness In Sexual Abuse Cases In Maine: Presentation, Impeachment, And Controversy, Kermit V. Lipez

Maine Law Review

In any sexual abuse trial, the entry of the child into the courtroom is a dramatic moment. The large door to the courtroom opens. A small child enters, accompanied by a victim advocate who walks with the child toward the witness stand. At the end of the public seats, the child is turned over to a court officer who escorts the child to the witness stand. In the typically high-ceilinged, expansive courtroom where we conduct our jury trials, the small child looks even smaller. Some children slouch in the witness chair, as if they were trying to hide. The jurors …

A Feedback Loop Of Exclusion: The Treatment Of Bilingualism In The Courtroom, Simone Stover

Northwestern University Law Review

In the 1991 case Hernandez v. New York, the United States Supreme Court characterized bilingualism as a race-neutral trait that can be used to exclude individuals from jury service. This Note proceeds by demonstrating how the current state of the law undermines the interests of bilingual individuals and then proposes a solution. Focusing specifically on Hispanic bilingual Spanish speakers, this Note first employs Professor Jennifer Lackey’s multi-directional credibility model to show that bilingual Spanish speakers suffer injustice in the courtroom due to both credibility deficits and excesses. Following this analysis, it proposes a possible solution to this issue: an …

Grasping The Third Rail: Restorative Justice And Violent Crime, Olwyn Conway

Washington and Lee Law Review

Restorative justice is a means of responding to harm— including criminal offenses—through active accountability and repair, rather than through passive punishment and isolation. While restorative justice has demonstrated potential to meaningfully improve processes and outcomes for individuals and communities, the implementation of restorative justice programs to address crime—both within and alongside the American criminal system—has been slow, limited, and misplaced. Programs are often directed at low-level, nonviolent offenses that involve little if any cognizable harm. This approach creates two problems. One, it risks net-widening: bringing more citizens under criminal surveillance and carceral control for minor offenses—further diluting the constitutional and …

Prescribed Child Abuse? Using The Americans With Disabilities Act To Deconstruct Discrimination Against Medication For Opioid Use Disorder In Child Abuse & Neglect Proceedings, Makenzie Stuard

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

The opioid crisis has disrupted parent-child relationships across the United States. While states actively seek to remove children from households with current drug use in order to protect the children, state entities often fail to protect the parent-child relationship itself by imposing counterproductive policies and stereotypes on parents who are in treatment for their drug use, which makes maintaining "recovery" and parental rights an uphill battle. This note argues that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) provides a novel path to root out discrimination in child abuse and neglect proceedings against parents who either take prescribed buprenorphine or are interested …