Digital Commons Network^™

Structure And Integrity, Susan Carle

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

In this Review Essay of David Luban's Legal Ethics and Human Dignity, I argue that although Professor Luban has not had much to say until now about "structural" concerns - namely, how lawyers' locations within institutions that organize access to power shape or should shape those lawyers' conduct - in his most recent work, another approach slips in as a supplement to his individualist framework. In this emerging supplement, structural concerns become increasingly important. Although individual integrity continues to matter most in Professor Luban's world view, it increasingly matters in the context of structural relations in which lawyers' ethical duties …

The American Prosecutor - Power, Discretion, And Misconduct, Angela J. Davis

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Prosecuting Sexual Violence In Correctional Settings: Examining Prosecutors' Perceptions, Brenda V. Smith

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The Prison Rape Elimination Act of 20031 (PREA) is the first piece of federal legislation, which expressly and exclusively addresses sexual abuse of persons in custody. Notwithstanding passage of the Act, there is clear belief, echoed by correctional leaders, that prosecutors are reluctant at best, and unwilling at worst, to prosecute cases of sexual violence in correctional settings. In order to gather information on prosecutor interest in and capacity to prosecute these cases, the National Institute of Corrections Project on Addressing Prison Rape at the Washington College of Law the (the NIC/WCL Project) collected data from state and federal prosecutors. …

The Mythical Divide Between Collateral And Direct Consequences Of Criminal Convictions: Involuntary Commitment Of "Sexually Violent Predators", Jenny M. Roberts

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Thomas Steele pleaded guilty to rape and other charges in exchange for a sentence of twelve to thirty years in a Massa- chusetts state prison.' Shortly before he became eligible for pa- role on this criminal conviction, the state classified Steele as a "sexually dangerous person." Although Steele has completed his prison sentence, the state continues to confine him under a Massachusetts law that allows for the involuntary civil com- mitment of "sexually dangerous persons." The order commit- ting him stated that he could be held for a period ranging from one day to life.

The Importance Of Effective Investigation Of Sexual Violence And Gender-Based Crimes At The International Criminal Court, Susana Sacouto

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

INTRODUCTION: Several provisions in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC or the Court) indicate that the statute's drafters intended sexual violence and gender-based crimes to be given specific attention during the investigation of potential cases before the Court. For instance, Article 54(1)(b) requires that, in ensuring the "effective investigation and prosecution of crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court," the Prosecutor "take into account the nature of the crime, in particular where it involves sexual violence, gender violence or violence against children."' The Rome Statute also provides that States Parties, which are responsible for nominating and electing …

Civil Society's Involvement In Post-Conflict Peacebuilding, Corinne Parver, Rebecca Wolf

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

War is a way of life – in some parts of the world it is an on-going struggle with no end in sight. Years of perpetual conflict have adversely affected the way in which political, socioeconomic, and cultural components of society have developed. Indeed, armed conflict negatively affects all aspects of society: not only does it destroy buildings and societies, but it also leaves surviving individuals and communities with deep wounds that can last a lifetime.

Many efforts have been employed around the world to build peace following a conflict. Some interventions have proven quite successful, while others have not. …

Immigrant Remittances, Ezra Rosser

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Remittances, the sending of money from immigrants back to their home countries, are the newest anti-poverty, development activity of the poor to be applauded by international institutions and economists. Exceeding foreign aid and private investment to many developing countries, remittances are being hailed as a new, untapped resource with powerful poverty alleviation and potential development attributes. After presenting the poverty, developmental, and economic characteristics of this new transnational connection between immigrants and their loved ones, as well as the dangerous effects of excessive remittance regulation, the author argues that remittances should be understood as an anti-poverty tool, but not as …

Reforming, Reclaiming Or Reframing Womanhood: Reflections On Advocacy For Women In Custody, Brenda V. Smith

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

I was asked to present one of the keynote addresses for this important symposium, Behind Bars: The Impact of Incarceration on Women and Their Families, sponsored by the Women's Rights Law Reporter at Rutgers University School of Law in Newark. I am happy to write the introductory essay for this meaningful publication which arose from that symposium. This is a particularly hospitable and appropriate environment for this publication given Rutgers University's important place in feminist scholarship and discourse - both in its graduate and undergraduate programs and in its publication arm - Rutgers University Press. Historically,the Women's Rights Law Reporter …

Convicting The Innocent In Transnational Criminal Cases: A Comparative Institutional Analysis Approach To The Problem, Song Richardson

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The adjudication of transnational criminal cases is burdened by a very narrow compulsory process mechanism known as Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties. These treaties regularize foreign evidence gathering for prosecutors and explicitly prevent their use by criminal defendants. The danger of inaccurate verdicts and wrongful convictions that may result from unequal access to evidence highlights the need to resolve this flawed transnational adjudication process, and specifically, its evidentiary method. Building on the works of Neil Komesar, Ronald Coase, and Mancur Nelson, the author utilizes a comparative institutional analysis approach to consider the question of how to obtain parity between the prosecution …

The Assumptions Behind The Assumptions In The War On Terror: Risk Assessment As An Example Of Foundational Disagreement In Counterterrorism Policy, Kenneth Anderson

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This 2007 article (based around an invited conference talk at Wayne State in early 2007) addresses risk assessment and cost benefit analysis as mechanisms in counterterrorism policy. It argues that although policy is often best pursued by agreeing to set aside deep foundational differences, in order to obtain a strategic plan for an activity such as counterterrorism, foundational differences must be addressed in order that policy not merely devolve into a policy minimalism that is always and damagingly tactical, never strategic, in order to avoid domestic democratic political conflict. The article takes risk assessment in counterterrorism, using cost benefit analysis, …

Lessons From Hurricane Katrina: Prison Emergency Preparedness As A Constitutional Imperative, Ira P. Robbins

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Hurricane Katrina was one of the worst natural disasters ever to strike the United States, in terms of casualties, suffering, and financial cost. Often overlooked among Katrina’s victims are the 8,000 inmates who were incarcerated at Orleans Parish Prison (OPP) when Katrina struck. Despite a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans, these men and women, some of whom had been held on charges as insignificant as public intoxication, remained in the jail as the hurricane hit, and endured days of rising, toxic waters, a lack of food and drinking water, and a complete breakdown of order within OPP. When the inmates …

Harmless Constitutional Error And The Institutional Significance Of The Jury, Roger Fairfax

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Appellate harmless error review, an early twentieth-century innovation prompted by concerns of efficiency and finality, had been confined to nonconstitutional trial errors until forty years ago, when the U.S. Supreme Court extended the harmless error rule to trial errors of constitutional proportion. Even as criminal procedural protections were expanded in the latter half of the twentieth century, the harmless error rule operated to dilute the effect of many of these constitutional guarantees-the Sixth Amendment right to jury trial being no exception. However, while a tradeoff between important process values and the Constitution's protection of individual rights is inherent in the …

Grand Jury Discretion And Constitutional Design, Roger Fairfax

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The grand jury possesses an unqualified power to decline to indict - despite probable cause that alleged criminal conduct has occurred. A grand jury might exercise this power, for example, to disagree with the wisdom of a criminal law or its application to a particular defendant. A grand jury might also use its discretionary power to send a message of disapproval regarding biased or unwise prosecutorial decisions or inefficient allocation of law enforcement resources in the community. This ability to exercise discretion on bases beyond the sufficiency of the evidence has been characterized pejoratively as grand jury nullification. The dominant …

The Death Penalty In America: Riding The Trojan Horse Of The Civil War, Michael S. Brazao

The Modern American

No abstract provided.

Exiling The Poor: The Clash Of Redevelopment And Fair Housing In Post-Katrina New Orleans, Anita Sinha, Judith Browne-Dianis

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Proposed Maryland Jury Instructionon Cross-Racial Identification, David E. Aaronson

American University Criminal Law Brief

No abstract provided.

The Violence Against Women Act:Denying Needed Resources Based On Criminal History, Jaime M. Yarussi

American University Criminal Law Brief

No abstract provided.

Prosecuting Sexual Violence In Correctional Settings:Examining Prosecutors’ Perceptions, Brenda V. Smith, Jaime M. Yarussi

American University Criminal Law Brief

No abstract provided.

The Prison Rape Elimination Act:Implementation And Unresolved Issues Torture, Brenda V. Smith

American University Criminal Law Brief

No abstract provided.

The Importance Of Effective Investigation Of Sexual Violence And Gender-Based Crimes At The International Criminal Court, Susana Sacouto

Feminist Scholarship

INTRODUCTION: Several provisions in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC or the Court) indicate that the statute's drafters intended sexual violence and gender-based crimes to be given specific attention during the investigation of potential cases before the Court. For instance, Article 54(1)(b) requires that, in ensuring the "effective investigation and prosecution of crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court," the Prosecutor "take into account the nature of the crime, in particular where it involves sexual violence, gender violence or violence against children."' The Rome Statute also provides that States Parties, which are responsible for nominating and electing …

Victims' Participation In The Investigations Of The International Criminal Court, Susana Sacouto, Katherine A. Cleary

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

The "High-Crime Area" Question: Requiring Verifiable And Quantifiable Evidence For Fourth Amendment Reasonable Suspicion Analysis [Pdf], Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, Damien Bernache

American University Law Review

This article proposes a legal framework to analyze the "high crime area" concept in Fourth Amendment reasonable suspicion challenges. Under existing Supreme Court precedent, reviewing courts are allowed to consider that an area is a "high crime area" as a factor to evaluate the reasonableness of a Fourth Amendment stop. See Illinois v. Wardlow, 528 U.S. 119 (2000). However, the Supreme Court has never defined a "high crime area" and lower courts have not reached consensus on a definition. There is no agreement on what a "high-crime area" is, whether it has geographic boundaries, whether it changes over time, whether …

The Gravity Threshold Of The International Criminal Court, Susana Sácouto, Katherine A. Cleary

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

From its inception, the world's first permanent International Criminal Court ("ICC" or "Court") was envisioned as a body that would preside over only those cases of most serious concern to the international community as a whole. Thus, the Court's subject matter jurisdiction is limited to the international crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression. Moreover, Article 17(1)(d) of the Rome Statute provides that the Court shall determine that a case is inadmissible where the case is not of sufficient gravity to justify further action by the Court. This so-called "gravity threshold" has played a …

O.J., Batson And Snyder: Lessons From An Intersecting Trilogy, Camille Nelson

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

INTRODUCTION There are few cases that inform our collective understanding of the American jury system more than Batson v. Kentucky. This case serves as a touchstone in Equal Protection jurisprudence and can be viewed as "the [U.S. Supreme Court's] most ambitious attempt to impose meaningful prohibitions on the use of race-based peremptory challenges." This case and its progeny provide a framework for the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause and also implicate the Sixth Amendment's jury-trial guarantees. The Batson holding has been expanded to guard not only against the wrongful exclusion of jurors based upon race, but also …

Due Process For The Global Crime Era: A Proposal, Song Richardson

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This article argues that the adjudication of transnational criminal cases in the United States raises troubling questions about the government's commitment to principled criminal process standards. Concern over global crime has resulted in a criminal process that inadequately protects fairness and legitimacy norms. Over 40 years ago, in his seminal work on the domestic criminal process, Herbert Packer described two models of criminal procedure: the crime control model and the due process model. The crime control model posits that the most important function of the criminal justice system is to suppress crime. The due process model focuses on the fallibility …

'Emaciated' Defense Or A Trend To Independence And Equality Of Arms In Internationalized Criminal Tribunals?, Richard J. Wilson

Newsletters & Other Publications

This short article gives an overview of recent developments in recognition of the right to effective defense in international criminal proceedings, with particular attention to new structures. The systems for provision of defense lawyers are examined in a case study of the Charles Taylor trial by the Special Court for Sierra Leone, sitting in The Hague, as well as the Bosnian War Crimes Chamber and the Special Tribunal for Lebanon.

Intellectual Property At The Intersection Of Race And Gender: Lady Sings The Blues, K.J. Greene

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Giving Birth In Shackles: A Constitutional And Human Rights Violation, Dana L. Sichel

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Resolved, Or Is It? The First Amendment And Giving Money To Terrorists, Jeff Breinholt

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Vicarious Criminal Liability And The Constitutional Dimensions Of Pinkerton, Alex Kreit

American University Law Review

This article considers what limits the constitution places on holding someone criminally liable for another's conduct. While vicarious criminal liability is often criticized, there is no doubt that it is constitutionally permissible as a general matter. Under the long-standing felony murder doctrine, for example, if A and B rob a bank and B shoots and kills a security guard, A can be held criminally liable for the murder. What if, however, A was not involved in the robbery but instead had a completely separate conspiracy with B to distribute cocaine? What relationship, if any, does the constitution require between A's …