Digital Commons Network^™

Comparative Cruelty: A Comparative Analysis Of The Eighth Amendment To The United States Constitution And Section Nine Of The New Zealand Bill Of Rights Act, Carrie Leonetti

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

Given that the United States Constitution and the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act both contain prohibitions against governmental acts of cruelty and torture, this Article offers a comparative analysis of the judicial interpretations of the meaning of “cruel” in the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment in the two country’s founding documents. The Article beings by considering the shared historical underpinnings of the prohibitions, which require a proportionality analysis when assessing whether a punishment is excessive. Next, it examines the meaning of “cruelty” and the scope of the prohibitions in New Zealand and the United States. The Article documents …

Neurodiversity In Public Schools: A Critique Of Special Education In America, Pallavi M. Vishwanath

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

This Note provides a comparative critique to the special education practices in the U.S. and Canada. The Note reasons that a country or democracy is most benefitted when there is a recognized governmental duty to maximize the potential of every student via public education. The Note further exposes how a difference in governmental duty to provide equal education drastically affects students’ dignity and potential. This Note describes the history of the American public education system; explains the development of special education in the United States and the ambiguous governmental duty to educate American students; and discusses Canadian case law regarding …

Teaching Professional Responsibility Through Theater, Michael Millemann, Elliott Rauh, Robert Bowie Jr.

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

This article is about ethics-focused, law school courses, co-taught with a theater director, in which students wrote, produced and performed in plays. The plays were about four men who, separately, were wrongfully convicted, spent decades in prison, and finally were released and exonerated, formally (two) or informally (two).

The common themes in these miscarriages of justice were that 1) unethical conduct of prosecutors (especially failures to disclose exculpatory evidence) and of defense counsel (especially incompetent representation) undermined the Rule of Law and produced wrongful convictions, and 2) conversely, that the ethical conduct of post-conviction lawyers and law students helped to …

Advancement & Communications Committee Meeting - Packet 05/14/2020, Uc Hastings Board Of Directors

2020 Board of Directors Agenda and Materials

No abstract provided.

The Twenty-First Century Poll Tax, Ryan A. Partelow

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

Although disenfranchising voters over outstanding legal financial obligations (“LFOs”) is widely criticized, no court has yet been persuaded to strike down these laws. The practice continues to disenfranchise people based on wealth, and disproportionately affects the voting rights of people of color due to inherent racial disparities in socioeconomic status and the American criminal justice system. Although the concept of felon disenfranchisement itself has been affirmatively upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, this Article argues that disenfranchisement for outstanding LFOs is more akin to the poll tax jurisprudence than to the felon-voting cases.

This Article aims to add to a …

Weeding Out Injustice: Amnesty For Pot Offenders, Mitchell F. Crusto

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

There are a growing number of States that have legalized marijuana, challenging the view that marijuana is a dangerous drug. These States are taking positions relative to both the retroactivity of the new laws and to amelioration of past offenses, which arguably contradict United States Supreme Court decisions on the retroactivity of changes in substantive criminal standards. And, many States recognize that past marijuana laws have greatly contributed to the problems related to a broken criminal justice system, including mass incarceration and racial disparities, particularly to the devastation of communities of color.

In response to these legal developments, this Article …

Dying For Equal Protection, Teri Dobbins Baxter

UC Law Journal

When health policy experts noticed that health outcomes for African Americans were consistently worse than those of their White counterparts, many in the health care community assumed that the poor outcomes could be blamed on poverty and lifestyle choices. Subsequent research told a different story. Studies repeatedly showed that neither money, nor marriage, nor educational achievement protect African American men, women, or children from poor health. Instead, the disparities were more likely explained by racism. Specifically, multiple studies have shown that experiencing racism has been linked to increased infant and maternal mortality rates, elevated stress levels, and an increased risk …

Committee On Special Programs, Centers & Partnerships Meeting - Packet 02/20/2020, Uc Hastings Board Of Directors

2020 Board of Directors Agenda and Materials

No abstract provided.

Restricts Parole For Certain Offenses Currently Considered To Be Non-Violent. Authorizes Felony Sentences For Certain Offenses Currently Treated Only As Misdemeanors. Initiative Statute.

Propositions

Limits access to parole program established for non-violent offenders who have completed the full term of their primary offense by eliminating eligibility for certain offenses. Fiscal Impact: Increase in state and local correctional, court, and law enforcement costs likely in the tens of millions of dollars annually, depending on implementation.

Negotiating The Implementation Of Children’S Right To Life With Bashar Al-Assad Regime: International Law And The Syrian Humanitarian Crisis, Yuri Mantilla

UC Law SF International Law Review

No abstract provided.

After Abolition: Acquiescence, Backlash, And The Consequences Of Ending The Death Penalty, Austin Sarat, Charlotte Blackman, Elinor Scout Boynton, Katherine Chen, Theodore Perez

Hastings Journal of Crime and Punishment

No abstract provided.

Prosecuting Members Of Defense Legal Teams And Its Ethical Implications For The Prosecutor: A Proposal For A New Ethical Standard, Belle Yan

Hastings Journal of Crime and Punishment

This Note explores improprieties and conflicts of interest that may arise when a prosecutor’s office investigates and files charges against defense counsel or a member of the defense legal team. Specifically, this Note focuses on such investigations and charges that arise from defense counsel’s representation of a defendant whom the same prosecutor’s office is prosecuting. The intimately adversarial and professional relationships between prosecutors and defense attorneys taint the legitimacy of any charges against defense counsel for alleged misconduct. The ethical standard proposed here suggests a non-waivable conflict of interest. This would assist the prosecutor’s office in avoiding the appearance of …

Editors’ Foreword, Tatiana Herschlikowicz, Christopher Johnson

Hastings Journal of Crime and Punishment

No abstract provided.

Are We Still Cheap On Crime? Austerity, Punitivism, And Common Sense In The Trump/Sessions/Barr Era, Hadar Aviram

Hastings Journal of Crime and Punishment

Literature on “late mass incarceration” observed a contraction of the carceral state, with varying opinions as to its causes and varying degrees of optimism about its potential. But even optimistic commentators were taken aback by the Trump-Sessions administration’s criminal justice rhetoric. This paper maps out the extent to which federal, state, and local actions in the age of Trump have reversed the promising trends to shrink the criminal justice apparatus, focusing on federal legislation, continued state and local reform, and the role of criminal justice in 2020 presidential campaigns. The paper concludes that the overall salutary trends from 2008 onward …

Preface To The Symposium Issue

Hastings Journal of Crime and Punishment

No abstract provided.

The First Ten Years Of The Lay Judge System: Now, Do We Have “Hope” For Criminal Trials In Japan?, Mari Hirayama

Hastings Journal of Crime and Punishment

No abstract provided.

Victim Participation In The Criminal Process In Japan, Shigenori Matsui

Hastings Journal of Crime and Punishment

No abstract provided.

What The Saiban-In System Brought From The Perspective Of A Defense Lawyer, Megumi Wada

Hastings Journal of Crime and Punishment

No abstract provided.

The Prosecution Review Commission Process – Historical Analysis And Some Suggestions For Change, Carl F. Goodman

Hastings Journal of Crime and Punishment

No abstract provided.

Lay Judge And Victim Participation In Japan: Japan’S Saiban’In Trial, The Prosecution Review Commission, And The Public Prosecution Of White-Collar Crimes, Hiroshi Fukurai

Hastings Journal of Crime and Punishment

In September 2019, the University of California Hastings Law School hosted a symposium on Japan’s newly instituted public and victim participation systems in the criminal process. This paper addresses themes raised by five scholars' presentations at the symposium, covering the effectiveness and impact of three different newly adopted systems of lay and victim participation in Japan: (1) the new 2009 law of the Prosecution Review Commission (PRC), a Japanese-style “civil grand jury” originally introduced in 1948, which gave the PRC the power to force the prosecution of formerly unindicted cases, thereby challenging and reversing the prosecutor’s original non-prosecution decision; (2) …

The Limits Of Lay Participation Reform In Japanese Criminal Justice, David T. Johnson, Dimitri Vanoverbeke

Hastings Journal of Crime and Punishment

No abstract provided.

A Proposal To Properly Address Implicit Bias In The Jury, Anona Su

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

No abstract provided.

Papercuts: Hierarchical Microaggressions In Law Schools, Nantiya Ruan

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

No abstract provided.

Tanks And Rubber Bullets Vs. Pussy Hats And High-Fives: A Comparative Look At The 2014 Ferguson Uprising And The 2017 Women’S March On Washington, Abby Harrington

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

No abstract provided.

Transgender Rights: Shifting Strategies In A Changing Nation, Alex Binsfeld

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

Transgender rights have only come to the forefront of public consciousness and US jurisprudence in the past couple of decades. During this time, the transgender rights movement has made large strides and was rapidly working toward the enshrinement of federal non-discrimination protections for the transgender community. However, recent political changes in the US have led to a federal effort to undo the decades of progress that transgender activists have made in advocating for the recognition of their rights.1 As a result of this changing political climate, the strategies used by transgender rights advocates must change if the movement is going …

The Company Store And The Literally Captive Market: Consumer Law In Prisons And Jails, Stephen Raher

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

The growth of public expense associated with mass incarceration has led many carceral systems to push certain costs onto the people who are under correctional supervision. In the case of prisons and jails, this frequently takes the form of charges and fees associated with telecommunications, food, basic supplies, and access to information. Operation of these fee-based businesses (referred to here as “prison retail”) is typically outsourced to a private firm. In recent years, the dominant prison retail companies have consolidated into a handful of companies, mostly owned by private equity firms.

This paper explores the practices of prison retailers, and …

The Legalization Of Restorative Justice: A 50-State Empirical Analysis, Thalia Gonzalez

Faculty Scholarship

his Article addresses the increasing formal legal nature of restorative justice in the United States. Over the last three decades, a substantial body of research has demonstrated the ways in which restorative justice offers an alternative societal response to crime and harm. It has also examined how restorative justice empowers individuals and groups to address violence, respond to social, political and economic injustice, and engage in resistance to existing structural inequities. Yet a prominent gap in the field exists: a comprehensive theoretical and empirical examination of the codification of restorative justice in state law. Studies of this nature are essential …

Sentenced To Surveillance: Fourth Amendment Limits On Electronic Monitoring, Kate Weisburd

Faculty Scholarship

As courts and legislatures increasingly recognize that “digital is different” and attempt to limit government surveillance of private data, one group is conspicuously excluded from this new privacy-protective discourse: the five million people in the United States on probation, parole, or other forms of community supervision. This Article is the first to explore how warrantless electronic surveillance is dramatically transforming community supervision and, as a result, amplifying a growing privacy-protection disparity: those in the criminal legal system are increasingly losing privacy protections even while those not in the system are increasingly gaining privacy protections. The quickly expanding use of GPS-equipped …

Naked Price And Pharmaceutical Trade Secret Overreach, Robin C. Feldman, Charles Graves

Faculty Scholarship

Trade secret has drifted from a quiet backwater doctrine to a pervasive force in intellectual property. As always, the risk of distortion is great when a legal arena is developing and expanding rapidly. Nowhere do the theoretical tensions of trade secret law appear in such stark relief as in the modern pharmaceutical debates, where the heart of the theoretical question involves whether pricing is a proper subject for trade secrecy claims.

We aim to bring trade secret into greater harmony with broad concepts that reach across all intellectual property regimes. As with other areas of intellectual property law, trade secret …

An Unappreciated Constraint On The President's Pardon Power, Aaron J. Rappaport

Faculty Scholarship

Most commentators assume that, except for the few restrictions expressly mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, the President's pardon power is unlimited. This Paper suggests that this common view is mistaken in at least one unexpected way. Presidential pardons must satisfy a modest procedural rule: they must list the specific crimes covered by the pardon. The "specificity requirement" means that vague and broadly worded pardons are invalid. This claim bears a significant burden of persuasion, since it runs so counter to accepted opinion. Nonetheless, that burden can be met. This Paper's argument rests on an originalist understanding of the constitutional text, …