Digital Commons Network^™

Whole Other Story: Applying Narrative Mediation To The Immigration Beat, Carol Pauli

Faculty Scholarship

If Donald Trump, kicking off his campaign for the White House, was saying “what everyone is thinking,” about illegal immigration, it must be that his message mirrored a narrative that already existed in the minds of his audience. That fearful story of criminals invading the U.S. borders has long been a dominant theme in the mainstream news immigration story. Like all news stories, this one focuses attention on some facts at the expense of others. Like many news stories, it draws its power from earlier, well-known tales — some as old as the Flood. This article recommends that the news …

The Obama War Powers Legacy And The Internal Forces That Entrench Executive Power, Rebecca Ingber

Faculty Scholarship

In exploring the Obama war powers legacy, this essay examines the systemic forces inside the executive branch that influence modern presidential decision-making and, barring a total reimagining of the executive branch, will operate on administrations to come. These mechanisms and norms fall broadly within two categories: (1) features that favor continuity and hinder presidents from effecting change, including both novel assertions of executive power and attempts to dial back that power; and (2) features that incrementally aggrandize such power claims. Together, these two sets of forces operate as a one-way ratchet, slowly expanding and ultimately entrenching executive branch power.

Moral Courage In Indigent Defense, Tigran W. Eldred

Faculty Scholarship

In this essay, I take a different perspective, one that focuses on why people are able to act ethically despite pressures to do otherwise. Social science has convincingly demonstrated that the power of the situation can exert significant influence over individual behavior, thus undermining the claim that only “bad” people engage in unethical conduct.⁴ Yet, we know that there are individual differences to how people respond to ethical dilemmas, which raises a core question: why do some individuals act more ethically than others, even in similar situations?

To explore this question, I focus on a familiar domain from my …

Penal Welfare And The New Human Trafficking Intervention Courts, Kate Mogulescu, Aya Gruber, Amy J. Cohen

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Assumed Sane, Fatma Marouf

Faculty Scholarship

In 2014, the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) held in Matter of G-G-S-that a noncitizen’s mental health status at the time of an offense is irrelevant to determining whether the offense is a “particularly serious crime” for immigration purposes. Since a “particularly serious crime” is a bar to asylum and withholding of removal, it can result in a noncitizen’s deportation to a country where he or she faces a serious risk of persecution. In deciding that immigration judges “are constrained by how mental health issues were addressed as part of the criminal proceedings,” the BIA failed to recognize the …

Brief For The American Association On Intellectual And Developmental Disabilities (Aaidd), And The Arc Of The United States As Amicus Curiae, James W. Ellis, Ann M. Delpha, Carol M. Suzuki, Steven Homer, David Stout, April Land

Faculty Scholarship

As with any field of scientific inquiry, our understanding of the condition of intellectual disability is improved and enhanced over time by continuing, rigorous study and analysis. The scientific study and the diagnosis of intellectual disability involve issues important to scholars and clinicians. But amici believe that there is no need for this Court to become enmeshed in the details and intricacies of those scholarly efforts in order to resolve the instant case and to provide guidance to lower courts in their task of fairly adjudicating cases under Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002). This Court need only affirm …

For Judith S. Kaye, Susan Herman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Engendering Peace And Justice After Armed Conflict: A Call For Qualitative Research Among Women's Community Networks, Jennifer Moore

Faculty Scholarship

Transitional justice refers to a variety of mechanisms established to help postconflict societies account for the war and build the peace, including war crimes tribunals, truth and reconciliation commissions, and reparations programs. The framework of transitional justice, while responsive to local actors and local realities, was largely constructed by external actors, including foreign states, international organizations, non-governmental agencies, advocates, and academics working in the fields of human rights and rule of law promotion. The gender dilemma for global and local transitional justice practitioners is the increasing awareness that most women in war-affected countries have not been well-served by the considerable …

The Constitutional Regulation Of Forensic Evidence, Brandon L. Garrett

Faculty Scholarship

The Constitution increasingly regulates the use of forensic evidence in criminal cases. This is a remarkable shift. In decades past, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to provide strong due process protection against destruction of forensic evidence or to obtain defense access to experts. In contrast, in recent years, the Court’s series of Confrontation Clause rulings tightened requirements to present live testimony in the courtroom. Perhaps far more significant, I will argue, the Court has strengthened obligations of defense counsel to litigate forensics, twice underscoring in little noticed opinions: “Criminal cases will arise where the only reasonable and available defense strategy …

Bad Hair: The Legal Response To Mass Forensic Errors, Brandon L. Garrett

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

"Cerd-Ain" Reform: Dismantling The School-To-Prison Pipeline Through More Thorough Coordination Of The Departments Of Justice And Education, Lisa A. Rich

Faculty Scholarship

In the last year of his presidency, President Barack Obama and his administration have undertaken many initiatives to ensure that formerly incarcerated individuals have more opportunities to successfully reenter society. At the same time, the administration has been working on education policy that closes the achievement gap and slows the endless flow of juveniles into the school-to-prison pipeline. While certainly laudable, there is much more that can be undertaken collaboratively among executive branch agencies to end the school-to-prison pipeline and the endless cycle of people re-entering the criminal justice system. This paper examines the rise of the school-to-prison pipeline through …

Constitutional Retroactivity In Criminal Procedure, Alex Stein, Dov Fox

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Identifying Criminals’ Risk Preferences, Murat C. Mungan, Jonathan Klick

Faculty Scholarship

There is a 250-year-old presumption in the criminology and law enforcement literature that people are deterred more by increases in the certainty rather than increases in the severity of legal sanctions. We call this presumption the Certainty Aversion Presumption (CAP). Simple criminal decision-making models suggest that criminals must be risk seeking if they behave consistently with CAP. This implication leads to disturbing interpretations, such as criminals being categorically different from law-abiding people, who often display risk-averse behavior while making financial decisions. Moreover, policy discussions that incorrectly rely on criminals’ risk attitudes implied by CAP are ill informed, and may therefore …

Distinguishing Households From Families, Katharine B. Silbaugh

Faculty Scholarship

The study of the relationship between all families, whether marital or non-marital, and households, is underdeveloped, despite extensive study of the mismatch between family law, which is still focused on marriage and parenthood, and family practices. Often, in an effort to update the discourse, discussions of non-marital families seem to deploy households or living arrangements as a substitute classification in the place of the old marital family. This Article argues that we need to resist the tendency to substitute the idea of “household” when the boundaries of legal family fail us, because households are not necessarily familial, and because core …

Sufficiently Safeguarded?: Competency Evaluations Of Mentally Ill Respondents In Removal Proceedings, Sarah R. Sherman-Stokes

Faculty Scholarship

In this Article, I examine the current regime for making mental competency determinations of mentally ill and incompetent noncitizen respondents in immigration court. In its present iteration, mental competency determinations in immigration court are made by immigration judges, most commonly without the benefit of any mental health evaluation or expertise. In reflecting on the protections and processes in place in the criminal justice system, and on interviews with removal defense practitioners at ten different sites across the United States, I conclude that the role of the immigration judge in mental competency determinations must be changed in order to protect the …

Modrall Sperling Interviews Kevin Washburn About Indian Law And Returning To New Mexico, Kevin Washburn

Faculty Scholarship

Reflections on Service as Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs, the State of Indian Law in 2016, and Returning Home to New Mexico

Montana Standard Interviews Barbara Creel On The Violence Against Women Act And Double Standards, Barbara L. Creel

Faculty Scholarship

Barbara Creel, Southwest Indian Law Clinic Director Professor at the University of New Mexico, agreed with Babcock that the case was not about tribal sovereignty.

Yet she said the case reveals inequities in the criminal justice system of tribes created when Congress told them how to structure their governments under the Indian Reorganization Act but did not provide sufficient funding or additional legal protections to make those systems function as intended.

Additionally, in a brief she and colleagues filed to the court, Creel argues that the Violence Against Women Act creates a discriminatory double standard.

Belief States In Criminal Law, James Macleod

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Copwatching, Jocelyn Simonson

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Foreword: Innocent Until Proven Poor, Sara Zampierin

Faculty Scholarship

One of the core tenets of our criminal justice system is the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. As the title of the Symposium recognizes, we have allowed our justice system to ignore that presumption for people living in poverty in a variety of ways. Instead, it often inflicts additional and harsher punishment on individuals because of their poverty.

On ‘Violence Against Women’, I. Bennett Capers

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Brief For Barbara L. Creel And The Tribal Defender Network, Us V. Bryant, Barbara L. Creel, John Lavelle

Faculty Scholarship

Although Congress intended to protect women in Indian Country from domestic abuse, they condoned the use of prior “uncounseled” tribal court convictions to charge and convict an Indian as a federal habitual domestic violence offender.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who wrote Bryant, denigrates Indian people’s civil rights, citing the need to protect Native women from domestic violence. But Department of Justice statistics show most domestic violence perpetrators in Indian country are non-Indians, and the Bryant decision leaves intact their constitutional rights, including the right to appointed counsel.

The Prosecutor's Turn, Bennett Capers

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Creating An International Prison, Mary Margaret Penrose

Faculty Scholarship

This Article asserts that a permanent international prison is a necessary, if not indispensable, component of any effective international criminal justice system. It begins by first addressing the historical approach to international sentencing. Next, it discusses the inadequacies of the status quo. Finally, it argues the time has come to construct a permanent international prison, rather than adhere to the ad hoc approach in dealing with international criminals and convicts.

Plea Bargain Negotiations: Defining Competence Beyond Lafler And Frye, Cynthia Alkon

Faculty Scholarship

In the companion cases of Lafler v. Cooper and Missouri v. Frye the U.S. Supreme Court held that there is a right to effective assistance of counsel during plea bargaining. However, the Court defined effective assistance of counsel in only one narrow phase of plea bargaining: the client counseling phase. The Court said it would not look more broadly at the negotiation process itself as "[b]argaining is, by its nature, defined to a substantial degree by personal style.” This statement indicates that the Court does not fully understanding developments in the field of negotiation over the last thirty years. Negotiation …

Charging The Poor: Criminal Justice Debt & Modern-Day Debtors' Prisons, Neil L. Sobol

Faculty Scholarship

Debtors’ prisons should no longer exist. While imprisonment for debt was common in colonial times in the United States, subsequent constitutional provisions, legislation, and court rulings all called for the abolition of incarcerating individuals to collect debt. Despite these prohibitions, individuals who are unable to pay debts are now regularly incarcerated, and the vast majority of them are indigent. In 2015, at least ten lawsuits were filed against municipalities for incarcerating individuals in modern-day debtors’ prisons. Criminal justice debt is the primary source for this imprisonment.

Criminal justice debt includes fines, restitution charges, court costs, and fees. Monetary charges exist …

A Guide To Gathering And Using Legislative History In Massachusetts, Sean J. Kealy

Faculty Scholarship

Lawyers must have the ability to interpret statutory language. Whether during criminal or civil litigation, advising a client on recent statutory changes or appearing before an administrative agency, the importance of statutes to the modern legal world is unquestioned. Although some jurists, notably Justice Antonin Scalia, question whether there can be such a thing as "legislative intent" and disregard materials that may be instructive to the court, most jurisdictions not only accept evidence of legislative intent, but seek it out.

Gambling In American Prisons, Robert Jarvis

Faculty Scholarship

GAMBLING TAKES PLACE IN EVERY PRISON in the United States.

What We Know (And Need To Know) About Court-Annexed Dispute Resolution, Deborah Thompson Eisenberg

Faculty Scholarship

Mediation and other alternative dispute resolution (ADR) processes are now well integrated into the United States judicial system, in both civil and criminal cases. This white paper, drafted for the American Bar Association Commission on the Future of Legal Services, summarizes empirical evidence about the costs and benefits of court-annexed ADR. The first-generation of ADR research found that mediation and other ADR processes resulted in high party satisfaction rates, high settlement rates, cost savings and efficiency, increased long-term cooperation among the parties, and higher compliance rates with the outcome. The paper then examines a ground-breaking study conducted by the Maryland …

Reflections On "Innovations In Family Dispute Resolution", Deborah Thompson Eisenberg

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.