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Extradition In The Early Republic: International Law And Constitutional Authority, Curtis A. Bradley

University of Chicago Law Review

This Article is the first comprehensive account of the constitutional foundations of U.S. extradition practice and its relationship to international law. Through detailed analysis of early American extradition controversies—including the Longchamps Affair and the Robbins case—the Article shows how political actors and courts constructed the modern constitutional law of extradition, resolving key issues concerning presidential power, the role of the states, and the scope of congressional authority. This regime, the Article argues, emerged not from appeals to the constitutional text or original understandings, but rather from structural intuitions, consequentialist considerations, and, as time went on, historical traditions. As the Article …

Native Marburys: Judicial Review In Tribal Courts, Elizabeth Hidalgo Reese

University of Chicago Law Review

Not all of America’s courts have judicial review. This Article is the first to dis- cuss a body of judicial review case law in which this extraordinary judicial power has been rejected, is a recent development, or is not yet a settled question—judicial review cases from tribal courts. In a time when skepticism about the power that judicial review gives to the federal courts is at an all-time high, it is that much more important that we look to other examples of government systems wrestling with whether to give their courts the power of judicial review—to other courts that are …

Expanding Sources Of Knowledge In Legal Scholarship, Adam Davidson, Jocelyn Simonson

University of Chicago Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Lpe Critique Of Law And Economics, Sarath Sanga

University of Chicago Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Law And Political Economy Movement’S Crime Agenda Hurts Black People, Jonathan Klick

University of Chicago Law Review

The law and political economy (LPE) movement claims concern for marginalized communities as a motivation for its crime agenda. However, efforts to defund police, elect progressive prosecutors, and eliminate prisons are likely to generate large costs for the very communities LPE scholars say they care about. Existing empirical analyses demonstrate that Black individuals benefit disproportionately from the deterrence provided by police. This Essay also provides new evidence that progressive prosecutors have put Black people in lethal danger. Finally, there are reasons to believe that decarceration would not be costless for the Black community.

Pardoning Corporations, Brandon Stras

University of Chicago Law Review

In 1977, a company convicted of conspiring with the mob asked President Jimmy Carter for a pardon. Government officials speculated that the President could grant the request, but ultimately the President decided that the company did not deserve clemency. Nearly fifty years later, President Donald Trump pardoned a company and commuted the sentence of another. People are again wondering whether the pardon power covers companies, but no one can offer evidence either way.

History shows that the pardon power covers companies. Before the Founding, the King would often pardon corporations. Both the City of London and the Massachusetts Bay Company …

No Exceptions: The New Movement To Abolish Slavery And Involuntary Servitude, Adam A. Davidson

University of Chicago Law Review

In the twenty-first century, slavery is still alive in the United States, but thankfully, it is increasingly unwell. States across the country, in places both expected and unexpected, have begun to pass amendments to their state constitutions that seek to finish the job started over 150 years ago by the Thirteenth Amendment. Whereas that amendment included an exception, providing for slavery and involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime, these new state amendments contain total prohibitions. But these prohibitions have thus far proven unable to end the blight of prison slavery merely through their text. This Article asks why and …

Compassionate Causation In The Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act, Zoë Lewis Ewing

University of Chicago Law Review

This Comment evaluates the implementation of the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act (DVSJA), a New York law passed in 2019 to provide shortened sentencing ranges for domestic violence survivors convicted of crimes. It identifies an inconsistency in sentencing courts’ application of the law’s causation standard, which requires that a petitioner’s experience of domestic violence be a “significant contributing factor” to their criminal conduct. Some courts interpret the prong narrowly, while others apply a broad causation standard. This Comment argues that courts should opt for the latter approach and consider causation in the DVSJA satisfied if domestic violence was “sufficiently significant …

Eliminating The Malice Requirement For Fourth Amendment Malicious Prosecution Plaintiffs, Sabrina Huang

University of Chicago Law Review

Someone who has been wrongfully prosecuted in violation of their Fourth Amendment rights can sue a government actor, such as a police officer, for malicious prosecution under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Malicious prosecution arises when a government actor initiates a criminal case without probable cause, the prosecution leads to the accused’s seizure, and the accused is ultimately not convicted. Fourth Amendment malicious prosecution claims are critical to holding officers and prosecutors accountable for misconduct. Official misconduct is common: more than half of the people exonerated since 1989 were incarcerated due in part to misconduct by the police or prosecutors.

Fourth …

Contract Or Prison, S. R. Blanchard

University of Chicago Law Review

Critics of the criminal enforcement system have condemned the expansion and privatization of electronic monitoring, criminal diversion, parole, and probation. But the astonishing perversion of contract involved in these new practices has gone unnoticed. Governments are turning to “offender-funded” programs that empower firms to contract with people who are suspected of or have been convicted of crimes— and whose alternative to agreeing to these contracts is prosecution or incarceration. Though incarceration-alternative (IA) contracting is sometimes framed as humane, historical and current context illuminates its coercive nature. IA contracting must be examined under classical contract theory and in light of the …

Administrative Subordination, Bijal Shah

University of Chicago Law Review

Much of the scholarship on immigration enforcement and environmental justice assumes that agencies negatively impact vulnerable and marginalized people as a result of individualized bias or arbitrariness in administration. This Article argues that, beyond idiosyncrasies or flaws in administrators themselves, the poor impact of administration on minorities emanates from institutional systems. In doing so, this Article introduces a framework of institutional oppression into the study of administration that illustrates how agencies subordinate minority interests to the ends of administrative competence and self-preservation.

A healthy federal bureaucracy is sustained by administrative efforts to reduce institutional burdens, improve efficiency, conserve resources, and …

Mutually Assured Democracy: Cooperating Under The Compact Clause To Combat Partisan Gerrymandering, Samuel P. Leroy

University of Chicago Law Review

No abstract provided.

Weak-Willed Legislatures And Statutory Interpretation, Helen Zhao

University of Chicago Law Review

Not all statutes are created equal. Contributing to the literature on “super statutes,” I suggest that an analogy to the philosophical concept of weakness of will can illuminate circumstances under which some statutes ought to stand above others. Analogizing to philosopher Richard Holton’s account of weak will, I develop an account in which some statutes express long-term commitments, are intended to foreclose future deliberation, and enact reasons into the law. Such statutes have the status of what Holton calls “resolutions.” Like an individual resolving to stop eating meat, yet finding themself unable to resist, Congress can be weak willed when …

Some Thoughts On A Developmental Approach To A Sound Basic Education, Goodwin Liu

University of Chicago Law Review

No abstract provided.

Protecting Children's Access To A Sound Basic Education In The Age Of Political Polarization, A Comment On Goodwin Liu And Kristine Bowman's Essays On Children's Education In The Restatement, Emily Buss

University of Chicago Law Review

Justice Goodwin Liu and Professor Kristine Bowman have taken two very different approaches in their essays commenting on the Restatement’s¹ coverage of the law governing children’s education. In Some Thoughts on a Developmental Approach to a Sound Basic Education,² Justice Liu focuses near exclusively on the Restatement’s articulation of the core educational standard, the “sound basic education,” and presses for an expanded application of that standard to children from birth through young adulthood.³ In The New Parents’ Rights Movement, Education, and Equality,⁴ Bowman addresses the entire structure of the educational provisions of the Restatement, which straddle …

Adolescents In The Justice System: A Progress Report On The Restatement Of Children And The Law, Richard J. Bonnie

University of Chicago Law Review

Professor Elizabeth Scott, the chief reporter of the American Law Institute’s (ALI) Restatement of Children and the Law,¹ has often observed that the nation’s widespread commitment to juvenile justice reform in the twenty-first century should be grounded in two premises: (1) the laws and practices of the juvenile justice system must be grounded in and guided by evolving knowledge about adolescent development; and (2) youth-serving institutions, including the justice system, must collaborate to erase substantial racial disparities in intervention, discipline, and punishment.² This Symposium will explore the current draft of the Restatement of Children and the Law with …

Seizure Or Due Process? Section 1983 Enforcement Against Pretrial Detention Caused By Fabricated Evidence, Jorge Pereira

University of Chicago Law Review

Can an individual who was held in pretrial detention but not criminally convicted as a result of fabricated evidence raise a due process claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983? The answer is unclear. In 2017, the Supreme Court in Manuel v. City of Joliet held that claims for unlawful pretrial detention are governed by the Fourth Amendment. Since then, the Seventh Circuit has asserted that the Fourth Amendment is the only source of redress under § 1983 for wrongful pretrial detention caused by fabricated evidence. By contrast, several circuits have opined that Manuel does not foreclose the possibility that individuals …

Decarcerating Immigrant Detainee Medical Care: A Path To Doctrinal Redemption, Kieran Dosanjh

University of Chicago Law Review

Government detention is a quid pro quo: the government may deprive persons of their physical liberty, but in exchange, it owes them a level of care. The critical question is, how much care does the Constitution require the government to provide? In a series of federal judicial decisions (collectively, the detainee medical care doctrine), courts have found that the Constitution requires different standards of care for different classes of government detainees. These courts’ standard of care for immigrant detainees is erroneous. Modern U.S. immigration detention’s descriptive resemblance to criminal confinement has prompted courts to (wrongly) find that immigrant detainees are …

Prosecutors, Race, And The Criminal Pipeline, Hannah Shaffer

University of Chicago Law Review

This Article presents evidence that some state prosecutors use their discretion to reduce racial disparities in criminal sentences. This finding challenges the prevailing view that prosecutors compound disparities. Given prosecutors’ positions as mediators in a sequential system, this Article analyzes how prosecutors respond to disparities they inherit from the past—and interprets their impacts in light of the accumulated disparities that already exist when they first open their case files. Specifically, I estimate how the sentencing penalty for prior convictions differs by defendant race using North Carolina state court records from 2010 to 2019. I find that the increase in the …

Vagueness And Federal-State Relations, Joel S. Johnson

University of Chicago Law Review

This Article aims to clarify the content of the void-for-vagueness doctrine and defend its historical pedigree by drawing attention to a fundamental aspect of the Supreme Court’s vagueness decisions—that vagueness analysis significantly depends on whether the law at issue is a federal or state law. That simple distinction has considerable explanatory power. It reveals that the doctrine emerged in the late nineteenth century in response to two simultaneous changes in the legal landscape— first, the availability of Supreme Court due process review of state penal statutes under the Fourteenth Amendment, and second, a significant shift in how state courts construed …

Droughts Of Compassion: The Enduring Problem With Compassionate Release And How The Sentencing Commission Can Address It, Nathaniel Berry

University of Chicago Law Review

Compassionate release, guided by 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A), allows a district court to reduce a previously imposed criminal sentence if “extraordinary and compelling reasons” warrant a reduction. Congress delegated the task of describing what constitutes an extraordinary and compelling reason to the U.S. Sentencing Commission. Following the passage of the First Step Act of 2018, most circuit courts held the Commission’s policy statement describing extraordinary and compelling reasons inapplicable, and that until the Commission updated its policy statement, courts enjoyed the discretion to determine what circumstances justify compassionate release.

e. Many have celebrated this newfound discretion and its potential to …

The Fourth Amendment Without Police, Shawn E. Fields

University of Chicago Law Review

What role will the Fourth Amendment play in a world without police? As academics, activists, and lawmakers explore alternatives to traditional law enforcement, it bears asking whether the amendment primarily tasked with regulating police investigations would also regulate postpolice public safety agencies. Surprisingly, the answer is often no. Courts are reluctant to recognize protections from government searches or seizures outside criminal investigations, and they are even more reluctant to require probable cause or a warrant for such conduct. Thus, by removing most public safety functions outside the criminal sphere, abolitionists also move intrusive government conduct outside these traditional strictures and …

The Joint Venture Exception In The International Silver Platter Doctrine: Variability And Devaluation Of Cooperation, Jacqueline Pecaro

University of Chicago Law Review

This Comment examines the joint venture exception in the international silver platter doctrine in the context of the use of wiretaps in federal narcotics cases. Under the international silver platter doctrine, evidence obtained through searches (like wiretaps) by foreign law enforcement on foreign soil and under foreign law is admissible in U.S. courts. The joint venture exception qualifies the international silver platter doctrine: if participation by U.S. law enforcement in a wiretap by foreign law enforcement on foreign soil constitutes a joint venture, then evidence obtained from the search is admissible only if the wiretap was reasonable under the Fourth …

Reducing Prejudice Through Law: Evidence From Experimental Psychology, Sara Emily Burke, Roseanna Sommers

University of Chicago Law Review

Can antidiscrimination law effect changes in public attitudes toward minority groups? Could learning, for instance, that employment discrimination against people with clinical depression is legally prohibited cause members of the public to be more accepting toward people with mental health conditions? In this Article, we report the results of a series of experiments that test the effect of inducing the belief that discrimination against a given group is legal (versus illegal) on interpersonal attitudes toward members of that group. We find that learning that discrimination is unlawful does not simply lead people to believe that an employer is more likely …

The Visibility Trap, Kate Redburn

University of Chicago Law Review

In August 2021, the Indiana Court of Appeals prohibited a transgender teenage boy (H.S.) from changing the gender marker on his birth certificate. Because he was fifteen at the time, his parents had filed the petition on his behalf.¹ As his parents testified, changing the gender marker on a young trans person’s birth certificate is more than a formality. It makes it possible for them to obtain a passport and driver’s license that match their identity, helping to avoid incongruities in gender regulation that can run the gambit from confusing to dangerous.²

The appellate panel was split. Legally …

Untangling The Prison Mailbox Rules, Mario Ramirez

University of Chicago Law Review

Unlike typical litigants, pro se prisoners are unable to deliver filings to court or to have an attorney do so on their behalf. Such prisoners are forced to rely on their prisons’ mailing systems to file documents, which often results in those documents reaching the court after the applicable deadlines. Accordingly, the Supreme Court created a “prison mailbox rule” in Houston v. Lack, under which some filings by prisoners are considered filed when they are given to prison officials for mailing, rather than when they reach the court.

Defining the exact reach of that prison mailbox rule has created considerable …

Kids Are Not So Different: The Path From Juvenile Exceptionalism To Prison Abolition, Emily Buss

University of Chicago Law Review

Inspired by the Supreme Court’s embrace of developmental science in a series of Eighth Amendment cases, “kids are different” has become the rallying cry, leading to dramatic reforms in our response to juvenile crime designed to eliminate the incarceration of children and support their successful transition to adulthood. The success of these reforms represents a promising start, but the “kids are different” approach is built upon two flaws in the Court’s developmental analysis that constrain the reach of its decisions and hide the true implications of a developmental approach. Both the text of the Court’s opinions and the developmental and …

Neither Here Nor There: Wire Fraud And The False Binary Of Territoriality Under Morrison, Jason Petty

University of Chicago Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Law And Economics Of Animus, Andrew T. Hayashi

University of Chicago Law Review

People sometimes want to harm other people. This truism points to a blind spot in law and economics scholarship, which generally assumes that people are indifferent to the effects of their actions on other people. Diverse areas of the law, such as hate-crime legislation and constitutional equal protection doctrine, reside in this blind spot because they are premised on the existence of animus. I argue that the assumption of indifference unnecessarily limits law and economics analysis and that it is both possible and fruitful to incorporate animus into law and economics. I show that doing so leads to new insights …

Experimental Jurisprudence, Kevin Tobia

University of Chicago Law Review

“Experimental jurisprudence” draws on empirical methods to inform questions typically associated with jurisprudence and legal theory. Scholars in this flourishing movement conduct empirical studies about a variety of legal language and concepts. Despite the movement’s growth, its justification is still opaque. Jurisprudence is the study of deep and longstanding theoretical questions about law’s nature, but “experimental jurisprudence,” it might seem, simply surveys laypeople. This Article elaborates on and defends experimental jurisprudence. Experimental jurisprudence, appropriately understood, is not only consistent with traditional jurisprudence; it is an essential branch of it.