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Passive Embezzlement Schemes As Continuing Offenses, William Admussen

University of Chicago Law Review

For most offenses, the statute of limitations begins to run when the elements of an offense are satisfied. For continuing offenses, however, the statute of limitations begins to run when the crime stops, extending the amount of time the government has to bring charges. This Comment considers the circuit split over whether passive embezzlement schemes are continuing offenses. Typically charged under the federal embezzlement statute, 18 USC § 641, passive embezzlement schemes continue automatically once set in motion. They are distinguished from active embezzlement schemes in that active schemes require some affirmative act by the embezzler for the scheme to …

Contents / Editorial Information

University of Chicago Law Review

No abstract provided.

Criminal Law In A Civil Guise: The Evolution Of Family Courts And Support Laws, Elizabeth D. Katz

University of Chicago Law Review

Each year family courts incarcerate thousands of Americans for nonpayment of child support. The vast majority of these parents are not accorded criminal procedure protections because courts have characterized routine child support enforcement as a “civil” matter. The United States Supreme Court has endorsed this approach. In Turner v Rogers, the Court began from a premise it regarded as both legally significant and unquestionably true: that child support proceedings are civil On that basis, the Court determined that an indigent father facing a year in jail was not entitled to a public defender. The Court’s analysis reflects a broader and …

Front Matter / Editorial Information

University of Chicago Law Review

No abstract provided.

Entire Issue

University of Chicago Law Review

No abstract provided.

Contents / Editorial

University of Chicago Law Review

No abstract provided.

Assessing The Empirical Upside Of Personalized Criminal Procedure, Matthew B. Kugler, Lior Jacob Strahilevitz

University of Chicago Law Review

Though personalization of law is often viewed as a new idea, pockets of criminal procedure already tolerate it. Many courts have held that Miranda warnings must be tailored when read to juveniles or people with limited English proficiency; a suspect’s age is necessarily part of the judicial calculus when determining whether the police’s questioning of her is a custodial interrogation; and some state courts consider a person’s demographic characteristics when deciding whether they have consented to a search. The question before us now is whether society should go further. Should the law of criminal procedure pay more attention to individual …

Neuroscience And The Personalization Of Criminal Law, Deborah W. Denno

University of Chicago Law Review

While objective standards of reasonableness permeate most legal disciplines, criminal law has trended toward personalization since the 1960s, when the Model Penal Code introduced conceptions of mental states based on Freudian psychoanalytic theory. Today, advancements in neuroscience offer previously inconceivable insights into living brain structures and damage. This Essay contends that a criminal justice system that uses personalizing neuroscientific evidence will yield better outcomes. This Essay contributes two unique tools to the personalized law debate. First are the results of my two-decade-long Neuroscience Study, in which I have compiled eight hundred criminal cases that addressed neuroscientific evidence in any capacity. …

Contents

University of Chicago Law Review

Contents and editorial information.

The Constitutionality Of Income-Based Fines, Alec Schierenbeck

University of Chicago Law Review

In America, fines are typically imposed without regard to income. The result is a system that traps low-income offenders in a cycle of debt and jail while letting rich offenders break the law without meaningful financial consequence. One-sizefits-all fines also fail to meet basic goals of the justice system: to treat like offenders alike, punish the deserving, and encourage respect for the law. Elsewhere in the world, however, systems that assess fines based on earnings have been around for nearly one hundred years. The most common model—known as the “day fine”— scales penalties according to a person’s daily income. These …

Empirical Patterns Of Pro Se Litigation In Federal District Courts, Mitchell Levy

University of Chicago Law Review

Pro se litigants face a number of challenges when bringing civil litigation. One potential solution to these challenges, endorsed by members of the judiciary and the legal academy, is pro se reform at the trial court level: offering special services to pro se litigants in order to help them successfully navigate the legal system. This Comment offers the first publicly available empirical assessment of several pro se reform efforts thus far. The analysis shows that these pro se reforms have not succeeded in improving pro se litigants’ win rates at trial. This Comment thus suggests that, while pro se reforms …

In Defense Of Territorial Jurisdiction, Cody J. Jacobs

University of Chicago Law Review

As the story is traditionally told, the minimum contacts test introduced in International Shoe v Washington freed personal jurisdiction from the dark age of territorialism and gave courts the flexibility to expand the scope of personal jurisdiction to keep pace with modern society. While scholars have critiqued the minimum contacts test on a number of grounds, the narrative that the Territorial Model was inherently problematic—and that Shoe was a step in the right direction— has gone largely unchallenged.

This Article challenges that narrative and argues for a return to the Territorial Model. While Shoe is traditionally cast as a step …

Reviewing Leniency: Appealability Of 18 Usc § 3582(C)(2) Sentence Modification Motions, Sarah E. Welch

University of Chicago Law Review

In ordinary circumstances, criminal defendants get only one shot at sentencing. But in a few cases, defendants have a second chance at a more lenient sentence. This Comment considers one of those circumstances: motions under 18 USC § 3582(c)(2) for sentence reduction after retroactive downward adjustment of the Sentencing Guidelines. Specifically, this Comment considers the circuit split over when those motions are appealable. Courts disagree about which statute governs appellate jurisdiction: the general jurisdictional statute permitting appeal of any final decision of a district court (28 USC § 1291) or the specific sentencing jurisdictional statute restricting appeal of otherwise final …

State Bureaucratic Undermining, Justin Weinstein-Tull

University of Chicago Law Review

Our federal rights are failing, and the inner workings of state government provide an explanation. States administer more federal rights than ever before; administering those rights requires intrastate coordination both horizontally (across cabinet-level state actors, agencies, and commissions) and vertically (with local governments like counties and towns). That coordination undermines federal law by creating bureaucratic barriers to full compliance. I unearth and identify three of these barriers—agency alienation, agency conflict, and role confusion—by surveying remedies in recent suits against state actors. These remedies take the form of choreography: they specify how internal state actors must work together to vindicate federal …

Righting Categorical Wrongs: A Holistic Solution To Rule 8(A)’S Same-Or-Similarcharacter Prong, Matthew Deates

University of Chicago Law Review

More than half of federal criminal defendants are charged with multiple offenses in a single indictment. These defendants are more likely to be convicted on at least one charge than defendants who receive separate trials for each charge. Joinder has been both lauded for increasing the efficiency of the federal criminal justice system and criticized for unfairly prejudicing criminal defendants. Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure 8(a) and 14 govern the joinder of offenses in the federal system. Rule 8(a) permits offenses of the “same or similar character” to be joined against a single defendant while Rule 14 allows district courts …

Rethinking Family-Court Prosecutors: Elected And Agency Prosecutors And Prosecutorial Discretion In Juvenile Delinquency And Child Protection Cases, Josh Gupta-Kagan

University of Chicago Law Review

Like criminal prosecutors, family-court prosecutors have immense power. Determining which cases to prosecute and which to divert or dismiss goes to the heart of the delinquency system’s balance between punishment and rehabilitation of children and the child protection system’s spectrum of family interventions. For instance, the 1990s shift to prosecute (rather than dismiss or divert) about 10 percent more delinquency cases annually is as significant a development as any other. Yet scholars have not examined the legal structures for these charging decisions or family-court prosecutors’ authority in much depth.

This Article shows how family-court prosecutors’ roles have never been fully …

Defining Flight Risk, Lauryn P. Gouldin

University of Chicago Law Review

Our illogical and too-well-traveled paths to pretrial detention have created staggering costs for defendants who spend unnecessary time in pretrial detention and for taxpayers who fund a broken system. These problems remain recalcitrant even as a third generation of reform efforts makes impressive headway. They are likely to remain so until judges, attorneys, legislators, and scholars address a fundamental definitional problem: the collapsing of very different types of behavior that result in failures to appear in court into a single, undifferentiated category of nonappearance risk. That single category muddies critical distinctions that this Article’s new taxonomy of pretrial nonappearance risks …

Cross-Examining The Preliminary Question: Encouraging Defendant Participation Under Federal Rule Of Evidence 104(D), Mila Rusafova

University of Chicago Law Review

No abstract provided.

Schrodinger's Cell: Pretrial Detention, Supervised Release, And Uncertainty, Eric J. Maier

University of Chicago Law Review

No abstract provided.

Taming Cerberus: The Beast At Aedpa's Gates, Patrick J. Fuster

University of Chicago Law Review

No abstract provided.

Learning From History In Changing Times: Taking Account Of Evolving Marijuana Laws In Federal Sentencing, Adam Davidson

University of Chicago Law Review

No abstract provided.

Escaping From Release: Is Supervised Release Custodial Under 18 Usc Sec. 751(A)?, Mica Moore

University of Chicago Law Review

No abstract provided.

Law And Subjective Well-Being, Thomas S. Ulen

University of Chicago Law Review

No abstract provided.

Restructuring Clemency: The Cost Of Ignoring Clemency And A Plan For Renewal, Rachel E. Barkow, Mark Osler

University of Chicago Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Child Quasi Witness, Richard D. Friedman, Stephen J. Ceci

University of Chicago Law Review

No abstract provided.

Programming Errors: Understanding The Constitutionality Of Stop-And-Frisk As A Program, Not An Incident, Tracey L. Meares

University of Chicago Law Review

No abstract provided.

Two More Ways Not To Think About Privacy And The Fourth Amendment, David Alan Sklansky

University of Chicago Law Review

No abstract provided.

Juvenile-Sex-Offender Registration: An Impermissible Life Sentence, Robin Walker Sterling

University of Chicago Law Review

No abstract provided.

How The Fourth Amendment And The Separation Of Powers Rise (And Fall) Together, Aziz Z. Huq

University of Chicago Law Review

This Essay explores an entanglement of ends and means between two seem-ingly disparate parts of the Constitution: the Fourth Amendment and the separation of powers. Not only do these two elements of the Constitution share a common ambition; they are also intertwined in practical operation. The vindication of Fourth Amendment interests, however defined, depends on a measure of institutional differentiation between the branches of government. That predicate, however, has eroded over time. In its absence, difficult questions arise about how Fourth Amendment values are best implemented and whether their realization will in the end hinge on private rather than on …

Following The Script: Narratives Of Suspicion In "Terry" Stops In Street Policing, Jeffrey Fagan, Amanda Geller

University of Chicago Law Review

No abstract provided.