Digital Commons Network^™

Romancing The Court, Jane M. Spinak

Faculty Scholarship

Problem-solving courts, created at the end of the 20th century, make court-based solutions central to addressing significant societal problems, such as substance abuse and its impact on criminal activity and family functioning. Yet, lessons gleaned from over 100 years of family court history suggest that court-based solutions to intractable social problems have rarely been effective. This article asks three questions of the problem-solving court movement: What problem are we trying to solve? Is the court the best place to solve the problem? What are the consequences of giving authority to a court for solving the problem? Answering those questions through …

Decisions About Coercion: The Corporate Attorney-Client Privilege Waiver Problem, Daniel C. Richman

Faculty Scholarship

For almost a decade, law reviews and hearing rooms have resounded with cogent arguments that, for corporations at least, the attorney-client privilege has been chilled, eroded, attacked, or even killed by the federal government's misuse of its bargaining leverage. Yet it is unclear whether this rhetoric is overstated or understated. Given that most federal criminal defendants plead guilty, and that an extraordinarily large percentage of them provide information and testimony against others in order to avoid harsh sentences (or to avoid being charged at all), one could as easily say that the Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution …

The Constitutional Dimension Of Immigration Federalism, Clare Huntington

Faculty Scholarship

In Farmers Branch, Texas, the city council enacted a measure to fine landlords who rent their premises to unauthorized migrants, and in Arizona, the state legislature passed a law imposing stiff penalties on employers who intentionally or knowingly hire unauthorized migrants. In San Francisco, the board of supervisors passed a measure that bars law enforcement officers from inquiring into the immigration status of an individual in the course of a criminal investigation. In Alabama and Florida, state officials have entered into agreements with the federal government permitting state law enforcement officers to arrest and detain non-citizens on immigration charges. Other …

Prosecutorial Perseveration: A Reaction To Public Commitment?, Elizabeth Rose Uhl

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The startling number of cases in which prosecutors ignore clear-cut exculpatory evidence and persist in the prosecution of an almost certainly innocent suspect may be related to the public nature of these prosecutors' commitments. Research has shown that people who make a public commitment to a decision are more likely to stick with their decision in the face of contrary evidence than people who did not make a public commitment. This study examined the effects of public commitment on undergraduate mock prosecutors' decisions to prosecute in a fictional murder case. Half of the participants rendered an initial decision which was …

The Application Of Federal And Texas State Sentence Ranges In A, Jessica Leigh Wildermuth

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Sentencing decisions are usually made in situations of judgmental uncertainty because they are typically complex and make use of inherently ambiguous information (Saks & Kidd, 1980). Research on underlying judgment processes has demonstrated that anchors provide a basis for simplifying judgments that involve uncertainty (Higgins, 1996; Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). To investigate sentencing disparities that occur for identical crimes, it is also essential to understand the psychological mechanisms that underlie decision making. The Selective Accessibility Model (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974) states that, "people construct a mental mode that selectively increases the accessibility of anchor-consistent information" (p.1125). In turn,because this information …

International Standards For Detaining Terrorism Suspects: Moving Beyond The Armed Conflict-Criminal Divide, Monica Hakimi

Faculty Scholarship

Although sometimes described as war, the fight against transnational jihadi groups (referred to for shorthand as the "fight against terrorism") largely takes place away from any recognizable battlefield. Terrorism suspects are captured in houses, on street comers, and at border crossings around the globe. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the high-level Qaeda operative who planned the September 11 attacks, was captured by the Pakistani government in a residence in Pakistan. Abu Omar, a radical Muslim imam, was apparently abducted by U.S. and Italian agents off the streets of Milan. And Abu Baker Bashir, the spiritual leader of the Qaeda-affiliated group responsible for …

Legitmacy And Criminal Justice, Jeffrey A. Fagan

Faculty Scholarship

Surveys of public opinion over four decades consistently show that Americans have little confidence in the fairness or effectiveness of the criminal justice system and criminal law more generally. This crisis of confidence is most acute among racial minorities: surveys show that more than one in three Whites have little confidence in the police, compared to more than half of Black respondents. Both the lack of confidence and the racial breach in perceptions of the law and legal actors have persisted for nearly four decades, regardless of whether crime was rising or falling.

But we might reasonably ask whether and …

Juvenile Crime And Criminal Justice: Resolving Border Disputes, Jeffrey Fagan

Faculty Scholarship

Rising juvenile crime rates during the 1970s and 1980s spurred state legislatures across the country to exclude or transfer a significant share of offenders under the age of eighteen to the jurisdiction of the criminal court, essentially redrawing the boundary between the juvenile and adult justice systems. Jeffrey Fagan examines the legal architecture of the new boundary-drawing regime and how effective it has been in reducing crime.

The juvenile court, Fagan emphasizes, has always had the power to transfer juveniles to the criminal court. Transfer decisions were made individually by judges who weighed the compet­ing interests of public safety and …

Abolition In The U.S.A. By 2050: On Political Capital And Ordinary Acts Of Resistance, Bernard E. Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

The United States, like the larger international community, likely will tend toward greater abolition of the death penalty during the first half of the twenty-first century. A handful of individual states – states that have historically carried out few or no executions – probably will abolish capital punishment over the next twenty years, which will create political momentum and ultimately a federal constitutional ban on capital punishment in the United States. It is entirely reasonable to expect that, by the mid-twenty-first century, capital punishment will have the same status internationally as torture: an outlier practice, prohibited by international agreements and …

Supposons Que La Discipline Et La Sécurité N'Existent Pas - Rereading Foucault's Collége De France Lectures (With Paul Veyne), Bernard E. Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

We have come to know well and deploy easily the Foucauldian terms discipline and sécurité (what we now call governmentality), especially as a result of Michel Foucault's 1978 and 1979 lectures at the College de France. What we know less well, I contend, is how to critique them – discipline and sécurité, that is – the way that Foucault critiqued the terms folie, délinquance, or sexualité.

In this essay, I push further my meditations on punishment and subject discipline and sécurité to the same brutal method that Foucault used in his writings on folie, délinquance, and sexualité. I begin by …

Law Library Briefs, Roger Williams University School Of Law Library

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

An Open Letter To The Political Science Community, Daniel R. Pinello

Human Rights & Human Welfare

In 2003, the American Political Science Association (APSA) selected New Orleans as the site for its 2012 annual meeting.

In 2004, 78 percent of Louisiana voters (including 54 percent in Orleans Parish) passed the following amendment to their state constitution:

Marriage in the state of Louisiana shall consist only of the union of one man and one woman. No official or court of the state of Louisiana shall construe this constitution or any state law to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any member of a union other than the union of one man and …

All For One: A Review Of Victim-Centric Justifications For Criminal Punishment, Adam J. Macleod

Scholarly Articles

Disparate understandings of the primary justification for criminal punishment have in recent years divided along new lines. Retributivists and consequentialists have long debated whether a community ought to punish violators of legal norms primarily because the violator has usurped communal standards (the retributivist view), or rather merely as a means toward some end such as rehabilitation or deterrence (the consequentialist view). The competing answers to this question have demarcated for some time the primary boundary in criminal jurisprudential thought. A new fault line appears to have opened between those who maintain the historical view that criminal punishment promotes the common …

Doing Policing : An Inquiry Into The Rhetorical And Argumentative Skills Of The Police, Nicholas John Lynn

Other Faculty of Science and Engineering Theses

This thesis examines the spoken and written discourse of uniformed British police officers. Utilising a rhetorical and discursive analysis, the study considers firstly how officers use their considerable powers of discretion to deal informally with crime and criminal incidents. Focusing on a form of discretion that the police refer to as cuffing, two specific discursive practices were identified as being used by police to informally resolve crime: these were the giving of suitable advice and the that's civil device. The second part of the study was concerned with the formal prosecution process and how officers construct prosecution case files. Specifically, …

Cohabitation And Property: The End Of The Road For The Traditional Trust?, Paul Todd

The Plymouth Law and Criminal Justice Review

It is generally assumed that financial apportionment between cohabiting parties, when the relationship ends, is determined by the law of property, in which the institution of the trust has a large role to play. Until recently, it has also been assumed that the ordinary law applies, rather than a special law for cohabitants. The trust developed to deal with fact situations far removed from those of modern cohabitation, and it may not be the most appropriate device for the resolution of what are essentially financial disputes between cohabitants. This article examines the limitations of the trust concept in this regard.

How Effective Are Anti-Doping Sport Measures In The Uk?, Louise Harris

The Plymouth Law and Criminal Justice Review

No abstract provided.

The Halliday Report: In Pursuit Of A New Sentencing Framework Or A Catastrophic Failure?, Chivonne Boothe

The Plymouth Law and Criminal Justice Review

In 2001 the Halliday Report, Making Punishments Work: A Review of the Sentencing Framework for England & Wales devised a sentencing framework where sentences – custodial and non-custodial - meant what they said, benefited offenders and society, and ultimately made sense. The new framework was designed to successfully rehabilitate offenders, reduce re-offending and reserve prison for those offenders that justify it by creating novel but ingenious ways of changing the attitudes and behaviours of offenders. The framework was to be one that generated public confidence. Changes were proposed of such magnitude that it was believed the reform would lead to …

Food Fraud, Current Issue But An Old Problem, Peter Shears

The Plymouth Law and Criminal Justice Review

Purposes: This article addresses the topic of food fraud which has been so widely and variously reported over recent months and years. Its purposes are to set current experience into an historical context and to illustrate the tension between the science of deception and the science of detection. Approach: This is a desk study of published literature and historical documentation, together with interviews with those professionally concerned with detection and enforcement. Findings: The piece concludes that with all the scientific developments and analytical techniques that seem so mind-bendingly sophisticated, there remains the basic problem of a lack of resources. Implications: …

Access To Justice - Rights Or Rations? Comparing European Legal Aid Systems In The Context Of A Shrinking Budgetary Environmentâ, Lynne Follett

The Plymouth Law and Criminal Justice Review

The inspiration for this thesis was derived from a week spent in the family law department of a local solicitor's practice. The UK government's reforms to the legal aid system were about to be implemented and appeared to be affecting the work undertaken as well as the morale of the solicitors working there. The discussion reviews the recent and proposed reforms to legal aid in England and Wales and their effect on access to justice. A comparison is made with other legal aid systems within the EU, examining best practices and the rationale behind implementation of reforms in order to …

The Human Rights Act 1998 - The Needs Of The Many And The Rights Of One': Annual Pilgrim Father's Lecture, 20 November 2008, David Neuberger

The Plymouth Law and Criminal Justice Review

No abstract provided.

The 2007 Analysis Of Information Remaining On Disks Offered For Sale On The Second Hand Market, Andy Jones, Craig Valli, Glenn S. Dardick, Iain Sutherland

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

All organisations, whether in the public or private sector, increasingly use computers and other devices that contain computer hard disks for the storage and processing of information relating to their business, their employees or their customers. Individual home users also increasingly use computers and other devices containing computer hard disks for the storage and processing of information relating to their private, personal affairs. It continues to be clear that the majority of organisations and individual home users still remain ignorant or misinformed of the volume and type of information that is stored on the hard disks that these devices contain …

To License Or Not To License: An Examination Of State Statutes Regarding Private Investigators And Digital Examiners, Thomas Lonardo, Doug White, Alan Rea

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

In this paper the authors examine statutes that regulate, license, and enforce investigative functions in each US state. After identification and review of Private Investigator licensing requirements, the authors find that very few state statutes explicitly differentiate between Private Investigators and Digital Examiners. After contacting all state agencies the authors present a distinct grouping organizing state approaches to professional Digital Examiner licensing. The authors conclude that states must differentiate between Private Investigator and Digital Examiner licensing requirements and oversight.

Sayre: Undergraduate Catalog 2008-2009, Southwestern Oklahoma State University

Undergraduate Catalogs

This catalog describes courses offered at Southwestern Oklahoma State University at Sayre, Oklahoma during the 2008-2009 academic year.

The Last Straw: The Department Of Justice's Privilege Waiver Policy And The Death Of Adversarial Justice In Criminal Investigations Of Corporations, Julie R. O'Sullivan

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The white-collar criminal defense bar has never been reticent to complain about U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) policies that threaten its clients or the viability of its practice. But nothing--at least in the author's twenty-plus years of involvement in white-collar issues--has consumed the bar as much as the threats posed to the corporate attorney-client privilege and work-product doctrine. While commentators have identified a variety of assaults on these protections, the bar is most vocally outraged by the DOJ policy, pursuant to which, it charges, federal prosecutors regularly insist that corporations waive these protections to secure cooperation credit, declination of criminal …

2008 Lynn University Women's Softball Media Guide, Lynn University Athletics

Athletics Media Guides

The 2008 Lynn University Softball Media Guide is a product of rhe Lynn University Sports Information Office.

2008-2009 Lynn University Women's Basketball Media Guide, Lynn University Athletics

Athletics Media Guides

The 2008-2009 Lynn University Women's Basketball Media Guide is a product of the Lynn University Sports Information Office.

Voluntarism, Vulnerability, And Criminal Law: A Response To Professors Hills And O'Hear , Ethan J. Leib, Dan Markel, Jennifer M. Collins

Faculty Scholarship

This Response addresses the criticisms of our project by Professors Rick Hills and Michael O'Hear. Before we address those challenges, we first want to reiterate our gratitude to the B.U. Law Review for hosting an exchange based on our article, Punishing Family Status (forthcoming BU LR, December 2008), and to Professors Hills and O'Hear for their careful and subtle analysis of that article. Additionally, it's worth recapitulating what our bottom-line conclusions are so we can better see if there are any practical disagreements with our critics. Summarizing quickly: we support decriminalization in the cases of parental responsibility laws (based on …

The Constitutional Dimension Of Immigration Federalism, Clare Huntington

Faculty Scholarship

Although the federal government is traditionally understood to enjoy exclusive authority over immigration, states and localities are increasingly asserting a role in this field. This development has sparked vigorous debate on the propriety of such involvement, but the debate is predicated on a misunderstanding of the nature of federal exclusivity. Challenging the conventional wisdom that the Constitution precludes a meaningful role for state and local involvement in immigration.

This Article argues that the Constitution allows immigration authority to be shared among levels of government. After establishing the correctness of this view of immigration authority, this Article argues that the constitutionality …

Introduction: Symposium: The Lethal Injection Debate: Law And Science, Deborah W. Denno

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Undergraduate Catalog 2008-2009, University Of North Florida

UNF Course Catalogs

No abstract provided.