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Table Of Contents

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

Table of Contents for the Richmond Journal of Law and the Public Interest Symposium 2015 Issue

Meta-Mindfulness: A New Hope, Peter Huang

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

This Essay starts by tracing its humble origins to an earlier, related and unique law review article, namely, Tiger Cub Strikes Back: Memoirs of an Ex-Child Prodigy About Legal Education and Parenting. This Essay describes various professional responses to Tiger Cub Strikes Back, provides an update of some developments in research about parenting and legal education since Tiger Cub Strikes Back, and recounts a few personal stories about mindfulness and related to being an ex-child prodigy. This Essay then analyzes meta-mindfulness, defined as mindfulness about mindfulness. This Essay discusses how mindfulness about mindfulness can help facilitate the positive transformation of …

The Criminalization Of Title Ix, Erin R. Collins

Law Faculty Publications

This essay proceeds in three parts. Part I provides a brief overview of the history of feminist-influenced criminal rape law reform and the rise of carceral feminism. Part II demonstrates how key tenets of the criminal law approach have been imported into emerging Title IX policies. Part III engages in a brief distributional analysis to identify who benefits and who loses from this approach. Then, drawing on insights from critical feminist critiques of rape law reform, begins to identify ways to use the opportunity Title IX presents to craft a very different kind of response to sexual assault--one that focuses …

Charging On The Margin, Paul T. Crane

Law Faculty Publications

The American criminal justice system has experienced a significant expansion in the number and severity of penalties triggered by misdemeanor convictions. In particular, legislatures have increasingly attached severe collateral consequences to misdemeanor offenses- penalties such as requirements to register as a sex offender, prohibitions on owning or possessing a firearm, and deportation. Although there is a wealth of scholarship studying the effect this development has on defendants and their attorneys, little attention has been paid to the impact collateral consequences have on prosecutorial incentives. This Article starts to remedy that gap by exploring the influence that collateral consequences exert on …

Leg 189.01: Criminal Procedures, Thomas W. Trigg

University of Montana Course Syllabi

No abstract provided.

Frontlines: Policing At The Lexus Of Race And Mental Health, Camille Nelson

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

he last several years have rendered issues at the intersection of race, mental health, and policing more acute. The frequency and violent, often lethal, nature of these incidents is forcing a national conversation about matters which many people would rather cast aside as volatile, controversial, or as simply irrelevant to conversations about the justice system. It seems that neither civil rights activists engaged in the work of advancing racial equality nor disability rights activists recognize the potent combination of negative racialization and mental illness at this nexus that bring policing practices into sharp focus. As such, the compounding dynamics and …

Measuring Older Adult Confidence In The Courts And Law Enforcement, Joseph A. Hamm, Lindsey E. Wylie, Eve M. Brank

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Older adults are an increasingly relevant subpopulation for criminal justice policy but, as yet, are largely neglected in the relevant research. The current research addresses this by reporting on a psychometric evaluation of a measure of older adults’ Confidence in Legal Institutions (CLI). Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) provided support for the unidimensionality and reliability of the measures. In addition, participants’ CLI was related to cynicism, trust in government, dispositional trust, age, and education, but not income or gender. The results provide support for the measures of confidence in the courts and law enforcement, so we present the scale as a …

The Nature, Attainments, Problems And Prospects Of Canadian-Nigerian Human Rights Engagements: An Analytical Overview, Obiora C. Okafor

Articles & Book Chapters

By way of a fully developed conclusion, this article offers a broad analytical overview of the insights that have been jointly and severally generated by the main sub-studies on which the articles in this volume are based. It offers such overarching discussions, one after the other, in relation to the nature, attainments, problems, and prospects of Canadian-Nigerian international human rights engagements. Drawing upon these analytical insights, the article then makes some pertinent recommendations that are addressed to the relevant stakeholders, especially in Canada and Nigeria, i.e. policy-makers, practitioners and theorists alike (depending on which of the itemized points they find …

Placing Twail Scholarship And Praxis: Introduction To The Special Issue Of The Windsor Yearbook Of Access To Justice, Sujith Xavier, Amar Bhatia, Usha Natarajan, John Reynolds

Articles & Book Chapters

This Special Issue of the Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice collects some of the written reflections of participants from the Third World Approaches to International Law [TWAIL] Conference held in Cairo, Egypt, from 21 to 24 February 2015. TWAIL is a loosely affiliated network of scholars and practitioners of international law and policy. TWAIL scholars and practitioners are animated by the relationship between the Global North and the Global South, and the ensuing disparities in wealth and health spurred on by processes of diverging and converging colonial and postcolonial histories.

Against Circumspection: Judges, Religious Symbols, And Signs Of Moral Independence, Benjamin Berger

Articles & Book Chapters

This chapter questions the interpretation of religious ­ signs and symbols— and the interpretive possibilities that emerge when we demand more from one another in thinking about such symbols— by ­ examining the question of judges and religious dress in the particular context of the judge’s role as wielding the coercive force of the state through the exercise of criminal punishment. I advance the argument that recent debates have proceeded on a misleadingly simplistic approach to understanding the meaning of signs of religious belonging and identity in this setting and that, with this, we miss an opportunity for a deeper …

Voices Of The First Women Leaders In The Federal Bureau Of Investigation, Ellen Glasser

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study utilized elite, semi-structured interviews of a purposive sample of the first women who became Special Agents and supervisors in the highly gendered Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The historical context for their experiences is significant in light of social and legal mandates for equal opportunity and the increased interest in gender-specific research that took place during the 1970s. Literature relating to feminist perspectives, the integration of women into nontraditional occupations, and the gendered nature of bureaucracy supported the conceptual framework. Guided by educational criticism, four strategies were used recursively: typological analysis was used to define categories of …

Social Capital, Economic Diversity, And Civic Well-Being In Flint And Grand Rapids, Michael Dewilde

Seidman Business Review

No abstract provided.

Detoxing The Child Welfare System, Allison E. Korn

Faculty Scholarship

This Article considers the varying reasons why drug policies informing child welfare interventions are not evolving as part of the drug policy reform movement, which has successfully advocated for initiatives that decrease mass incarceration, end mandatory minimums, and decriminalize or legalize marijuana use and possession. Many existing child welfare laws and policies that address parental drug use rely on the premise that prenatal exposure to a controlled substance causes inevitable harm to a child. Furthermore, they presume that any amount of drug use by a parent places a child in imminent danger, or is indicative of future risk of harm. …

Military Justice, Charles J. Dunlap Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Brief Of Amici Curiae Professors Of Law In Support Of Petitioner, Barbara Allen Babcock, Jeffrey Bellin, Darryl K. Brown, Robert P. Burns, James E. Coleman Jr., Lisa Kern Griffin, Robert P. Mosteller, Deborah Tuerkheimer, Neil Vidmar, Jessica L. West

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Vol. 45, No. 1: Full Issue, Denver Journal Of International Law & Policy

Denver Journal of International Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

An Empirical Research Agenda For The Forensic Sciences, Jonathan J. Koehler, John B. Meixner Jr.

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

After the National Academy of Sciences issued a stunning report in 2009 on the unscientific state of many forensic science subfields, forensic science has undergone internal and external scrutiny that it had managed to avoid for decades. Although some reform efforts are underway, forensic science writ large has yet to embrace and settle upon an empirical research agenda that addresses knowledge gaps pertaining to the reliability of its methods. Our paper addresses this problem by proposing a preliminary set of fourteen empirical studies for the forensic sciences. Following a brief discussion of the courtroom treatment of forensic science evidence, we …

The Exercise Of Power In Prison Organizations And Implications For Legitimacy, John Wooldredge, Benjamin Steiner

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

Extrapolating from Bottoms and Tankebe’s framework for a social scientific understanding of “legitimacy,” we argue that differences in how correctional officers exercise “power” over prisoners can potentially impact their rightful claims to legitimate authority. Given the implications of this argument for the “cultivation” of legitimacy (as discussed by Weber), the study described here focused on (a) individual and prison level effects on the degree to which officers generally rely on different power bases when exercising their authority, and (b) whether more or less reliance on different power bases at the facility level impacts prisoners’ general perceptions of officers as legitimate …

The Nature And Function Of Prosecutorial Power, Jordan A. Sklansky

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

The key to the growing prominence of prosecutors, both in the United States and elsewhere, lies in the prosecutor’s preeminent ability to bridge organizational and conceptual divides in criminal justice. Above all else, prosecutors are mediating figures, straddling the frontiers between adversarial and inquisitorial justice, between the police and the courts, and between law and discretion. By blurring these boundaries, prosecutors provide the criminal justice system with three different kinds of flexibility—ideological, institutional, and operational—and they strengthen their own hands in a legal culture that increasingly disfavors institutional rigidity and hard-and-fast commitments. At the same time, though, the mediating role …

Secular Dissent: Protecting Non-Believers From Coercive Religious Parole Programs, Phillip Grudzina

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

It is common practice for states to contract with third party organizations to run their parole rehabilitation programs. A majority of these organizations emphasize religious themes as a means of recovery from alcohol and substance abuse problems. However, for parolees who reject a belief in God, there are rarely any secular alternatives available. Those whom object are often given the choice between forced participation in religious activities or revocation of their parole. For years, courts have held that such practices violate parolees’ First Amendment rights. Nonetheless, most states have failed to implement policies to prevent such violations from reoccurring. Due …

The Colors Of Cannabis: Race And Marijuana, Steven Bender

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

Recidivism And Time Served In Prison, Daniel P. Mears, Joshua C. Cochran, William D. Bales, Avinash S. Bhati

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

A justification for lengthier stays in prison stems from the belief that spending more time in prison reduces recidivism. Extant studies, however, have provided limited evidence for that belief and, indeed, suggest the effect of time served may be minimal. Few studies have employed rigorous methodological approaches, examined time spans of more than one to two years, or investigated the potential for the relationship between recidivism and time served to be curvilinear. Drawing on prior scholarship, this paper identifies three sets of hypotheses about the functional form of the time served and recidivism relationship. Using generalized propensity score analysis to …

Parental Kidnapping, Criminal Contempt Of Court, And The Double Jeopardy Clause: A Recommendation For State Courts, Valerie Brummel

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

In states such as Illinois, courts invoke the Double Jeopardy Clause of the United States Constitution to protect parental kidnappers who have already been held in contempt of court from subsequent prosecution under state child kidnapping laws. State courts should not apply the Double Jeopardy Clause to protect parental kidnappers; instead, they should follow the example of the Ohio state courts by recognizing that contempt of court and child kidnapping are not the same crime for double jeopardy purposes. The many differences between the crimes of contempt and parental kidnapping, the disparity between sanctions delivered by the court for contempt …

Evidence Laundering In A Post-Herring World, Kay L. Levine, Jenia I. Turner, Ronald F. Wright

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

The Supreme Court’s decision in Herring v. United States authorizes police to defeat the Fourth Amendment’s protections through a process we call evidence laundering. Evidence laundering occurs when one police officer makes a constitutional mistake when gathering evidence and then passes that evidence along to a second officer, who develops it further and then delivers it to prosecutors for use in a criminal case. The original constitutional taint disappears in the wash.

Courts have allowed evidence laundering in a variety of contexts, from cases involving flawed databases to cases stemming from faulty judgments and communication lapses in law enforcement teams. …

Introduction To Juries And Mixed Tribunals Across The Globe: New Developments, Common Challenges And Future Directions, Nancy S. Marder, Valerie P. Hans

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This introduction to the special issue of Oñati Socio-legal Series describes the goals of the conference on Juries and Mixed Tribunals across the Globe, and identifies themes that emerged as jury scholars from all over the world examined different forms of lay participation in legal decision-making. The introduction focuses on common challenges that different systems of lay participation face, including the selection of impartial fact finders and the presentation of complex cases to lay citizens. The introduction and special issue articles also highlight new developments and innovative practices to address these challenges, including some tools, like decision trees, that remain …

Legal Interpreter For The Jury: The Role Of The Clerk Of The Court In Spain, Mar Jimeno-Bulnes, Valerie P. Hans

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The Clerk of the Court (secretario judicial) in Spanish provincial courts is an important legal actor in the proceedings of the modern Spanish jury, introduced in 1995. In contrast to the general verdicts of traditional common-law juries, Spanish juries must answer an often lengthy list of specific questions, and must provide the reasoning supporting these responses. Early on, many Spanish juries found the task of providing legally acceptable responses and reasons challenging. Because the law permits the clerk to enter the deliberation room to assist the jury in its writing of the verdict, the clerk has come to act as …

Forty Years Of Death: The Past, Present, And Future Of The Death Penalty In South Carolina (Still Arbitrary After All These Years), John H. Blume, Lindsey S. Vann

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Forty years ago, the Supreme Court of the United States deemed constitutional new death penalty laws intended to minimize the arbitrariness which led the Court to invalidate all capital sentencing statutes four years earlier in Furman v. Georgia. Over the last four decades the Court has — time and again — attempted to regulate the “machinery of death.” Looking back over the Court’s work, many observers, including two current Supreme Court justices, have questioned whether the modern death penalty has lived up to expectations set by the Court in the 1970s or if, despite 40 years of labor, the American …

Analysis Of Firearm Legislation And Law Enforcement Suicides In Nvdrs-Funded States, Meagan L. Hurst

Theses and Dissertations--Public Health (M.P.H. & Dr.P.H.)

BACKGROUND:

The purpose of this study was to evaluate firearm-related suicides among law enforcement members and identify potential differences between decedents and firearm legislation grades from National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) funded states

METHODS:

Descriptive and regression analyses were conducted using suicide data from 820 decedents who worked within law enforcement at the time of death. Data were collected over a ten-year period (2003-2013) from the NVDRS. Multivariable logistic regression and Pearson’s chi-square were used to identify if differences existed among firearm-related suicides and other means using variables such as age, marital status, occupation, mental health, and firearm legislation …

Service Training And Recovery (Star) Program: An Interdisciplinary Community-Based Project To Mitigate Rr-Ptsd Among Kentucky Women, Margaret Melissa Brown

Theses and Dissertations--Public Health (M.P.H. & Dr.P.H.)

Background: Kentucky has greater prevalence of sexual assault compared to the US overall, 37.5% versus 35.6% of all assault crimes respectively, translating to roughly 638,000 victims within the Commonwealth [1].Research identified sexual violence as the number one factor in development of PTSD among women. There are four times the prevalence of PTSD in victims of sexual violence versus other forms of trauma. [2, 3] The STAR program utilizes skills-based training methods to empower participants through improving a sense of safety and security, self-confidence, and self-efficacy to mitigate RR-PTSD symptoms leading to negative health outcomes.

Literature Review: Existing research …

Regulators At The Margins: The Impact Of Malpractice Insurers On Solo And Small Firm Lawyers, Leslie Levin

Faculty Articles and Papers

Liability insurers often informally regulate the behavior of their insureds through the underwriting process, premium pricing, contract design, and risk management practices. This Article explores whether lawyer professional liability ("LPL") insurers effectively regulate the behavior of solo and small firm lawyers in ways that encourage responsible conduct. The Article draws on interviews of insurance industry executives, risk management counsel, and insured lawyers, as well as insurer documents and surveys of lawyers, to explore the impact of LPL insurers on the work lives of solo and small firm lawyers. The research reveals that LPL insurers appear to regulate the behavior of …