Digital Commons Network^™

Pricing Justice: The Wasteful Enterprise Of America's Bail System, Liana M. Goff

Brooklyn Law Review

This note contributes to the growing national consensus about the need to reduce the population of low-income defendants who are detained pretrial due to their inability to afford bail. It documents the efforts undertaken by certain state actors to mitigate the harmful consequences of wealth-based pretrial systems and critiques the so-called alternatives to cash bail—namely, supervised release programs. This note suggests that lawmakers eliminate the role of finances and incarceration in pretrial procedure altogether and recommends an approach to criminal procedure that is based not only on heuristic methods of measuring cost and benefit but also normative principles of good …

Domestic Violence Law, Abusers’ Intent, And Social Media: How Transaction-Bound Statutes Are The True Threats To Prosecuting Perpetrators Of Gender-Based Violence, Megan L. Bumb

Brooklyn Law Review

The rapid expansion of social media has brought with it a new platform for perpetrators of domestic violence to assert power and control over their victims. The statutes presently used to prosecute abusers fail to protect victims from social media threats and to punish abusers for making those threats. Using the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision in Elonis v. United States, this note proposes a straightforward solution to a multifaceted problem—how to better protect victims of domestic violence from social media threats while maintaining abusers’ First Amendment rights. The answer is not mere clarification of the true threat doctrine; it is …

Wiping The Slate… Dirty: The Inadequacies Of Expungement As A Solution To The Collateral Consequences Of Federal Convictions, Alexia Lindley Faraguna

Brooklyn Law Review

Criminal justice reform discussions routinely permeate political and societal media forums. Many proponents of reform highlight the concern that significant collateral consequences plague ex-offenders and prohibit them from resuming a meaningful place in society. Specifically, scholars focus on the lack of employment opportunities for ex-offenders as the most salient and detrimental collateral consequence. Some academics argue the expansion of expungement of criminal records would rectify the lack of employment opportunities to this group, and correct the general societal imbalance ex-offenders face. Wiping away an ex-offender’s past transgression is seen as a public act of forgiveness that removes the possibility of …

The Conundrum Of Voluntary Intoxication And Sex, Michal Buchhandler-Raphael

Brooklyn Law Review

Research shows that a significant number of sexual assaults occur after victims have consumed an excessive amount of intoxicants, rendering them substantially impaired and incapable of opposing nonconsensual sexual acts. Existing sexual assault statutes mostly criminalize sexual acts with involuntarily intoxicated people, namely when the defendant administered the intoxicants to the victim. Most of these statutes, however, do not directly prohibit sexual intercourse with voluntarily intoxicated victims whose intoxication was self-inflicted. While general prohibitions against sexual intercourse with physically and mentally incapacitated individuals may be used to prosecute sexual assaults of intoxicated victims, they offer only an incomplete solution to …

Finally, A True Elements Test: Mathis V. United States And The Categorical Approach, Rebecca Sharpless

Brooklyn Law Review

The fate of defendants facing lengthy federal sentence enhancements often turns on what the U.S. Supreme Court calls the categorical approach. The approach controls whether a federal defendant might face an additional decade or longer in prison based solely on having prior convictions of a certain type. At a time when many question the wisdom of mass incarceration, the Court has taken great care to delimit the circumstances in which a federal sentencing judge can lengthen sentences based on recidivism. The categorical approach also governs most immigration cases involving deportation for a crime. As Congress has cut back deportation defenses …

The Community Politics Of Domestic Violence, Deborah M. Weissman

Brooklyn Law Review

Gender violence has long been identified as a crisis of epidemic proportions that defies facile solution. Despite decades of intellectual and practical engagement, law reform, and notwithstanding increased social services and public health interventions, the rates of gender violence have not appreciably declined. The field of domestic violence advocacy is itself in a crisis, and it has been difficult to discern the best way forward. Reliance on the criminal justice system has tended to fracture the domestic violence movement even as it marginalized itself from disenfranchised populations. This article offers a case study of an incident that occurred between the …

“Lucky” Adnan Syed: Comprehensive Changes To Improve Criminal Defense Lawyering And Better Protect Defendants’ Sixth Amendment Rights, Meredith J. Duncan

Brooklyn Law Review

Almost twenty years ago, seventeen years old and accused of murder, Adnan Syed was deprived of his Sixth Amendment right to the effective assistance of counsel at trial and sentenced to life in prison. The reality is that Syed is just another casualty of the criminal justice system’s tolerance of poor defense lawyering. The substandard quality of legal representation highlighted in Syed’s case continues to harm countless defendants nationwide, and the promise of effective assistance of counsel for the accused remains unfulfilled due to a combination of factors. This article suggests comprehensive changes to certain aspects of the criminal justice …

The Yiriman Project In The West Kimberley: An Example Of Justice Reinvestment?, Kathryn Thorburn, Melissa Marshall

Arts Papers and Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Views Of Reality: Perceptions Of Police Responses To Mentally Ill People, Kiara L. Gonzalez Cruz

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Society’s views about mental illness can influence their views regarding police-response strategies used with the mentally ill. The purpose of this study is to analyze the question: does mental illness impact perceptions of delinquent behavior and police responses? It is important to understand the effects of these interactions to better assist those affected by mental illness and avoid uncertain risks/injuries to the police and citizens involved in an incident. Labeling theory suggests that people may come to identify and act in ways that reflect how others label them as well as come to define mentally ill individuals in accordance with …

A Comparative Analysis Of The United States Supreme Court's Doctrine Of Selective Incorporation And Corporate Constitutional Rights Jurisprudence, Rebecca R. Fate

Honors Undergraduate Theses

With recent and contentious Supreme Court cases dealing with corporate constitutional rights, such as Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010), as well as with the appointment of a new justice, the time is particularly ripe for evaluations of the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence in this area, including predictions about the future of this line of cases. The purpose of this thesis is to establish a better understanding of the historical jurisprudential approach utilized by the Supreme Court to decide corporate constitutional rights by establishing the well-known doctrine of selective incorporation as an appropriate analogy. No other works attempt to frame …

Innovation And Access To Justice: Addressing The Challenge Of A Diverse Justice Ecosystem, Nicole Aylwin, Martha E. Simmons

Articles & Book Chapters

Despite having been a mainstay topic of conversation for many years in the fields of business, technology, public administration and other specialized service sectors such as medicine, ‘innovation’ has only recently begun to infuse conversations in the justice sector. With the widespread recognition that globalization is disrupting traditional legal roles and organizational structures, that technology is poised to radically reconfigure how legal services are delivered, and that despite best efforts, the access to justice gap continues to grow in Canada, innovation – as both a noun and a verb - has become a talisman, poised to help address the challenges …

Seeking Justice By Plea: The Prosecutor's Ethical Obligations During Plea Bargaining, Palma Paciocco

Articles & Book Chapters

Canadian Crown prosecutors enjoy tremendous discretionary power. They can leverage this power during plea bargaining by structuring the terms of plea deals and by engaging in aggressive negotiation tactics, thereby exerting a disproportionate influence on plea bargaining processes and outcomes. This article considers how Crowns should wield their power to shape plea bargains in light of their ethical obligation to seek justice. In particular, it considers how Crowns should identify the just case outcomes they will pursue through plea bargaining and assesses which bargaining strategies they should employ or eschew in pursuit of those outcomes. In the process, the article …

Calibrating A System Dynamic Model Within An Integrative Framework To Test Foreign Policy Choices, Carlos Kavetsky

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Political science uses international relations (IR) theory to explain state-actor political behavior. Research suggests that this theoretical framework can inform a predictive model incorporating features of systems dynamics (SD) and agent based (AB) modeling. The Foreign Policy Model (ForPol) herein applies Alexander Y. Lubyansky's (2014) SD model for macro-political behavior to represent behaviors between real systems and mental models. While verifying and validating the resulting SD/AB/IR holistic model requires an extensive comprehensive research agenda, the present work will take a closer examination at input parameter calibration and conducting typical runs of the SD portion of the model as a first …

The Strange Life Of Stanley V. Illinois: A Case Study In Parent Representation And Law Reform, Josh Gupta-Kagan

Faculty Publications

This Article helps describe the growth of parent representation through an analysis of Stanley v. Illinois—the foundational Supreme Court case that established parental fitness as the constitutional lynchpin of any child protection case. The Article begins with Stanley’s trial court litigation, which illustrates the importance of vigorous parental representation and an effort by the court to prevent Stanley from obtaining an attorney. It proceeds to analyze how family courts applied it (or not) in the years following the Supreme Court’s decision and what factors have led to a recent resurgence of Stanley’s fitness focus.

Despite Stanley’s requirement that states prove …

The School To Prison Pipeline's Legal Architecture: Lessons From The Spring Valley Incident And Its Aftermath, Josh Gupta-Kagan

Faculty Publications

This Article examines the 2015 Spring Valley High School incident – the high-profile arrest of a Columbia, South Carolina high school student for “disturbing schools” in which a school resource officer threw her out of her desk – to identify and illustrate the core elements of the school-to-prison pipeline’s legal architecture, and to evaluate legal reforms in response to growing concern over the pipeline.

The Spring Valley incident illustrates, first, how broad criminal laws transform school discipline incidents into law enforcement matters. Second, it illustrates how legal instruments that should limit the role of police officers assigned to schools (school …

The New Religious Freedom Restoration Act And Its Effects On Student-Athletes Chalk Talk

The Journal of Law and Education

No abstract provided.

The Daily Gamecock, Monday, October 16, 2017, University Of South Carolina, Office Of Student Media

October

No abstract provided.

Between Convictions And Reconciliations: Processing Criminal Cases In Kazakhstani Courts, Alexei Trochev

Cornell International Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Culture Counts: Examining The Effectiveness Of A Culturally Focused Empowerment Program For At-Risk Black Girls, Candice Nicole Aston

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Traditionally, many of the problems experienced by Black girls were overshadowed by the ongoing crises facing Black Males. Although important, the focus on Blackness and masculinity often implicitly leaves young Black girls on the sidelines and fails to recognize their unique obstacles. Fortunately, there has been a new surge of social concern revolving around the plight of Black girls in the school system. New estimates report that Black girls are facing an educational crisis in regards to disproportionate discipline practices and academics (Morris, 2012). To date, there has been very limited research in regards to school-based interventions that have been …

Exploring The Intersections Between International And Domestic Justice Efforts, Susana Sacouto

American University International Law Review

No abstract provided.

Promoting Domestic Accountability For Conflict-Related Sexual Violence: The Cases Of Guatemala, Peru, And Colombia, Daniela Kravetz

American University International Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Law Of Abolition, Kevin M. Barry

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

Three themes have characterized death penalty abolition throughout the Western world: a sustained period of de facto abolition; an understanding of those in government that the death penalty implicates human rights; and a willingness of those in government to defy popular support for the death penalty. The first two themes are present in the U.S.; what remains is for the U.S. Supreme Court to manifest a willingness to act against the weight of public opinion and to live up to history’s demands.

When the Supreme Court abolishes the death penalty, it will be traveling a well-worn road. This Essay gathers, …

A Withering Instrumentality: The Negative Implications Of R. V. Safarzadeh-Markali And Other Recent Section 7 Jurisprudence, Andrew Menchynski, Jill R. Presser

The Supreme Court Law Review: Osgoode’s Annual Constitutional Cases Conference

The Supreme Court of Canada has faced a perennial problem, particularly since the advent of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (“Charter”), in its efforts to protect the constitutional rights of individuals without unduly interfering in the domain of the legislative branch of government. A key question has been — to what extent should the courts use section 7 of the Charter to review or police Parliament’s decisions regarding laws that engage an individual’s liberty interests? Indeed, this is an issue brought to the fore in many of the Supreme Court of Canada’s recent decisions that have struck down …

Making Trial Within A Reasonable Time A Right Once More, Steve Coughlan

The Supreme Court Law Review: Osgoode’s Annual Constitutional Cases Conference

Jordan got it right.

The use of presumptive ceilings to determine whether there has been a violation of a Charter right is a blunt instrument which eliminates most of the ability of judges to consider the individual circumstances of cases and to exercise discretion. It allows no role for what might seem to be an important consideration, the seriousness of the offence. Had this been the Court’s first attempt at structuring the right, it would seem unsophisticated and simplistic.

But of course Jordan is not the first attempt at outlining the contours of the right to a trial within a …

Undergratuate Student Catalog 2017-2018, Nova Southeastern University

Undergraduate Programs Course Catalogs

No abstract provided.

2017 Commencement Program, New York Law School

Commencement Programs

Click here to view online.

Strategic Plan Progress And Outcomes (2017), New York Law School

Strategic Plan and Initiatives

No abstract provided.

New York Law School Magazine, Vol. 36, No. 2 (2017), New York Law School

New York Law School Magazine

Features:

Bookshelf: Professor David Schoenbrod’s DC Confidential: Inside the Five Tricks of Washington

Answering the Call: NYLS leads the way in a new era of immigration law

Ready to Launch: Five students reflected on beginning their final year at NYLS

Reasons For Gaps In Crime Reporting: The Case Of White-Collar Criminals Investigated By Private Fraud Examiners In Norway, Petter Gottschalk, Maria Tcherni-Buzzeo

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

A private investigation is an examination of facts, sequence of events, causes for deviance, and responsibilities for negative incidents. Recent years have seen an increasing use of private internal investigations in terms of the assessment of financial irregularities. The form of inquiry aims to uncover vulnerabilities to unrestricted opportunities, failing internal controls, abuse of position, and any financial misconduct such as corruption, fraud, embezzlement, theft, manipulation, tax evasion and other forms of economic crime. When fraud examiners discover evidence of white-collar crime, they almost always leave it to their clients to decide whether or not to report crime to the …

2017 Associate's Degree Exit Survey, Southwestern Oklahoma State University

Assessment Center Reports

Exit Surveys produced by the SWOSU Assessment Center.