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American Hustle: Abscam, Entrapment And The Senate Expulsion Trial Of Harrison Williams, Henry P. Biggs Phd

Henry P Biggs PhD

American Hustle: Abscam, Entrapment and The Senate Expulsion Trial of Harrison Williams

The recent success of the film American Hustle has renewed curiosity in the events surrounding the Abscam scandal and its subsequent trials. This article begins by detailing the Abscam proposition as well as its players, moving on to address the contours of the defense of entrapment those accused frequently invoked. The article then focuses on the analyses of specific Abscam cases that claimed this defense. Finally, the article considers the specific case of Harrison Williams, a senator from New Jersey and the highest official ensnared in Abscam, documenting …

Penal Modernism In Theory And Practice, Darryl K. Brown

Darryl K. Brown

This comment on James Whitman's article, "The Case for Penal Modernism: Beyond Utility and Desert," suggests additional reasons why the era of penal modernism was eventually elipsed by retributivism in the U.S., and questions the degree to which penal modernism's fall also represents retributivism's triumph.

Public Welfare Offenses, Darryl K. Brown

Darryl K. Brown

This chapter provides an overview, historical account and critical analysis of Anglo-American public welfare offenses, meaning strict liability crimes generally employed for regulatory purposes. As an explanation for the greater prevalence of these strict liability regulatory crimes in England and the U.S. compared to other jurisdictions, the chapter points to, among other factors, the evolving scope of social duties in modernity and traditional Anglo-American limits on central state administrative capacity.

U.S. Insider Trading Law Enforcement: Survey Of Sec Actions From 2009 To 2013 And Issues, Chien-Chung Lin, Eric Hung

Chien-Chung Lin

This article discusses the SEC’s insider trading enforcement actions from 2009 to 2013. With an introduction of the current procedures and regulatory tools available, this article provides a thorough survey on the insider trading cases found from SEC’s official website, related databases and litigation releases in the corresponding period and compiles the results in appendices. In doing so, we present a first-hand, detailed picture of insider trading law in the United States and its enforcement. The data also relates to several much debated theoretical issues in this area, including the merit of punishing insider trading activities, the efficacy of current …

Grounding Drones: Big Brother’S Tool Box Needs Regulation Not Elimination, Melanie M. Reid

Melanie M. Reid

One of the most significant contemporary issues in privacy law relates to law enforcement’s new domestic surveillance tool: unmanned aerial vehicles, also known as, drones. Law enforcement’s use of aerial surveillance as an investigatory tool is currently under attack. In the past, if law enforcement chose to follow a suspect throughout the day, either on the ground or in the air, they need not worry about seeking a warrant or determining whether probable cause or reasonable suspicion exists to justify their surveillance. Aerial surveillance of criminal suspects has been considered outside the protections of Fourth Amendment law. In the 1980’s, …

Decriminalizing Victims Of Sex Trafficking, Michelle Madden Dempsey

Michelle Madden Dempsey

Despite the United States’ commitment to decriminalizing victims of sex trafficking and the obvious injustice of subjecting these victims to criminal penalties, the majority of jurisdictions throughout the U.S. continue to treat sex trafficking victims as criminals. This paper argues that the criminal law must abandon this practice. Part one presents a brief account of definitional and conceptual debates regarding what counts as sex trafficking. Part two explains why we must decriminalize victims of sex trafficking. Part three outlines four methods of decriminalizing sex trafficking victims, and defends what has come to be known as the “Nordic model” as the …

The "Not A Search" Game, John F. Stinneford

John F. Stinneford

No abstract provided.

The Immigration Detention Risk Assessment, Mark Noferi, Robert Koulish

Mark L Noferi

In early 2013, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) deployed nationwide a new automated risk assessment tool to help determine whether to detain or release noncitizens pending their deportation proceedings. Adapted from similar evidence-based criminal justice reforms that have reduced pretrial detention, ICE’s initiative now represents the largest pre-hearing risk assessment experiment in U.S. history—potentially impacting over 400,000 individuals per year. However, to date little information has been released regarding the risk assessment algorithm, processes, and outcomes.

This article provides the first comprehensive examination of ICE’s risk assessment initiative, based on public access to ICE methodology and outcomes as a …

Criminal Forfeiture In 2014: An Annual Survey Of Developments In The Law, Stefan D. Cassella

Stefan D Cassella

This paper is another in the series of annual surveys of the case law regarding the procedure to making criminal forfeiture part of the sentence in a federal criminal case. It begins with the scope of criminal forfeiture, and the moves chronologically through the stages of a typical criminal case from indictment and trial through the post-trial ancillary proceeding.