Law Commons^™

The Ostrich Instruction: Deliberate Ignorance As A Criminal Mens Rea, Ira Robbins

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Improving Substance Abuse Treatment For Women, Brenda V. Smith

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Alcohol and other drug use among women of child-bearing age has increased dramatically, and, as a result, more pregnant women are faced with alcohol and other drug problems. The only known national estimate suggests that 11 percent of pregnant women used illegal drugs during their pregnancy. Although pregnant crack-addicted women have received the most media attention, the problem is no less serious for alcohol and other drugs.

Alcohol and other drug use during pregnancy has negative physical and psychological consequences for both the mother and the child. Alcoholic mothers are at risk of having infants with fetal alcohol syndrome, which …

Double Inchoate Crimes, Ira Robbins

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

American criminal law treats the inchoate crimes of attempt, conspiracy, and solicitation as substantive offenses punishable by criminal sanctions. The legal system criminalizes the types. of behavior that constitute these offenses to intervene before an actor completes the intended illegal act. Some jurisdictions now recognize the concept of double inchoate crimes, punishing inchoate offenses that are the immediate objects of other inchoate offenses. In this Article, Professor Robbins examines the concept of double inchoate crimes, first by tracing the evolution of inchoate offenses and then by reviewing the judicial development of double inchoate crimes. Arguing that double inchoate crimes are …

Impact Of The Delegation Doctrine On Prison Privatization, Ira Robbins

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Few people would argue that the state of our nation's prisons and jails is ideal. Apart from whatever other ills plague these institutions, overcrowding is pervasive. Populations have doubled in a decade, and with preventive detention, mandatory minimum sentences, habitual offender statutes, and the abolition of parole in some jurisdictions, there is no relief in sight. Some states are even leasing or purchasing prison space in other states. And it is costing the taxpayers more than seventeen million dollars a day to operate the facilities, with estimates ranging up to sixty dollars a day per inmate.

Privatizing Corrections: Defining The Issues, Ira Robbins

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Should Prisons Be Privately Run?: No Quick Fixes, Ira Robbins

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Attempting The Impossible: The Emerging Consensus, Ira Robbins

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Impossible attempts are situations in which an actor fails to consummate a substantive crime because he is mistaken about attendant circumstances. Professor Robbins divides mistakes regarding circumstances into three categories: mistakes of fact, mistakes of law, and mistakes of mixed fact and law. Courts and commentators disagree primarily over the identification and treatment of mixed fact law cases. Professor Robbins surveys each category of mistake. He then examines the objective, subjective, and hybrid approaches to dealing with the mixed fact/law category. The objective approach requires an objective manifestation of the actor's intent before conviction is allowed. The subjective approach permits …

The Philippines: A Country In Crisis - A Report By Lawyers Committee For International Human Rights, Diane Orentlicher, Marvin E. Frankel, Jack Greenberg

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Legal Aspects Of Prison Riots, Ira Robbins

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Introduction: Riots are a recurrent phenomenon in American prisons. In the 1950s and the early 1970s, major riots erupted in prisons across the country, and many have occurred in the past several years.' Riots will continue to occur as long as the dominant function of prisons is the custodial confinement of inmates. As one commentator explains, "The way to make a strong bomb is to build a strong perimeter and generate pressure inside. Similarly, riots occur where ... pressures and demands are generated in the presence of strong custodial confinement."When such a bomb detonates and a prison riot erupts, a …

Book Review: A Theory Of Criminal Justice By Jan Corecki. New York: Columbia University Press. 1979. Pp. Xv, 185. $15.00., Ira Robbins

Book Reviews

Review of A Theory of Criminal Justice by Jan Corecki. New York: Columbia University Press. 1979. Pp. xv, 185. $15.00.

The Cry Of Wolfish In The Federal Courts: The Future Of Federal Judicial Intervention In Prison Administration, Ira Robbins

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Introduction: In Bell v. Wolfish, the United States Supreme Court held that, with respect to conditions or restrictions having no specific constitutional source for protection, a pretrial detainee in a federal correctional center has a right under the due process clause of the fifth amendment to be free from any punitive conditions or restrictions during detention. The Court further held that all of the challenged practices and conditions were valid because they were rationally related to the legitimate non-punitive purposes of the detention center. Thus, the correctional facility could place two detainees in a cell built for one, prohibit receipt …

Solipsism And Criminal Liability, Ira Robbins

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

A viable legal system and a free society can endure and progress only by continuing to debate fundamental principles. Thus, often it is useful to return to underlying precepts in order to refine and comprehend more fully the contemporary state of knowledge. This article posits the case of the solipsist-one who denies the existence of all physical reality and maintains that his own ego alone exists-as a criminal defendant. Others, most notably Professor Lon L. Fuller, have expounded upon the manifold ways in which certain harsh necessities, externally impose upon common people, can test the rules of the criminal law. …

The Gulag Archipelago: Implications For American Criminal Justice, Ira P. Robbins

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

A Constitutional Analysis Of The Prohibition Against Collateral Attack In The Mexican-American Prisoner Exchange Treaty, Ira Robbins

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Introduction: On November 25, 1976, the United States and Mexico concluded a bilateral treaty providing for reciprocal prisoner exchange, so that a national of one party to the agreement could complete his sentence in his home country.' The objectives of the agreement essentially were twofold: first, there was a need to ameliorate relations with Mexico on the delicate matter of the abuse of American citizens confined in Mexican prisons; second, there was a strong desire to alleviate special hardships, such as those respecting living conditions and prospects for rehabilitation, resulting from imprisonment in a foreign country. The Treaty was ratified …

Improving Police Discretion: Rationality In Handling Public Inebriates Part Ii, David Aaronson , C. Dienes, Michael Musheno

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

In 1913 Eugene Ehrlich spoke of the living law when he stated that "[a]t the present as well as at any other time, the center of gravity of legal development lies not in legislation, nor in juristic science, nor in judicial decision, but in society itself.' This article is premised on the belief that Ehrlich's perception is as valid today as it was then. If you want to know the law relating to public intoxication you cannot be content with the statutes and ordinances, in the court decisions nor even the administrative rules and regulations of those charged with enforcing …

Changing The Public Drunkenness Laws: The Impact Of Decriminalization, David Aaronson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Laws that decriminalize public drunkenness continue to use the police as the major intake agent for public inebriates under the "new" public health model of detoxification and treatment. Assuming that decriminalization introduces many disincentives to police intervention using legally sanctioned procedures, we hypothesize that it will be fol- lowed by a statistically significant decline in the number of public inebriates formally handled by the police in the manner designated by the "law in the books." Using an "interrupted time-series quasi- experiment" based on a "stratified multiple-group single-I design," we confirm this hypothesis for Washington, D.C., and Minneapolis, Minnesota. However, through …

Improving Police Discretion Rationality In Handling Public Inebriates Part Ii, David Aaronson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

A Behavioral Analysis Of Legal Intent, Ira P. Robbins, Harvey J. Sepler

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Punitive Conditions Of Prison Confinement: An Analysis Of Pugh V. Locke And Federal Court Supervision Of State Penal Administration Under The Eighth Amendment, Ira Robbins

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The 1960's marked a watershed for the criminal justice system. In such areas as search and seizure, right to counsel and the privilege against self-incrimination, the federal courts first defined substantive constitutional rights and then imposed them upon disinclined functionaries at the state level. At first, these innovations raised thorny questions of constitutional interpretation about the rights involved, but, as is especially visible in the search and seizure area, the debate more recently has focused on the remedy chosen by the Supreme Court for enforcing these rights against the states.' This pattern of escalating federal involvement in the criminal justice …

Improving Police Discretion: Rationality In Handling Public Inebriates, David Aaronson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Improving Police Discretion: Rationality In Handling Public Inebriates, David Aaronson , C. Dienes, Michael Musheno

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This two-part article reports on the findings of the "prescriptive" phase of the American University Law School's Project on Public Inebriation.' First, we provide a framework or model designed to contribute to efforts to improve the rationality of police discretion and the quality of discretionary justice. Second, we seek to increase understanding of, and provide the basis for improving, the intake process whereby public inebriates are delivered to designated facilities-jails, detoxification centers, etc.-in criminal and decriminalized jurisdictions. While the article focuses on the discretionary power of police officers to remove street inebriates, it should increase awareness of problems of decriminalizing …

Criminal Law Reform In The District Of Columbia, David Aaronson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

INTRODUCTION: The prospects for meaningful, comprehensive revision of the District of Columbia's substantive criminal laws have improved markedly in recent years. In the most promising of recent political developments, Congress established a Law Review Commission for the District of Columbia in August of 1974 with a broad mandate to give special consideration to revision of the criminal code.' Since jurisdiction to initiate revision of the criminal laws will pass to the District of Columbia Council in January of 1977 pursuant to the Home Rule Act, Congress has substantial incentive to give final approval to a new criminal code within two …