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Full-Text Articles in Law
Counseling Oppression, Angelo Petrigh
Counseling Oppression, Angelo Petrigh
Faculty Scholarship
Critical scholars and public defenders alike have grappled with the contradictions at the heart of counseling clients in a carceral system. Systems of oppression operate within the public defender - client relationship because the defender’s role in translating the law also enforces its inequities. Counseling can obscure the workings of the system, providing an illusion of choice despite privileging certain forms of knowledge and tactics.
But the counseling site is also where defenders become exposed to client’s lived experiences, encounter collectivist tactics, and critically examine the tension of their role in the system. Likewise, through counseling defenders can pull back …
Bargaining For Abolition, Zohra Ahmed
Bargaining For Abolition, Zohra Ahmed
Faculty Scholarship
What if instead of seeing criminal court as an institution driven by the operation of rules, we saw it as a workplace where people labor to criminalize those with the misfortune to be prosecuted? Early observers of twentieth century urban criminal courts likened them to factories.1 Since then, commentators often deploy the pejorative epithet “assembly line justice” to describe criminal court’s processes.2 The term conveys the criticism of a mechanical system delivering a form of justice that is impersonal and fallible. Perhaps unintentionally, the epithet reveals another truth: criminal court is also a workplace, and it takes labor …
Of Afrofuturism, Of Algorithms, Ngozi Okidegbe
Of Afrofuturism, Of Algorithms, Ngozi Okidegbe
Faculty Scholarship
Algorithms are proliferating in criminal legal structures. The predictions produced by these algorithms inform life-altering decisions around surveillance and incarceration. Their continued use poses a challenge to ongoing racial justice efforts. Contesting how algorithms of today maintain the racial status quo requires a fundamental rethinking of the algorithm project. This essay explores how Afrofuturism can facilitate such a rethinking. It imagines how applying an Afrofuturist paradigm to the adoption, construction, implementation, and oversight of algorithms could radically change the kind of algorithms developed and the purposes for which they are developed. Tapping into this potential offers the chance for members …
The Sanctuary Of Prosecutorial Nullification, Zohra Ahmed
The Sanctuary Of Prosecutorial Nullification, Zohra Ahmed
Faculty Scholarship
In the aftermath of the 2016 election, the shortcomings of existing sanctuary protections came sharply into focus.1 Historically, cities enacted sanctuary protections to extricate their law enforcement agencies from activities related to federal immigration enforcement. In sanctuary cities, local government agencies are typically restricted from sharing information with federal immigration authorities or from cooperating in apprehending individuals targeted for removal. 2 After the White House issued an Executive Order (EO) in late January 2017, many immigrant rights advocates recognized that external facing policies that proscribed direct cooperation would not suffice. 3 The EO announced that Immigration and Customs Enforcement …
Searching Places Unknown: Law Enforcement Jurisdiction On The Dark Web, Ahmed Ghappour
Searching Places Unknown: Law Enforcement Jurisdiction On The Dark Web, Ahmed Ghappour
Faculty Scholarship
The use of hacking tools by law enforcement to pursue criminal suspects who have anonymized their communications on the dark web presents a looming flashpoint between criminal procedure and international law. Criminal actors who use the dark web (for instance, to commit crimes or to evade authorities) obscure digital footprints left behind with third parties, rendering existing surveillance methods obsolete. In response, law enforcement has implemented hacking techniques that deploy surveillance software over the Internet to directly access and control criminals’ devices. The practical reality of the underlying technologies makes it inevitable that foreign-located computers will be subject to remote …
Due Process In Islamic Criminal Law, Sadiq Reza
Due Process In Islamic Criminal Law, Sadiq Reza
Faculty Scholarship
Rules and principles of due process in criminal law--how to, and how not to, investigate crime and criminal suspects, prosecute the accused, adjudicate criminal cases, and punish the convicted--appear in the traditional sources of Islamic law: the Quran, the Sunna, and classical jurisprudence. But few of these rules and principles are followed in the modern-day practice of Islamic criminal law. Rather, states that claim to practice Islamic criminal law today mostly follow laws and practices of criminal procedure that were adopted from European nations in the twentieth century, without reference to the constraints and protections of Islamic law itself. To …
Egypt: Criminal Procedure, Sadiq Reza
Egypt: Criminal Procedure, Sadiq Reza
Faculty Scholarship
This chapter presents the criminal-procedure law of Egypt according to the sources of that law: the 1971 Constitution, the 1950 Code of Criminal Procedure, the 1958 Emergency Law, and other legislation; decisions by the Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC), the Court of Cassation, and other organs of the Egyptian judiciary; and administrative and executive regulations. Included are references to controversial aspects of this law and its practice, such as the use of military courts, state security courts, and emergency courts and powers. The chapter thus serves as an introduction to modern Egyptian criminal procedure and a reference source for scholars and …
Unpatriotic Acts: An Introduction, Sadiq Reza
Unpatriotic Acts: An Introduction, Sadiq Reza
Faculty Scholarship
John Walker Lindh. Zacarias Moussaoui. Jose Padilla. Richard Reid. Who reading these lines does not instantly recognize the names of these men? Or at least their assigned noms de guerre: American Taliban, 20th hijacker, dirty bomber, shoe bomber. For two and a half years these names and others have flitted through our daily copies of The New York Times like shadow characters in a play, along with black-and-white photographs underneath which black-and-white text tells us of their alleged (and sometimes proven) wrongdoing and the latest developments in their tribulations (and sometimes trials) with our government. But the men themselves are …
Pretrial Procedure Under The Massachusetts Rules Of Criminal Procedure, Eva S. Nilsen
Pretrial Procedure Under The Massachusetts Rules Of Criminal Procedure, Eva S. Nilsen
Faculty Scholarship
The Massachusetts Rules of Criminal Procedure became effective on July 1, 1979. While many of their provisions helpfully codify previously existing practice and case law, the Rules have in some areas effected a major transformation of criminal procedure. This article examines the changes wrought by the Rules in the pretrial arena, with emphasis on those areas that remain somewhat unfamiliar to the practitioner or untested against constitutional challenge in the courts. While the Rules appear to have done an admirable job of simplifying and rationalizing the criminal trial process, their emphasis on mutuality and reciprocity have in some cases created …
Traditional Criminal Procedure In Ethiopia, Stanley Z. Fisher
Traditional Criminal Procedure In Ethiopia, Stanley Z. Fisher
Faculty Scholarship
In the decade 1955-1965 the Ethiopian government completely revolutionized its legal system by promulgating comprehensive legal codes and a new constitution. These laws have a predominantly Western flavor, and seem to bear little relation to the traditional patterns of life which still prevail in the Empire-one of the least "developed" areas of Africa. This state of affairs has led some to characterize the new codes as "fantasy law," which may serve to put a modern "face" on the country but, at least for some time to come, will not have any serious impact on the conduct of its affairs.