Law Commons^™

The Evolution Of Adolescence: A Developmental Perspective On Juvenile Justice Reform, Elizabeth S. Scott, Thomas Grisso

Faculty Scholarship

The legal response to juvenile crime is undergoing revolutionary change, and its ultimate shape is uncertain. The traditional juvenile court, grounded in optimism about the potential for rehabilitation of young offenders, has long been the target of criticism, and even its defenders have been forced to acknowledge that it has failed to meet its objectives. Beginning in the late 1960s, when the Supreme Court introduced procedural regularity to delinquency proceedings in In re Gault, courts and legislatures began to slowly chip away at the foundations of the juvenile justice system. Recent developments have accelerated and intensified that process, as …

Old Chief V. United States: Stipulating Away Prosecutorial Accountability?, Daniel Richman

Faculty Scholarship

Earlier this year, in Old Chief v. United States, the Supreme Court finally resolved a circuit split on a nagging evidentiary issue: When a defendant charged with being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm offers to satisfy one of the statute's elements by stipulating to the existence of a prior felony conviction, may the government decline the stipulation and prove the existence and the nature of that prior felony?

The question of evidence law resolved in Old Chief is not particularly earth-shattering. Indeed, while the Court divided five to four on the issue, neither Justice Souter's opinion …

The Role Of Criminal Law In Policing Corporate Misconduct, Gerard E. Lynch

Faculty Scholarship

In the early 1990s, I spent a couple of years as Chief of the Criminal Division in the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. One of my principal responsibilities was to hear "appeals" from defense lawyers, usually, although not exclusively, in white collar crime cases. These lawyers felt that their clients should not be indicted, or that the plea offer they had received from the prosecutor in charge of the case was unduly severe. Sometimes their arguments were essentially factual contentions that the government had the wrong take on the evidence – that the …

Ethics, Professionalism, And Meaningful Work, William H. Simon

Faculty Scholarship

Much of the anxiety and dissatisfaction associated with legal ethics arises from the categorical quality of the bar's dominant norms. These norms take the form of relatively inflexible rules insensitive to all but a few of the circumstances of the cases they govern. Hence they often require the lawyer to take actions that contribute to injustice or to refrain from actions that would avert injustice.

For example, many lawyers believe that a criminal defender is obliged to impeach a truthful complaining witness even though the only immediate purpose of this tactic is to encourage the trier to draw a mistaken …

Does Public Choice Theory Justify Judicial Activism After All?, Thomas W. Merrill

Faculty Scholarship

Some legal scholars have argued that public choice theory justifies certain kinds of judicial activism. Others have said it does not. Given the present state of the debate, it would appear that those finding no necessary support for judicial activism have the stronger argument. I will suggest, however, that if we tweak the analysis a little further, it may turn out that public choice theory provides limited support for judicial activism after all.