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Full-Text Articles in Law
Miranda'S Truth: The Importance Of Adversarial Testing And Dignity In Confession Law, Meghan J. Ryan
Miranda'S Truth: The Importance Of Adversarial Testing And Dignity In Confession Law, Meghan J. Ryan
Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters
The landmark decision of Miranda v. Arizona focuses on the important values of adversarial testing and human dignity. These values can be found among a constellation of values ordinarily aligned with constitutional criminal procedure cases like Miranda. The constellation also includes values such as truth-finding and equality. With the regularization of DNA analysis and the realization that a large number of innocent people have been convicted, however, there has been a recent fixation on truth-finding. Other values have been overshadowed. The myopic pursuit of truth-finding may be somewhat misguided, as certainty of truth is generally impossible. This is recognized by …
Taking Dignity Seriously: Excavating The Backdrop Of The Eighth Amendment, Meghan J. Ryan
Taking Dignity Seriously: Excavating The Backdrop Of The Eighth Amendment, Meghan J. Ryan
Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters
The U.S. punishment system is in turmoil. We have a historically unprecedented number of offenders in prison, and our prisoners are serving longer sentences than in any other country. States are surreptitiously experimenting with formulas for lethal injection cocktails, and some prisoners are suffering from botched executions. Despite this tumult, the Eighth Amendment of our Constitution does place limits on the punishments that may be imposed and how they may be implemented. The difficulty, though, is that the Supreme Court’s Eighth Amendment jurisprudence is a bit of a mess. The Court has been consistent in stating that a focus on …