Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Keyword
-
- Crimes (12)
- Crimes of passion (9)
- Defenses (9)
- Justification (9)
- Provocation (9)
-
- Victims (9)
- Emotions (8)
- Excuses (8)
- Homicide (8)
- Law reform (4)
- Gender and law (3)
- Women (3)
- Armed forces (2)
- Capital punishment (2)
- Constitutional violations (2)
- Corporations (2)
- Death penalty (2)
- Drugs (2)
- History (2)
- Intent (2)
- Liability (2)
- Prosecutorial discretion (2)
- Prosecutors (2)
- Punishment (2)
- Sex discrimination (2)
- Symposia (2)
- Trials (2)
- United States Supreme Court (2)
- War crimes (2)
- Anfal campaign (1)
- Publication
- Publication Type
Articles 1 - 25 of 25
Full-Text Articles in Law
A Critical Introduction To The Symposium, Kyron Huigens
A Critical Introduction To The Symposium, Kyron Huigens
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Introduction for a symposium issue in reply to Reid Fontaine's article "Adequate (Non)Provocation and Heat of Passion as Excuse Not Justification."
Adequate (Non)Provocation And Heat Of Passion As Excuse Not Justification, Reid Griffith Fontaine
Adequate (Non)Provocation And Heat Of Passion As Excuse Not Justification, Reid Griffith Fontaine
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
For a number of reasons, including the complicated psychological makeup of reactive homicide, the heat of passion defense has remained subject to various points of confusion. One persistent issue of disagreement has been the justificatory versus excusatory nature of the defense. In this Article, I highlight and categorize a series of varied American homicide cases in which the applicability of heat of passion was supported although adequate provocation (or significant provocation by the victim) was absent. The cases are organized to illustrate how common law heat of passion may apply in instances in which there is no actual provocation or …
The Values Of Interdisciplinarity In Homicide Law Reform, Robert Weisberg
The Values Of Interdisciplinarity In Homicide Law Reform, Robert Weisberg
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Professor Reid Fontaine's article, Adequate (Non)Provocation and Heat of Passion as Excuse Not Justification, makes a convincing case for treating heat of passion wholly as an excuse not a justification, as the only sensible way to comprehend its various forms. In doing so, Professor Fontaine stimulates further thinking about heat of passion doctrine, along two dimensions.
Unjustified: The Practical Irrelevance Of The Justification/Excuse Distinction, Gabriel J. Chin
Unjustified: The Practical Irrelevance Of The Justification/Excuse Distinction, Gabriel J. Chin
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
In recent decades, the distinction between justification and excuse defenses has been a favorite topic of theorists of philosophy and criminal law. Notwithstanding the impressive intellectual efforts devoted to the task, no single scholar or viewpoint appears to be on the verge of generating practical consensus about the concepts of justification and excuse, categorization of the defenses, or categorization of difficult individual cases. This Essay suggests that none of these goals can be usefully advanced through the justification/excuse distinction.
Misunderstanding Provocation, Samuel H. Pillsbury
Misunderstanding Provocation, Samuel H. Pillsbury
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Provocation is and always has been a compromise rule whose success depends on its ability to appeal to all ideological constituencies, and therefore will always-as long as it lasts-resist the final categorization that this question seeks. As long as provocation involves an inquiry into reasonableness, it will include considerations of justification. As long as it provides for mitigation of punishment based on the difficulty of resisting temptations to violence inspired by strong emotion, it will speak to considerations of excuse.
How Not To Argue That Reasonable Provocation Is Not An Excuse, Peter K. Westen
How Not To Argue That Reasonable Provocation Is Not An Excuse, Peter K. Westen
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Reid Fontaine draws two conclusions regarding the partial defense to murder of reasonable provocation-one regarding its substantive content, the other regarding its formal classification…. I agree with both of Fontaine's two conclusions, and, indeed, I have previously written to that effect. Unfortunately, while I agree with Fontaine's conclusions, I do not think he adequately supports them.
On Passion's Potential To Undermine Rationality: A Reply, Reid Griffith Fontaine
On Passion's Potential To Undermine Rationality: A Reply, Reid Griffith Fontaine
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
This Reply is organized into several sections. Following the Introduction, I respond to my six distinguished commentators. In Section II, I consider Professor Chin's concern that the distinction between justification and excuse bears no practical relevance for the criminal law. In Section III, I respond to Professor Baron's argument that reasonable mistake of fact is consistent with justification-a view, she observes, that is generally reflected in the criminal law. Building on the discussion of whether mistake and justification are compatible, Section IV addresses Professor Pillsbury's treatment of heat of passion as a hybrid defense that uniquely incorporates components of both …
The Provocation Defense And The Nature Of Justification, Marcia Baron
The Provocation Defense And The Nature Of Justification, Marcia Baron
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
In this Essay, I evaluate the evidence of "adequate nonprovocation” that Fontaine puts forward to show that the heat of passion defense is decidedly an excuse (more precisely, a partial excuse). I will be focusing my remarks on the traditional heat of passion defense.
The Irreducibly Normative Nature Of Provocation/Passion, Stephen J. Morse
The Irreducibly Normative Nature Of Provocation/Passion, Stephen J. Morse
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
I agree with Professor Fontaine that provocation/passion is best interpreted as a partial excuse, but the ground for my conclusion is normative and not analytic. Indeed, I fear that he has not made the analytic case in large part because he begs a question about failed justifications that has only a normative and not an analytic answer. This Essay first briefly provides my own understanding of provocation/ passion. In the course of doing so, I address Professor Fontaine's argument that provocation/passion should also be applied to people with provocation interpretational bias. I then turn to why Fontaine's case for …
An Information Theory Of Willful Breach, Oren Bar-Gill, Omri Ben-Shahar
An Information Theory Of Willful Breach, Oren Bar-Gill, Omri Ben-Shahar
Michigan Law Review
Should willful breach be sanctioned more severely than inadvertent breach? Strikingly, there is sharp disagreement on this matter within American legal doctrine, in legal theory, and in comparative law. Within law-and-economics, the standard answer is "no "-breach should be subject to strict liability. Fault should not raise the magnitude of liability in the same way that no fault does not immune the breaching party from liability. In this paper, we develop an alternative law-and-economics account, which justifies supercompensatory damages for willful breach. Willful breach, we argue, reveals information about the "true nature" of the breaching party-that he is more likely …
Gender-Related Violence And International Criminal Law And Justice, Christine Chinkin
Gender-Related Violence And International Criminal Law And Justice, Christine Chinkin
Book Chapters
The treatment of gender-related violence within ICL is inextricably tied up with the recognition of women's rights as human rights, and the growing jurisprudence recognizing violence against women in non-armed conflict situations as human rights violations. Following from the Third World Conference on Women in Nairobi in 1985 women's NGOs campaigned to have gender-based acts of violence against women recognized as abuses of human rights, a goal that was achieved at the Vienna World Conference on Human Rights in 1993. That Conference was held against the backdrop of the 'massive, organized and systematic detention and rape of women that were …
The Failure Of Sexting Criminalization: A Plea For The Exercise Of Prosecutorial Restraint, Robert H. Wood
The Failure Of Sexting Criminalization: A Plea For The Exercise Of Prosecutorial Restraint, Robert H. Wood
Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review
The purpose of this Essay is to explore the various legal approaches to the sexting phenomenon through an analysis of a decision by the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, which granted a temporary restraining order enjoining the prosecution of sexting teens on constitutional grounds, and an examination of current and pending legislative attempts to deal with the sexting phenomenon. Section I describes the facts leading up to the district court decision and its subsequent holding. Section II examines the approaches to sexting prosecution and legislation taken by other states. Section III analyzes the legal issues …
The Abolition Of The Death Penalty In New Jersey And Its Impact On Our Nation's "Evolving Standards Of Decency", Aaron Scherzer
The Abolition Of The Death Penalty In New Jersey And Its Impact On Our Nation's "Evolving Standards Of Decency", Aaron Scherzer
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
In 2007, New Jersey became the first state in over forty years to abolish the death penalty legislatively. Twenty-five years earlier, in 1982, New Jersey had followed a state-level trend by reinstating its death penalty. However, during the twenty-five years between reinstatement and abolition, New Jersey did not conduct a single execution. Instead, the New Jersey Supreme Court reversed numerous death penalty cases and consistently narrowed the class of cases eligible for the death penalty. This Note posits that the supreme court's narrowing of eligible cases was one of the factors that prevented executions from taking place in New Jersey. …
A Critical Guide To The Iraqi High Tribunal's Anfal Judgement: Genocide Against The Kurds, Jennifer Trahan
A Critical Guide To The Iraqi High Tribunal's Anfal Judgement: Genocide Against The Kurds, Jennifer Trahan
Michigan Journal of International Law
In the Anfal trial, the Iraqi High Tribunal (IHT or the Tribunal) in Baghdad convicted former Iraqi high officials of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. Unlike its predecessor-the Dujail trial-the Anfal trial included the presentation of a high volume of documentary and eye-witness evidence. This evidence clearly revealed the existence of a genocidal campaign by the former Iraqi government and military that eliminated an estimated 182,000 Iraqi Kurds in 1988, as part of the eight-phased "Anfal campaign" (the Anfal). Relying on this and other evidence, judges in the Anfal Trial Chamber explained fairly persuasively how genocide, crimes against …
Passions We Like… And Those We Don't: Anti-Gay Hate Crime Laws And The Discursive Construction Of Sex, Gender, And The Body, Yvonne Zylan
Passions We Like… And Those We Don't: Anti-Gay Hate Crime Laws And The Discursive Construction Of Sex, Gender, And The Body, Yvonne Zylan
Michigan Journal of Gender & Law
This Article proceeds as follows. In Part II, the author catalogs the history of anti-gay hate crime laws in the United States, describing the rapid spread of state-level laws extending race- and religion-based hate crime laws to LGB people. The Article also provides an overview of federal legislation addressing anti-gay hate crime. In Part III, it examines the policy environment within which anti-gay hate crime laws have been, and continue to be, considered. Specifically, the jurisprudential frameworks that shape, define, and constrain discourses of equality, rights, and social identity are analyzed. The argument is made that the policy environment of …
Vindicating The Matriarch: A Fair Housing Act Challenge To Federal No-Fault Evictions From Public Housing, Melissa A. Cohen
Vindicating The Matriarch: A Fair Housing Act Challenge To Federal No-Fault Evictions From Public Housing, Melissa A. Cohen
Michigan Journal of Gender & Law
Pearlie Rucker, sixty-three years old, had been living in public housing in Oakland, California for thirteen years. Ms. Rucker lived with her mentally disabled adult daughter, Gelinda, as well as two grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Ms. Rucker regularly searched Gelinda's room for signs of drugs, and had warned Gelinda that any drug activity on the premises could result in eviction. Nevertheless, Gelinda was caught with drugs three blocks from the apartment. Despite the fact that Ms. Rucker had no knowledge of Gelinda's drug activity, and in fact had been carefully monitoring what happened in her apartment, the Oakland Housing Authority …
Student Gladiators And Sexual Assault: A New Analysis Of Liability For Injuries Inflicted By College Athletes, Ann Scales
Michigan Journal of Gender & Law
This Article will focus on an issue that was probably not on the minds of 19th century educators, nor primarily on the minds of the legions of present-day academic critics of intercollegiate sports. Namely, this Article explores the ways in which big-time athletics- particularly football-normalize and encourage harms to women, including educational and sexual harms. The author’s theses depend upon acknowledging certain open secrets about college football: that it is a celebration of male physical supremacy (measured by male standards); that it is something that society lets males do and have as their sport, for reasons both good and bad; …
Pursuing The Perfect Mother: Why America's Criminalization Of Maternal Substance Abuse Is Not The Answer- A Compartive Legal Analysis, Linda C. Fentiman
Pursuing The Perfect Mother: Why America's Criminalization Of Maternal Substance Abuse Is Not The Answer- A Compartive Legal Analysis, Linda C. Fentiman
Michigan Journal of Gender & Law
In this Article the author will examine not only the substantive legal differences between the United States, Canada, and France, but will also explore how these legal rules fit within a broader social, political, and religious setting. This Article will pursue four lines of inquiry. First, it will briefly chronicle the history of criminal prosecution of pregnant women in America and show how these prosecutions have become markedly more aggressive over the last twenty years. Second, it will situate these prosecutions in the full context of American law and culture, demonstrating how the fetus has received increasing legal recognition in …
The Unconstitutionality, Ineffectiveness, And Alternatives Of Gang Injunctions, Thomas A. Myers
The Unconstitutionality, Ineffectiveness, And Alternatives Of Gang Injunctions, Thomas A. Myers
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
Gang violence across America puts in jeopardy the peace and tranquility of neighborhoods. Cities are challenged to keep their communities safe from gang violence. One common way in which cities attempt to combat violent gang activity is by using gang injunctions. Gang injunctions are court orders that prohibit gang members from conducting already-illegal activities such as vandalism, loitering, and use or possession of illegal drugs or weapons within a defined area. These injunctions, however, also prohibit otherwise legal activity such as associating with others within the restricted area of the injunction, using words or hand gestures, and wearing certain clothing. …
Choosing Those Who Will Die: The Effect Of Race, Gender, And Law In Prosecutorial Decision To Seek The Death Penalty In Durham County, North Carolina, Isaac Unah
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
District prosecutors in the United States exercise virtually unfettered power and discretion to decide which murder cases to prosecute for capital punishment. According to neoclassical theory of formal legal rationality, the process for determining criminal punishment should be based upon legal rules established and sanctioned by the state to communicate the priorities of the political community. The theory therefore argues in favor of a determinate mode of decision-making that diminishes the importance of extrinsic elements such as race and gender in the application of law. In the empirical research herein reported, I test this theory using death eligible cases in …
The Case For The Third-Party Doctrine, Orin S. Kerr
The Case For The Third-Party Doctrine, Orin S. Kerr
Michigan Law Review
This Article offers a defense of the Fourth Amendment's third party doctrine, the controversial rule that information loses Fourth Amendment protection when it is knowingly revealed to a third party. Fourth Amendment scholars have repeatedly attacked the rule on the ground that it is unpersuasive on its face and gives the government too much power This Article responds that critics have overlooked the benefits of the rule and have overstated its weaknesses. The third-party doctrine serves two critical functions. First, the doctrine ensures the technological neutrality of the Fourth Amendment. It corrects for the substitution effect of third parties that …
Failures To Punish: Command Responsibility In Domestic And International Law, Amy J. Sepinwall
Failures To Punish: Command Responsibility In Domestic And International Law, Amy J. Sepinwall
Michigan Journal of International Law
This Article embraces one of two contested understandings of what a failure to punish entails. On the first understanding, a military commander's failure to punish is construed solely as a dereliction of duty. Accordingly, his failure to punish constitutes a separate offense from the underlying atrocity that his troops have committed. The failure to punish is, then, a substantive offense in its own right. On a second understanding, for which I argue here, the failure to punish renders the commander criminally liable for the atrocity itself, even if he neither ordered nor even knew about the atrocity before its occurrence. …
Prosecuting Worker Endangerment: The Need For Stronger Criminal Penalties For Violations Of The Occupational Safety And Health Act, David M. Uhlmann
Prosecuting Worker Endangerment: The Need For Stronger Criminal Penalties For Violations Of The Occupational Safety And Health Act, David M. Uhlmann
Articles
A recent spate of construction deaths in New York City, similar incidents in Las Vegas, and scores of fatalities in recent years at mines and industrial facilities across the country have highlighted the need for greater commitment to worker safety in the United States and stronger penalties for violators of the worker safety laws. Approximately 6,000 workers are killed on the job each year1—and thousands more suffer grievous injuries—yet penalties for worker safety violations remain appallingly small, and criminal prosecutions are almost non-existent. In recent years, most of the criminal prosecutions for worker safety violations have been brought by the …
Sentence Reduction As A Remedy For Prosecutorial Misconduct, Sonja B. Starr
Sentence Reduction As A Remedy For Prosecutorial Misconduct, Sonja B. Starr
Articles
Current remedies for prosecutorial misconduct, such as reversal of conviction or dismissal of charges, are rarely granted by courts and thus do not deter prosecutors effectively. Further, such all-or-nothing remedial schemes are often problematic from corrective and expressive perspectives, especially when misconduct has not affected the trial verdict. When granted, these remedies produce windfalls to guilty defendants and provoke public resentment, undermining their expressive value in condemning misconduct. To avoid these windfalls, courts refuse to grant any remedy at all, either refusing to recognize violations or deeming them harmless. This often leaves significant non-conviction-related harms unremedied and egregious prosecutorial misconduct …
Environmental Crime Comes Of Age: The Evolution Of Criminal Enforcement In The Environmental Regulatory Scheme, David M. Uhlmann
Environmental Crime Comes Of Age: The Evolution Of Criminal Enforcement In The Environmental Regulatory Scheme, David M. Uhlmann
Articles
The Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899 often is considered the first environmental criminal statute because it contains strict liability provisions that make it a misdemeanor to discharge refuse into navigable waters of the United States without a permit. When Congress passed the Rivers and Harbors Act, however, it was far more concerned with preventing interference with interstate commerce than environmental protection. For practical purposes, the environmental crimes program in the United States dates to the development of the modem environmental regulatory system during the 1970s, and amendments to the environmental laws during the 1980s, which upgraded criminal violations of …