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Full-Text Articles in Law
Redistributing Justice, Benjamin Levin, Kate Levine
Redistributing Justice, Benjamin Levin, Kate Levine
Faculty Articles
This Essay surfaces an obstacle to decarceration hiding in plain sight: progressives’ continued support for the carceral system. Despite progressives’ increasingly prevalent critiques of criminal law, there is hardly a consensus on the left in opposition to the carceral state. Many left-leaning academics and activists who may critique the criminal system writ large remain enthusiastic about criminal law in certain areas— often areas in which defendants are imagined as powerful and victims as particularly vulnerable.
In this Essay, we offer a novel theory for what animates the seemingly conflicted attitude among progressives toward criminal punishment—the hope that the criminal system …
Constitutional Crimes, Michael L. Smith
Constitutional Crimes, Michael L. Smith
Faculty Articles
Studies of criminal laws tend to focus on statutory, regulatory, and common law offenses. Discussions of constitutional law often revolve around abstract, concise statements, particularly those in, or which mirror, the Federal Constitution. In the interest of exploring new territory in both fields, this Article introduces and analyzes a family of crimes that has gone unanalyzed until now: criminal laws that appear in the text of the federal and state constitutions. As it turns out, there are a host of criminal laws contained in the federal and state constitutions, ranging from widespread crimes against treason, bribery, criminal contempt, and corrupt …
Library Crime, Michael L. Smith
Library Crime, Michael L. Smith
Faculty Articles
Libraries are often idealized as one of the few remaining safe, public spaces. Beyond providing books and internet access, they are a source of shelter, warmth, restrooms, and a place to stay without a reason for society's most vulnerable. But libraries are also at the core of a network of criminal laws that punish a wide array of library-related conduct. Steal a book? Write in or otherwise damage materials? Fail to return an item? Hide a book in a manner that looks like you are about to steal it? Many states criminalize these activities, often punishing them with potential jail …
Dual Sovereignty In The U.S. Territories, Emmanuel Hiram Arnaud
Dual Sovereignty In The U.S. Territories, Emmanuel Hiram Arnaud
Faculty Articles
This Essay examines the emergence and application of the “ultimate source” test and sheds light on the dual sovereign doctrine’s patently colonial framework, particularly highlighting the paternalistic relationship it has produced between federal and territorial prosecutorial authorities.
The Progressive Love Affair With The Carceral State, Kate Levine
The Progressive Love Affair With The Carceral State, Kate Levine
Faculty Articles
A Review of The Feminist War on Crime: The Unexpected Role of Women’s Liberation in Mass Incarceration. By Aya Gruber.
Countermajoritarian Criminal Law, Michael L. Smith
Countermajoritarian Criminal Law, Michael L. Smith
Faculty Articles
Criminal law pervades American society, subjecting millions to criminal enforcement, prosecution, and punishment every year. All too often, culpability is a minimal or nonexistent aspect of this phenomenon. Criminal law prohibits a wide range of common behaviors and practices, especially when one considers the various federal, state, and municipal levels of law restricting people's actions. Recent scholarship has criticized not only the scope and impact of these laws but has also critiqued these laws out to the extent that they fail to live up to supermajoritarian ideals that underlie criminal justice.
This Article adds to and amplifies this criticism by …
Entitlement To Punishment, Kyron J. Huigens
Entitlement To Punishment, Kyron J. Huigens
Faculty Articles
This Article advances the idea of entitlement to punishment as the core of a normative theory of legal punishment's moral justification. It presents an alternative to normative theories of punishment premised on desert or public welfare; that is, to retributivism and consequentialism. The argument relies on H.L.A. Hart's theory of criminal law as a "choosing system," his theory of legal rules, and his theory of rights. It posits the advancement of positive freedom as a morally justifying function of legal punishment.
An entitlement to punishment is a unique, distinctive legal relation. We impose punishment when an offender initiates an ordered …
Prosecutorial Declination Statements, Jessica A. Roth
Prosecutorial Declination Statements, Jessica A. Roth
Faculty Articles
This Article examines how prosecutors convey to various audiences their decisions not to charge in discrete cases. Although prosecutors regularly issue public statements about their declinations—and anecdotal evidence suggests that declination statements are on the rise—there is an absence of literature discussing the interests that such statements serve, the risks that they pose, and how such statements are consistent with the prosecutorial function. Prosecutors also operate in this space without clear ground rules set by law, policies, or professional standards. This Article attempts to fill that void. First, it theorizes the interests potentially advanced by such statements—characterized as signaling, accountability, …
Alternative Elements, Jessica A. Roth
Alternative Elements, Jessica A. Roth
Faculty Articles
The U.S. Constitution provides a criminal defendant with a right to trial by jury, and most states and the federal government require criminal juries to agree unanimously before a defendant may be convicted. But what exactly must a jury agree upon unanimously? Well-established doctrine, pursuant to In re Winship, provides that the jury must agree that the prosecution has proven every element of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt. Yet what the elements of any given offense are is not as clear as one might expect. Frequently, criminal statutes—especially federal statutes—describe an array of prohibited conduct, leaving ambiguous whether …
Criminal Law, John M. Schmolesky
Towards Neutral Principles In The Administration Of Criminal Justice: A Critique Of Supreme Court Decisions Sanctioning The Plea Bargaining Process, Malvina Halberstam
Towards Neutral Principles In The Administration Of Criminal Justice: A Critique Of Supreme Court Decisions Sanctioning The Plea Bargaining Process, Malvina Halberstam
Faculty Articles
This article compares the Court's reasoning in plea bargaining cases with its reasoning in non-plea-bargaining cases that involve the same legal principles. It analyzes the Court's arguments for sustaining guilty pleas induced by fear of the death penalty or by promises of leniency, and for sanctioning the imposition of harsher penalties on those who reject prosecutional offers to plead and insist on a trial. Finally, it briefly addresses the contention that the system for the administration of criminal justice in the United States could not function if use of a sentencing differential to induce guilty pleas were prohibited.
Testimonial Immunity And The Privilege Against Self-Incrimination: A Study In Isomorphism, Peter Lushing
Testimonial Immunity And The Privilege Against Self-Incrimination: A Study In Isomorphism, Peter Lushing
Faculty Articles
This Article accepts and will develop the Court's isomorphic theory of immunity and privilege, and will show why Portash is nonetheless correct in result. A case for a broadened view of the privilege, partially because of the availability of testimonial immunity, will be made. Apftlbaum will be shown to be incorrect in result. This Article will also analyze the problem of immunized testimony and perjury by inconsistent statement, a problem faced once by the Court but left unresolved. Finally, this Article will discuss the constitutional requirements of an immunity statute, and consider an immunity case presently pending before the Supreme …
Faces Without Features: The Surface Validity Of Criminal Inferences, Peter Lushing
Faces Without Features: The Surface Validity Of Criminal Inferences, Peter Lushing
Faculty Articles
This article will offer nonempirical grounds to show that instructed inferences operate as the dissenters believe, at least when the instruction does not explicitly refer to the evidence at trial, but to occurrences in general.