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Criminal Law

Selected Works

2017

Criminal law

Articles 1 - 11 of 11

Full-Text Articles in Law

Punishing Without Free Will, Luis E. Chiesa Nov 2017

Punishing Without Free Will, Luis E. Chiesa

Luis Chiesa

Most observers agree that free will is central to our practices of blaming and punishment. Yet the conventional conception of free will is under sustained attack by the so-called determinists. Determinists claim that all of the events that take place in the universe – including human acts – are the product of causally determined forces over which we have no control. If human conduct is really determined by factors that we cannot control, how can our acts be the product of our own unfettered free will and what would that mean for the criminal law? The overwhelming majority of legal …

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Hard Bargaining In Plea Bargaining: When Do Prosecutors Cross The Line?, Cynthia Alkon Nov 2017

Hard Bargaining In Plea Bargaining: When Do Prosecutors Cross The Line?, Cynthia Alkon

Cynthia Alkon

Well over 90 percent of all criminal cases in the United States are resolved by plea bargaining and not by trial. This means that how plea bargaining works impacts nearly every criminal defendant. However, there are few restrictions to protect defendants in the negotiating process. One serious problem is that prosecutors regularly use hard bargaining tactics such as exploding offers, threats to add enhancements, take-it-or-leave-it offers, and threats to seek the death penalty. These hard bargaining tactics contribute to the often highly coercive atmosphere of plea bargaining that can lead innocent defendants to plead guilty. Pressure to plead guilty can …

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On The Ends And Means Of Protecting Youth In Juvenile Courts, Franklin E. Zimring Oct 2017

On The Ends And Means Of Protecting Youth In Juvenile Courts, Franklin E. Zimring

Franklin E. Zimring

No abstract provided.

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The Geography Of Justice Wormholes: Dilemmas From Property And Criminal Law, Hari M. Osofsky Jul 2017

The Geography Of Justice Wormholes: Dilemmas From Property And Criminal Law, Hari M. Osofsky

Hari Osofsky

No abstract provided.

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Procedural Due Process Claims, Erwin Chemerinsky Jun 2017

Procedural Due Process Claims, Erwin Chemerinsky

Erwin Chemerinsky

No abstract provided.

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Criminal Law And Procedure--Bringing It Home, Fernand N. Dutile Mar 2017

Criminal Law And Procedure--Bringing It Home, Fernand N. Dutile

Fernand "Tex" N. Dutile

No abstract provided.

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Written Testimony For Briefing On Targeted Fines And Fees Against Low-Income Minorities: Civil Rights And Constitutional Implications, Neil L. Sobol Mar 2017

Written Testimony For Briefing On Targeted Fines And Fees Against Low-Income Minorities: Civil Rights And Constitutional Implications, Neil L. Sobol

Neil L Sobol

My testimony today will focus on issues discussed in Fighting Fines & Fees: Borrowing from Consumer Law to Combat Criminal Justice Debt Abuses, forthcoming in the Colorado Law Review. In that article, I examine whether the framework used to address debt-collection abuses in the consumer context should apply to the abusive collection and assessment of criminal justice debt. I argue that the rationale that led to the enactment of the federal FDCPA and the creation of CFPB to combat consumer collection abuses parallels the reasons that a federal statute should be adopted to help the DOJ coordinate the attack against …

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Two Concepts Of Freedom In Criminal Jurisprudence, Roni M. Rosenberg Feb 2017

Two Concepts Of Freedom In Criminal Jurisprudence, Roni M. Rosenberg

Roni M Rosenberg

The goal of this essay is to identify and discuss two aspects of liberty by examining the distinction between act and omission in criminal jurisprudence. Criminal law makes a significant distinction between harmful actions and harmful omissions and, consequently, between killing and letting die. Any act that causes death is grounds for a homicide conviction -- subject, of course, to the existence of the other elements necessary for establishing criminal liability, such as causation and mens rea. However, liability for death by omission is subject to the additional identification of a duty to act. In other words, the defendant …

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Faultless Guilt: Toward A Relationship Based View Of Criminal Liability, Amy Sepinwall Dec 2016

Faultless Guilt: Toward A Relationship Based View Of Criminal Liability, Amy Sepinwall

Amy J. Sepinwall

There is in the criminal law perhaps no principle more canonical than the fault principle, which holds that one may be punished only where one is blameworthy, and one is blameworthy only where one is at fault. Courts, criminal law scholars, moral philosophers and textbook authors all take the fault principle to be the foundational requirement for a just criminal law. Indeed, perceived threats to the fault principle in the mid-Twentieth Century yielded no less an achievement than the drafting of the Model Penal Code, which had as its guiding purpose an effort to safeguard faultless conduct from criminal condemnation. …

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Patriarchy, Not Hierarchy: Rethinking The Effect Of Cultural Attitudes In Acquaintance Rape Cases, Eric Carpenter Dec 2016

Patriarchy, Not Hierarchy: Rethinking The Effect Of Cultural Attitudes In Acquaintance Rape Cases, Eric Carpenter

Eric R. Carpenter

Do certain people view acquaintance rape cases in ways that favor the man? The answer to that question is important. If certain people do, and those people form a disproportionately large percentage of the people in the institutions that process these cases, then those institutions may process these cases in ways that favor the man.
In 2010, Dan Kahan published Culture, Cognition, and Consent, a study on how people evaluate a dorm room rape scenario. He found that those who endorsed a stratified, hierarchical social order were more likely to find that the man should not be found guilty of …

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The French Prosecutor As Judge. The Carpenter’S Mistake?, Mathilde Cohen Dec 2016

The French Prosecutor As Judge. The Carpenter’S Mistake?, Mathilde Cohen

Mathilde Cohen

In France as elsewhere, prosecutors and their offices are seldom seen as agents of democracy. A distinct theoretical framework is itself missing to conceptualize the prosecutorial function in democratic states committed to the rule of law. What makes prosecutors democratically legitimate? Can they be made accountable to the public? Combining democratic theory with original qualitative empirical data, my hypothesis is that in the French context, prosecutors’ professional status and identity as judges determines to a great extent whether and how they can be considered democratic figures.
 
The French judicial function is defined more broadly than in the United States, …

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