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Articles 1 - 30 of 37
Full-Text Articles in Law
Protecting Liberty And Autonomy: Desert/Disease Jurisprudence, Stephen J. Morse
Protecting Liberty And Autonomy: Desert/Disease Jurisprudence, Stephen J. Morse
All Faculty Scholarship
This contribution to a symposium on the morality of preventive restriction on liberty begins by describing the positive law of preventive detention, which I term "desert/disease jurisprudence." Then it provides a brief excursus about risk prediction (estimation), which is at the heart of all preventive detention practices. Part IV considers whether proposed expansions of desert jurisprudence are consistent with retributive theories of justice, which ground desert jurisprudence. I conclude that this is a circle that cannot be squared. The following Part canvasses expansions of disease jurisprudence, especially the involuntary civil commitment of mentally abnormal, sexually violent predators, and the use …
Overcriminalization: Is There A Problem To Solve?, Roger Fairfax
Overcriminalization: Is There A Problem To Solve?, Roger Fairfax
Presentations
No abstract provided.
Perpetuating The Marginalization Of Latinos: A Collateral Consequence Of The Incorporation Of Immigration Law Into The Criminal Justice System, Yolanda Vazquez
Perpetuating The Marginalization Of Latinos: A Collateral Consequence Of The Incorporation Of Immigration Law Into The Criminal Justice System, Yolanda Vazquez
All Faculty Scholarship
Latinos currently represent the largest minority in the United States. In 2009, we witnessed the first Latina appointment to the United States Supreme Court. Despite these events, Latinos continue to endure racial discrimination and social marginalization in the United States. The inability of Latinos to gain political acceptance and legitimacy in the United States can be attributed to the social construct of Latinos as threats to national security and the cause of criminal activity.
Exploiting this pretense, American government, society and nationalists are able to legitimize the subordination and social marginalization of Latinos, specifically Mexicans and Central Americans, much to …
Mental Disorder And Criminal Law, Stephen J. Morse
Mental Disorder And Criminal Law, Stephen J. Morse
All Faculty Scholarship
Mental disorder among criminal defendants affects every stage of the criminal justice process, from investigational issues to competence to be executed. As in all other areas of mental health law, at least some people with mental disorders, are treated specially. The underlying thesis of this Article is that people with mental disorder should, as far as is practicable and consistent with justice, be treated just like everyone else. In some areas, the law is relatively sensible and just. In others, too often the opposite is true and the laws sweep too broadly. I believe, however, that special rules to deal …
Why Cops Lie, Peter Keane
Why Cops Lie, Peter Keane
Publications
Police officer perjury in court to justify illegal dope searches is commonplace. One of the dirty little not-so-secret secrets of the criminal justice system is undercover narcotics officers intentionally lying under oath. It is a perversion of the American justice system that strikes directly at the rule of law. Yet it is the routine way of doing business in courtrooms everywhere in America.
Making The Best Of Felony Murder, Guyora Binder
Making The Best Of Felony Murder, Guyora Binder
Journal Articles
Although scorned as irrational by academics, the felony murder doctrine persists as part of our law. It is therefore important that criminal law theory show how the felony murder doctrine can be best justified, and confined within its justifying principles. To that end, this Article seeks to make the best of American felony murder laws by identifying a principle of justice that explains as much existing law as possible, and provides a criterion for reforming the rest. Drawing on the moral intuition that blame for harm is properly affected by the actor’s aims as well as the actor’s expectations, this …
And Death Shall Have No Dominion: How To Achieve The Categorical Exemption Of Mentally Retarded Defendants From Execution, J. Amy Dillard
And Death Shall Have No Dominion: How To Achieve The Categorical Exemption Of Mentally Retarded Defendants From Execution, J. Amy Dillard
All Faculty Scholarship
This article examines the Court’s categorical exclusion of mentally retarded defendants from execution and explores how trial courts should employ procedures to accomplish heightened reliability in the mental retardation determination; it maintains that if a mentally retarded defendant is subjected to a death sentence then the Atkins directive has been ignored. To satisfy the Atkins Court’s objective of protecting mentally retarded defendants from the “special risk of wrongful execution,” the article explores whether trial courts should engage in a unified, pre-trial competency assessment in all capital cases where the defendant asserts mental retardation as a bar to execution and how …
My Brother's Keeper: An Empirical Study Of Attorney Facilitation Of Money-Laundering Through Commercial Transactions, Lawton P. Cummings, Paul T. Stepnowsky
My Brother's Keeper: An Empirical Study Of Attorney Facilitation Of Money-Laundering Through Commercial Transactions, Lawton P. Cummings, Paul T. Stepnowsky
Faculty Scholarship
In recent years, various “gatekeeping initiatives” have been introduced through inter-governmental standard-setting organizations, such as the Financial Action Task Force, as well as through federal legislation in the United States, which seek to apply the mandatory customer due diligence, record keeping, and suspicious activity reporting obligations contained in the existing anti-money laundering regime to lawyers when they conduct certain commercial transactions on behalf of their clients. The organized bar has argued against such attempts to regulate it, in part, due to the lack of empirical data showing that, as a threshold matter, lawyers unwittingly aid money laundering in a significant …
Realizing Padilla's Promise: Ensuring Noncitizen Defendants Are Advised Of The Immigration Consequences Of A Criminal Convictions, Yolanda Vazquez
Realizing Padilla's Promise: Ensuring Noncitizen Defendants Are Advised Of The Immigration Consequences Of A Criminal Convictions, Yolanda Vazquez
Faculty Articles and Other Publications
On March 31, 2010 the United States Supreme court decided Padilla v. Kentucky and created a Sixth Amendment duty for defense attorneys to advise defendants of the immigration consequences of a criminal conviction. While Padilla answered the broad question of whether there is a duty to advise a defendant under the Sixth Amendment, it left many questions unanswered. One critical inquiry is how defense attorneys and the courts will determine what advice concerning the immigration consequences of the criminal conviction will satisfy defense counsels’ Sixth Amendment duty under Padilla.
This Article discusses the potential detrimental impact of Padilla’s ambiguous holding …
Punishing Without Free Will, Luis E. Chiesa
Punishing Without Free Will, Luis E. Chiesa
Journal Articles
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 …
Consent Is Not A Defense To Battery: A Reply To Professor Bergelson, Luis E. Chiesa
Consent Is Not A Defense To Battery: A Reply To Professor Bergelson, Luis E. Chiesa
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
Professor Vera Bergelson expressed puzzlement over the fact that those who feel "trapped in the wrong body" can "consent to a sex change operation, which often involves the removal of healthy sexual organs," whereas those who would feel happier being amputees "cannot consent to amputation of an arm or a leg.” Bergelson is equally puzzled by the fact that a spouse may physically injure her partner pursuant to practices of religious flagellation, but she may not cause similar injuries pursuant to sadomasochistic sexual practices. The purpose of this brief essay is to explain why I believe that the aforementioned cases …
Beyond Experience: Getting Retributive Justice Right, Dan Markel, Chad Flanders, David C. Gray
Beyond Experience: Getting Retributive Justice Right, Dan Markel, Chad Flanders, David C. Gray
Faculty Scholarship
How central should hedonic adaptation be to the establishment of sentencing policy? In earlier work, Professors Bronsteen, Buccafusco, and Masur (BBM) drew some normative significance from the psychological studies of adaptability for punishment policy. In particular, they argued that retributivists and utilitarians alike are obliged on pain of inconsistency to take account of the fact that most prisoners, most of the time, adapt to imprisonment in fairly short order, and therefore suffer much less than most of us would expect. They also argued that ex-prisoners don't adapt well upon re-entry to society and that social planners should consider their post-release …
The New Common Law Courts, Culture, And The Localization Of The Model Penal Code, Anders Walker
The New Common Law Courts, Culture, And The Localization Of The Model Penal Code, Anders Walker
All Faculty Scholarship
Few tropes in American law teaching are more firmly entrenched than the criminal law division between Model Penal Code and common law states. Yet, even a cursory look at current state codes indicates that this bifurcation is outmoded. No state continues to cling to ancient English common law, nor does any state adhere fully to the Model Penal Code. In fact, those states that adopted portions of the Code have since produced a substantial body of case law – what this article terms “new common law” – transforming it. Taking the controversial position that criminal law pedagogy is antiquated, this …
Economics, Behavioral Biology, And Law, Owen D. Jones, Erin O'Hara O'Connor, Jeffrey Evans Stake
Economics, Behavioral Biology, And Law, Owen D. Jones, Erin O'Hara O'Connor, Jeffrey Evans Stake
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
The article first compares economics and behavioral biology, examining the assumptions, core concepts, methodological tenets, and emphases of the two fields. Building on this, the article then compares the applied interdisciplinary fields of law and economics, on one hand, with law and behavioral biology, on the other - highlighting not only the most important similarities, but also the most important differences.
The article subsequently explores ways that biological perspectives on human behavior may prove useful, by improving economic models and the behavioral insights they generate. The article concludes that although there are important differences between the two fields, the overlaps …
Sorting Guilty Minds, Owen D. Jones, Francis X. Shen, Morris B. Hoffman, Joshua D. Greene, Rene Marois
Sorting Guilty Minds, Owen D. Jones, Francis X. Shen, Morris B. Hoffman, Joshua D. Greene, Rene Marois
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Because punishable guilt requires that bad thoughts accompany bad acts, the Model Penal Code (MPC) typically requires that jurors infer the past mental state of a criminal defendant. More specifically, jurors must sort that mental state into one of four specific categories - purposeful, knowing, reckless, or negligent - which in turn defines the nature of the crime and the extent of the punishment. The MPC therefore assumes that ordinary people naturally sort mental states into these four categories with a high degree of accuracy, or at least can reliably do so when properly instructed. It also assumes that ordinary …
Supreme Court Criminal Law Jurisprudence: Fair Trials, Cruel Punishment, And Ethical Lawyering—October 2009 Term, Richard Klein
Supreme Court Criminal Law Jurisprudence: Fair Trials, Cruel Punishment, And Ethical Lawyering—October 2009 Term, Richard Klein
Scholarly Works
No abstract provided.
A Critical Appraisal Of The Department Of Justice's New Approach To Medical Marijuana, Robert A. Mikos
A Critical Appraisal Of The Department Of Justice's New Approach To Medical Marijuana, Robert A. Mikos
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
The Obama Administration has embarked upon a much-heralded shift in federal policy toward medical marijuana. Eschewing the hard-ball tactics favored by earlier Administrations, Attorney General Eric Holder announced in October 2009 that the Department of Justice (DOJ) would stop enforcing the federal marijuana ban against persons who comply with state medical marijuana laws. Given the significance of the medical marijuana issue in both criminal law and federalism circles, this Article sets out to provide the first in-depth analysis of the changes wrought by the DOJ’s new Non Enforcement Policy (NEP). In a nutshell, it suggests that early enthusiasm for the …
The Origins Of Back-End Sentencing In California: A Dispatch From The Archives, Sara Mayeux
The Origins Of Back-End Sentencing In California: A Dispatch From The Archives, Sara Mayeux
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
In recent years, policy analysts have generated a small body of literature about the practice of "back-end sentencing," observing that California uses parole revocation in lieu of criminal prosecution for a surprisingly high number of cases, including many that would otherwise be considered serious crimes. Some of these offenders may be getting away with far shorter sentences than if their conduct were prosecuted criminally. Surely others are being railroaded into serving time for charges of which they could never be convicted beyond a reasonable doubt. And many are being cycled in and out of prison on fairly minor violations for …
Punishing Without Free Will, Luis E. Chiesa
Punishing Without Free Will, Luis E. Chiesa
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
This Article will argue that there are good moral reasons to conclude that the scientific plausibility of determinism ought to lead us to abandon the notion of free will. Contra P. F. Strawson and Moore, this Article suggests that rejecting free will does not undermine the human experience, and doing so is plausible and attractive because it would likely lead to more humane and efficient institutions of blaming and punishing.
The Evolution Of The Law Of Evidence: Plus Ça Change…?, Robert Currie
The Evolution Of The Law Of Evidence: Plus Ça Change…?, Robert Currie
Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press
Originally prepared as a CLE backgrounder for criminal lawyers, this article provides a brief and occasionally critical account of developments in the law of evidence over the last three or so decades. Particular attention is paid to the Supreme Court of Canada’s introduction and development of the “principled approach.” It is argued that this framework has been most successful where it has coalesced into a more traditional-looking “rules-based” stance, albeit one based in principle, and less so where looser tests of principle have been given freer rein.
Consent Is Not A Defense To Battery: A Reply To Professor Bergelson, Luis E. Chiesa
Consent Is Not A Defense To Battery: A Reply To Professor Bergelson, Luis E. Chiesa
Journal Articles
In this essay I argue that, contrary to what most criminal law scholars believe, consent does not operate as a justification that relieves the actor of liability for conduct that admittedly satisfies the offense elements of battery. Rather, I contend that consent is only relevant to battery liability when, in conjunction with other factors, it modifies the definition of the crime in a way that reveals that the defendant’s act does not actually fall within the range of conduct prohibited by the offense. The argument proceeds in three parts.
In Part I, I argue that there are three ways of …
"Sticky Metaphors" And The Persistence Of The Traditional Voluntary Manslaughter Doctrine, Joseph L. Hoffmann, Elise J. Percy, Steven J. Sherman
"Sticky Metaphors" And The Persistence Of The Traditional Voluntary Manslaughter Doctrine, Joseph L. Hoffmann, Elise J. Percy, Steven J. Sherman
Articles by Maurer Faculty
No abstract provided.
Alternative Elements, Jessica A. Roth
Alternative Elements, Jessica A. Roth
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 …
Gene-Environment Interactions, Criminal Responsibility, And Sentencing, Stephen J. Morse
Gene-Environment Interactions, Criminal Responsibility, And Sentencing, Stephen J. Morse
All Faculty Scholarship
This chapter in, Gene-Environment Interactions in Developmental Psychopathology (K. Dodge & M. Rutter, eds. 2011), considers the relevance of GxE to criminal responsibility and sentencing. It begins with a number of preliminary assumptions that will inform the analysis. It then turns to the law’s view of the person, including the law’s implicit psychology, and the criteria for criminal responsibility. A few false starts or distractions about responsibility are disposed of briefly. With this necessary background in place, the chapter then turns specifically to the relation between GxE and criminal responsibility. It suggests that GxE causes of criminal behavior have no …
The Unsolved Mysteries Of Causation And Responsibility, Kimberly Kessler Ferzan
The Unsolved Mysteries Of Causation And Responsibility, Kimberly Kessler Ferzan
All Faculty Scholarship
This article is part of a symposium on Michael Moore's Causation and Responsibility. In Causation and Responsibility, Moore adopts a scalar approach to factual causation, with counterfactual dependency serving as an independent desert basis. Moore’s theory of causation does not include proximate causation. The problem with Moore's argument is that the problems with which proximate causation dealt - how and when to limit cause in fact - remain unresolved. In this paper, I focus on two sets of problems. The first set is the “fit” or categorization problems within the criminal law. I focus on three matches: (1) the fit …
Developing Standards Of Conduct For Prosecutors And Criminal Defense Lawyers, Bruce A. Green
Developing Standards Of Conduct For Prosecutors And Criminal Defense Lawyers, Bruce A. Green
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
It's Good To Be Autonomous: Prospective Consent, Retrospective Consent, And The Foundation Of Consent In The Criminal Law, Jonathan Witmer-Rich
It's Good To Be Autonomous: Prospective Consent, Retrospective Consent, And The Foundation Of Consent In The Criminal Law, Jonathan Witmer-Rich
Law Faculty Articles and Essays
What is the foundation of consent in the criminal law? Classically liberal commentators have offered at least three distinct theories. J.S. Mill contends we value consent because individuals are the best judges of their own interests. Joel Feinberg argues an individual’s consent matters because she has a right to autonomy based on her intrinsic sovereignty over her own life. Joseph Raz also focuses on autonomy, but argues that society values autonomy as a constituent element of individual well-being, which it is the state’s duty to promote.The criminal law’s approach to the problem of non-contemporaneous consent—prospective consent and retrospective consent—casts a …
The Federal Common Law Crime Of Corruption, Lisa Kern Griffin
The Federal Common Law Crime Of Corruption, Lisa Kern Griffin
Faculty Scholarship
This contribution to the North Carolina Law Review’s 2010 symposium, Adaptation and Resiliency in Legal Systems, considers the compatibility between the common law nature of honest services fraud and the dynamic quality of public integrity offenses. Corruption enforcement became a focal point of recent debates about over- criminalization because it typifies expansive legislative mandates for prosecutors and implicit delegations to courts. Federal prosecutions of political corruption have relied primarily on an open-textured provision: 18 U.S.C. § 1346, the honest services extension of the mail fraud statute. Section 1346 raises notice concerns because it contains few self-limiting terms, but it has …
Realizing Padilla's Promise: Ensuring Noncitizen Defendants Are Advised Of The Immigration Consequences Of A Criminal Conviction, Yolanda Vazquez
Realizing Padilla's Promise: Ensuring Noncitizen Defendants Are Advised Of The Immigration Consequences Of A Criminal Conviction, Yolanda Vazquez
All Faculty Scholarship
On March 31, 2010 the United States Supreme court decided Padilla v. Kentucky and created a Sixth Amendment duty for defense attorneys to advise defendants of the immigration consequences of a criminal conviction. While Padilla answered the broad question of whether there is a duty to advise a defendant under the Sixth Amendment, it left many questions unanswered. One critical inquiry is how defense attorneys and the courts will determine what advice concerning the immigration consequences of the criminal conviction will satisfy defense counsels’ Sixth Amendment duty under Padilla.
This Article discusses the potential detrimental impact of Padilla’s ambiguous …
Criminalization Tensions: Empirical Desert, Changing Norms, And Rape Reform, Paul H. Robinson
Criminalization Tensions: Empirical Desert, Changing Norms, And Rape Reform, Paul H. Robinson
All Faculty Scholarship
This short Article is part of the organizers’ larger Criminalization Project, which seeks, among other things, to develop theories for how criminalization decisions should be made. The argument presented here is that there is instrumentalist, as well as deontological, value in having criminalization decisions that generally track the community’s judgments about what is sufficiently condemnable to be criminal, but that there are also good reasons to deviate from community views. Interestingly, those in the business of social reform may be the ones with the greatest stake in normally tracking community views, in order to avoid community perceptions of the criminal …