Law Commons^™

Assessing The Control-Theory, Jens David Ohlin, Elies Van Sliedregt, Thomas Weigend

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

As the first cases before the ICC proceed to the Appeals Chamber, the judges ought to critically evaluate the merits and demerits of the control-theory of perpetratorship and its related doctrines. The request for a possible re-characterization of the form of responsibility in the case of Katanga and the recent acquittal of Ngudjolo can be taken as indications that the control-theory, is problematic as a theory of liability. The authors, in a spirit of constructive criticism, invite the ICC Appeals Chamber to take this unique opportunity to reconsider or improve the control-theory as developed by the Pre-Trial Chambers in the …

Discovering The Right To Criminal Disclosure: Lessons From Civil Procedure, Denise Huiwen Wong

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code (Cap 68, 1985 Rev Ed) and subsequent case law developments have created a patchwork of rules governing the disclosure obligations of parties in criminal cases. This article argues that parties have thereby been endowed with a right that is exercisable in the courts to access the material to which the law says they are entitled. However, there are currently no proper procedural mechanisms in place for parties to make interlocutory applications to obtain such material. This article examines the competing values and ideals of a criminal discovery regime, and suggests that concepts such …

The Dog Days Of Fourth Amendment Jurisprudence, Kit Kinports

NULR Online

No abstract provided.

Teaching 'The Wire': Fiction As Pedagogical Tool, Roger Fairfax

Presentations

No abstract provided.

Legal Services Assessment For Trafficked Children- Cook County, Illinois Case Study, Katherine Kaufka Walts Jd, Linda Rio Reichmann Jd, Catherine Lee Ma

Center for the Human Rights of Children

Child trafficking is one of the most disturbing human rights abuses of our time, involving cases of boys and girls exploited for labor and/or commercial sexual services. These children may suffer physical, sexual, and emotional violence at the hands of traffickers, who can be pimps, employers, and even family members. Trafficking schemes may involve various forms of force, fraud, and coercion, which can be physical and/or psychological in nature. Current research indicates that legal services are a critical component of a comprehensive service delivery model for victims of human trafficking and a realization of human rights. However, little to no …

Summary Of State V. Greene, 129 Nev. Adv. Op. No. 58, Brittnie Watkins

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The Court considered an appeal from a district court order granting respondent’s post-conviction petition for a writ of habeas corpus.

Summary Of Brass V. State, 129 Nev. Adv. Op. 53, Katelyn J. Cantu

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The Court considered whether an attorney may file a substantive motion on a deceased client's behalf in a criminal case when a personal representative has not been substituted as a party to the appeal.

Summary Of State V. Robles-Nieves, 129 Nev. Adv. Op. No. 55, Sean Africk

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The Court considered the appropriate factors for evaluating a motion for the stay of a criminal proceeding pending the resolution of an interlocutory appeal from an order granting a motion to suppress evidence.

Summary Of Armenta-Carpio V. State, 129 Nev. Adv. Op. No. 54, Drew Wheaton

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The Court considered whether a concession-of-guilt strategy is equivalent to a guilty plea, thus requiring the district court to canvass a defendant to determine whether he knowingly and voluntarily consented to the concession of guilt.

Summary Of Clay V. Eighth Judicial District Court, 129 Nev. Adv. Op. 48, Katelyn Franklin

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The Court considered a petition for a writ of mandamus challenging an order from the district court denying a pretrial petition for a writ of habeas corpus. The question before the Court was whether a district attorney violates NRS 172.095(2) when he or she seeks an indictment for child abuse or neglect under NRS 200.508(1),2 based on nonaccidental physical injury, but fails to inform the grand jurors of the definition of “physical injury.”

Summary Of State V. Beckman, 129 Nev. Adv. Op. 51, Daniel Nubel

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

Appeal from a district court order granting a motion to suppress evidence. The Court clarified the government’s ability to subject citizens to drug sniffing dogs in the absence of reasonable suspicion.

Order, Technology And The Constitutional Meanings Of Criminal Procedure, Thomas P. Crocker

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

How Folk Beliefs About Free Will Influence Sentencing: A New Target For The Neuro-Determinist Critics Of Criminal Law, Emad H. Atiq

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Do recent results in neuroscience and psychology that portray our choices as predetermined threaten to undermine the assumptions about "free will" that drive criminal law? This article answers in the affirmative, and offers a novel argument for the transformative import of modern science. It also explains why a revision in the law's assumptions is morally desirable. Problematic assumptions about free will have a role to play in criminal law not because they underlie substantive legal doctrine or retributive theory, but because everyday actors in the sentencing process are authorized to make irreducibly moral determinations outside of the ordinary doctrinal framework. …

Putting The Trial Penalty On Trial, David S. Abrams

All Faculty Scholarship

The "trial penalty" is a concept widely accepted by all the major actors in the criminal justice system: defendants, prosecutors, defense attorneys, court employees, and judges. The notion is that defendants receive longer sentences at trial than they would have through plea bargain, often substantially longer. The concept is intuitive: longer sentences are necessary in order to induce settlements and without a high settlement rate it would be impossible for courts as currently structured to sustain their immense caseload. While intuitively appealing, this view of the trial penalty is completely at odds with economic prediction. Since both prosecutors and defendants …

Rational Criminal Addictions, Manuel A. Utset

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Was Ellen Wronged?, Stephen P. Garvey

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Imagine a citizen (call her Ellen) engages in conduct the state says is a crime, for example, money laundering. Imagine too that the state of which Ellen is a citizen has decided to make money laundering a crime. Does the state wrong Ellen when it punishes her for money laundering? It depends on what you think about the authority of the criminal law. Most criminal law scholars would probably say that the criminal law as such has no authority. Whatever authority is has depends on how well it adheres to the demands of morality inasmuch as morality is the only …

The Only Thing That Stops A Guy With A Bad Policy Is A Guy With A Good Policy: An Examination Of The Nra’S “National School Shield” Proposal, Gordon A. Crews, Angela D. Crews, Catherine E. Burton

Criminal Justice Faculty Research

With the recent tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, CT, the public and the government are looking for solutions to school violence. The National Rifle Association (NRA), a Second Amendment, pro-gun advocacy group, has proposed an “education and training emergency response program” called The National School Shield, which advocates the placement of armed security in schools. Although the program sounds provocative, serious questions complicate its plausibility, necessity, motive, and effectiveness. Furthermore, the potential policy and practical ramifications of encouraging armed security forces in U.S. schools are complex. The authors examined the proposal’s key elements from a public policy perspective …

Rage Against The Machine: A Reply To Professors Bierschbach And Bibas, Erik Luna

Scholarly Articles

The article presents a response to the article by Professor Albert Alschuler on the administrative rulemaking in criminal law enforcement and guiding the power which was wielded by criminal justice officials. It mentions that the increase in the rate of the punishment given to the convicts is less effective in reducing the crime and enhancing public safety. It informs that bureaucratization can be considered as the means to improve the criminal process in the U.S.

Searching For Solutions To The Indigent Defense Crisis In The Broader Criminal Justice Reform Agenda, Roger Fairfax

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

As we mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Gideon v. Wainwright decision, the nearly universal assessment is that our indigent defense system remains too under-resourced and overwhelmed to fulfill the promise of the landmark decision, and needs to be reformed. At the same time, fiscal necessity and moral outrage have prompted a historic reexamination of outdated policies that have led to an overreliance on incarceration and inefficiencies in the administration of criminal justice. This Essay argues that there are synergies between the indigent defense reform agenda and the broader criminal justice reform agenda, which places a premium on cost-effective, evidence-based, …

Schizophrenia: Causes, Crime, And Implications For Criminology And Criminal Justice, Anthony Walsh, Ilhong Yun

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper is aimed at criminologists and criminal justicians seeking to understand their role in educating law enforcement and correctional personnel who must deal with the mentally ill. It is motivated by William Johnson's (2011) recent call for rethinking the interface between mental illness, criminal justice, and academia, and his call for advocacy. We concur with his concerns, and insist that this rethinking must necessarily include grounding in the etiology of mental illness (specifically, with schizophrenia) as it is currently understood by researchers in the area. Advocacy must go hand in hand with a thorough knowledge of the condition of …

The Plea Bargain Crisis For Noncitizens In Misdemeanor Court, Jason A. Cade

Scholarly Works

This Article considers three factors contributing to a plea-bargain crisis for noncitizens charged with misdemeanors: 1) the expansion of deportation laws to include very minor offenses with little opportunity for discretionary relief from removal; 2) the integration of federal immigration enforcement programs with the criminal justice system; and 3) the institutional norms in non-federal lower criminal courts, where little attention is paid to evidence or individual equities and where bail and other process costs generally outweigh perceived incentives to fight charges. The Article contends that these factors increase the likelihood that a noncitizen’s low-level conviction will not reliably indicate guilt …

Humane Punishment For Seriously Disordered Offenders: Sentencing Departures And Judicial Control Over Conditions Of Confinement, E. Lea Johnston

UF Law Faculty Publications

At sentencing, a judge may foresee that an individual with a major mental disorder will experience serious psychological or physical harm in prison. In light of this reality and offenders’ other potential vulnerabilities, a number of jurisdictions currently allow judges to treat undue offender hardship as a mitigating factor at sentencing. In these jurisdictions, vulnerability to harm may militate toward an order of probation or a reduced term of confinement. Since these measures do not affect offenders’ day-to-day experience in confinement, these expressions of mitigation fail to protect adequately those vulnerable offenders who must serve time in prison. This Article …

Women In Prison In Argentina: Causes, Conditions, And Consequences, Cornell Law School. Avon Global Center For Women And Justice, DefensoríA General De La NacióN (Argentina), University Of Chicago. Law School. International Human Rights Clinic

Avon Global Center for Women and Justice and Dorothea S. Clarke Program in Feminist Jurisprudence

In recent years, the number of women in prison has increased throughout the world, including in Argentina. In Argentina’s federal prisons, the population of female prisoners has expanded nearly 200% in the past two decades, a much higher rate than the increase in the number of incarcerated men. It is important to understand why these numbers have increased so significantly and to recognize the gender-specific needs and challenges of women prisoners.

This report offers a valuable contribution towards our understanding of the causes, conditions, and consequences of women’s imprisonment in Argentina. It is based on extensive research, including desk research, …

Inchoate Crimes Revisited: A Behavioral Economics Perspective, Manuel A. Utset

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Have A Trial By Relevance, Not Severance - The Eccc's Case 002, Vani Sathisan, Jenny Holligan

2008 Asian Business & Rule of Law initiative

No abstract provided.

Safe To Drive? Police Powers Of Search And Seizure In The Vehicular Context, Mark Rucci

Honors College

Since their creation, automobiles have become a central facet of the American culture and psyche. As status symbols and modes of transportation their importance cannot be overstated. Americans love their cars, and the average citizen believes that he or she has legitimate privacy interests in his or her vehicle. But is this the case? For decades, The Court has struggled to balance 4th Amendment privacy rights with effective police procedure, and has thus handed down dozens of rulings on the topic, many of which often seem disparate and contradictory. In the face of such confusion, the Court’s answer has almost …

Summary Of Carter V. State, 129 Nev. Adv. Op. 26, Brittany Puzey

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

Whether a suspect who asks, “Can I get an attorney?” after he has been advised of his rights under Miranda , unambiguously invokes his right to counsel, and if so, whether the State can resume the interrogation of the suspect by reading him a second set of Miranda warnings and obtaining an otherwise valid waiver.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev And The Miranda Debate, Jana Nestlerode

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Long Arc Of Justice In Guatemala, Lauren Carasik

Media Presence

No abstract provided.

Summary Of Slaatte V. State, 129 Nev. Adv. Op. 23, David H. Rigdon

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

An appeal from a judgment of conviction that imposed restitution in an uncertain amount. Slaatte argued that Nevada law requires that a district court set a fixed amount of restitution when it determines that restitution is appropriate as part of a sentence.