Law Commons^™

Mens Rea And The Colorado Criminal Code, Marianne Wesson

Publications

No abstract provided.

Final Report On The Establishment Of An International Criminal Court For The Implementation Of The Apartheid Convention And Other Relevant International Instruments, Daniel H. Derby, M. Cherif Bassiouni

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Faces Without Features: The Surface Validity Of Criminal Inferences, Peter Lushing

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.

Conjugal Violence: The Law Of Force And The Force Of Law , Maria Marcus

Faculty Scholarship

The Article concludes that neither the impartial mission of the rule of law nor the neatly tooled goal of individual justice has been served by the governmental response to conjugal violence, and suggests the elements from which a valid approach may be constructed.

Two Modes Of Legal Thought, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

We should begin with a confession of ignorance. We have no jurisprudence of legal scholarship. Scholars expatiate at length on the work of other actors in the legal culture – legislators, judges, prosecutors, and even practicing lawyers. Yet we reflect little about what we are doing when we write about the law. We have a journal about the craft of teaching, but none about the craft of scholarship.

In view of our ignorance, we should pay particular heed to our point of departure. I start with the observation that legal scholarship expresses itself in a variety of verbal forms. Descriptive …

The Federal Rules Of Evidence: Six Years After, Paul F. Rothstein

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Federal Rules of Evidence have been in effect since 1975. Six years of experience is not much time in which to assess such a complex and important body of law. Nevertheless, there is now some "evidence" of the impact of the Federal Rules on the various states and circuits.

The Rules do seem to have proved successful enough to stimulate widespread imitation. Approximately half the states in the United States have or will very shortly have evidence codes patterned substantially on the Rules, even down to their numbers. Many of the remaining states (e.g., Iowa, Illinois, and Pennsylvania) have …

Authority And Consent, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

My starting point is the assumption that there is no general obligation to obey the law, not even a prima facie obligation and not even in a just society. This assumption is perhaps becoming more popular. In recent years it has been defended by several writers. There is more that needs to be said in its support, but I will not attempt to do so here. Instead, I will reflect on a problem posed by accepting it, a problem concerning the relations between an individual citizen and the state. It is common to think that the state has authority over …

"No Soul To Damn: No Body To Kick": An Unscandalized Inquiry Into The Problem Of Corporate Punishment, John C. Coffee Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

Did you ever expect a corporation to have a conscience, when it has no soul to be damned, and no body to be kicked?
—Edward, First Baron Thurlow 1731-1806

The Lord Chancellor of England quoted above was neither the first nor the last judge to experience frustration when faced with a convicted corporation. American sentencing judges are likely to face a similar dilemma with increasing frequency in the near future, for a number of signs indicate that corporate prosecutions will become increasingly commonplace. At first glance, the problem of corporate punishment seems perversely insoluble: moderate fines do not deter, …

State Prisoners, Federal Courts, And Playing By The Rules: An Analysis Of The Aldisert Committee's Recommended Procedures For Handling Prisoner Civil Rights Cases, Gay Gellhorn

Seattle University Law Review

The Comment first will recapitulate the full range of procedural initiatives proposed by the Aldisert Committee for adoption as local court rules. Then it will analyze the Committee's recommendations relating to pleading forms and screening the complaints before service of process, the critical stage at which courts dispose of most prisoner complaints. Although concluding that important aspects of the recommended procedures are fundamentally inconsistent with federal statutes and rules, this Comment acknowledges the valid concerns generating the Committee's proposals, and then suggests alternative judicial actions responsive to the phenomenon of state prisoner civil rights com- plaints in federal courts.

Reliable Identification: Could The Supreme Court Tell In Manson V. Brathwaite, Randolph N. Jonakait

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

An Inventory Of The Criminal Justice Curriculum Of American Law Schools, Paul M. Kurtz

Scholarly Works

The purpose of this study is to examine the structure of the criminal justice curriculum in the American law school. This entails an analysis of what courses are being offered, how many hours of classroom instruction (both required and elective) are available, and when during the educational process the student is exposed to criminal law courses. The reason for undertaking the study is to provide at least a gross picture of what the present situation is as a guide to what we as a profession or as individual schools might like to do by way of improving the structure. Hopefully, …

Perils Of The Rulemaking Process: The Development, Application, And Unconstitutionality Of Rule 804(B)(3)'S Penal Interest Exception, Peter W. Tague

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

As the culmination of a decade of rulemaking, in 1975 Congress enacted the Federal Rules of Evidence, which include in rule 804(b)(3) an exception to the hearsay rule that allows federal courts to admit statements against penal interest. Having reviewed previously unpublished memoranda and nonpublic tape recordings of the deliberations of the Advisory and Standing Committees to the Judicial Conference and the Special Subcommittee on Reform of Federal Criminal Laws of the House Judiciary Committee, Professor Tague explores the development of rule 804(b)(3), one of the more controversial rules that emerged from that rulemaking process. After analyzing rule 804(b)(3) and …

"Twisting Slowly In The Wind": A Search For Constitutional Limits On Coercion Of The Criminal Defendant, John C. Coffee Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

In the corridor outside Courtroom Four, Foster Clark approached the prosecutor. "I was wondering," he said, "are we really going to have to try this case?"

"Well," the prosecutor said, "that depends. He's dead on and gone to heaven, if that's what you mean. He doesn't have a prayer."

"I was wondering if we could work something out," Clark said. "I haven't really had a chance to talk with him, but I was wondering."

"So talk to him," the prosecutor said. "Find out where he stands, and call me."

* * *

"Look," the prosecutor said, "you know I can't …

Reflections On Felony-Murder, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

Of all the reforms proposed by the Model Penal Code, perhaps none has been less influential than the Model Code's recommendation on the perennial problem of felony-murder. As found in our nineteenth-century criminal codes, the rule has several variations. The basic scheme is to hold the accused liable for murder if the killing is connected in any way with the attempt to commit a felony or the flight from the scene of a felony. It does not matter whether the accused or an accomplice causes the death. Nor does it matter whether the killing occurs accidentally and non-negligently. According to …

Punishment And Compensation, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

When novelists and philosophers turn to the work of lawyers, they tend to gravitate toward certain issues and ignore others. Two processes-punishment and compensation-lie at the heart of our legal system, but only the former has drawn the attention of literary and philosophical minds.

The issues of wrongdoing, guilt, and expiation are of endless fascination not only for Dostoevsky and Dürrenmatt, but for any writer who seeks to fathom the foundations of our moral life. For philosophers, the concept of punishment has become a proving ground of the even broader conflict between deontological and utilitarian moral theories. Deontologists hold that …

The Plea Bargain In England And America: A Comparative Institutional Approach, Richard Adelstein

Richard Adelstein

A comparative view of adjudication by guilty plea in the US and the UK.

Institutional Function And Evolution In The Criminal Process, Richard Adelstein

Richard Adelstein

An extended development of the foundations of the price exaction model of the criminal process.