Law Commons^™

Plain Error Rule--Clarifying Plain Error Analysis Under Rule 52(B) Of The Federal Rules Of Criminal Procedure, Jeffrey L. Lowry

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Gender In A Structured Sentencing System: Equal Treatment, Policy Choices, And The Sentencing Of Female Offenders Under The United States Sentencing Guidelines, Ilene H. Nagel, Barry L. Johnson

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

No abstract provided.

Gender, Crime, And The Criminal Law Defenses, Deborah W. Denno

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

No abstract provided.

Is Gender Subordinate To Class--An Empirical Assessment Of Colvin And Pauly's Structural Marxist Theory Of Delinquency, Sally S. Simpson, Lori Elis

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

No abstract provided.

Dual Construction Of Rico: The Road Not Taken In Reves, Bryan T. Camp

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Hobbs Act: Maintaining The Distinction Between A Bribe And A Gift, Medrith Lee Hager

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Hearsay And Informal Reasoning, Craig R. Callen

Vanderbilt Law Review

The Federal Rules of Evidence define hearsay as "a statement, other than one made by the declarant while testifying at the trial or hearing, offered in evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted."' A statement, in turn, is "(1) an oral or written assertion or (2) nonverbal conduct of a person, if it is intended by the person as an assertion." Hearsay is inadmissible unless it falls within an exception to the rule or an exclusion from the definition. Courts and commentators often write as if the distinctions they make between hearsay and nonhearsay are consistent with informal …

First Amendment--Penalty Enhancement For Hate Crimes: Content Regulation, Questionable State Interests And Non-Traditional Sentencing, Thomas D. Brooks

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

No abstract provided.

The Meaning Of Gender Equality In Criminal Law, Dorothy E. Roberts

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

No abstract provided.

A Critical View From The Inside: An Application Of Critical Legal Studies To Criminal Law, Katheryn K. Russell

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

No abstract provided.

The Influence Of The Garner Decision On Police Use Of Deadly Force, Abraham N. Tennenbaum

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

No abstract provided.

Book Review

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

No abstract provided.

Recent Books

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

No abstract provided.

Mistake Of Fact In The Objective Theory Of Justification: Do Two Rights Make Two Wrongs Make Two Rights, Russell L. Christopher

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

No abstract provided.

A Transatlantic Perspective On The Compensation Of Crime Victims In The United States, Desmond S. Greer

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

No abstract provided.

How Reasonable Is The Reasonable Man: Police And Excessive Force, Geoffrey P. Alpert, William C. Smith

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

No abstract provided.

Categorical And Individualized Rights-Ordering On Federal Habeas Corpus, Daniel B. Yeager

Faculty Scholarship

This Article criticizes the Supreme Court's treatment of both individualized and categorical bases of relief on federal habeas corpus. Part I notes the Court's trend toward trimming the process that is due in criminal and prisoner litigation generally. This trend may explain the drop in process on habeas as well, but generally declining process cannot explain which rights, if any, should survive the decline. That would require our weighting, if not reconciling, accuracy and dignitary norms, which is the subject of Part II. In Part II, I examine Withrow v Williams, a case from the Court's 1992 Term, which, for …

Overbroad Civil Forfeiture Statutes Are Unconstitutionally Vague, Deborah Duseau, David Schoenbrod

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Are Criminal Codes Irrelevant?, Paul H. Robinson

All Faculty Scholarship

After planning the effort for twenty years, the American Law Institute spent ten years debating and drafting a model criminal code. Twenty-eight drafters and forty-two advisors produced thirteen reports that were debated at eight annual meetings. Twenty years later, seven reporters with twenty-five advisors completed six volumes of official commentaries. This monumental drafting effort served as only the starting point for nearly two-thirds of the states that have recodified their criminal codes since the Model Penal Code was promulgated in 1962. In every instance a commission, legislative committee, or both, devoted additional time and energy redebating and revising the 1962 …

A Functional Analysis Of Criminal Law, Paul H. Robinson

All Faculty Scholarship

The criminal law has three primary functions. First, it must define and announce the conduct that is prohibited (or required) by the criminal law. Such rules of conduct, as they have been called, provide ex ante direction to members of the community as to the conduct that must be avoided (or that must be performed) upon pain of criminal sanction. This may be termed the rule articulation function of the doctrine. When a violation of the rules of conduct occurs, the criminal law takes on a different role. It must decide whether the violation merits criminal liability. This second function, …

The Sanist Lives Of Jurors In Death Penalty Cases: The Puzzling Role Of Mitigating Mental Disability Evidence, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

What Is Punishment Imposed For?, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

The institution of punishment invites a number of philosophical queries. Sometimes the question is: How do we know that inflicting discomfort and disadvantage is indeed punishment? This is a critical question, for example, in cases of deportation or disbarment proceedings. Classifying the sanction as punishment triggers application of the Sixth Amendment and its procedural guarantees. In other situations the question might be: Why do we punish? What is the purpose of making people suffer? In this context, we encounter the familiar debates about the conflicting appeal of retribution, general deterrence, special deterrence, and rehabilitation.

In this article I wish to …

Violence Against Lesbians And Gay Men, Suzanne B. Goldberg, Bea Hanson

Faculty Scholarship

Faggot! Dyke! Pervert! Homo!" Just words? Or rhetoric that illuminates and fuels hatred of lesbians and gay men? How often are these words supplemented by the use of a bat, golf clubs, a hammer, a knife, a gun? Studies indicate that lesbians and gay men experience criminal victimization at rates significantly higher than other individuals and are the most frequent victims of bias crime.

Since lesbians and gay men live all across the country – in large cities, small towns, and rural areas – we can be targets of bias crime no matter where we live. From the attacks against …

Taking The Fifth: Reconsidering The Origins Of The Constitutional Privilege Against Self-Incrimination, Eben Moglen

Faculty Scholarship

The purpose of this essay is to cast doubt on two basic elements of the received historical wisdom concerning the privilege as it applies to British North America and the early United States. First, early American criminal procedure reflected less tenderness toward the silence of the criminal accused than the received wisdom has claimed. The system could more reasonably be said to have depended on self-incrimination than to have eschewed it, and this dependence increased rather than decreased during the provincial period for reasons intimately connected with the economic and social context of the criminal trial in colonial America.

Second, …

Bad Advice: The Entrapment By Estoppel Doctrine In Criminal Law, Sean Connelly

University of Miami Law Review

No abstract provided.

Between The Frontier And The Big City: Sixty Years Of Small-Town Murder Prosecution, Chris Guthrie

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This article examines small-town murder in Johnson County, Kansas, from 1880 to 1939. While providing lurid details of the murders committed over a sixty-year period in the county's small towns and villages, this article concludes that smalltown murder was slightly different from murder elsewhere. The overwhelming impression one gets from reviewing these rural murder cases is that small-town murder - though criminal and violent - was more a matter of inept dispute resolution than a matter of violent crime. True, the frontier and the big cities saw their share of petty disputes "resolved" through murder. But the small-town murders, at …

Depravity Thrice Removed: Using The 'Heinous, Cruel, Or Depraved' Factor To Aggravate Convictions Of Nontriggermen Accomplices In Capital Cases, Richard W. Garnett

Journal Articles

In Tison v. Arizona, the Tison brothers' appeal from their death sentences, the U.S. Supreme Court held that a nontriggerman convicted of first-degree felony murder could constitutionally be executed if he was a major participant in the crime and if he exhibited a reckless disregard for human life. This decision blurred the bright-line rule announced just five years earlier in Enmund v. Florida, which limited the death penalty to defendants who kill, attempt to kill, or at least intend to kill. Tison thus dramatically increased the exposure of nontriggermen to capital punishment, undercutting the death penalty's limited purpose of identifying …

The Role Of Harm And Evil In Criminal Law: A Study In Legislative Deception?, Paul H. Robinson

All Faculty Scholarship

What is the role of the occurrence of harm or evil in criminal law? What should it be? Answers to these questions commonly use the distinction between what is called an objective and a subjective view of criminality. To oversimplify, the objective view maintains that the occurrence of the harm or evil defined by the offense is highly relevant. The subjectivist view maintains that such harm or evil is irrelevant; only the actor's culpable state of mind regarding the occurrence of the harm or evil is important. The labels tend to overstate a rather subtle distinction. The objectivist or harmful …

Of Laws And Men: An Essay On Justice Marshall's View Of Criminal Procedure, Daniel C. Richman, Bruce A. Green

Faculty Scholarship

As a general rule, criminal defendants whose cases made it to the Supreme Court between 1967 and 1991 must have thought that, as long as Justice Thurgood Marshall occupied one of the nine seats, they had one vote for sure. And Justice Marshall rarely disappointed them – certainly not in cases of any broad constitutional significance. From his votes and opinions, particularly his dissents, many were quick to conclude that the Justice was another of those "bleeding heart liberals," hostile to the mission of law enforcement officers and ready to overlook the gravity of the crimes of which the defendants …

On The Moral Irrelevance Of Bodily Movements, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

In the mess of confusions called Anglo-American criminal law, writers commonly refer to the "problem of punishing omissions." There is something untoward, they say, about imposing criminal liability on the bystander who could intervene to save a drowning child and fails to do so. Punishing acts in violation of the law is all right, but there is some special difficulty, never completely understood and clarified, about imposing liability for omissions.

The confusion about omissions has suffered unnecessary compounding by the organization of one of the leading casebooks on criminal law. Apparently not quite sure where to locate their cases on …