Law Commons^™

Punishment As Suffering, David Gray

Vanderbilt Law Review

When it comes to punishment, should we be subjectivists or objectivists? That is, should we define, measure, and justify punishment based on the subjective experiences of those who are punished or should we instead remain objective, focusing our attention on acts, culpability, and desert? In a recent series of high- profile articles, a group of contemporary scholars has taken up the mantle of subjectivism. In their view, criminal punishment is a grand machine for the production of negative subjective experiences-suffering. The machine requires calibration, of course. According to these scholars, the main standard we use for ours is comparative proportionality. …

Outsourcing And Insourcing Crime: The Political Economy Of Globalized Criminal Activity, Tomer Broude, Doron Teichman

Vanderbilt Law Review

Globalization is on the rise. The last few decades have been marked by dramatic reductions in transaction costs that have helped bring together local markets. Technological advances such as wireless telecommunications and the Internet have connected buyers and sellers of goods and services across the planet through transactions that were not even feasible, let alone cost-effective, as little as a decade ago. No less importantly, the systematic removal of regulatory barriers to international trade has facilitated economic globalization. At the forefront of international economic liberalization, the creation of the World Trade Organization ("WTO") in 1995 extended multilateral trading rules beyond …

"No Provincial Or Transient Notion": The Need For A Mistake Of Age Defense In Child Rape Prosecutions, Jarrod F. Reich

Vanderbilt Law Review

Suppose a state legislature enacted a law making any theft a crime punishable by twenty years' imprisonment. Within this law was a provision precluding an accused from introducing evidence that he unwittingly took property to which he was not entitled. Suppose further that after this law was enacted, an elderly woman hung her black coat in a restaurant's lobby and, upon leaving, mistakenly retrieved another's black coat. Under the hypothetical statute, her mistake could neither hinder the prosecution's case against her nor be asserted by her as a defense. By inadvertently taking another's coat from a crowded restaurant, the woman …

Specific Crime Vs. Criminal Ways: Criminal Conduct And Responsibility In Rule 3e1.1, Matthew Richardson

Vanderbilt Law Review

The United States Sentencing Commission ("Sentencing Commission") drafted Rule 3E1.1 with an inherent ambiguity, one that concerns both the Rule's purpose and design. Rule 3E1.1 allows for a reduction in sentence if a criminal "accepts responsibility" for his offense.' As result of the Rule's ambiguous language, prior tensions in interpretation of its meaning have spilled over into the current debate over sentence reductions.

The inherent ambiguity results from the Rule's genesis. The Sentencing Commission enacted the Rule with the purpose of increasing predictability in sentencing by reducing judicial discretion. Before the enactment of the Rule, mitigating and aggravating circumstances allowed …

Stretching The "Terry" Doctrine To The Search For Evidence Of Crime: Canine Sniffs, State Constitutions, And The Reasonable Suspicion Standard, Kenneth L. Pollack

Vanderbilt Law Review

The Fourth Amendment, protects an individual's interest in freedom from unreasonable government intrusions into personal privacy. When a court finds an investigative technique to be a search within the Amendment's meaning, it effectively concludes that Fourth Amendment protection should apply. If the government activity constitutes a search, that activity must be reasonable. If the activity does not amount to a search, however, the government enjoys virtual freedom to conduct that activity as unreasonably as it pleases. For pure investigatory searches, the United States Supreme Court has found that the probable cause requirement strikes the proper balance in defining reasonableness. Unlike …

The Limits Of Law Enforcement, Hans Zeisel

Vanderbilt Law Review

Society will not be able to solve the crime problem before it has solved the problems of the ghettos. Such an undertaking is a big task, on which society thus far has worked with little diligence.Even if efforts are increased beyond their present level, the task will take a long time. Nevertheless, the question must be ad-dressed, and the statistics point precisely to where the endeavor must begin. Crime typically starts early in life, therefore, radical efforts should be made to reach these crime-prone youths before their life style is fixed. One particular statistic illuminates the problem and suggests a …

How Serious Is Serious Crime?, Albert J. Reiss, Jr.

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Article examines the information systems that are available to the American public. Part H of the Article discusses crime information sources and limitations arising from their excessive dependence upon the same sources of information. Parts III and IV of the Article focus on the information and methods that American society depends upon to determine the amount and seriousness of"serious" crime. These parts of the Article criticize society's present modes of crime assessment by evaluating public perceptions of crime under several standards for determining the amount of harm that results from different criminal acts. In part V, the Article examines …

Book Reviews, Frank J. Remington, George B. Tindall

Vanderbilt Law Review

Fair and Certain Punishment

Review by Frank J. Remington

Punishing Criminals. By Ernest van den Haag. New York: BasicBooks, Inc., 1975. Thinking About Crime. By James Q. Wilson. New York: BasicBooks, Inc., 1975.

Times change. So also do opinions about important social problems such as crime and government's response to crime. The books of both van den Haag and Wilson reflect changing opinions on crime and on what to do about crime. Both urge that we abandon the view that social conditions are an important cause of crime and that an improvement in social conditions will reduce crime substantially.Both urge …

Compensation For Victims Of Crimes, Law Review Staff

Vanderbilt Law Review

The steadily increasing number of crimes in the United States and other Western countries brings about not only the destruction of property and the expenditure of money and effort to apprehend and punish the criminals, but also physical injury to thousands of innocent victims.' Although our society has established elaborate safe-guards for the rights of the accused criminal, the injured victim is left to shoulder the responsibility of paying his own medical bills and providing for his own living expenses while he is unable to work. Because of the extremely high cost of medical and hospital care, even a well …

Book Reviews, Edward R. Hayes, Bennett B. Patterson, Elston Roady

Vanderbilt Law Review

Anatomy of a Murder

By Robert Traver

This novel of a killing and its consequences has great dramatic qualities and is outstanding in its description of the lawyer's role in defending one accused of crime. The author, who has written several other books under the name of Robert Traver, qualifies as a legal expert through many years of practice in the Upper Peninsula; he has also recently become a Justice on the Supreme Court of Michigan.

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Groups and the Constitution

By Robert A. Horn

The first chapter in the book, which deals with the growth of the freedom of …