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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Progress Of Passion, Kathryn Abrams
The Progress Of Passion, Kathryn Abrams
Kathryn Abrams
Like an abandoned fortress, the dichotomy between reason and the passions casts a long shadow over the domain of legal thought. Beset by forces from legal realism to feminist epistemology, this dichotomy no longer holds sovereign sway. Yet its structure helps to articulate the boundaries of the legal field; efforts to move in and around it infuse present thinking with the echoes of a conceptually distinct past. Early critics of the dichotomy may unwittingly have prolonged its influence through the frontal character of their attacks. By challenging a strong distinction between emotion and reason, critics kept it, paradoxically, before legal …
Fighting Fines & Fees: Borrowing From Consumer Law To Combat Criminal Justice Debt Abuses, Neil L. Sobol
Fighting Fines & Fees: Borrowing From Consumer Law To Combat Criminal Justice Debt Abuses, Neil L. Sobol
Neil L Sobol
Although media and academic sources often describe mass incarceration as the primary challenge facing the American criminal justice system, the imposition of criminal justice debt may be a more pervasive problem. On March 14, 2016, the Department of Justice (DOJ) requested that state chief justices forward a letter to all judges in their jurisdictions describing the constitutional violations associated with the illegal assessment and enforcement of fines and fees. The DOJ’s concerns include the incarceration of indigent individuals without determining whether the failure to pay is willful and the use of bail practices that result in impoverished defendants remaining in …
Lessons Learned From Ferguson: Ending Abusive Collection Of Criminal Justice Debt, Neil L. Sobol
Lessons Learned From Ferguson: Ending Abusive Collection Of Criminal Justice Debt, Neil L. Sobol
Neil L Sobol
On March 4, 2015, the Department of Justice released its scathing report of the Ferguson Police Department calling for “an entire reorientation of law enforcement in Ferguson” and demanding that Ferguson “replace revenue-driven policing with a system grounded in the principles of community policing and police legitimacy, in which people are equally protected and treated with compassion, regardless of race.” Unfortunately, abusive collection of criminal justice debt is not limited to Ferguson. This Article, prepared for a discussion group at the Southeastern Association of Law Schools conference in July 2015, identifies the key findings in the Department of Justice’s report …
Charging The Poor: Criminal Justice Debt & Modern-Day Debtors' Prisons, Neil L. Sobol
Charging The Poor: Criminal Justice Debt & Modern-Day Debtors' Prisons, Neil L. Sobol
Neil L Sobol
Debtors’ prisons should no longer exist. While imprisonment for debt was common in colonial times in the United States, subsequent constitutional provisions, legislation, and court rulings all called for the abolition of incarcerating individuals to collect debt. Despite these prohibitions, individuals who are unable to pay debts are now regularly incarcerated, and the vast majority of them are indigent. In 2015, at least ten lawsuits were filed against municipalities for incarcerating individuals in modern-day debtors’ prisons. Criminal justice debt is the primary source for this imprisonment.
Criminal justice debt includes fines, restitution charges, court costs, and fees. Monetary charges exist …
Written Testimony For Briefing On Targeted Fines And Fees Against Low-Income Minorities: Civil Rights And Constitutional Implications, Neil L. Sobol
Written Testimony For Briefing On Targeted Fines And Fees Against Low-Income Minorities: Civil Rights And Constitutional Implications, Neil L. Sobol
Neil L Sobol
Correcting A Fatal Lottery: A Proposal To Apply The Civil Discrimination Standards To The Death Penalty, Joseph Thomas
Correcting A Fatal Lottery: A Proposal To Apply The Civil Discrimination Standards To The Death Penalty, Joseph Thomas
Joseph Thomas
Claims of discrimination are treated differently in the death penalty context. Discrimination in employment, housing, civil rights and jury venire all use a burden-shifting framework with the preponderance of the evidence as the standard. Discrimination that occurs in death penalty proceedings is the exception to the rule -- the framework offers less protections; there is only one phase of argumentation, with a heightened evidentiary standard of “exceptionally clear proof.” With disparate levels of protections against discrimination, the standard and framework for adjudicating claims of discrimination in the death penalty is unconstitutional.
Death is different as a punishment. But does discrimination …
Equal Protection And The Prosecutor's Charging Decision: Enforcing An Ideal, Donald G. Gifford
Equal Protection And The Prosecutor's Charging Decision: Enforcing An Ideal, Donald G. Gifford
Donald G Gifford
No abstract provided.