Law Commons^™

Delusions Of Judicial Grandeur: State V. Wierson And The Return To Statutory Sanity, Max Jordan Katz

Mercer Law Review

Georgia’s insanity defenses have long reflected tension between accountability and mental illness. The State’s statutory framework, which preserves both a “mental incapacity” and “delusional compulsion” defense, reflects this tension. Yet for decades, the Supreme Court of Georgia’s decision in Bailey v. State imposed a judicial limitation: a defendant who “brought about” her own delusion through voluntary acts or omissions could not claim insanity. The court’s recent decision in State v. Wierson marks a turning point. In Wierson, the court considered whether noncompliance with psychiatric medication preempts the defendant from invoking statutory insanity defenses. Rejecting Bailey, the court reasserted the primacy …

Deliberately Silenced, Rachel Kincaid

Mercer Law Review

The Prison Litigation Reform Act is celebrating its 30^th birthday this year. It was designed to make it harder for incarcerated people to file lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of their conditions of confinement and to restrict their remedies even when they do so successfully. It has been wildly effective at achieving those objectives. It has also propped up mass incarceration and facilitated the persistence of dismal conditions of confinement in carceral facilities in the United States.

The PLRA’s exhaustion requirement—arguably its most damaging provision—silences carceral voices without regard for the merit of their complaints. It does so by mandating …

The Evasive Epidemic Of Missing Black Children, Trinity D. Garlick

Criminal Law Society Blog

The Evasive Epidemic of Missing Black Children” brings to light the disproportionately low amount of media support for missing Black Children. It draws on examples of missing Black Children, like Adam Walsh and other Atlanta Black children, to illustrate how Black children have gone ignored by the public for too long. It discusses factors such as failure of state legislatures, lack of media exposure, unfair and racial fixed labels, and law enforcement discretionary conduct, as the leading drivers of the epidemic of missing Black children. This Article then dives into efforts to reform the American system to adequately address when …

Perang Irak- Iran Mengancam Keamanan Pelayaran Kapal Negara Netral, Rusdi Malik, S.H.

Jurnal Hukum & Pembangunan

Abstract

Advokat Dan Penegakan Hukum Dalam Perspektif Peradilan Pidana, Luhut M.P. Pangaribuan, S.H.

Jurnal Hukum & Pembangunan

Abstract

Minimal Success: The Consequences Of Mandatory Minimums In Youth Sentencing, Maya Chrobot

Fordham Law Review

In New York State, children as young as thirteen can be processed as adults and sentenced to mandatory minimum sentences. Mandatory minimum sentences require judges to sentence the defendant to a statutorily set minimum term of imprisonment. Practitioners, judges, and researchers question the efficacy of mandatory minimum sentences, finding that they are ineffective at deterring crime, decreasing bias in sentencing, and increasing community safety. Additionally, there is clear evidence about the damaging effects of incarceration on young adults. Instead of functioning as rehabilitative punishment, incarceration leads young adults to experience poor mental and physical health outcomes upon release, and they …

Interior Optimal Imprisonment Under Diminishing Marginal Disutility, Tim Friehe, Murat C. Mungan

Faculty Scholarship

This note revisits the important question of how fines and imprisonment should be optimally employed. In D’Antoni et al. (2022), a monotone hazard rate condition implies a corner solution for imprisonment in the observable-wealth benchmark when imprisonment disutility is linear. We show that this result is not robust to offenders facing diminishing marginal disutility of imprisonment. The optimal prison term is interior as long as the marginal disutility associated with large imprisonment terms are low and the harms from the offense are large enough to warrant imprisonment. The sentence length thus becomes a genuine policy margin rather than a boundary …

The Press, Privacy, Expungement, And Second Chances: Shifting The Paradigm, Brian M. Murray

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Using State Sentencing Enhancements To Protect Journalists From Physical Assault, Anthony L. Fargo

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Drawing Lines In The Substance: Questioning The Inconsistent Application Of West Virginia's Recidivist Statute In Cases Involving Controlled Substance Violations, Patrick Hassen

West Virginia Law Review

For decades, West Virginia’s recidivist statute required courts to sentence repeat felony offenders to life in prison even if their offenses were not violent. Over the years, the statute mandated life sentences for triggering offenses as minor as writing a bad check or failing to register a new phone number with the police. Unsurprisingly, the statute has come under its fair share of constitutional attack for violating the state Constitution’s proportionality principle. In 1981 the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia held the state’s proportionality principle requires a strict interpretation of the recidivist statute in favor of the defendant. …

Individualized Cannabis Reparations, Scott Bloomberg

Faculty Publications

This Article makes an argument that should be obvious. The best way for governments to right the wrongs of cannabis prohibition is to give money to people with cannabis offenses. Nonetheless, this straightforward reform has been consistently overlooked, dismissed, or minimized by policymakers and scholars alike, eschewed in favor of other social equity programs that do not right those wrongs nearly as effectively. Governments have indeed invested hundreds of millions of cannabis tax dollars in social equity licensing programs and community reinvestment initiatives. These programs-while often worthwhile-do not benefit the vast majority of people with past cannabis offenses. Governments should …

Harmless In Name Only: Prosecutorial Misconduct And The Right To A Fair Trial, Jennifer Brinkman

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

Prosecutorial misconduct during trial—particularly improper questioning of witnesses and improper argument—occurs in front of the jury and directly shapes its deliberations. Yet appellate courts routinely dismiss such misconduct as “harmless error,” allowing convictions to stand even when prosecutors violate defendants’ rights. This Article contends that the harmless error framework both underestimates the impact of misconduct on jurors and undermines the Constitutional guarantee of a fair trial. It proposes that certain instances of misconduct that occur during trial should be classified as structural error, requiring automatic reversal. This would protect defendants’ right to a fair trial and maintain the integrity of …

Before The Last Breath: How Alabama’S Nitrogen Execution Adoption Created A Procedural Crisis On Death Row, Caroline E. Penfield

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

In 2024 and 2025, Alabama executed eleven people. During this time and in the years leading up to it, the State botched multiple lethal injections. Seeking an ostensibly constitutional way to continue carrying out executions, Alabama introduced death by nitrogen gas suffocation. The problems with lethal injection are not unique to Alabama, but Alabama was the first to adopt and use the novel nitrogen gas method, despite concerns from medical professionals, the public, and inmates themselves. Alabama put little to no protocol in place for inmates to exercise their statutory right to elect this method, leading to confusion and harm. …

Reel It In: Untangling The Circuit Split On The Constitutionality Of Geofence Warrants Under The Fourth Amendment, Kate P. Risser

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

This Note examines geofence warrants and their ongoing threat to constitutionally protected rights such as privacy, speech, and assembly. Part I will provide background information on geofence warrants and examine the prominent justifications for the use of the warrants. Part II will examine how law enforcement’s use of geofence warrants threatens citizens’ constitutionally protected fundamental rights like privacy and reproductive rights. Specifically, Part II addresses how geofence warrants disproportionately target and affect women, people of color, and low-income individuals. Part III will detail the history of the Fourth Amendment tracing its roots to before the Founding Era then exploring applicable …

The Crime We Forget? White-Collar Crime: Problems In Defining Motive And Enforcement Of Followers, John Stillman

Notre Dame JLEPP: In Limine

John Stillman explains problems in defining and enforcing against white-collar crime, focusing on followers.

Federal Extreme Risk Protection Orders: A Potential Pathway To Preventing Mass Shootings, Lilly H. Donahue

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

This Note examines how the creation and implementation of a federal extreme risk protection order (ERPO) statute would impact federal investigations, mass shooting prevention, and the reduction of firearm deaths at large. While ERPOs exist in several states, there is currently no federal statutory scheme to allow federal law enforcement agencies to pursue ERPOs against citizens at risk of harming themselves or others with firearms. By examining the current legal landscape of state-level ERPOs, federal agencies’ investigatory procedures and failures, constitutional and racial equity concerns, and industry best practices, this Note aims to explore what a federal ERPO statute could …

Sanctioning Lawyer-Criminals, Jon J. Lee

Washington and Lee Law Review

Until now there has been relatively little consideration given to disciplinary agencies’ sanctioning of lawyers who commit or are convicted of crimes, so called “lawyer-criminals.” This is likely because most assume that these offenders make up a tiny percentage of disciplinary cases. It also may explain why jurisdictions continue to employ disparate approaches regarding what types of criminal conduct warrant professional intervention, the appropriate sanctions to impose on lawyer-criminals, and whether lawyers convicted of certain offenses should be automatically excluded from practice.

This Article makes three primary contributions to the discourse on reforming professional lawyer regulation to protect the public …

Drug War Repair Guarantees, Amber Baylor

Washington and Lee Law Review

Drug legalization, especially cannabis legalization, is a critical step forward in states’ willingness to address systemic disparities, privacy intrusions, violence, and other harms of the drug war. Yet, reforms center on legalization and repair through a narrow lens, focused on changes to the penal code. The public has found that narrow forms of legalization cannot serve their purported reparative purpose. Narrowly drawn legalization is illusory. Drug war harms and punishment for legalized substance use continue. Legalization reforms are vulnerable to political trends, resulting in rollback and retrenchment of drug war operations.

Legalization cannot deliver on its reparative terms without guarantees. …

Constructive Falsity, Legal Truth, And The Public Interest In Not Reporting On Expunged Records, Itay Ravid

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Structuring The Notional Imprisonment Period When The Accused Is Unfit To Plead – Abdul Ghufran Bin Abdul Wahid V Public Prosecutor, Abhishek Behera, Aaron Yoong

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This case comment examines how Abdul Ghufran bin Abdul Wahid v Public Prosecutor [2025] 3 SLR 1572 brings clarity to Singapore’s “fitness to plead” regime by structuring the nominal imprisonment period (“NIP”) as a principled, non-punitive ceiling on confinement for unfit accused persons. It explains the General Division of the High Court’s four-step framework, the elevation of prevention over rehabilitation at the NIP stage, and the constrained role of mental disorders in adjusting the provisional term. It further highlights the decisive influence of psychiatric evidence and explores how the framework mediates between consistency, individualised justice, and public protection.

Verdict Format On Trial: Experimental Tests Of The Criminal Law’S Orthodoxy, Avani Mehta Sood

Vanderbilt Law Review

For centuries, American criminal courts have overwhelmingly favored “general” verdicts over “special” verdicts, without giving the latter a fair trial. A general verdict requires criminal jurors to deliver only an ultimate judgment of “guilty” or “not guilty” on a charged offense. In contrast, a special verdict would require jurors to answer a sequence of questions about whether each legal element of the charged offense has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt before they deliver a final judgment. The criminal law’s conventional wisdom holds that special verdicts will disadvantage defendants by constraining jurors’ latitude to temper or nullify the law, thereby …

A Real Account Of Deep Fakes, Benjamin L.W Sobel

Michigan Law Review

Laws regulating pornographic deepfakes are written to prohibit “digital forgeries,” “false” images, or media “indistinguishable” from “authentic” recordings. Yet the typical anti-deepfake law covers materials that aren’t forgeries, aren’t false, and that reasonable observers can easily distinguish from authentic recordings. Though drafted as if they regulate statements of fact, anti-deepfake laws actually target certain outrageous depictions per se—and rightly so, because pornographic deepfakes cause harm irrespective of their truth or falsity. However, the inapposite language of facts results in statutes with crucial ambiguities. Moreover, because anti-deepfake laws ban outrageous depictions irrespective of the factual assertions they make, they differ fundamentally …

The Territorial Continuum: American Samoa, Criminal Adjudication, And Territorial Administration, Emmanuel Hiram Arnaud

Faculty Scholarship

The standard account of American territorial expansion posits that territorial acquisition moved along a spectrum of sovereignty. The federal government acquired new inhabited land through conquest or purchase, and the Constitution tasked Congress with organizing and administering the new territories until they were ready to become states. That pattern came to an abrupt halt in 1898 when, at the conclusion of the Spanish-American War, the Supreme Court, fearing the extension of citizenship to, and the permanent integration of, non-White populations into the American polity, suddenly pronounced that the Constitution authorized the holding of colonies. The Court thus sentenced new territories, …

Probing The Prevalence Of Pharmaceutical Corruption, Marc A. Rodwin

Suffolk University Law School Faculty Works

This article reviews the history and current evidence of systematic pharmaceutical industry corruption.  It draws on studies by the OECD on international corruption; reports of the Securities and Exchange Commission; studies of the Public Citizen health Research Group of settlement agreements between federal and state authorities and pharmaceutical firm; the history of the Medicare and Medicaid Anti-Kickback Act; professional and industry codes of ethics; the literature on institutional corruption; and studies of conflicts of interest.  These sources support findings of systemic corruption since the mid-20th century. The paper also explores the relationship between classic corruption, institutional corruption and conflicts of …

Listening To Survivors: A Community Conversation, Jonathan Jackson

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Core Elements Of Policy Solutions, Audrey Morrissey

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

(Mis)Judging Suspicion, Sherri Lee Keene

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Twenty-five years ago, the Supreme Court decided Illinois v. Wardlow, a Fourth Amendment case that allowed the high-crime nature of a location to be considered in determinations of whether there was reasonable suspicion to support a police stop. In making these determinations, courts rarely acknowledge the role that race can play in decisions that factor in the nature of a location as context. Yet even when the race of a defendant is not mentioned, high-crime area designations can act as a proxy for race inviting racial bias into courts’ analyses. Reasonable suspicion analysis involves the interpretation of a suspect’s …

Lessons Learned From Global Responses To Criminal Abortion Laws, Cynthia Soohoo

Fordham Law Review Online

No abstract provided.

Ibu Kota Nusantara Sebagai Daerah Khusus Berdasarkan Desentralisasi Asimetris, Krisna Bagas Purwopangestu, Sri Wahyuningsih

Jurnal Hukum & Pembangunan

This research examines the legal issue concerning the administration of regional government in Nusantara Capital City (IKN) which has been consider by some scholars as demonstrating deviations from the principle of decentralization. This research takes a position contrary to the mainstream legal discourse that argues there is a conceptual deviation in the model of regional governance in IKN. This research is normative legal research employing a conceptual approach and statutory approach with data collected through library research. This research argues that the administration of regional government in IKN does not indicate any deviation from the principle of decentralization. IKN is …

The Exoneration Of Archie Williams, Dominic R. Graves

SACAD: Scholarly Activities

This poster covers the case of Archie Williams, a man incarcerated for a crime he did not commit. Multiple forensic science and criminalistic strategies were employed to exonerate Williams after years of incarcerations. Fingerprints and false identification were themes throughout the case. Much of the evidence was used in the trial but disregarded, only to be used to appeal the punishment. This poster highlights the case, the issues with repeat line-ups, and the accuracy of fingerprints. The poster also conveys alternative actions that could have prevented this unfortunate outcome. This is but one story of many others who have been …