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Full-Text Articles in Law
With Unanimity And Justice For All: The Case For Retroactive Application Of The Unanimous Jury Verdict Requirement, Kara Kurland
With Unanimity And Justice For All: The Case For Retroactive Application Of The Unanimous Jury Verdict Requirement, Kara Kurland
Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy
Until the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision in Ramos v. Louisiana, non-unanimous jury verdicts were constitutional and utilized in two states: Louisiana and Oregon. The Ramos decision not only declared the practice of non-unanimous jury verdicts unconstitutional, but it also emphasized the essential nature of jury verdict unanimity in criminal trials throughout American history and legal jurisprudence. A year later, in Edwards v. Vannoy, the Court considered retroactive application of Ramos. Utilizing the test created in Teague v. Lane that assessed the retroactivity of new rules of criminal procedure, the Court announced that, despite the essential nature of the unanimous jury …
The Jury Trial Reinvented, Christopher Robertson, Michael Shammas
The Jury Trial Reinvented, Christopher Robertson, Michael Shammas
Faculty Scholarship
The Framers of the Sixth and Seventh Amendments to the United States Constitution recognized that jury trials were essential for maintaining democratic legitimacy and avoiding epistemic crises. As an institution, the jury trial is purpose-built to engage citizens in the process of deliberative, participatory democracy with ground rules. The jury trial provides a carefully constructed setting aimed at sorting truth from falsehood.
Despite its value, the jury trial has been under assault for decades. Concededly, jury trials can sometimes be inefficient, unreliable, unpredictable, and impractical. The COVID–19 pandemic rendered most physical jury trials unworkable but spurred some courts to begin …
Let's Make Some "Scents" Of Our Fourth Amendment Rights: The Discriminatory Truths Behind Using The Mere Smell Of Burnt Marijuana As Probable Cause To Search A Vehicle, Alessandra Dumenigo
Let's Make Some "Scents" Of Our Fourth Amendment Rights: The Discriminatory Truths Behind Using The Mere Smell Of Burnt Marijuana As Probable Cause To Search A Vehicle, Alessandra Dumenigo
St. Thomas Law Review
This Comment addresses the negative effects that have resulted and will continue to result if police officers are encouraged by jurisprudence to conduct a warrantless search of an entire vehicle based on the smell of burnt marijuana. Warrantless searches of an entire vehicle based merely on the smell of burnt marijuana grant officers unlimited power that will likely result in police misconduct, an increase in racially profiled traffic stops, and a distrust between police officers and the Black community amid the nationwide outrage over the death of George Floyd. Part II of this Comment discusses the history of the Fourth …
Pandemic, Protest, And Agency: Jury Service And Equal Protection In A Future Defined By Covid-19, Patrick C. Brayer
Pandemic, Protest, And Agency: Jury Service And Equal Protection In A Future Defined By Covid-19, Patrick C. Brayer
Faculty Works
This essay calls for an expansive view of Fourteenth Amendment equal protection against the discriminatory empanelment of juries grounded upon a culture of systemic racism. For an individual juror fundamental elements of survival during a pandemic are access to health care, safe transportation, and connective technology. Yet, structural and systemic racism precludes many potential jurors of color from securing these necessary supports, thus denying them the ability to be recognized on juror source list or accommodated for jury service. Jury service is a direct and impactful act of citizen agency over the justice system, and the systemic exclusion of individuals …
Testa, Crain, And The Constitutional Right To Collateral Relief, Carlos Manuel Vázquez, Stephen I. Vladeck
Testa, Crain, And The Constitutional Right To Collateral Relief, Carlos Manuel Vázquez, Stephen I. Vladeck
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
In Montgomery v. Louisiana, the U.S. Supreme Court held that state prisoners have a constitutional right to relief from continued imprisonment if the prisoner’s conviction or sentence contravenes a new substantive rule of constitutional law. Specifically, the Court held that prisoners with such claims are constitutionally entitled to collateral relief in state court—at least if the state courts are open to other claims for collateral relief on the ground that their continued imprisonment is unlawful. In our article, The Constitutional Right to Collateral Post-Conviction Relief, we argued that, under two lines of Supreme Court decisions interpreting the Supremacy …