Law Commons^™

The High Price Of Poverty: A Study Of How The Majority Of Current Court System Procedures For Collecting Court Costs And Fees, As Well As Fines, Have Failed To Adhere To Established Precedent And The Constitutional Guarantees They Advocate., Trevor J. Calligan

Trevor J Calligan

No abstract provided.

Do We Know How To Punish?, Benjamin L. Apt

Benjamin L. Apt

A number of current theories attempt to explain the purpose and need for criminal punishment. All of them depend on some sort of normative basis in justifying why the state may penalize people found guilty of crimes. Yet each of these theories lacks an epistemological foundation; none of them explains how we can know what form punishments should take. The article analyses the epistemological gaps in the predominant theories of punishment: retributivism, including limited-retributivism; and consequentialism in its various versions, ranging from deterrence to the reparative theories such as restorative justice and rehabilitation. It demonstrates that the common putative epistemological …

Federal Programs And The Real Costs Of Policing, Rachel A. Harmon

Rachel A. Harmon

Dozens of federal statutes authorize federal agencies to give money and power to local police departments and municipalities in order to improve public safety. While these federal programs encourage better coordination of police efforts and make pursuing public safety less financially costly for local communities, they also encourage harmful policing. Of course, policing often interferes with our interests in autonomy, privacy, and property, and those harms are often worthwhile in exchange for security and order. Federal public safety programs, however, are designed, implemented, and evaluated without reference to the nonbudgetary costs of policing. When those costs are high, federal programs …

Modos De Extinción De La Propiedad, Ronald Benjamin Jallurana Añamuro

RONALD Benjamín Jallurana Añamuro

De acuerdo al C. C. (art. 968) la propiedad se extingue por: 1. Adquisición del bien por otra persona. 2. Destrucción o pérdida total o consumo del bien. 3. Expropiación. 4. Abandono del bien durante veinte años, en cuyo caso pasa el predio al dominio del estado.

Discouraging Police Use Of Choke-Holds In California, Catherine L. Rucker

Catherine L Rucker

This resolution would discourage police use of choke-holds by eliminating the training and testing modules for choke holds from the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) curriculum. Video of the fatal choke-hold: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2014/dec/04/i-cant-breathe-eric-garner-chokehold-death-video. See 1:20 min to 1:40 min. In April, 2015, the CCBA posted this resolution as series 8, number 10 at: http://calconference.org/html/wp-content/Resolutions/2015/Series%2008%20-%20Criminal%20II.pdf For more information about the Conference of California Bar Associations, visit www.calconference.org

Jones, Lackey, And Teague, Richard Broughton

Richard Broughton

In a recent, high-profile ruling, a federal court finally recognized that a substantial delay in executing a death row inmate violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishments. Courts have repeatedly rejected these so-called “Lackey claims,” making the federal court’s decision in Jones v. Chappell all the more important. And yet it was deeply flawed. This paper focuses on one of the major flaws in the Jones decision that largely escaped attention: the application of the non-retroactivity rule from Teague v. Lane. By comprehensively addressing the merits of the Teague bar as applied to Lackey claims, and making …

Managing Cyberthreat, Lawrence J. Trautman

Lawrence J. Trautman Sr.

Cyber security is an important strategic and governance issue. However, because most corporate CEOs and directors have no formal engineering or information technology training, it is understandable that their lack of actual cybersecurity knowledge is problematic. Particularly among smaller companies having limited resources, knowledge regarding what their enterprise should actually be doing about cybersecurity can’t be all that good. My goal in this article is to explore the unusually complex subject of cybersecurity in a highly readable manner. First, an examination of recent threats is provided. Next, governmental policy initiatives are discussed. Third, some basic tools that can be used …

Propuesta De Aplicación De Los Elementos De Configuración De La Disuasión Al Derecho Del Consumo En Colombia (A Proposition Of Application Of The Elements Of Deterrence To The Consumer Protection Act In Colombia), Jesús A. Soto

Jesús Alfonso Soto Pineda

Resumen Las normas de consumo en Colombia, tal y como sucede en los sistemas jurídicos de mayor relevancia alrededor del globo, representan un elemento insoslayable de las empresas, a tomar en cuenta en el curso de su actividad económica. No obstante, al margen de la importancia teórica que comportan, ciertos precedentes parecen demostrar que dichas normas carecen de la contundencia debida en el territorio nacional y se enmarcan en un panorama empresarial no disuasivo, en virtud del cual, en oportunidades, las consecuencias de las infracciones a las normas de consumo se asumen vía decisión negocial, toda vez que arrogarse la …

Navigating The Rock And The Whirlpool: Managing Critical Incident Investigations And Garrity, Joseph R. Sullivan

Joseph R Sullivan

This article presents a best practice model for managing officer-involved shooting or other critical incident investigations on behalf of the officer; one that protects the officer’s legal interests and still preserves the most accurate factual information for investigators. Section I details the causes and effects of critical incident amnesia as it relates to officer-involved shootings. Section II analyzes the relationship between a public employee’s Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and a public employer’s ability to compel work related statements. Section III discusses the practical implications and aftermath of an officer-involved shooting or other critical incident and section IV synthesizes the …

Virtual Currencies: Bitcoin & What Now After Liberty Reserve, Silk Road, And Mt. Gox?, Lawrence J. Trautman

Lawrence J. Trautman Sr.

During 2013, the U.S. Treasury Department evoked the first use of the 2001 Patriot Act to exclude virtual currency provider Liberty Reserve from the U.S. financial system. This article will discuss: the regulation of virtual currencies; cybercrimes and payment systems; darknets, Tor and the “deep web;” Bitcoin; Liberty Reserve; Silk Road and Mt. Gox. Virtual currencies have quickly become a reality, gaining significant traction in a very short period of time, and are evolving rapidly. Virtual currencies present particularly difficult law enforcement challenges because of their: ability to transcend national borders in the fraction of a second; unique jurisdictional issues; …

An Empirical Study: A Socio-Legal Approach To Gauging Attitudes To Intellectual Property Rights, Faris K. Nesheiwat, Mike Adcock

Ferris K Nesheiwat

This article seeks to provide a socio-legal framework for the examination of the attitude of a section of the Jordanian public towards intellectual property rights (IPRs), using copyright protected software as an example; it provides an overview of perceptions of IPRs within an Arabic and predominantly Muslim society, and examines how such perceptions impact attitudes towards abiding with, and enforcement of, IPRs. Through its analytical value and empirical research, this paper fills a void in the availability of reliable empirical data in Jordan as part of the analysis to gauge the impact of intellectual property (IP) laws. A review of …

Extrajudicial Executions And Assaults In American Prisons And The Looming Human Rights Crisis, Robert M. Hardaway

Robert Hardaway

This article examines the current due process crisis in American prisons and proposes reforms that would comply with human rights principles and international law. The number of prisoners killed in American prisons exceeds the number who are executed pursuant to judicial process. The bulk of these extrajudicial killings, and sexual assaults are the proximate consequence of close contact between prisoners. The predominate practice in American prisons is at the extreme ends of the spectrum—that is either placing prisoners in solitary confinement, a practice that has been challenged on Eighth Amendment grounds, or placing them in such close contact with each …

A Propósito De Un Elemento Esencial De La Defensa De La Competencia En Europa: Las Facultades De Investigación De La Comisión En Materia De Inspección (About An Essential Element Of The European Antitrust: Commission Investigation Faculties Of Inspection), Jesús Alfonso Soto Pineda

Jesús Alfonso Soto Pineda

En base a la prolongación de las facultades de investigación que le han sido proporcionadas a la Comisión Europea para combatir la existencia de acuerdos colusorios en el ámbito comunitario, el presente artículo expone las condiciones en las cuales el poder percibido con mayor sensibilidad desde el terreno empresarial, la inspección, debe ser puesto en marcha por la máxima autoridad comunitaria de competencia, analizando en detalle la contradicción natural que se presenta entre los objetivos propios de la inspección y dos postulados básicos relacionados con el derecho de defensa, como lo son el secreto profesional y el derecho a guardar …

Beyond Finality: How Making Criminal Judgments Less Final Can Further The Interests Of Finality, Andrew Chongseh Kim

Andrew Chongseh Kim

Courts and scholars commonly assume that granting convicted defendants more liberal rights to challenge their judgments would harm society’s interests in “finality.” According to conventional wisdom, finality in criminal judgments is necessary to conserve resources, encourage efficient behavior by defense counsel, and deter crime. Thus, under the common analysis, the extent to which convicted defendants should be allowed to challenge their judgments depends on how much society is willing to sacrifice to validate defendants’ rights. This Article argues that expanding defendants’ rights on post-conviction review does not always harm these interests. Rather, more liberal review can often conserve state resources, …

An Anachronism Too Discordant To Be Suffered: A Comparative Study Of Parliamentary And Presidential Approaches To Regulation Of The Death Penalty, Derek R. Verhagen

Derek R VerHagen

It is well-documented that the United States remains the only western democracy to retain the death penalty and finds itself ranked among the world's leading human rights violators in executions per year. However, prior to the Gregg v. Georgia decision in 1976, ending America's first and only moratorium on capital punishment, the U.S. was well in line with the rest of the civilized world in its approach to the death penalty. This Note argues that America's return to the death penalty is based primarily on the differences between classic parliamentary approaches to regulation and that of the American presidential system. …

La Doctrina Y La Evaluación De Tendencias En La Aplicación De La Normativa "Antitrust" (Doctrine And Evaluation Of Trends In Antitrust Law Enforcement), Jesús A. Soto

Jesús Alfonso Soto Pineda

El presente texto expone de forma unificada, los argumentos recurrentes que han sido elegidos por parte de la doctrina interesada en estructurar un enforcement efectivo de las normas antitrust comunitarias, para delimitar las bondades e inconvenientes que perciben en las dos vías de aplicación de las normas de libre competencia en la Unión Europea. Delimitando igualmente la defensa de un enforcement colectivo que compenetre el nivel de disuasión de ambos prototipos, favorezca la unificación de las determinaciones que les ponen en marcha y acople correctamente las diversas vicisitudes a las que se deben hacer frente en el tránsito de cada …

Punishment And Rights, Benjamin L. Apt

Benjamin L. Apt

Prevalent theories of criminal punishment lack a rationale for the precise duration and nature of state-ordered criminal punishment. In practice, too, criminal penalization suffers from inadequate evidence of punitive efficacy. These deficiencies, in theory and in fact, would not be so grave were the state to enjoy unfettered power over the disposition of criminal penalties. However, in societies that recognize legal rights, criminal punishments must be consistent with rights. Efficacy, even where demonstrable, does not suffice as a legal justification for punishment. This article analyzes the source of rights and how they function as primary rules in a legal system. …

Slavery And Information, Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci

Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci

This article shows how asymmetric information shaped slavery by determining the likelihood of manumission. A theoretical model explains the need to offer positive incentive to slaves working in occupations characterized by a high degree of asymmetric information. As a result, masters freed (and, more generally, rewarded) slaves who performed well. The model’s implications are then tested against the available evidence: both in Rome and in the Atlantic world, slaves with high-asymmetric-information tasks had greater chances of manumission. The analysis also sheds light on the master’s choices of carrots versus sticks and of labor versus slavery.

The Rise Of Carrots And The Decline Of Sticks, Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci, Gerrit De Geest

Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci

There is a remarkable tendency in modern legal systems to increasingly use carrots. This trend is not limited to legal systems but can also be observed in, for instance, parenting styles, social control mechanisms, and even law schools’ teaching methods. Yet, at first glance, sticks appear to be a more efficient means of inducing people to comply with legal rules or social norms because they are not meant to be applied (thus minimizing transaction costs and risks) and may cause fewer unintended distributional distortions. So how can we justify the widespread use of carrots?

This Article shows that carrots can …

Interpersonal Crimes: A Critical Study Of Systematic Bias Against Men, Sukdeo Ingale

Sukdeo Ingale

No abstract provided.

Foreword: A Global Perspective On Sentencing Reforms, Oren Gazal-Ayal

Oren Gazal-Ayal

The articles published in this issue of Law and Contemporary Problems examine the effects of different sentencing reforms across the world. While the effects of sentencing reforms in the United States have been studied extensively, this is the first symposium that examines the effects of sentencing guidelines and alternative policies in a number of western legal systems from a comparative perspective. This issue focuses on how different sentencing policies affect prison population rates, sentence disparity, and the balance of power between the judiciary and prosecutors, while also assessing how sentencing policies respond to temporary punitive surges and moral panics. The …

Do Sentencing Guidelines Increase Prosecutorial Power? An Empirical Study, Oren Gazal-Ayal, Hagit Turjeman, Gideon Fishman

Oren Gazal-Ayal

Traditionally, judges have had tremendous flexibility in sentencing. Offering judges maximum discretion in the sentencing process allows them to consider not only an offender’s criminal history and the severity of the crime committed, but also the complex web of mitigating and aggravating factors present in each case and additional qualitative factors, such as a defendant’s testimony or selfpresentation in a courtroom. When judges are empowered with more discretion, however, there is heightened potential for inter-judge variability in sentencing. In order to reduce sentencing disparities caused by individual sentencers, several countries and jurisdictions, most notably in the United States, have enacted …

Breaking The Theft-Chain-Cycle: Property Marking As A Defensive Tool, William J. Bailey, David J. Brooks

Bill Bailey

The theft of property and its associated impact effects many parts of society. For example, a considerable amount of resources are expended in trying to reduce property theft, as such crime engenders both a financial and emotional impact (Grabosky, 1995, p. 1) on those involved. Factors such as fear of crime, increased insurance premiums and victimization are all outcomes of property crime. Much of the past research has focused on the mitigation of such crimes, collectively termed as ‘crime prevention’. Crime prevention are “any actions designed to reduce the actual level of crime and/or the perceived crime” (S.P. Lab, 2010, …

Limited Leverage: Federal Remedies And Policing Reform, Rachel A. Harmon

Rachel A. Harmon

With respect to deterring police misconduct, federal remedies are almost as good as they are ever going to get. Federal remedies for police misconduct, and most other remedies for misconduct, promote change by making misconduct costly for police departments and municipalities. Improving federal remedies would encourage some additional departments to seek the positive expected return on reform measures likely to reduce misconduct. But existing federal remedies all focus on either increasing the cost of misconduct or reducing its benefits. The problem is that even if existing federal remedies are altered to maximize deterrence, they cannot be employed to impose a …

The Role Tax Preparers Play In Taxpayer Compliance - An Empirical Investigation With Policy Implications, Sagit Leviner Dr.

Sagit Leviner Dr.

In January 2010, the IRS published its Return Preparer Review Final Report, recommending extensive increases in oversight of the tax return preparer industry. The IRS suggests achieving these increases in oversight through numerous measures, including preparer registration, competency testing, continuing professional education, ethical standards, and enforcement. Effective August, 2011, new paid preparer regulation requires all tax return preparers who offer their services for a fee to register and obtain a unique Preparer Tax Identification Number (PTIN) that must be used to sign all returns they prepare. Given that additional preparer regulation is expected to come into effect within the next …

Analysis: Williams V Scott, Jon Foster

Jon Foster

In the case of Williams v Scott, the Court has been asked to determine the constitutionality of Senate Bill 2100 in relation to the rights of public sector employees to collectively bargain.

The Problem Of Policing, Rachel A. Harmon

Rachel A. Harmon

The legal problem of policing is how to regulate police authority to permit officers to enforce law while also protecting individual liberty and minimizing the social costs the police impose. Courts and commentators have largely treated the problem of policing as limited to preventing violations of constitutional rights and its solution as the judicial definition and enforcement of those rights. But constitutional law and courts alone are necessarily inadequate to regulate the police. Constitutional law does not protect important interests below the constitutional threshold or effectively address the distributional impacts of law enforcement activities. Nor can the judiciary adequately assess …

Something Smells Rotten: The Practical Consequences Of Bad Epistemology In The Context Of Drug Sniffing Dogs., George Souri

George Souri

This paper examines the practical consequences of most courts' rational, rather than empirical, epistemology in the context of drug-sniffing dogs. Using the case of Florida v. Harris, this paper criticizes the unscientific attitude of many courts, and argues that, by employing a purely rational epistemology to justify the use of drug-sniffing dogs to establish probable cause, the Court impedes the Constitution's skepticism of, and protection from, arbitrary government intrusions. The paper concludes by proposing a new empirical standard based on the Daubert factors.

Recent Developments In The Niger Delta Of Nigeria, Saheed A. Alabi

Saheed Alabi

The Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) requested the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to carry out an environmental assessment of Ogoniland due to perpetual oil spillages and gas flaring by the multinational oil companies, specifically Shell Petroleum Development Company (Nigeria) Ltd (SPDC). The Environmental Assessment Report (EA Report) was finalised and submitted to the FGN in August 2011 for review and implementation. The aim of this country report is to determine the sincerity of the FGN in finding the lasting solution to the severe environmental degradation in Ogoniland. This is imperative because of the historic failures of the Nigeria Government …

Clemency, Parole, Good-Time Credits, And Crowded Prisons: Reconsidering Early Release, Paul J. Larkin Jr.

Paul J Larkin Jr.

Traditionally, the criminal justice system used executive clemency, parole statutes, and good-time credit laws to grant prisoners an early relief for various reasons, such as to encourage and reward efforts toward rehabilitation and to ease prison overcrowding. The replacement of rehabilitation with incapacitation as the principal justification for criminal punishment over the last 30 years, however, has resulted in an enormous expansion in the prison population. We need to ask whether we have arrived at a point where an overly punitive approach to corrections is hurting as many innocent parties as helping and whether we are generating more criminals than …