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Full-Text Articles in Law

Revisiting Beccaria's Vision: The Enlightenment, America's Death Penalty, And The Abolition Movement, John Bessler Oct 2009

Revisiting Beccaria's Vision: The Enlightenment, America's Death Penalty, And The Abolition Movement, John Bessler

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In 1764, Cesare Beccaria, a 26-year-old Italian criminologist, penned On Crimes and Punishments. That treatise spoke out against torture and made the first comprehensive argument against state-sanctioned executions. As we near the 250th anniversary of its publication, law professor John Bessler provides a comprehensive review of the abolition movement from before Beccaria's time to the present. Bessler reviews Beccaria's substantial influence on Enlightenment thinkers and on America's Founding Fathers in particular. The Article also provides an extensive review of Eighth Amendment jurisprudence and then contrasts it with the trend in international law towards the death penalty's abolition. It then discusses …


Jews In Jail, Kenneth Lasson Sep 2009

Jews In Jail, Kenneth Lasson

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No abstract provided.


The Dna Of An Argument: A Case Study In Legal Logos, Colin Starger Jul 2009

The Dna Of An Argument: A Case Study In Legal Logos, Colin Starger

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This Article develops a framework for analyzing legal argument through an in-depth case study of the debate over federal actions for post-conviction DNA access. Building on the Aristotelian concept of logos, this Article maintains that the persuasive power of legal logic depends in part on the rhetorical characteristics of premises, inferences, and conclusions in legal proofs. After sketching a taxonomy that distinguishes between prototypical argument logo (formal, empirical, narrative, and categorical), the Article applies its framework to parse the rhetorical dynamics at play in litigation over post-conviction access to DNA evidence under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, focusing in particular on …


Pollard Languishes, Kenneth Lasson Feb 2009

Pollard Languishes, Kenneth Lasson

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No abstract provided.


Strong Claims And Weak Evidence: Reassessing The Predictive Validity Of The Iat, Hart Blanton, James Jaccard, Jonathan Klick, Barbara Mellers, Gregory Mitchell, Philip Tetlock Jan 2009

Strong Claims And Weak Evidence: Reassessing The Predictive Validity Of The Iat, Hart Blanton, James Jaccard, Jonathan Klick, Barbara Mellers, Gregory Mitchell, Philip Tetlock

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The authors reanalyzed data from 2 influential studies — A. R. McConnell and J. M. Leibold (2001) and J. C. Ziegert and P. J. Hanges (2005) — that explore links between implicit bias and discriminatory behavior and that have been invoked to support strong claims about the predictive validity of the Implicit Association Test. In both of these studies, the inclusion of race Implicit Association Test scores in regression models reduced prediction errors by only tiny amounts, and Implicit Association Test scores did not permit prediction of individual-level behaviors. Furthermore, the results were not robust when the impact of rater …


Restoration But Also More Justice, Stephanos Bibas Jan 2009

Restoration But Also More Justice, Stephanos Bibas

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This short essay replies to Erik Luna's endorsement of restorative justice. He is right that the goal of healing victims, defendants, and their families is important but all too often neglected by substantive criminal law and procedure, which is far too state-centered and impersonal. The problem with restorative justice is that too often it seeks to sweep away punishment as barbaric and downplays the need for deterrence and incapacitation as well. In short, restorative justice deserves more of a role in American criminal justice. Shorn of its political baggage and reflexive hostility to punishment, restorative justice has much to teach …