Law Commons^™

Statement Of The District Task Force On Jails & Justice Before The Committee On The Judiciary And Public Safety Of The Council Of The District Of Columbia Performance Oversight Hearing For The D.C. Department Of Corrections March 1, 2023, Katherine S. Broderick

D.C. Council Testimony

No abstract provided.

Special Issue “Energy Transition And Environmental Sustainability”, Prafula Pearce

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

This Special Issue on “Energy Transition and Environmental Sustainability” includes thirteen papers on policies including: the challenges of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals regarding energy transition and legal reforms in Taiwan and Japan [1] successful energy transition toward solar PV in South Korea [2]; transition from diesel buses to hybrid-driven (HEV) and electricity-driven buses (BEV) for public transport in Central Europe [3]; vehicle transition and the development of electric car production in three regions, the United States, the European Union and Japan [4]; affordable and environmentally friendly cooling solutions for buildings in Pakistan [5]; development of projects to replace …

Statement Of The District Task Force On Jails & Justice Before The Committee On Facilities & Family Services Performance Oversight Hearing For The Department Of General Services February 28, 2023, Katherine S. Broderick

D.C. Council Testimony

No abstract provided.

Statement Of The District Task Force On Jails And Justice Before The Committee On The Judiciary And Public Safety Of The Council Of The District Of Columbia. Performance Oversight Hearing For The Deputy Mayor For Public Safety & Justice, Katherine S. Broderick

D.C. Council Testimony

No abstract provided.

Reducing Community Violence While Protecting Civil Rights, Kami Chavis

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Policing & The Problem Of Physical Restraint, Steven Arrigg Koh

Faculty Scholarship

The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution prohibits unreasonable “seizures” and thus renders unlawful police use of excessive force. On one hand, this definition is expansive. In the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2021 Term, in Torres v. Madrid, the Court clarified that a “seizure” includes any police application of physical force to the body with intent to restrain. Crucially, Chief Justice Roberts’ majority opinion emphasized that police may seize even when merely laying “the end of a finger” on a layperson’s body. And yet, the Supreme Court’s Fourth Amendment totality-of-the-circumstances reasonableness balancing test is notoriously imprecise—a “factbound morass,” in the famous …

Effective Communication With Deaf, Hard Of Hearing, Blind, And Low Vision Incarcerated People, Civil Rights Litigation, Tessa Bialek, Margo Schlanger

Articles

Tens of thousands of people incarcerated in jails and prisons throughout the United States have one or more communication disabilities, a term that describes persons who are deaf, hard of hearing, blind, low vision, deafblind, speech disabled, or otherwise disabled in ways that affect communication. Incarceration is not easy for anyone, but the isolation and inflexibility of incarceration can be especially challenging, dangerous, and further disabling for persons with disabilities. Correctional entities must confront these challenges; the number of incarcerated persons with communication disabilities—already overrepresented in jails and prisons—continues to grow as a proportion. Federal antidiscrimination law obligates jails and …

Searches Without Suspicion: Avoiding A Four Million Person Underclass, Tonja Jacobi, Addie Maguire

Faculty Articles

In Samson v. California, the Supreme Court upheld warrantless, suspicionless searches for parolees. That determination was controversial both because suspicionless searches are, by definition, anathema to the Fourth Amendment, and because they arguably undermine parolees’ rehabilitation. Less attention has been given to the fact that the implications of the case were not limited to parolees. The opinion in Samson included half a sentence of dicta that seemingly swept probationers into its analysis, implicating the rights of millions of additional people in the United States. Not only is analogizing parolees and probationers not logically sound because the two groups differ …

Helping The Helpers: The Role Of Organizational Support And Peer Influence On Police Officer Receptivity To Employee Assistance Programs, Kenneth Quick

Publications and Research

Purpose – This study aims to investigate critical differences between police officer willingness to use and recommend an employee assistance program (EAP) to a peer, including the relationship between officer perceptions of macro-level organizational support and micro-level EAP support.

Design/methodology/approach – A survey of 213 police officers from a large, urban police department in the Northeast United States of America is used to evaluate the relationship between officer perceptions of the EAP and the officers’ willingness to use and recommend the EAP to peers. Generalized linear regression models are used to evaluate the moderating effect of perceived organizational support (POS) …

Are Police Officers Bayesians? Police Updating In Investigative Stops, Jeffrey A. Fagan, Lila J.E. Nojima

Faculty Scholarship

Theories of rational behavior assume that actors make decisions where the benefits of their acts exceed their costs or losses. If those expected costs and benefits change over time, behavior will change accordingly as actors learn and internalize the parameters of success and failure. In the context of proactive policing, police stops that achieve any of several goals — constitutional compliance, stops that lead to “good” arrests or summonses, stops that lead to seizures of weapons, drugs, or other contraband, or stops that produce good will and citizen cooperation — should signal to officers the features of a stop that …

Public Order Policing: A Proposal For A Charter-Compliant Legislative Response, Jamie Cameron, Robert Diab

Articles & Book Chapters

This article offers a brief response to the Final Report of the Public Order Emergency Commission by two authors who provided expert reports to the Commission. We focus on Commissioner Rouleau’s recommendation that the provinces and the federal government create a “major event management unit” to ensure “integrated command and control” of large events, and that governments clarify the scope of police power to create exclusion zones and to impose other limits on protest and assembly. We argue that nothing short of legislation on point would suffice to address problems of coordination among police agencies and the lack of clarity …

Critical Pathways To Disability Decarceration: Reading Liat Ben-Moshe And Linda Steele, Sheila Wildeman

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

I consider how Liat Ben-Moshe’s Decarcerating Disability and Linda Steele’s Disability, Criminal Justice and Law: Reconsidering Court Diversion contribute to emerging conversations between critical disability studies and anti-carceral studies, and between disability deinstitutionalization and prison abolitionism. I ask: what if any role might law, or specifically rights-based litigation, play in resisting carceral state strategies and redirecting material and conceptual resources toward supports for diverse forms of flourishing? I centre my remarks on the special relevance of Ben-Moshe’s and Steele’s books to social movement activism in Atlantic Canada and critical reappraisal of Canada’s solitary confinement litigation.

A Tribute To Gerald S. "Geary" Reamey, Michael Ariens

Faculty Articles

Geary Reamey began teaching at St. Mary's University School of Law in the Fall 1982 semester. He will have taught for forty-one years at St. Mary's when he retires in May 2023. Geary is known throughout Texas for his work, both as a speaker and as a writer, educating lawyers and judges about Texas criminal law and procedure. He is known among St. Mary's Law alumni for creating and operating, along with the late John Schmolesky, a vibrant criminal law and procedure curriculum, including the first-year Criminal Law course.

Police Officers' Perceptions Regarding Their Interactions With The Disabled In Kankakee County, Jilliann English

Honors Program Projects

Background: Previous research shows the rate of crime against people with disabilities is significantly higher than the general population. Despite this, gaps in the training and resources for officers to assist those with disabilities may exist. Eadens et al. (2008) explored this issue by evaluating officer attitudes towards intellectual disabilities. Kankakee County has a significant disabled population, and Illinois is ranked very low in the improvement of related policies, making this a valuable area of interest.

Methods: This study utilized the modified version of the Social Distance Questionnaire (SDQ) used by Eadens et al. (2008), which is both qualitative and …

Surveillance Normalization, Christian Sundquist

Articles

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the government has expanded public surveillance measures in an attempt to combat the spread of the virus. As the pandemic wears on, racialized communities and other marginalized groups are disproportionately affected by this increased level of surveillance. This article argues that increases in public surveillance as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic give rise to the normalization of surveillance in day-to-day life, with serious consequences for racialized communities and other marginalized groups. This article explores the legal and regulatory effects of surveillance normalization, as well as how to protect civil rights and liberties …

Muslim Prisoner Litigation: An Unsung American Tradition (Introduction), Spearit

Book Chapters

For most Americans, “prison jihad” may sound frightening and conjure images of religious militants, bearded, turbaned, and under the spell of foreign radical networks…. While this may be the immediate impression, there is nothing like that happening in American prisons. However, there has been a different type of jihad taking place, one that is real and identifiable. This is not the sensational jihad of headline media; rather, this jihad is uneventful and quiet by comparison and has persisted since the 1960s with hardly any public notice.

Despite little attention and recognition, Muslims in prison occupy a unique spot in the …

Title Theft, Stewart E. Sterk

Articles

Real property owners across the country have been targeted by scammers who prepare deeds purporting to convey title to property the scammers do not own. Sometimes, the true owners are entirely unaware of these bogus transfers. In other instances, the scammers use misrepresentation to induce unsophisticated owners to sign documents they do not understand.

Property doctrine protects owners against forgery and fraud—the primary vehicles scammers use in their efforts to transfer title. Owners enjoy protection not only against the scammers themselves, but generally against unsuspecting purchasers to whom the scammers transfer purported title.

Recovery of title, however, involves costs and …

Law Enforcement Recruit Health Database, Myles C. Murphy, Simone Radavelli-Bagatini, Garth Allen, Nicolas Hart, Andrea Mosler

Research Datasets

Our study established clear demographic, mental health/physical injury, and physical performance data to be collected in a law enforcement recruit training program for injury surveillance and performance monitoring. Furthermore, we identified several items that were classified as relevant, but unlikely to be reported truthfully. These items which can help inform current practice and assist clinicians to determine the trustfulness of information received by patients when working within law enforcement environments.

Policy Challenges And Responses To Environmental Non-Migration, Mostafa Mahmud Naser, Bishawjit Mallick, Rup Priodarshini, Saleemul Huq, Ajay Bailey

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

The scientific literature, media, international summits, and policy forums highlighted enough the people who either move or are willing to move because of environmental reasons. Still, the voluntary environmental non-migrants (ENM), who are assumed to have strong resilience and coping capacity, are inordinately overlooked. The importance of addressing these ENMs has increasingly been emphasised. First, the paper explains the characteristics of ENM, outlining the key distinction between voluntary and forced non-migrants. Second, it emphasises the need to protect populations affected by environmental change and disaster, specifically highlighting oft-neglected ENM policy gaps. Thus, it examines to what extent ENM is addressed …

Australian Highlevel Public Policy Preparedness For Population-Based Triage During The Pandemic, Zachary Horn, Lily Gapp Duckett, Kaitlin Webber

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

The COVID-19 pandemic brought attention to scarce clinical resource allocation via secondary population-based triage (S-PBT) throughout the international healthcare community. Experiences overseas highlighted the importance of coordinated and consistent approaches to allocating resources when facing overwhelming demand, particularly for critical care. Noting the importance of consistency and the system of devolved governance deployed in Australia, this study aimed to identify and analyse sources of high-level policy that affect Australia’s health system preparedness for the operationalisation of S-PBT. Of the 39 documents reviewed, 17 contained potential references to S-PBT. There was a lack of clear recommendations and guidance to inform S-PBT …

Fair Notice, The Rule Of Law, And Reforming Qualified Immunity, Nathan S. Chapman

Scholarly Works

After many well-publicized cases of police wrongdoing, a growing number of courts, scholars, and politicians have demanded the abolition of qualified immunity. The doctrine requires courts to dismiss damages actions against officials for violating the plaintiff’s constitutional rights unless a reasonable officer would have known that the right was “clearly established.” Scholars argue that the doctrine impedes deterrence of rights violations and forecloses compensation and vindication for victims.

One line of attack has relied on empirical evidence to challenge what scholars take to be the main justification for qualified immunity, that it prevents the threat of constitutional liability from over-deterring …

Exploring Perceptions Of Control Within Offender Cognition And Recidivism Paradigms, Anistasha H. Lightning, Danielle Polage

Student Published Works

Elements of perceived control are associated with recidivism in offender populations. We investigated the application of locus of control to the frequency of personal involvement with the law and to beliefs surrounding the likelihood of future contact with the legal system. We hypothesized that, as the number of sentencings or legal experiences increased, locus of control would externalize. We also predicted that increased legal involvement would lead to greater belief in the likelihood of future involvement. A statistically significant path model suggests that locus of control appears to be a predictor of increased criminality, as opposed to the other way …

Letting Offenders Choose Their Punishment?, Gilles Grolleau, Murat C. Mungan, Naoufel Mzoughi

Faculty Scholarship

Punishment menus allow offenders to choose the punishment to which they will be subjected from a set of options. We present several behaviorally informed rationales for why punishment menus may serve as effective deterrents, notably by causing people to refrain from entering a calculative mindset; reducing their psychological reactance; causing them to reconsider the reputational impacts of punishment; and reducing suspicions about whether the act is enforced for rent-seeking purposes. We argue that punishment menus can outperform the traditional single punishment if these effects can be harnessed properly. Our observations thus constitute a challenge, based on behavioral arguments, to the …

Algorithmic Governance From The Bottom Up, Hannah Bloch-Wehba

Faculty Scholarship

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are both a blessing and a curse for governance. In theory, algorithmic governance makes government more efficient, more accurate, and more fair. But the emergence of automation in governance also rests on public-private collaborations that expand both public and private power, aggravate transparency and accountability gaps, and create significant obstacles for those seeking algorithmic justice. In response, a nascent body of law proposes technocratic policy changes to foster algorithmic accountability, ethics, and transparency.

This Article examines an alternative vision of algorithmic governance, one advanced primarily by social and labor movements instead of technocrats and firms. …

Sentencing Co-Offenders, Ehud Guttel, Ittai Paldor, Gideon Parchomovsky

All Faculty Scholarship

Tort law and criminal law are the two main vehicles utilized by the state to deter wrongful behavior. Despite the many similarities between the two legal fields, they differ in their treatment of collaborations. While tort law divides liability among joint-tortfeasors, criminal law abides by a no-division rule that imposes on each co-offender the full brunt of the sanction. Thus, each of two offenders who jointly steal $1,000, will be subject to the full corresponding penalty (rather than the divided penalty for stealing $500).

This Article demonstrates that in property and financial crimes, the no-division regime of criminal law harms …

Highly Automated Vehicles & Discrimination Against Low-Income Persons, William H. Widen

Articles

Law reform in the United States often reflects a structural bias that advances narrow business interests without addressing broader public interest concerns.' This bias may appear by omitting protective language in laws or regulations which address a subject matter area, such as permitting the testing of highly automated vehicles ("HA Vs") on public roads, while omitting a requirement for a reasonable level of insurance as a condition to obtain a testing permit.2 This Article explores certain social and economic justice implications of laws and regulations governing the design, testing, manufacture, and deployment of HA Vs which might advance a business …

An Algorithmic Assessment Of Parole Decisions, Hannah Lacqueur, Ryan W. Copus

Faculty Works

Objectives: Parole is an important mechanism for alleviating the extraordinary social and financial costs of mass incarceration. Yet parole boards can also present a major obstacle, denying parole to low-risk inmates who could safely be released from prison. We evaluate a major parole institution, the New York State Parole Board, quantifying the costs of suboptimal decision-making.

Methods: Using ensemble Machine Learning, we predict any arrest and any violent felony arrest within three years to generate criminal risk predictions for individuals released on parole in New York from 2012–2015. We quantify the social welfare loss of the Board’s suboptimal decisions by …

Abolition, And A Mule: Guest Lecturer In Race And The Foundations Of American Law Course 09-28-2022, Paul Butler, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Police Killings As Felony Murder, Guyora Binder, Ekow Yankah

Journal Articles

The widely applauded conviction of officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd employedthe widely criticized felony murder rule. Should we use felony murder as a tool to check discriminatory and violent policing? The authors object that felony murder—although perhaps the only murder charge available for this killing under Minnesota law—understated Chauvin’s culpability and thereby inadequately denounced his crime. They show that further opportunities to prosecute police for felony murder are quite limited. Further, a substantial minority of states impose felony murder liability for any death proximately caused by a felony, even if the actual killer was a police …

Blame The Victim: How Mistreatment By The State Is Used To Legitimize Police Violence, Tamara Rice Lave

Articles

No abstract provided.