Law Commons^™

Moore On The Mind, Stephen J. Morse

All Faculty Scholarship

In revised form, this chapter will be published in a volume, Legal, Moral, and Metaphysical Truths: The Philosophy of Michael S. Moore, a festschrift for Michael Moore edited by Professor Kimberly Ferzan and me for Oxford University Press. The chapter first addresses a particular approach to foundational metaphysical issues in the philosophy of mind, action and responsibility that I term “Spockian solutions,” which are home remedies modeled on those found in the baby and child care book of famed pediatrician, the late Dr. Benjamin Spock. It then engages with Moore’s work on a variety of topics concerning action and …

How The Black Lives Matter Movement Can Improve The Justice System, Paul H. Robinson

All Faculty Scholarship

This op-ed piece argues that because the criminal justice system's loss of moral credibility contributes to increased criminality and because blacks are disproportionately the victims of crimes, especially violent crimes, the most valuable contribution that the Black Lives Matter movement can make is not to tear down the system’s reputation but rather to propose and support reforms that will build it up, thereby improving its crime-control effectiveness and reducing black victimization.

Web Based Cyber Forensics Training For Law Enforcement, Nick Sturgeon

Purdue Polytechnic Masters Theses

Training and education are two of the most important aspects within cyber forensics. These topics have been of concern since the inception of the field. Training law enforcement is particularly important to ensure proper execution of the digital forensics process. It is also important because the proliferation of technology in to society continues to grow at an exponential rate. Just as technology is used for good there are those that will choose to use it for criminal gains. It is critical that Law Enforcement have the tools and training in cyber forensics. This research looked to determine if web based …

Criminal Law And Common Sense: An Essay On The Perils And Promise Of Neuroscience, Stephen J. Morse

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Written Testimony On Correctional Oversight Of The Nys Doccs, Michael B. Mushlin

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

I am testifying today on behalf of both myself and my co-chair Michele Deitch, who has submitted written testimony for your consideration. My comments here reflect both the key points in her testimony as well as some of my own thoughts about the importance of external oversight and comments about the critical role played by the Correctional Association of New York, the failure of the State Commission on Correction to provide meaningful regulation of New York’s prisons, and the need to improve access by the media to the public and to the state’s prisons.

Trending @ Rwulaw: Professor Peter Margulies's Post: Cybersecurity: A 'Must-Know' For Lawyers And Citizens, Peter Margulies

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.

Resentencing In The Shadow Of Johnson V. United States, Leah Litman

Articles

On June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court handed down a decision many years in the making—Johnson v. United States. Johnson held that the ‘‘residual clause’’ of the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA) is unconstitutionally vague. Although Johnson may have been overshadowed in the final days of a monumental Supreme Court term, the decision is a significant one that will have important consequences for the criminal justice system. ACCA’s residual clause imposed a severe 15-year mandatory minimum term of imprisonment, and many federal prisoners qualify for ACCA’s mandatory minimum. Johnson did away with ACCA’s residual clause such that defendants will no …

A Look Back At The "Gatehouses And Mansions" Of American Criminal Procedure, Yale Kamisar

Articles

I am indebted to Professor William Pizzi for remembering—and praising—the “Gatehouses and Mansions” essay I wrote fifty years ago. A great many articles and books have been written about Miranda. So it is nice to be remembered for an article published a year before that famous case was ever decided.

Regulation Or Resistance: A Counter-Narrative Of Constitutional Criminal Procedure, Alice Ristroph

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Newsroom: Horwitz On Ri Probation Reform, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Boys, Rape And Masculinity: Reclaiming Boys' Narratives Of Sexual Violence In Custody, Brenda V. Smith

Project on Addressing Prison Rape - Articles

This article examines a little studied area at the intersections of masculinity, feminist studies, and criminal justice – sexual abuse of boys in custody by female staff. Professor Smith will outline the scope of the problem and discusses competing narratives that attempt to explain the phenomena: (1) female staff as “mother, sister, friend”; (2) adolescent development theory; (3) complex early childhood trauma; and (4) female authority and power. There is a gap in both masculinity and feminist theory in analyzing sexual aggression and power by women over boys. The talk will colclude with policy and practice prescription and recommendations for …

The Impact Of Prison Deinstitutionalization On Community Treatment Services, Beverly D. Frazier, Hung-En Sung, Lior Gideon, Karla S. Alfaro

Publications and Research

Background: With one in every 108 Americans behind bars, the deinstitutionalization of prisons is a pressing issue for all those facing the daunting challenges of successfully reintegrating ex-offenders into both their communities and the larger society. Given the strong evidence that treatment services, such as mental/behavioral health, alcohol/substance abuse, and primary healthcare may reduce recidivism, the large number of prisoner releases highlights the need for adequate treatment services in the community. It is within this context that the current study aims to examine the effects of prison deinstitutionalization on community based intervention modalities.

Methods: This study set out to address …

Newsroom: Yeluri '07 On Baltimore Protests, Swapna Yeluri

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Against Solitary Confinement: Jonah's Redemption And Our Need For Mercy, Margo Schlanger

Articles

Author’s Note: This essay is adapted from one I wrote in September 2013 to give as a d’var Torah for Yom Kippur, and published in Tablet, an online Jewish magazine. Mostly, I’ve added footnotes. As a law professor, I am far more expert at constitutional than biblical exegesis. But perhaps because the Bible and the Constitution share their status as instrumental and highly authoritative documents, my own subjective experience of developing a reading or critique of both has turned out to be remarkably similar. Both exercises require close textual reading and wide-ranging investigation of its extant interpretations; both are informed …

Veil V. Bennett, 131 Nev. Adv. Op. 22 (Apr. 30, 2015), Jaymes Orr

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The Court held that, although a sheriff has a duty to diligently execute arrest warrants, he is within his discretion to determine how to best execute the arrest warrants. The statute does not impose a duty to enter the warrant information into an electronic database.

Evidentiary Rulings As Police Reform, Seth W. Stoughton

Faculty Publications

How can law be a mechanism for police reform? The most familiar answer, for legal scholars who work on the regulation of law enforcement, is as a deterrent: the law sets some limit on police behavior and imposes some sanction for violations. But the deterrent model is not the only method through which the law can affect police behaviors. In this article, Stoughton contends that evidentiary considerations have the potential to change both police training and agency culture. Stoughton’s contention is based on the observation that evidentiary considerations have shaped not just police behavior but also the culture of policing …

Law Enforcement's "Warrior Problem", Seth W. Stoughton

Faculty Publications

Within law enforcement, few things are more venerated than the concept of the Warrior. Officers are trained to cultivate a “warrior mindset,” the virtues of which are extolled in books, articles, interviews, and seminars intended for a law enforcement audience. An article in Police Magazine opens with a sentence that demonstrates with notable nonchalance just how ubiquitous the concept is: “[Officers] probably hear about needing to have a warrior mindset almost daily.” Modern policing has so thoroughly assimilated the warrior mythos that, at some law enforcement agencies, it has become a point of professional pride to refer to the “police …

Newsroom: A Closer Look At Mass Incarceration, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Prisoners' Rights Lawyers' Strategies For Preserving The Role Of The Courts, Margo Schlanger

Articles

This Article is part of the University of Miami Law Review’s Leading from Below Symposium. It canvasses prisoners’ lawyers’ strategies prompted by the 1996 Prison Litigation Reform Act (“PLRA”). The strategies comply with the statute’s limits yet also allow U.S. district courts to remain a forum for the vindication of the constitutional rights of at least some of the nation’s millions of prisoners. After Part I’s introduction, Part II summarizes in several charts the PLRA’s sharp impact on the prevalence and outcomes of prison litigation, but demonstrates that there are still many cases and situations in which courts continue to …

Process Costs And Police Discretion, Charlie Gerstein, J. J. Prescott

Articles

Cities across the country are debating police discretion. Much of this debate centers on “public order” offenses. These minor offenses are unusual in that the actual sentence violators receive when convicted — usually time already served in detention — is beside the point. Rather, public order offenses are enforced prior to any conviction by subjecting accused individuals to arrest, detention, and other legal process. These “process costs” are significant; they distort plea bargaining to the point that the substantive law behind the bargained-for conviction is largely irrelevant. But the ongoing debate about police discretion has ignored the centrality of these …

Trends In Prisoner Litigation, As The Plra Enters Adulthood, Margo Schlanger

Articles

The Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), enacted in 1996 as part of the Newt Gingrich "Contract with America," is now as old as some prisoners. In the year after the statute's passage, some commenters labeled it merely "symbolic." In fact, as was evident nearly immediately, the PLRA undermined prisoners' ability to bring, settle, and win lawsuits. The PLRA conditioned court access on prisoners' meticulously correct prior use of onerous and error-inviting prison grievance procedures. It increased filing fees, decreased attorneys' fees, and limited damages. It subjected injunctive settlements to the scope limitations usually applicable only to litigated injunctions. It made …

Body-Mounted Police Cameras: A Primer On Police Accountability Vs. Privacy, Kami Chavis Simmons

Faculty Publications

Immediately following the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and the death of Eric Garner at the hands of a New York Police Department officer, criminal justice advocates called for greater measures to hold police officers accountable for their actions. For many observers, the failure to secure criminal indictments against the officers involved in each of these deaths of unarmed citizens suggested various shortcomings in the criminal justice system.

One of the most hotly contested reform proposals involves requiring police officers to wear body cameras. The NAACP, the ACLU, and The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law …

Symposium: Sounding The Alarm On Mass Incarceration: Moving Beyond The Problem And Toward Solutions, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

“First, Do No Harm”: Legal Guidelines For Health Programmes Affecting Adolescents Aged 10–17 Who Sell Sex Or Inject Drugs, Brendan M. Conner

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A Justice System Overwhelmed, Colin Starger

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

California State Parks: Implementing Recent Recommendations Regarding Peace Officers, California Research Bureau

California Agencies

The California State Legislature requested a blueprint for implementing certain recommendations of the Little Hoover Commission (LHC), the Parks Forward Commission, and others for organizational change at the Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR). In its March 2013 report, “Beyond Crisis: Recapturing Excellence in California’s State Park System,” LHC recommended transforming DPR into a new operating model built around shared management, innovation, greater transparency, and the expectation that it generate more revenue from its operations.1 LHC recommended two specific actions as critical steps to achieving the transformation: first, to create a promotional path to management for staff without law enforcement …

Justice Scalia's Fourth Amendment: Text, Context, Clarity, And Occasional Faint-Hearted Originalism, Timothy C. Macdonnell

Scholarly Articles

Since joining the United States Supreme Court in 1986, Justice Scalia has been a prominent voice on the Fourth Amendment, having written twenty majority opinions, twelve concurrences, and six dissents on the topic. Under his pen, the Court has altered its test for determining when the Fourth Amendment should apply; provided a vision to address technology's encroachment on privacy; and articulated the standard for determining whether government officials are entitled to qualified immunity in civil suits involving alleged Fourth Amendment violations. In most of Justice Scalia's opinions, he has championed an originalist/textualist theory of constitutional interpretation. Based on that theory, …

Dignity And The Eighth Amendment: A New Approach To Challenging Solitary Confinement, Laura L. Rovner

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

The use of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons and jails has come under increasing scrutiny. Over the past few months, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy all but invited constitutional challenges to the use of solitary confinement, while President Obama asked, “Do we really think it makes sense to lock so many people alone in tiny cells for 23 hours a day for months, sometime for years at a time?” Even some of the most notorious prisons and jails, including California’s Pelican Bay State Prison and New York’s Rikers Island, are reforming their use of solitary confinement because of successful litigation …

Free, But Still Behind Bars: Reading The Illinois Post-Conviction Hearing Act To Allow Any Person Convicted Of A Crime To Raise A Claim Of Actual Innocence, 35 B.C. J. L. & Soc. Just. 1 (2015), Hugh Mundy

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

As the number of wrongfully convicted prisoners who are subsequently exonerated continues to rise, the importance of access to post-conviction relief also increases. Under the Illinois Post-Conviction Hearing Act, this access is restricted to petitioners who are currently imprisoned or otherwise facing a restraint on their liberty. Persons convicted of a crime who have completed their sentence are barred from pursuing post-conviction relief under the Act, regardless of the existence of exculpatory evidence that supports their innocence. Removing this procedural roadblock and interpreting the Act broadly to allow any person convicted of a crime to raise a claim of actual …

Law Enforcement And White Power: An F.B.I. Report Unraveled, 41 T. Marshall L. Rev. 103 (2015), Samuel Vincent Jones

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

Because of intensifying civil strife over the recent killings of unarmed Black men, women, and boys, many Americans are wondering, “What's wrong with our police?” Remarkably, one of the most compelling but unexplored explanations may rest with an FBI warning of October, 2006, which reported that “[W]hite supremacist infiltration of law enforcement” represented a significant national threat.