Law Commons^™

The Blurred Blue Line: Municipal Liability, Police Indemnification, And Financial Accountability In Section 1983 Litigation, Teresa E. Ravenell, Armando Brigandi

Villanova Law Review

No abstract provided.

Root Cause Analysis: A Tool To Promote Officer Safety And Reduce Officer Involved Shootings Over Time, John Hollway, Calvin Lee, Sean Smoot

Villanova Law Review

No abstract provided.

Fines: The Folly Of Conflating The Power To Fine With The Power To Tax, Mildred Wigfall Robinson

Villanova Law Review

No abstract provided.

In Police We Trust, Rachel Moran

Villanova Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Effects Of A Mandatory Body-Worn Camera Policy On Officer Perceptions Of Accountability, Oversight, And Departmental Culture, Jordan M. Hyatt, Renee J. Mitchell, Barak Ariel

Villanova Law Review

No abstract provided.

Feeding The Machine: Policing, Crime Data, & Algorithms, Elizabeth E. Joh

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

The Investigative Dynamics Of The Use Of Malware By Law Enforcement, Paul Ohm

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

The police have started to use malware—and other forms of government hacking—to solve crimes. Some fear coming abuses—the widespread use of malware when traditional investigative techniques would work just as well or to investigate political opponents or dissident speakers. This Article argues that these abuses will be checked, at least in part, by the very nature of malware and the way it must be controlled. This analysis utilizes a previously unformalized research methodology called “investigative dynamics” to come to these conclusions. Because every use of malware risks spoiling the tool—by revealing a software vulnerability that can be patched—the police will …

Private Prisons And The Need For Greater Transparency: Private Prison Information Act, Libbi L. Vilher

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

Private prisons are not subject to the same regulations as government prisons. Particularly, private prisons are exempt from the requirements set forth in the Freedom of Information Act and its state equivalents, which provide that the public has an enforceable right to request certain records from government agencies. Numerous efforts made by members of Congress to enact the Private Prison Information Act, a bill that would subject private prisons to disclosure laws found in the Freedom of Information Act, have been unsuccessful. Such efforts to strip the veil of secrecy that shades private prisons from public scrutiny are especially important …

How Does The Law Put A Historical Analogy To Work?: Defining The Imposition Of "A Condition Analogous To That Of A Slave" In Modern Brazil, Rebecca J. Scott, Leonardo Augusto De Andrade Barbosa, Carlos Henrique Borlido Haddad

Articles

Over the last decades, the Brazilian state has engaged in concerted legal efforts to identify and prosecute cases of what officials refer to as “slave labor” (trabalho escravo). At a conceptual level, the campaign has paired the constitutional protection of human dignity and the “social value of labor” with an expansive interpretation of the offense described in Article 149 of the Criminal Code as “the reduction of a person to a condition analogous to that of a slave.” At the operational level, mobile teams of inspectors and prosecutors have intervened in thousands of work sites, and labor prosecutors …

A Pantomime Of Privacy: Terrorism And Investigative Powers In German Constitutional Law, Russell A. Miller

Russell A. Miller

Germany is widely regarded as a global model for the privacy protection its constitutional regime offers against intrusive intelligence-gathering and law enforcement surveillance. There is some basis for Germany’s privacy “exceptionalism,” especially as the text of the German Constitution (“Basic Law”) provides explicit textual protections that America’s Eighteenth Century Constitution lacks. The German Federal Constitutional Court has added to those doctrines with an expansive interpretation of the more general rights to dignity (Basic Law Article 1) and the free development of one’s personality (Basic Law Article 2). This jurisprudence includes constitutional liberty guarantees such as the absolute protection of a …

Cardinal Safety Newsletter - December 2017, Otterbein University

Otterbein Police Department

No abstract provided.

Utah V. Strieff: Lemonade Stands And Dragnet Policing, Guy Padula

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Police Discretion And Local Immigration Policymaking, Rick Su

Rick Su

Immigration responsibilities in the United States are formally charged to a broad range of federal agencies, from the overseas screening of the State Department to the border patrols of the Department of Homeland Security. Yet in recent years, no department seems to have received more attention than that of the local police. For some, local police departments are frustrating our nation’s immigration laws by failing to fully participate in federal enforcement efforts. For others, it is precisely their participation that is a cause for concern. In response to these competing interests, a proliferation of competing state and federal laws have …

Walking While Trans: Profiling Of Transgender Women By Law Enforcement, And The Problem Of Proof, Leonore F. Carpenter, R. Barrett Marshall

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

The Violent State: Black Women's Invisible Struggle Against Police Violence, Michelle S. Jacobs

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

The Next Step In Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform: Passing The Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act Of 2014, Daniel Reed

Catholic University Law Review

Civil asset forfeiture is an operation of legal fiction that enables the government to seize property without an underlying conviction of the property owner. Federal authorities bring thousands of civil asset forfeiture cases annually, often against the property of owners who have not been charged with a crime. Such cases can result in unjust outcomes and denials of due process to property owners. To address this controversy, Representative Tim Walberg proposed several reforms to federal civil asset forfeiture laws known as the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2014 (CAFRA 2014).

After discussing the history of civil asset forfeiture, this …

Prisoners With Disabilities, Margo Schlanger

Book Chapters

A majority of American prisoners have at least one disability. So how jails and prisons deal with those prisoners’ needs is central to institutional safety and humaneness, and to reentry success or failure. In this chapter, I explain what current law requires of prison and jail officials, focusing on statutory and constitutional law mandating non-discrimination, accommodation, integration, and treatment. Jails and prisons have been very slow to learn the most general lesson of these strictures, which is that officials must individualize their assessment of and response to prisoners with disabilities. In addition, I look past current law to additional policies …

Rationing Criminal Justice, Richard A. Bierschbach, Stephanos Bibas

Michigan Law Review

Of the many diagnoses of American criminal justice’s ills, few focus on externalities. Yet American criminal justice systematically overpunishes in large part because few mechanisms exist to force consideration of the full social costs of criminal justice interventions. Actors often lack good information or incentives to minimize the harms they impose. Part of the problem is structural: criminal justice is fragmented vertically among governments, horizontally among agencies, and individually among self-interested actors. Part is a matter of focus: doctrinally and pragmatically, actors overwhelmingly view each case as an isolated, short-term transaction to the exclusion of broader, long-term, and aggregate effects. …

The Costs Of Trumped-Up Immigration Enforcement Measures, Kari E. Hong

Kari E. Hong

Currently, our country spends $18 billion each year on immigration enforcement, which is nearly $4 billion more than the combined budgets of the FBI, DEA, Secret Service, and ATF. President Trump hopes to substantially increase that annual number with his proposed heightened enforcement measures that result in more arrests, more ICE officers roaming our streets, airports, and courtrooms, more detentions, more deportations, and more wall. This essay begins by examining each of these measures that were outlined in the new executive orders and concludes that all are expensive, ineffective, unnecessary, and inhumane. Just as being “Tough on Crime” was proven …

How Law Enforcement Unmanned Aircraft Systems (Uas) Could Improve Tactical Response To Active Shooter Situations: The Case Of The 2017 Las Vegas Shooting, Ryan J. Wallace, Jon M. Loffi

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

Using a case study methodology, this paper assesses the unique tactical challenges faced by law enforcement officers responding to the October 1, 2017, Las Vegas active shooter incident. The authors assessed the tactical strengths of the assailant, Stephen Paddock, and challenges faced by law enforcement personnel. The authors present several proposed applications of unmanned aircraft systems that could have potentially mitigated the active shooter’s tactical advantages.

Looking At Justice Through A Lens Of Healing And Reconnection, Annalise Buth, Lynn Cohn

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.

Panel Discussion: Expanding Our Conception Of Justice

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.

Collateral Visibility: A Socio-Legal Study Of Police Body Camera Adoption, Privacy, And Public Disclosure In Washington State, Bryce Clayton Newell

Indiana Law Journal

Law enforcement use of body-worn cameras has become a subject of significant public and scholarly debate in recent years. This Article presents findings from a study of the legal and social implications of body-worn camera adoption by two police departments in Washington State. In particular, this study focuses on the public disclosure of body-worn camera footage under Washington State’s public records act, state privacy law, and original empirical findings related to officer attitudes about—and perceptions of—the impact of these laws on their work, their own personal privacy, and the privacy of the citizens they serve. The law in Washington State …

The Violent State: Black Women's Invisible Struggle Against Police Violence, Michelle S. Jacobs

UF Law Faculty Publications

Black women have a very specific history with the state and law enforcement that is not replicated among other women’s communities, and it is that unique situation that is the focus of this Article. Part I of this Article explores the historical roots of Black women’s interaction with the state. Part II of this Article is broken into two sections. The first will cover police killings of Black women. The second part of the section will explore the conditions under which Black women are physically assaulted by the police. Part III of the Article seeks to highlight when the police …

The Ambulance Chasing Epidemic In Texas, Ronald Rodriguez

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

Barratry and solicitation of professional employment is illegal and unethical. The Texas Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct define barratry as ethical misconduct and a serious crime. Unfortunately, for citizens and law-abiding attorneys of Texas, the criminal and ethical prohibitions against barratry have rarely been enforced. Consequently, barratry continues to proliferate rapidly throughout South Texas. For lawyers who engage in this unethical practice, the potential for large financial gain proves irresistible given the virtually nonexistent risk of prosecution. The lack of robust and successful prosecutions has created an optimal environment for barratry to proliferate. This Article discusses the current barratry epidemic …

Police In America: Ensuring Accountability And Mitigating Racial Bias Feat. Professor Destiny Peery

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.

Litigating Police Misconduct: Does The Litigation Process Matter? Does It Work?

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.

Police In America: Ensuring Accountability And Mitigating Racial Bias Feat. Paul Butler

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.

Reforming The Ranks: Policy Initiatives To Ensure Police Accountability & Improve Police And Community Relations

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.

Building Movement: Racial Injustice, Transformative Justice And Reimagined Policing

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.