Law Commons^™

Bond Repudiation, Tax Codes, The Appropriations Process And Restitution Post-Eminent Domain Reform, John H. Ryskamp

ExpressO

This brief comment suggests where the anti-eminent domain movement might be heading next.

The “Csi Effect”: Better Jurors Through Television And Science?, Michael D. Mann

ExpressO

This Comment discusses how television shows such as CSI and Law & Order create heightened juror expectations. This will be published in the Buffalo Public Interest Law Journal's 2005-2006 issue.

Entrapment By Numbers, Dru Stevenson

ExpressO

This essay analyzes emerging trends in entrapment law, and is the first to describe the declining numbers of reported cases that involve the entrapment defense. This phenomenon is attributed to decreasing levels of uncertainty in the rules pertaining to the defense, and to discreet procedural issues. The shifting degrees of certainty in penal rules, which have become increasingly mechanical and mathematical over time, are shown to disfavor certain defendants inherently, to the point of being a snare or source of “entrapment” themselves for these individuals. (Published in 16 J. Law & Pub. Pol’y 1 2005)

Drugs, Dogs And The Fourth Amendment: An Analysis Of Justice Stevens' Opinion In Illinois V. Caballes, James Johnston

James B Johnston

When a drug dealer delivers illegal narcotics to the American maret place, he frequently uses out nation's roads. In an opinion authored by Justice John Paul Stevens, the U.S. Supreme Court that is captioned Illinois v. Caballes, the Court ruloed that drug dealers do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy when delivering illegal drugs in their cars. This article agrees with the Court's ruling and argues that we as a society have a right and an obligatio n to protect ourselves from drug abuse and drug traffickers. Justice Stevens' opinionj provides a brilliant examination of judicial precedent coupled with …

Detection Avoidance, Chris William Sanchirico

ExpressO

In practice, the problem of law enforcement is half a matter of what the government does to catch violators and half a matter of what violators do to avoid getting caught. In the theory of law enforcement, however, although the state’s efforts at "detection" play a decisive role, offenders’ efforts at "detection avoidance" are largely ignored. Always problematic, this imbalance has become critical in recent years as episodes of corporate misconduct spur new interest in punishing process crimes like obstruction of justice and perjury. This article adds detection avoidance to the existing theoretical frame with an eye toward informing the …

Breaking The Bank: Revisiting Central Bank Of Denver After Enron And Sarbanes-Oxley, Celia Taylor

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

Calling A Truce In The Culture Wars: From Enron To The Cia, Craig S. Lerner

George Mason University School of Law Working Papers Series

This Article compares and evaluates recent Congressional efforts to improve institutional “cultures” in the private and public sectors. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 was designed to upgrade corporate culture by patching up the “walls” that separate corporate management from boards of directors, accountants, lawyers, and financial analysts. The Intelligence Reform Act of 2005 took a different tack, hammering away at walls that supposedly segmented the intelligence community. The logic was that the market failed because people did not observe sufficient formalities in their dealings with one another, while the intelligence community failed precisely because people kept their distance from one …

Victims And Perpetrators: An Argument For Comparative Liability In Criminal Law, Vera Bergelson

Rutgers Law School (Newark) Faculty Papers

This article challenges the legal rule according to which the victim’s conduct is irrelevant to the determination of the perpetrator’s criminal liability. The author attacks this rule from both positive and normative perspectives, and argues that criminal law should incorporate an affirmative defense of comparative liability. This defense would fully or partially exculpate the defendant if the victim by his own acts has lost or reduced his right not to be harmed.

Part I tests the descriptive accuracy of the proposition that the perpetrator’s liability does not depend on the conduct of the victim. Criminological and victimological studies strongly suggest …

Whistle Blowing, Ben Depoorter, Jef De Mot

George Mason University School of Law Working Papers Series

For law enforcement purposes corruption and fraud are hard battles. Because of the highly secretive and premeditated nature of these crimes, prime witnesses are themselves often implicated in the fraudulent transaction. Promises of immunity and whistle blowing rewards are often required to resolve these information asymmetries. These insights have set a trend, both in scholarship and law enforcement practice, towards reward-based approaches (carrots), as an alternative or complement to punishment based deterrence (sticks). Applying the U.S. False Claims Act (FCA) as an analytical framework, we provide a critical review of the efficiency limitations of whistle blowing. More specifically, the formal …

Plea Bargaining Outside The Shadow Of Trial, Stephanos Bibas

All Faculty Scholarship

Plea-bargaining literature predicts that parties strike plea bargains in the shadow of expected trial outcomes. In other words, parties forecast the expected sentence after trial, discount it by the probability of acquittal, and offer some proportional discount. This oversimplified model ignores how structural distortions skew bargaining outcomes. Agency costs; attorney competence, compensation, and workloads; resources; sentencing and bail rules; and information deficits all skew bargaining. In addition, psychological biases and heuristics warp judgments: overconfidence, denial, discounting, risk preferences, loss aversion, framing, and anchoring all affect bargaining decisions. Skilled lawyers can partly counteract some of these problems but sometimes overcompensate. The …

Pleas' Progress, Stephanos Bibas

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Prison Reform Revisited: The Unfinished Agenda, Michael B. Mushlin

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Prison Reform Revisited: The Unfinished Agenda, which was held at Pace Law School from October 16-18, 2003, was a remarkable event. At this conference--a summit really--leading academics, attorneys, prison reformers, judges, prison officials and international prison reformers gathered at Pace Law School and the New York State Judicial Center in White Plains, New York to discuss how to advance the cause of prison reform in the U.S. This issue of the Pace Law Review is devoted to the papers presented in connection with that important conference.

Integrating Remorse And Apology Into Criminal Procedure, Stephanos Bibas, Richard A. Bierschbach

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Biological Factors Associated With Aggression And Violent Behavior: A Comparative Analysis Of Scientific, Societal, And Legal Dimensions, Troy M. Bear

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

Dying Twice: Incarceration On Death Row, Michael B. Mushlin

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Dying Twice is an important report. The work is a collaboration between the Corrections Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, which I chaired, and the Committee on Capital Punishment of the Association chaired by Norman Greene. The working group that researched and wrote the report was drawn from members of both committees. The attorneys and the physician who served on the committee are wonderful, talented, dedicated people. It was a pleasure to work with professionals of this caliber on such an important effort. Dying Twice was endorsed as the position of the Association …

Dying Twice: Conditions On New York's Death Row, Michael B. Mushlin

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In 1995 New York State revived the death penalty as a punishment for certain categories of murder, and established a “death row” for condemned men at the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York (variously, “Clinton” or the “Prison”). Four years later, in October 1999, two committees of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York (the “Association”) joined together to study the conditions of confinement on this death row--or, as it is officially called, the Unit for Condemned Persons (the “UCP”). These committees--the Committee on Corrections and the Committee on Capital Punishment--formed a joint subcommittee (the …

Double Helix, Double Bind: Factual Innocence And Postconviction Dna Testing, Seth F. Kreimer, David Rudovsky

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Judicial Fact-Finding And Sentence Enhancements In A World Of Guilty Pleas, Stephanos Bibas

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.