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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Effects Of Voluntary And Presumptive Sentencing Guidelines, Stephen Rushin, Josph Colquitt, Griffin Sims Edwards
The Effects Of Voluntary And Presumptive Sentencing Guidelines, Stephen Rushin, Josph Colquitt, Griffin Sims Edwards
Faculty Publications & Other Works
This Article empirically illustrates that the introduction of voluntary and presumptive sentencing guidelines at the state-level can contribute to statistically significant reductions in sentence length, inter-judge disparities, and racial disparities.
For much of American history, judges had largely unguided discretion to select criminal sentences within statutorily authorized ranges. But in the mid-to-late twentieth century, states and the federal government began experimenting with sentencing guidelines designed to reign in judicial discretion to ensure that similarly situated offenders received comparable sentences. Some states have made their guidelines voluntary, while others have made their guidelines presumptive or mandatory, meaning that judges must generally …
Equal Protection Under The Carceral State, Aya Gruber
Equal Protection Under The Carceral State, Aya Gruber
Publications
McCleskey v. Kemp, the case that upheld the death penalty despite undeniable evidence of its racially disparate impact, is indelibly marked by Justice William Brennan’s phrase, “a fear of too much justice.” The popular interpretation of this phrase is that the Supreme Court harbored what I call a “disparity-claim fear,” dreading a future docket of racial discrimination claims and erecting an impossibly high bar for proving an equal protection violation. A related interpretation is that the majority had a “color-consciousness fear” of remedying discrimination through race-remedial policies. In contrast to these conventional views, I argue that the primary anxiety …
The Racist Algorithm?, Anupam Chander
The Racist Algorithm?, Anupam Chander
Michigan Law Review
Review of The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms That Control Money and Information by Frank Pasquale.
What's Wrong With Sentencing Equality?, Richard A. Bierschbach, Stephanos Bibas
What's Wrong With Sentencing Equality?, Richard A. Bierschbach, Stephanos Bibas
All Faculty Scholarship
Equality in criminal sentencing often translates into equalizing outcomes and stamping out variations, whether race-based, geographic, or random. This approach conflates the concept of equality with one contestable conception focused on outputs and numbers, not inputs and processes. Racial equality is crucial, but a concern with eliminating racism has hypertrophied well beyond race. Equalizing outcomes seems appealing as a neutral way to dodge contentious substantive policy debates about the purposes of punishment. But it actually privileges deterrence and incapacitation over rehabilitation, subjective elements of retribution, and procedural justice, and it provides little normative guidance for punishment. It also has unintended …
Evolving Standards Of Domination: Abandoning A Flawed Legal Standard And Approaching A New Era In Penal Reform, Spearit
Chicago-Kent Law Review
This article critiques the evolving standards of decency doctrine as a form of Social Darwinism. It argues that evolving standards of decency provided a system of review that was tailor-made for Civil Rights opponents to scale back racial progress. Although as a doctrinal matter, evolving standards sought to tie punishment practices to social mores, prison sentencing became subject to political agendas that determined the course of punishment more than the benevolence of a matur-ing society. Indeed, rather than the fierce competition that is supposed to guide social development, the criminal justice system was consciously deployed as a means of social …
Adding Fuel To The Fire: United States V. Booker And The Crack Versus Powder Cocaine Sentencing Disparity, Briton K. Nelson
Adding Fuel To The Fire: United States V. Booker And The Crack Versus Powder Cocaine Sentencing Disparity, Briton K. Nelson
University of Richmond Law Review
No abstract provided.