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Articles 1 - 17 of 17
Full-Text Articles in Law
Proportionalities, Youngjae Lee
Proportionalities, Youngjae Lee
Notre Dame Law Review Reflection
“Proportionality” is ubiquitous. The idea that punishment should be proportional to crime is familiar in criminal law and has a lengthy history. But that is not the only place where one encounters the concept of proportionality in law and ethics. The idea of proportionality is important also in the self-defense context, where the right to defend oneself with force is limited by the principle of proportionality. Proportionality plays a role in the context of war, especially in the idea that the military advantage one side may draw from an attack must not be excessive in relation to the loss of …
The Fugazi Second Amendment: Bruen's Text, History, And Tradition Problem And How To Fix It, Patrick J. Charles
The Fugazi Second Amendment: Bruen's Text, History, And Tradition Problem And How To Fix It, Patrick J. Charles
Cleveland State Law Review
This Article critiques the Supreme Court’s use of text, history, and tradition in New York Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen. In doing so, not only is the Supreme Court’s approach to history-in-law in Bruen called into question, but also the Article provides the courts with an historically objective and even-keeled ‘way-ahead’ for future Second Amendment cases and controversies.
The Stereotyped Offender: Domestic Violence And The Failure Of Intervention, Carolyn B. Ramsey
The Stereotyped Offender: Domestic Violence And The Failure Of Intervention, Carolyn B. Ramsey
Publications
Scholars and battered women's advocates now recognize that many facets of the legal response to intimate-partner abuse stereotype victims and harm abuse survivors who do not fit commonly accepted paradigms. However, it is less often acknowledged that the feminist analysis of domestic violence also tends to stereotype offenders and that state action, including court-mandated batterer intervention, is premised on these offender stereotypes. The feminist approach can be faulted for minimizing or denying the role of substance abuse, mental illness, childhood trauma, race, culture, and poverty in intimate-partner abuse. Moreover, those arrested for domestic violence crimes now include heterosexual women, lesbians, …
Domestic Violence And State Intervention In The American West And Australia, 1860-1930, Carolyn B. Ramsey
Domestic Violence And State Intervention In The American West And Australia, 1860-1930, Carolyn B. Ramsey
Publications
This Article calls into question stereotypical assumptions about the presumed lack of state intervention in the family and the patriarchal violence of Anglo-American frontier societies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By analyzing previously unexamined cases of domestic assault and homicide in the American West and Australia, Professor Ramsey reveals a sustained (but largely ineffectual) effort to civilize men by punishing violence against women. Husbands in both the American West and Australia were routinely arrested or summoned to court for beating their wives in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Judges, police officers, journalists, and others expressed dismay …
A Diva Defends Herself: Gender And Domestic Violence In An Early Twentieth-Century Headline Trial, Carolyn B. Ramsey
A Diva Defends Herself: Gender And Domestic Violence In An Early Twentieth-Century Headline Trial, Carolyn B. Ramsey
Publications
This short article was presented as part of a symposium on headline criminal trials, organized by St. Louis University School of Law in honor of Lawrence Friedman. It describes and analyzes the self-defense acquittal of opera singer Mae Talbot in Nevada in 1910 on charges of murdering her abusive husband. Based on extensive research into archival trial records and newspaper reports, the article discusses how the press, the court, and trial lawyers on both sides depicted the killing and Mae’s possible defenses. Without discounting the sensationalism and entertainment value, to a scandal-hungry public, of stories about violent marriages, I contend …
Retail Rebellion And The Second Amendment, Darrell A. H. Miller
Retail Rebellion And The Second Amendment, Darrell A. H. Miller
Faculty Scholarship
When, if ever, is there a Second Amendment right to kill a cop? This piece seeks to answer that question. In District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment codifies a natural right to keep and bear arms for self-defense. That right to self-defense extends to both private and public threats, including self-defense against agents of a tyrannical government. Moreover, the right is individual. Individuals -- not just communities -- have the right to protect themselves from public violence. Individuals -- not just militias -- have the right to defend themselves against tyranny. In McDonald …
A Defensible Defense?: Reexamining Castle Doctrine Statutes, Benjamin Levin
A Defensible Defense?: Reexamining Castle Doctrine Statutes, Benjamin Levin
Publications
Recent years have seen a proliferation of so-called “castle doctrine” statutes – laws that provide home dwellers with more expansive self-defense protections if they resort to lethal force in confrontations with intruders. The passage of such laws and subsequent uses of the defense have captured the public imagination, prompting significant media attention, as well as skeptical and critical scholarship from the legal academic community.
Considering the current prevalence of castle laws and the often polarized nature of the debate concerning their application, this Article argues that it is important to excavate the doctrine from the culture wars rhetoric in which …
Provoking Change: Comparative Insights On Feminist Homicide Law Reform, Carolyn B. Ramsey
Provoking Change: Comparative Insights On Feminist Homicide Law Reform, Carolyn B. Ramsey
Publications
The provocation defense, which mitigates murder to manslaughter for killings perpetrated in the heat of passion, is one of the most controversial doctrines in the criminal law because of its perceived gender bias; yet most American scholars and lawmakers have not recommended that it be abolished. This Article analyzes trendsetting feminist homicide law reforms, including the abolition of the provocation defense in three Australian jurisdictions, places these reforms in historical context, and assesses their applicability to the United States. It ultimately advocates reintroducing the concept of justified emotion, grounded in modern equality principles and social values, as a requirement for …
Is Law? Constitutional Crisis And Existential Anxiety, Alice G. Ristroph
Is Law? Constitutional Crisis And Existential Anxiety, Alice G. Ristroph
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
In the recurring discussions of constitutional crises, one may find three forms of existential anxiety. The first, and most fleeting, is an anxiety about the continued existence of the nation. A second form of anxiety—to my mind, the most interesting form—is an anxiety about the possibility of the rule of law itself. Third, and most solipsistically, references to crisis in constitutional law scholarship could be the product of a kind of professional anxiety in the legal academy. We may be asking ourselves, “Constitutional theory: what is it good for?” and worrying that the answer is, “Absolutely nothing.” And yet, I …
The Natural Right Of Self-Defense: Heller's Lesson For The World, David B. Kopel
The Natural Right Of Self-Defense: Heller's Lesson For The World, David B. Kopel
David B Kopel
The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in District of Columbia v. Heller constitutionalized the right of self-defense, and described self-defense as a natural, inherent right. Analysis of natural law in Heller shows why Justice Stevens' dissent is clearly incorrect, and illuminates a crucial weakness in Justice Breyer's dissent. The constitutional recognition of the natural law right of self-defense has important implications for American law, and for foreign and international law.
After The Reasonable Man: Getting Over The Subjectivity Objectivity Question, Victoria Nourse
After The Reasonable Man: Getting Over The Subjectivity Objectivity Question, Victoria Nourse
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
This article challenges the conventional notion of the “reasonable man.” It argues that we make a category mistake when we adopt the metaphor of a human being as the starting point for analysis of the criminal law and instead offers an alternate approach based on heuristic theory, reconceiving the reasonable man as a heuristic that serves as the site for debate over majoritarian norms. The article posits that the debate over having a purely subjective standard and a purely objective standard obscures the commonsense necessity of having a hybrid standard, one which takes into account the characteristics of a particular …
Melting Hearts Of Stone: Clarence Darrow And The Sweet Trials, Douglas O. Linder
Melting Hearts Of Stone: Clarence Darrow And The Sweet Trials, Douglas O. Linder
Faculty Works
Detroit seemed to Dr. Ossian Sweet a good place to launch a medical practice in 1921. Ossian Sweet understood racial violence all too well. Growing up in Orlando, Ossian had witnessed a large crowd of whites running a black boy down a dusty road. Seeing racial hatred in its ugliest forms instilled in Sweet a deep race consciousness and determination not to let bigotry prevent him from achieving his own personal goals. He decided to move into his new home at 2905 Garland, whatever the risks to him and his family. Clarence Darrow associated with many causes over his long …
Self-Defense In Asian Religions, David B. Kopel
Self-Defense In Asian Religions, David B. Kopel
David B Kopel
This Article investigates the attitudes of six Far Eastern religions - Confucianism, Taoism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism, and Buddhism - towards the legitimacy of the use of force in individual and collective contexts. Self-defense is strongly legitimated in the theory and practice of the major Far Eastern religions. The finding is consistent with natural law theory that some aspects of the human personality, including the self-defense instinct, are inherent in human nature, rather than being entirely determined by culture.
The Catholic Second Amendment, David B. Kopel
The Catholic Second Amendment, David B. Kopel
David B Kopel
At the beginning of the second millennium, there was no separation of church and state, and kings ruled the church. Tyrannicide was considered sinful. By the end of the thirteenth century, however, everything had changed. The Little Renaissance that began in the eleventh century led to a revolution in political and moral philosophy, so that using force to overthrow a tyrannical government became a positive moral duty. The intellectual revolution was an essential step in the evolution of Western political philosophy that eventually led to the American Revolution.
Reconceptualizing Criminal Law Defenses, Victoria Nourse
Reconceptualizing Criminal Law Defenses, Victoria Nourse
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
In 1933, one of the leading theorists of the criminal law, Jerome Michael, wrote openly of the criminal law "as an instrument of the state." Today, criminal law is largely allergic to claims of political theory; commentators obsess about theories of deterrence and retribution, and the technical details of model codes and sentencing grids, but rarely speak of institutional effects or political commitments. In this article, the author aims to change that emphasis and to examine the criminal law as a tool for governance. Her approach is explicitly constructive: it accepts the criminal law that we have, places it in …
Self-Defense: The Equalizer, David B. Kopel, Linda Gorman
Self-Defense: The Equalizer, David B. Kopel, Linda Gorman
David B Kopel
Experiments in tightening gun-control laws have eroded the right of self defense and failed to stop serious crime. Studies Japan, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia.
The Case For Liberalizing The Use Of Deadly Force In Self-Defense, John Q. La Fond
The Case For Liberalizing The Use Of Deadly Force In Self-Defense, John Q. La Fond
Seattle University Law Review
This article sets forth the primary theories which might underlie the right of self-defense: necessity, duress, and personal autonomy. The article then examines the common law and the law of Washington governing the use of force in self-defense and demonstrates that both are grounded primarily in the utilitarian theory of necessity, which has as its primary objective the minimization of social loss even at the cost of harm to individual innocent victims. The article then analyzes the inadequate manner in which Washington courts are resolving difficult cases involving the use of deadly force in self-defense. Finally, the article argues that …