Law Commons^™

Enforcing State Law In Congress's Shadow, Robert A. Mikos

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This article examines an important yet overlooked form of federal regulation implicating efficiency and fairness concerns - congressional statutes that impose federal sanctions on individuals convicted of state crimes. These sanctions may profoundly influence state criminal proceedings, but the scholarly literature has all but ignored their effects. The article demonstrates that by raising the stakes involved in state cases, federal sanctions may cause defendants to contest state charges more vigorously, thereby producing one of two unintended consequences. First, the sanctions may make it more costly for state prosecutors to enforce state laws. Second, due to resource constraints or dislike of …