Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Discipline
-
- Criminal Procedure (10)
- Constitutional Law (6)
- Criminal Law (4)
- Courts (3)
- Judges (2)
-
- Supreme Court of the United States (2)
- Civil Procedure (1)
- Construction Law (1)
- Criminology (1)
- Dispute Resolution and Arbitration (1)
- Evidence (1)
- Fourteenth Amendment (1)
- Fourth Amendment (1)
- Human Rights Law (1)
- Immigration Law (1)
- Jurisprudence (1)
- Law and Society (1)
- Legal Biography (1)
- Legal Profession (1)
- Science and Technology Law (1)
- Social and Behavioral Sciences (1)
- Sociology (1)
Articles 1 - 13 of 13
Full-Text Articles in Law
Constitutionally Tailoring Punishment, Richard A. Bierschbach, Stephanos Bibas
Constitutionally Tailoring Punishment, Richard A. Bierschbach, Stephanos Bibas
All Faculty Scholarship
Since the turn of the century, the Supreme Court has begun to regulate non-capital sentencing under the Sixth Amendment in the Apprendi line of cases (requiring jury findings of fact to justify sentence enhancements) as well as under the Eighth Amendment in the Miller and Graham line of cases (forbidding mandatory life imprisonment for juvenile defendants). Though both lines of authority sound in individual rights, in fact they are fundamentally about the structures of criminal justice. These two seemingly disparate lines of doctrine respond to structural imbalances in non-capital sentencing by promoting morally appropriate punishment judgments that are based on …
Presumed Guilty, Terrence Cain
Presumed Guilty, Terrence Cain
Faculty Scholarship
It would probably surprise the average American to learn that prosecutors need only prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt sometimes. Although the Due Process Clauses of the Constitution require that the government prove each element of an alleged criminal offense beyond a reasonable doubt, the use of statutory presumptions has relieved the government of this responsibility, and in some cases, has even shifted the burden to the defendant to disprove the presumption. Likewise, the Sixth Amendment grants a criminal defendant the right to have the jury and the jury alone determine whether the government has met its burden and ultimately …
Shrinking Gideon And Expanding Alternatives To Lawyers, Stephanos Bibas
Shrinking Gideon And Expanding Alternatives To Lawyers, Stephanos Bibas
All Faculty Scholarship
This essay, written as part of a symposium at Washington and Lee Law School entitled Gideon at 50: Reassessing the Right to Counsel, argues that the standard academic dream of expanding the right to counsel to all criminal and major civil cases has proven to be an unattainable mirage. We have been spreading resources too thin, in the process slighting the core cases such as capital and other serious felonies that are the most complex and need the most time and money. Moreover, our legal system is overengineered, making the law too complex and legal services too expensive for …
Reclaiming Equality To Reframe Indigent Defense Reform, Lauren Sudeall
Reclaiming Equality To Reframe Indigent Defense Reform, Lauren Sudeall
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Equal access to resources is fundamental to meaningful legal representation, yet for decades, equality arguments have been ignored in litigating indigent defense reform. At a time when underfunded indigent defense systems across the country are failing to provide indigent defendants with adequate representation, the question of resources is even more critical. Traditionally, advocates seeking indigent defense reform have relied on Sixth Amendment arguments to protect the rights of indigents in this context; however, the Sixth Amendment approach suffers from a number of shortcomings that have made it a poor tool for systemic reform, including its exclusive focus on attorney performance …
Effective Trial Counsel After Martinez V. Ryan: Focusing On The Adequacy Of State Procedures, Eve Brensike Primus
Effective Trial Counsel After Martinez V. Ryan: Focusing On The Adequacy Of State Procedures, Eve Brensike Primus
Articles
Everyone knows that excessive caseloads, poor funding, and a lack of training plague indigent defense delivery systems throughout the states, such that the promise of Gideon v. Wainwright is largely unfulfilled. Commentators have disagreed about how best to breathe life into Gideon . Many disclaim any possibility that federal habeas corpus review of state criminal cases could catalyze reform give n the many procedural obstacle s that currently prevent state prisoners from getting into federal court. But the Supreme Court has recently taken a renewed interest in using federal habeas review to address the problem of ineffective attorneys in state …
Confronting Science: Expert Evidence And The Confrontation Clause, David H. Kaye, Jennifer L. Mnookin
Confronting Science: Expert Evidence And The Confrontation Clause, David H. Kaye, Jennifer L. Mnookin
Journal Articles
In Crawford v Washington, the Supreme Court substantially changed its understanding of how the Confrontation Clause applies to hearsay evidence. Since then, the Court has issued three bitterly contested expert-evidence-related Confrontation Clause decisions, and each one has generated at least as many questions as answers. This article analyzes this trilogy of cases, especially the most recent, Williams v Illinois.
In Williams, the Court issued a bewildering array of opinions in which majority support for admitting the opinion of a DNA analyst about tests that she did not perform was awkwardly knitted together out of several incompatible doctrinal …
Understanding Immigration: Satisfying Padilla's New Definition Of Competence In Legal Representation, Yolanda Vazquez
Understanding Immigration: Satisfying Padilla's New Definition Of Competence In Legal Representation, Yolanda Vazquez
Faculty Articles and Other Publications
Panel Discussion on Padilla v. Kentucky.
A Rejoinder To Professor Schauer's Commentary, Yale Kamisar
A Rejoinder To Professor Schauer's Commentary, Yale Kamisar
Articles
It is quite a treat to have Professor Frederick Schauer comment on my Miranda article.1 Professor Schauer is a renowned authority on freedom of speech and the author of many thoughtful, probing articles in other areas as well, especially jurisprudence. I am pleased that in large measure, Schauer, too, laments the erosion of Miranda in the last four-and-a-half decades2 and that he, too, was unhappy with the pre-Miranda due process/“totality of circumstances”/“voluntariness” test.3 I also like what Schauer had to say about “prophylactic rules,” a term that has sometimes been used to disparage the Miranda rules.4 As Schauer observes, the …
Justice Kennedy's Sixth Amendment Pragmatism, Stephanos Bibas
Justice Kennedy's Sixth Amendment Pragmatism, Stephanos Bibas
All Faculty Scholarship
This essay, written as part of a symposium on the evolution of Justice Kennedy’s jurisprudence, surveys three areas of criminal procedure under the Sixth Amendment: sentence enhancements, the admissibility of hearsay, and the regulation of defense counsel’s responsibilities. In each area, Justice Kennedy has been a notable voice of pragmatism, focusing not on bygone analogies to the eighteenth century but on a hard-headed appreciation of the twenty-first. He has shown sensitivity to modern criminal practice, prevailing professional norms, and practical constraints, as befits a Justice who came to the bench with many years of private-practice experience. His touchstone is not …
The Right To Plea Bargain With Competent Counsel After Cooper And Frye: Is The Supreme Court Making The Ordinary Criminal Process Too Long, Too Expensive, And Unpredictable In Pursuit Of Perfect Justice, Bruce A. Green
Faculty Scholarship
In Lafler v. Cooper and Missouri v. Frye, the Supreme Court recently ruled in favor of criminal defendants who were deprived of a favorable plea offer because of their lawyers’ professional lapses. In dissent, Justice Scalia complained that “[t]he ordinary criminal process has become too long, too expensive, and unpredictable,” because of the Court’s criminal procedure jurisprudence; that plea bargaining is “the alternative in which...defendants have sought relief,” and that the two new decisions on the Sixth Amendment right to effective representation in plea bargaining would add to the burden on the criminal process. This essay examines several aspects of …
Child Testimony And The Right To Present A Defense, Stephen A. Saltzburg
Child Testimony And The Right To Present A Defense, Stephen A. Saltzburg
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
This article discusses the importance of a child's testimony in a criminal prosecution by examining Harris v. Thompson, 698 F.3d 609 (7th Cir. 2012). In this case, a child's testimony was excluded, violating the defendant's right to present a complete defense.
Effective Remedies For Ineffective Assistance, Jenia I. Turner
Effective Remedies For Ineffective Assistance, Jenia I. Turner
Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters
In two recent cases, Missouri v. Frye and Lafler v. Cooper, the Supreme Court affirmed that criminal defendants have a right to competent counsel during plea bargaining. The Court also established that the injury caused by ineffective assistance is not mooted by the subsequent conviction of the defendant at trial. The cases were broadly celebrated for clarifying that the Sixth Amendment applies fully to plea bargaining — the standard process by which our justice system resolves criminal cases today.
The most significant and surprising part of Lafler, however, was the Court’s holding concerning remedies. The Court held that trial courts …
Fear Of Adversariness: Using Gideon To Restrict Defendants' Invocation Of Adversary Procedures, Pamela R. Metzger
Fear Of Adversariness: Using Gideon To Restrict Defendants' Invocation Of Adversary Procedures, Pamela R. Metzger
Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters
Fifty years ago Gideon promised that an attorney would vindicate the constitutional rights of any accused too poor to afford an attorney. But Gideon also promised more. Writ small, Gideon promised to protect individual defendants; writ large, Gideon promised to protect our system of constitutional criminal procedure. Much has been written about Gideon’s broken promise to our poor; this Essay is about Gideon’s broken promise to our system.
With its army of zealous public defenders, Gideon should have produced litigation that vigorously protected the core structures of our adversary trial system. Instead, courts have converted Gideon representation into a Gideon …