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Articles 1 - 30 of 34
Full-Text Articles in Law
Canada's Assisted Human Reproduction Act: Pragmatic Reforms In Support Of Research, Tania M. Bubela, Erika Kleiderman, Zubin Master, Ubaka Ogbogu, Vardit Ravitsky, Amy Zarzeczny, Bartha Maria Knoppers
Canada's Assisted Human Reproduction Act: Pragmatic Reforms In Support Of Research, Tania M. Bubela, Erika Kleiderman, Zubin Master, Ubaka Ogbogu, Vardit Ravitsky, Amy Zarzeczny, Bartha Maria Knoppers
Office of the Provost
Canada's Assisted Human Reproduction Act is long overdue for Parliamentary review. We argue that the current regulation of research using human reproductive materials is not proportionate, not responsive to the uncertain threats posed to human and environmental health and safety, and is not considerate of diverse values in a democratic society. We propose tailored regulatory carve-outs for in vitro research for currently prohibited activities, such as gene editing, and for the exercise of Ministerial Discretion for access by Canadians to experimental in vivo interventions that are currently prohibited, such as mitochondrial replacement therapy. Our recommendations are bounded by constitutional constraints …
It's Complicated: The Challenge Of Prosecuting Tncs For Criminal Activity Under International Law, Jena Martin
It's Complicated: The Challenge Of Prosecuting Tncs For Criminal Activity Under International Law, Jena Martin
Faculty & Staff Scholarship
This essay aims to tackle an increasingly thorny and relevant issue: what do you do if a Transnational Corporation (TNC) commits a crime? The question raises a number of challenges, both philosophically and practically. First, what does it mean to prosecute an organization? Although there are some limited examples (the United States’ prosecution of accounting firm Arthur Andersen being among the most note-worthy), we have relatively little precedence regarding what this would entail; how exactly do you put a corporation on trial? Second, practically speaking, where do you hold the trial? This challenge is magnified by the fact that, by …
Bias In, Bias Out, Sandra G. Mason
Bias In, Bias Out, Sandra G. Mason
AI-DR Collection
Police, prosecutors, judges, and other criminal justice actors increasingly use algorithmic risk assessment to estimate the likelihood that a person will commit future crime. As many scholars have noted, these algorithms tend to have disparate racial impact. In response, critics advocate three strategies of resistance: (1) the exclusion of input factors that correlate closely with race, (2) adjustments to algorithmic design to equalize predictions across racial lines, and (3) rejection of algorithmic methods altogether.
This Article’s central claim is that these strategies are at best superficial and at worst counterproductive, because the source of racial inequality in risk assessment lies …
Envisioning Abolition Democracy, Allegra M. Mcleod
Envisioning Abolition Democracy, Allegra M. Mcleod
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
For decades, police in Chicago chained people in their custody to the wall in dark, windowless rooms and subjected their captives to beatings, electric shocks, anal rape, and racial abuse. In July 2016, members of the #LetUsBreathe Collective, created in the aftermath of numerous police killings in Chicago and elsewhere, occupied vacant lots adjacent to the Chicago Police Department’s Homan Square facility — one of the locations where such abuse occurred. The Collective sought justice, not through recourse to the criminal courts or civil litigation, but instead by reconceptualizing justice in connection with efforts to end reliance on imprisonment and …
Down To The Last Strike: The Effect Of The Jury Lottery On Criminal Convictions, Scott Kostyshak, Neel U. Sukhatme
Down To The Last Strike: The Effect Of The Jury Lottery On Criminal Convictions, Scott Kostyshak, Neel U. Sukhatme
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
How much does luck matter to a criminal defendant in a jury trial? We use rich data on jury selection to causally estimate how parties who are randomly assigned a less favorable jury (as proxied by whether their attorneys exhaust their peremptory strikes) fare at trial. Our novel identification strategy uniquely captures variation in juror predisposition using data unobserved by the econometrician but observed by attorneys. Criminal defendants who lose the “jury lottery” are more likely to be convicted than similarly-situated counterparts, with a significant increase (18-20 percentage points) for Black defendants. Our results are robust to alternate specifications and …
Women's Rights, Human Rights And The Criminal Law Or, Feminist Debates And Responses To [De]Criminalization And Sexual And Reproductive Health, Aziza Ahmed
Faculty Scholarship
My comments today seek to highlight how social and economic rights advocates, particularly those concerned with the right to health, engage with ongoing debates about the role of criminal law in human rights. In particular, I emphasize how many “right to health” campaigns fight for the decriminalization of laws that result in the arrest of marginalized communities or health workers. This trend within right to health advocacy complicates what has been called the anti-impunity turn in human rights. In other words, although many scholars have correctly highlighted the rise of a carceral agenda in human rights, there is also ongoing, …
Reforming Competence Restoration Statutes: An Outpatient Model, Susan A. Mcmahon
Reforming Competence Restoration Statutes: An Outpatient Model, Susan A. Mcmahon
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Defendants who suffer from mental illness and are found incompetent to stand trial are often ordered committed to an inpatient mental health facility to restore their competence, even if outpatient care may be the better treatment option. Inpatient facilities are overcrowded and place the defendants on long waiting lists. Some defendants then spend weeks, months, or even years in their jail cell, waiting for a transfer to a hospital bed.
Outpatient competence restoration programs promise to relieve this pressure. But even if every state suddenly opened a robust outpatient competence restoration program, an obstacle looms: the statutes governing competence restoration, …
The Persistence Of Fatal Police Taserings In 2018, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.
The Persistence Of Fatal Police Taserings In 2018, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.
Popular Media
Fatal police taserings have been a persistent phenomenon in the United States for nearly two decades. Steadily, relentlessly, year after year, month after month, our police kill citizens with tasers. This article reviews the history of fatal police taserings and those that occurred in 2018.
Graffiti, Speech, And Crime, Jenny E. Carroll
Graffiti, Speech, And Crime, Jenny E. Carroll
Faculty Scholarship
Graffiti resides at the uncomfortable intersection of criminal law and free speech rhetoric. It is not the shout of revolution to the gathered, protesting masses, or the political pamphlet flung from a 1920s window. Graffiti is not the obscene-rendered-political-jacketed protest of war, or a flag set aflame in the name of reclaiming patriotism. It is an illicit scrawl. It is damage and defiance rolled into one from the moment of its creation. Graffiti is a crime.
Unlike more celebrated examples of free speech, graffiti earns no safe harbor from the First Amendment. When asked to choose between the tag that …
Ethics In Criminal Justice Ccg 333, Karen Morse
Ethics In Criminal Justice Ccg 333, Karen Morse
Library Impact Statements
No abstract provided.
Constitutionally Incapable: Parole Boards As Sentencing Courts, Mae C. Quinn
Constitutionally Incapable: Parole Boards As Sentencing Courts, Mae C. Quinn
Journal Articles
Courtroom sentencing, as part of the judicial process, is a long-standing norm in the justice system of the United States. But this basic criminal law precept is currently under quiet attack. This is because some states are now allowing parole boards to step in to decide criminal penalties without first affording defendants lawful judicial branch sentencing proceedings and sentences. These outside-of-court punishment decisions are occurring in the cases of youthful offenders entitled to sentencing relief under Miller v. Alabama, which outlawed automatic life-without-parole sentences for children. Thus, some Miller-impacted defendants are being sentenced by paroleboards as executive branch agents, rather …
The Criminal Law Docket: A Term Of Modest Changes, Alan Raphael
The Criminal Law Docket: A Term Of Modest Changes, Alan Raphael
Faculty Publications & Other Works
No abstract provided.
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 …
The Effects Of Voluntary And Presumptive Sentencing Guidelines, Stephen Rushin, Griffin Sims Edwards, Josph Colquitt
The Effects Of Voluntary And Presumptive Sentencing Guidelines, Stephen Rushin, Griffin Sims Edwards, Josph Colquitt
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 …
The Temptations Of Scapegoating, Daniel B. Yeager
The Temptations Of Scapegoating, Daniel B. Yeager
Faculty Scholarship
We say “it is better that ten guilty persons escape, than one innocent suffer.” Evidence of the law’s 10:1 preference for false acquittals, however, is weak. In actuality, the “twofold aim … that guilt shall not escape or innocence suffer” weights the avoidance of false convictions and false acquittals equally. Likewise, the Supreme Court’s claim that “the central purpose of a criminal trial is to decide the factual question of the defendant’s guilt or innocence” is, it turns out, porous. The truth sought at trial need be only true enough—verdicts are legally true if fairly arrived at. While the risk …
Bias In, Bias Out, Sandra G. Mayson
Bias In, Bias Out, Sandra G. Mayson
Scholarly Works
Police, prosecutors, judges, and other criminal justice actors increasingly use algorithmic risk assessment to estimate the likelihood that a person will commit future crime. As many scholars have noted, these algorithms tend to have disparate racial impact. In response, critics advocate three strategies of resistance: (1) the exclusion of input factors that correlate closely with race, (2) adjustments to algorithmic design to equalize predictions across racial lines, and (3) rejection of algorithmic methods altogether.
This Article’s central claim is that these strategies are at best superficial and at worst counterproductive, because the source of racial inequality in risk assessment lies …
Graffiti, Street Art, Walls, And The Public In Canadian Copyright Law, Pascale Chapdelaine
Graffiti, Street Art, Walls, And The Public In Canadian Copyright Law, Pascale Chapdelaine
Law Publications
Graffiti is vilified, and at the same time is increasingly revered and celebrated. This ambivalence is reflected in the general legal landscape that surrounds graffiti and other forms of street art at the criminal, civil and municipal levels. Within this general legal framework, the application of copyright law to graffiti and street art reveals a complex web of interwoven issues about the protection of the graffiti artist’s economic and moral rights and questions of illegality and public policy, and about the rights of the property owner of the “wall” on which the art resides, and the public. This book chapter …
Neurohype And The Law: A Cautionary Tale, Stephen J. Morse
Neurohype And The Law: A Cautionary Tale, Stephen J. Morse
All Faculty Scholarship
This chapter suggests that for conceptual, empirical, and practical reasons, neuroscience in general and non-invasive brain imaging in particular are not likely to revolutionize the law and our conception of ourselves, but may make modest contributions to legal policy and case adjudication if the legal relevance of the science is properly understood.
Misdemeanor Appeals, Nancy J. King, Michael Heise
Misdemeanor Appeals, Nancy J. King, Michael Heise
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
We provide the first estimate of the rate of appellate review for misdemeanors, concluding that appellate courts review no more than eight in ten thousand misdemeanor convictions and disturb only one conviction or sentence out of every ten thousand misdemeanor judgments. This level of oversight is much lower than that for felony cases, for reasons we explain. To develop law and regulate error in misdemeanor cases, particularly in prosecutions for the lowest-level offenses, courts may need to provide mechanisms for judicial scrutiny outside the direct appeal process.
Additional findings include new information about the rate of felony trial court review …
Mens Rea Reform And Its Discontents, Benjamin Levin
Mens Rea Reform And Its Discontents, Benjamin Levin
Publications
This Article examines the debates over recent proposals for “mens rea reform.” The substantive criminal law has expanded dramatically, and legislators have criminalized a great deal of common conduct. Often, new criminal laws do not require that defendants know they are acting unlawfully. Mens rea reform proposals seek to address the problems of overcriminalization and unintentional offending by increasing the burden on prosecutors to prove a defendant’s culpable mental state. These proposals have been a staple of conservative-backed bills on criminal justice reform. Many on the left remain skeptical of mens rea reform and view it as a deregulatory vehicle …
The Compliance Process, Veronica Root Martinez
The Compliance Process, Veronica Root Martinez
Journal Articles
Even as regulators and prosecutors proclaim the importance of effective compliance programs, failures persist. Organizations fail to ensure that they and their agents comply with legal and regulatory requirements, industry practices, and their own internal policies and norms. From the companies that provide our news, to the financial institutions that serve as our bankers, to the corporations that make our cars, compliance programs fail to prevent misconduct each and every day. The causes of these compliance failures are multifaceted and include general enforcement deficiencies, difficulties associated with overseeing compliance programs within complex organizations, and failures to establish a culture of …
Prosecuting In The Shadow Of The Jury, Anna Offit
Prosecuting In The Shadow Of The Jury, Anna Offit
Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters
This article offers an unprecedented empirical window into prosecutorial discretion drawing on long-term participatory research between 2013 and 2017. The central finding is that jurors play a vital role in federal prosecutors’ decision-making, professional identities, and formulations of justice. This is because even the remote possibility of lay scrutiny creates an opening for prosecutors to make common sense assessments of (1) the evidence in their cases, (2) the character of witnesses, defendants and victims, and (3) their own moral and professional character as public servants. By facilitating explicit consideration of the fairness of their cases from a public vantage point, …
Federal Guilty Pleas: Inequities, Indigence And The Rule 11 Process, Julian A. Cook
Federal Guilty Pleas: Inequities, Indigence And The Rule 11 Process, Julian A. Cook
Scholarly Works
In 2017 and 2018, the Supreme Court issued two little-noticed decisions—Lee v. United States and Class v. United States. While neither case captured the attention of the national media nor generated meaningful academic commentary, both cases are well deserving of critical examination for reasons independent of the issues presented to the Court. They deserve review because of a consequential shared fact; a fact representative of a commonplace, yet largely overlooked, federal court practice that routinely disadvantages the indigent (and disproportionately minority populations), and compromises the integrity of arguably the most consequential component of the federal criminal justice process. In each …
The Left's Law-And-Order Agenda, Aya Gruber
How Courts In Criminal Cases Respond To Childhood Trauma, Deborah W. Denno
How Courts In Criminal Cases Respond To Childhood Trauma, Deborah W. Denno
Faculty Scholarship
Neurobiological and epidemiological research suggests that abuse and adverse events experienced as a child can increase an adult’s risk of brain dysfunction associated with disorders related to criminality and violence. Much of this research is predictive, based on psychological evaluations of children; few studies have focused on whether or how criminal proceedings against adult defendants consider indicators of childhood trauma. This Article analyzes a subset of criminal cases pulled from an 800-case database created as part of an original, large-scale, empirical research project known as the Neuroscience Study. The 266 relevant cases are assessed to determine the extent to which, …
Latin American Racial Equality Law As Criminal Law, Tanya K. Hernandez
Latin American Racial Equality Law As Criminal Law, Tanya K. Hernandez
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Federal Courts' Supervisory Authority In Federal Criminal Cases: The Warren Court Revolution That Might Have Been, Bruce A. Green
Federal Courts' Supervisory Authority In Federal Criminal Cases: The Warren Court Revolution That Might Have Been, Bruce A. Green
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Punishment Without Process: Victim Impact Proceedings For Dead Defendants, Bruce Green, Rebecca Roiphe
Punishment Without Process: Victim Impact Proceedings For Dead Defendants, Bruce Green, Rebecca Roiphe
Articles & Chapters
After Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide in jail, two judges allowed his accusers to speak in court. This article argues that the proceedings were inappropriate because the criminal case ends when the defendant dies. If the conviction and appeal are not final, there is no finding of guilt, and the defendant is still presumed innocent. Allowing accusers to speak at this time violates the principle of due process and threatens to undermine faith in judges and the criminal justice system in general. While courts are at times legally required to hear from victims of crimes, they were not allowed to do …
Integrating The Access To Justice Movement, Lauren Sudeall
Integrating The Access To Justice Movement, Lauren Sudeall
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Last fall, advocates of social change came together at the A2J Summit at Fordham University School of Law and discussed how to galvanize a national access to justice movement - who would it include, and what would or should it attempt to achieve? One important preliminary question we tackled was how such a movement would define "justice," and whether it would apply only to the civil justice system. Although the phrase "access to justice" is not exclusively civil in nature, more often than not it is taken to have that connotation. Lost in the interpretation is an opportunity to engage …
Foreword: Abolition Constitutionalism, Dorothy E. Roberts
Foreword: Abolition Constitutionalism, Dorothy E. Roberts
All Faculty Scholarship
In this Foreword, I make the case for an abolition constitutionalism that attends to the theorizing of prison abolitionists. In Part I, I provide a summary of prison abolition theory and highlight its foundational tenets that engage with the institution of slavery and its eradication. I discuss how abolition theorists view the current prison industrial complex as originating in, though distinct from, racialized chattel slavery and the racial capitalist regime that relied on and sustained it, and their movement as completing the “unfinished liberation” sought by slavery abolitionists in the past. Part II considers whether the U.S. Constitution is an …