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Full-Text Articles in Law
Legislating Racial Fairness In Criminal Justice, Olatunde C.A. Johnson
Legislating Racial Fairness In Criminal Justice, Olatunde C.A. Johnson
Faculty Scholarship
Twenty years ago, in McCleskey v. Kemp, the Supreme Court rejected a capital defendant's claim that statistical evidence of racial discrimination in the administration of Georgia's death penalty system constituted a violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. Yet, even as McCleskey effectively bars constitutional challenges to racial disparities in the criminal justice system where invidious bias is difficult to establish, the Court invites advocates to pursue legislation as a remedy to racial disparities. Indeed, the McCleskey Court offers as a rationale for its ruling the judiciary's institutional incompetence to remedy these disparities, holding that "McCleskey's arguments are best …
Less Is Better: Justice Stevens And The Narrowed Death Penalty, James S. Liebman, Lawrence C. Marshall
Less Is Better: Justice Stevens And The Narrowed Death Penalty, James S. Liebman, Lawrence C. Marshall
Faculty Scholarship
In a recent speech to the American Bar Association, Justice John Paul Stevens "issued an unusually stinging criticism of capital punishment." Although he "stopped short of calling for an end to the death penalty," Justice Stevens catalogued a number of its "'serious flaws,'" including several procedures that the full Court has reviewed and upheld over his dissent – selecting capital jurors in a manner that excludes those with qualms about the death penalty, permitting elected state judges to second-guess jurors when they decline to impose the death penalty, permitting states to premise death verdicts on "victim impact statements," tolerating sub-par …