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Full-Text Articles in Law
Tort Justice Reform, Paul David Stern
Tort Justice Reform, Paul David Stern
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
This Article calls for a comprehensive reform of public tort law with respect to law enforcement conduct. It articulates an effective and equitable remedial regime that reconciles the aspirational goals of public tort law with the practical realities of devising payment and disciplinary procedures that are responsive to tort settlements and judgments. This proposed statutory scheme seeks to deter law enforcement misconduct without disincentivizing prudent officers from performing their duties or overburdening them with extensive litigation. Rather than lamenting the dissolution of Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics or the insurmountability of qualified immunity, reform …
The Incremental Retributive Impact Of A Death Sentence Over Life Without Parole, Michael L. Radelet
The Incremental Retributive Impact Of A Death Sentence Over Life Without Parole, Michael L. Radelet
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
In this paper, the author takes a closer look at retribution, which is the primary justification for the death penalty today in the United States and the main component of the additional punishment imposed by the death penalty over and above life imprisonment without parole (LWOP). While all criminal punishments, to varying degrees, punish both the inmate and his or her family, this paper argues that the death penalty’s added punishment over LWOP often punishes the family just as much as the inmate, and after the execution the full brunt of the punishment falls on the family. This added impact …
Confessions In An International Age: Re-Examining Admissibility Through The Lens Of Foreign Interrogations, Julie Tanaka Siegel
Confessions In An International Age: Re-Examining Admissibility Through The Lens Of Foreign Interrogations, Julie Tanaka Siegel
Michigan Law Review
In Colorado v. Connelly the Supreme Court held that police misconduct is necessary for an inadmissible confession. Since the Connelly decision, courts and scholars have framed the admissibility of a confession in terms of whether it successfully deters future police misconduct. As a result, the admissibility of a confession turns largely on whether U.S. police acted poorly, and only after overcoming this threshold have courts considered factors pointing to the reliability and voluntariness of the confession. In the international context, this translates into the routine and almost mechanic admission of confessions— even when there is clear indication that the confession …
From Arbitrariness To Coherency In Sentencing: Reducing The Rate Of Imprisonment And Crime While Saving Billions Of Taxpayer Dollars, Mirko Bagaric
From Arbitrariness To Coherency In Sentencing: Reducing The Rate Of Imprisonment And Crime While Saving Billions Of Taxpayer Dollars, Mirko Bagaric
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
Dealing with criminals and preventing crime is a paramount public policy issue. Sentencing law and practice is the means through which we ultimately deal with criminal offenders. Despite its importance and wide-ranging reforms in recent decades, sentencing remains an intellectual and normative wasteland. This has resulted in serious human rights violations of both criminals and victims, incalculable public revenue wastage, and a failure to implement effective measures to reduce crime. This Article attempts to bridge the gulf that exists between knowledge and practice in sentencing and lays the groundwork for a fair and efficient sentencing system. The Article focuses on …
A Virtuous State Would Not Assign Correctional Housing Based On Ability To Pay, Bradley W. Moore
A Virtuous State Would Not Assign Correctional Housing Based On Ability To Pay, Bradley W. Moore
Michigan Law Review First Impressions
Pay-to-stay jails expose the moral tension between the dominant theories of punishment: retributivism and deterrence. A turn to a third major moral theory—virtue ethics—resolves this tension. According to virtue ethics, the moral worth of an action follows from both the character of the action and the disposition of the actor. Virtuous acts promote human flourishing— the central goal of life—when they are the right actions performed for the right reasons. The virtue ethics theory of punishment suggests that pay-to-stay jails conflict with the promotion of human flourishing. A virtuous state’s criminal justice system would not include fee-based incarceration because it …
Government Entrepreneurship: How Cop, Direct Supervision, And A Business Plan Helped To Solve Santa Ana's Crime Problems, Paul M. Walters, Russell Davis
Government Entrepreneurship: How Cop, Direct Supervision, And A Business Plan Helped To Solve Santa Ana's Crime Problems, Paul M. Walters, Russell Davis
Michigan Law Review First Impressions
Much has been written about Community Oriented Policing for police agencies and about the Direct Supervision concept for jail operations. Each strategy is at the cutting edge of its respective discipline. This Commentary describes how the progressive City of Santa Ana implemented both strategies— along with a visionary business plan to operate its jail at minimal cost—to combat crime successfully. The City’s business plan relies on entrepreneurship that is too often lacking in government programs. This approach has led to a number of innovations in law enforcement, corrections, and government service. Pay-to-Stay programs provide yet another example of how Santa …
Pay-To-Stay In California Jails And The Value Of Systemic Self-Embarassment, Robert Weisberg
Pay-To-Stay In California Jails And The Value Of Systemic Self-Embarassment, Robert Weisberg
Michigan Law Review First Impressions
The website of the Santa Ana, California-version of Pay-to-Stay uses hotelier-type verbiage in describing features of its alternative jail program. It tells us that the jail “is pleased to host a full range of alternatives to traditional incarceration”; it reassures prospective “clients” seeking flexible work/jail schedules (“Work on Saturday or Sunday? No problem, your weekend days are our weekend days.”); it guarantees “24-hour on-site medical staff”; it accommodates inmates near and far (“We have helped clients with sentences from other counties as well as other states.”); and it generally brags that the jail “is the most modern and comfortable facility …
Deterrence Versus Brutalization: Capital Punishment's Differing Impacts Among States, Joanna M. Shepherd
Deterrence Versus Brutalization: Capital Punishment's Differing Impacts Among States, Joanna M. Shepherd
Michigan Law Review
Policymakers' false beliefs about capital punishment's universal deterrent effect may have caused many people to die needlessly. If deterrence is capital punishment's purpose then, in the majority of states where executions do not deter crime, executions kill convicts uselessly. Moreover, in the many states where the brutalization effect outweighs the deterrent effect, executions not only kill convicts needlessly but also induce the additional murders of many innocent people. After Part II discusses capital punishment's recent history in the United States, Part III reviews the conflict in recent studies on capital punishment and deterrence. Part IV explores differences in states' applications …
Reflecting On The Subject: A Critique Of The Social Influence Conception Of Deterrence, The Broken Windows Theory, And Order-Maintenance Policing New York Style, Bernard E. Harcourt
Reflecting On The Subject: A Critique Of The Social Influence Conception Of Deterrence, The Broken Windows Theory, And Order-Maintenance Policing New York Style, Bernard E. Harcourt
Michigan Law Review
In 1993, New York City began implementing the quality-of-life initiative, an order-maintenance policing strategy targeting minor misdemeanor offenses like turnstile jumping, aggressive panhandling, and public drinking. The policing initiative is premised on the broken windows theory of deterrence, namely the hypothesis that minor physical and social disorder, if left unattended in a neighborhood, causes serious crime. New York City's new policing strategy has met with overwhelming support in the press and among public officials, policymakers, sociologists, criminologists and political scientists. The media describe the "famous" Broken Windows essay as "the bible of policing" and "the blueprint for community policing." Order-maintenance …
Evaluating The Fourth Amendment Exclusionary Rule: The Problem Of Police Compliance With The Law, William C. Heffernan, Richard W. Lovely
Evaluating The Fourth Amendment Exclusionary Rule: The Problem Of Police Compliance With The Law, William C. Heffernan, Richard W. Lovely
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Part I of this article reviews background matters bearing on our research - in particular, we discuss the Court's framework for analyzing exclusion as a deterrent safeguard, the research questions that need to be raised within that framework, and the research strategy we adopted in light of the Court's approach to exclusion. Part II analyzes our findings on police knowledge of the rules of search and seizure. Part III analyzes our findings on officers' willingness to obey the law. Part IV evaluates our findings in light of policy questions concerning the exclusionary rule. We consider whether the Court should retain …