Law Commons^™

Toward A Better Criminal Legal System: Improving Prisons, Prosecution, And Criminal Defense, David A. Harris, Created And Presented Jointly By Students From State Correctional Institution - Greene, Waynesburg, Pa, And University Of Pittsburgh School Of Law, Chief Editor: David A. Harris

Articles

During the Fall 2023 semester, 15 law (Outside) students from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and 13 incarcerated (Inside) students from the State Correctional Institution – Greene, in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, took a full semester class together called Issues in Criminal Justice and Law. The class, occurring each week at the prison, utilized the Inside-Out Prison Exchange pedagogy, and was facilitated by Professor David Harris. Subjects include the purposes of prison, addressing crime, the criminal legal system and race, and issues surrounding victims and survivors of crime. The course culminated in a Group Project; under the heading “improving the …

The Intenational Crimial Court (Icc) As A Mechanism For Global Justice And Rule Of Law, Paolo Davide Farah

Book Chapters

Throughout history, institutions have been the chosen platforms for governing and regulating society. However, in the twenty-first century, with unprecedented connectivity and interdependence, working toward multilateral solutions for global challenges, whether in climate change through the UNFCCC or in trade via the World Trade Organization, has become increasingly complex. This rise in complexity within the international landscape has not been met with proportional attention to cooperation, conflict resolution, and harmonizing human values.

It is relevant to highlight the intersection between the International Criminal Court (ICC) and broader questions within international humanitarian law, (IHL) its interconnections and intertwinement with International Criminal …

Muslim Prisoner Litigation: An Unsung American Tradition (Introduction), Spearit

Book Chapters

For most Americans, “prison jihad” may sound frightening and conjure images of religious militants, bearded, turbaned, and under the spell of foreign radical networks…. While this may be the immediate impression, there is nothing like that happening in American prisons. However, there has been a different type of jihad taking place, one that is real and identifiable. This is not the sensational jihad of headline media; rather, this jihad is uneventful and quiet by comparison and has persisted since the 1960s with hardly any public notice.

Despite little attention and recognition, Muslims in prison occupy a unique spot in the …

Surveillance Normalization, Christian Sundquist

Articles

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the government has expanded public surveillance measures in an attempt to combat the spread of the virus. As the pandemic wears on, racialized communities and other marginalized groups are disproportionately affected by this increased level of surveillance. This article argues that increases in public surveillance as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic give rise to the normalization of surveillance in day-to-day life, with serious consequences for racialized communities and other marginalized groups. This article explores the legal and regulatory effects of surveillance normalization, as well as how to protect civil rights and liberties …

Creating A Better, Fairer Criminal Justice System, David A. Harris, Created And Presented Jointly By Students From State Correctional Institution - Greene, Waynesburg, Pa, And University Of Pittsburgh School Of Law, Chief Editor: David A. Harris

Articles

In the Fall 2022 semester, 14 law (Outside) students from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and 14 incarcerated (Inside) students at the State Correctional Institution at Greene, in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, took a full-semester class together called "Issues in Criminal Justice and the Law." The class, taught and facilitated by Professor David Harris, utilized the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program pedagogy, emphasizing dialogic learning and peer teaching. The semester culminated with a group project, with the topic selected by the students: "creating a better, fairer criminal justice system." Members of the class organized themselves into small groups, each working for …

Participatory Litigation: A New Framework For Impact Lawyering, Jules Lobel

Articles

This Article argues that the manner in which class-action and impact lawyers have traditionally litigated leaves little room for class participation in lawsuits, and that a new, participatory framework can and should be adopted. Through the story of a successful class-action suit challenging California’s use of prolonged solitary confinement in its prisons, the Article demonstrates that plaintiff participation is both possible and important.

Academic literature has assumed that broad plaintiff participation in class-action and impact litigation is not achievable. Yet this Article describes how, in a key California case, attorneys actively involved the plaintiffs in all aspects of the litigation: …

Prison Transfers And The Mootness Doctrine: Disappearing The Rule Of Law In Prisons, Spearit

Book Chapters

Access to the legal system does not come easily for people in prison. There are administrative procedures that must be exhausted; federal legislation like the Prison Litigation Reform Act disadvantages prisoner-petitioners in multiple ways, including by imposing significant limits on damages and creating financial disincentives for lawyers to take on cases. Such onerous legislation and lack of legal aid ensure genuine issues evade redress. Sometimes, however, the law itself is the cause of evasion. Sometimes doctrine prevents the Rule of Law from functioning in prison, particularly when a prison-transfer moots a legal claim. In the most egregious situations, a transfer …

Reframing Hate, Lu-In Wang

Articles

The concept and naming of “hate crime,” and the adoption of special laws to address it, provoked controversy and raised fundamental questions when they were introduced in the 1980s. In the decades since, neither hate crime itself nor those hotly debated questions have abated. To the contrary, hate crime has increased in recent years—although the prominent target groups have shifted over time—and the debate over hate crime laws has reignited as well. The still-open questions range from the philosophical to the doctrinal to the pragmatic: What justifies the enhanced punishment that hate crime laws impose based on the perpetrator’s motivation? …

White Vigilantism And The Racism Of Race-Neutrality, Christian Sundquist

Articles

Race-neutrality has long been touted in American law as central to promoting racial equality while guarding against race-based discrimination. And yet the legal doctrine of race-neutrality has perversely operated to shield claims of racial discrimination from judicial review while protecting discriminators from liability and punishment. This Article critiques the doctrine of race-neutrality by examining the law’s response to white vigilantism in the much-publicized criminal trials of Kyle Rittenhouse and that of Ahmaud Arbery’s assailants.

White Supremacy, Police Brutality, And Family Separation: Preventing Crimes Against Humanity Within The United States, Elena Baylis

Articles

Although the United States tends to treat crimes against humanity as a danger that exists only in authoritarian or war-torn states, in fact, there is a real risk of crimes against humanity occurring within the United States, as illustrated by events such as systemic police brutality against Black Americans, the federal government’s family separation policy that took thousands of immigrant children from their parents at the southern border, and the dramatic escalation of White supremacist and extremist violence culminating in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. In spite of this risk, the United States does not have …

Muslims In Prison: Advancing The Rule Of Law Through Litigation Praxis, Spearit

Articles

Islamic ideas about justice and equality directly informed the development of prison law jurisprudence in the United States. Since the early 1960s, when federal courts began to hear claims by state prisoner-petitioners, Muslims began to look to courts to establish Islam in prison and inaugurated an ongoing campaign for civil rights. The trend is significant when considering Muslims represent a relatively small percentage of the American population. Decades of persistent litigation by Muslims in courts have been integral to developing the prisoners’ rights movement in America. The Muslim impact on prison law and culture is an underappreciated phenomenon that involves …

9/11 Impacts On Muslims In Prison, Spearit

Articles

This essay is part of a volume that reflects on the 20-year anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001. The work examines the impacts this event had on the management of Muslims in prison. Soon after the attacks, the culture war against Muslims in the United States began to seep into prisons, where Muslims faced heightened levels of Islamophobia, which cut across several areas of existence: the ability to access religious literature, religious leaders, and paraphernalia, in addition to the federal creation of Communication Management Units. There was also heightened hysteria about the idea of Muslim radicalization in prison, …

Reimagining The Death Penalty: Targeting Christians, Conservatives, Spearit

Articles

This Article is an interdisciplinary response to an entrenched legal and cultural problem. It incorporates legal analysis, religious study and the anthropological notion of “culture work” to consider death penalty abolitionism and prospects for abolishing the death penalty in the United States. The Article argues that abolitionists must reimagine their audiences and repackage their message for broader social consumption, particularly for Christian and conservative audiences. Even though abolitionists are characterized by some as “bleeding heart” liberals, this is not an accurate portrayal of how the death penalty maps across the political spectrum. Abolitionists must learn that conservatives are potential allies …

Racial Profiling: Past, Present, And Future, David A. Harris

Articles

It has been more than two decades since the introduction of the first bill in Congress that addressed racial profiling in 1997. Between then and now, Congress never passed legislation on the topic, but more than half the states passed laws and many police departments put anti-profiling policies in place to combat it. The research and data on racial profiling has grown markedly over the last twenty-plus years. We know that the practice is real (contrary to many denials), and the data reveal racial profiling’s shortcomings and great social costs. Nevertheless, racial profiling persists. While it took root most prominently …

Opioids And Converging Interests, Mary Crossley

Articles

Written as part of Seton Hall Law Review’s Symposium on “Race and the Opioid Crisis: History and Lessons,” this Essay considers whether applying the lens of Professor Derrick Bell’s interest convergence theory to the opioid crisis offers some hope of advancing racial justice. After describing Bell’s interest convergence thesis and identifying racial justice interests that African Americans have related to the opioid crisis, I consider whether these interests might converge with white interests to produce real racial progress. Taken at face value, white politicians’ statements of compassion toward opioid users might signal a public health-oriented approach to addiction, representing …

The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act's Evolving Genocide Exception, Vivian Grosswald Curran

Articles

The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) was passed by Congress as a comprehensive statute to cover all instances when foreign states are to be immune from suit in the courts of the United States, as well as when foreign state immunity is to be limited. Judicial interpretation of one of the FSIA’s exceptions to immunity has undergone significant evolution over the years with respect to foreign state property expropriations committed in violation of international law. U.S. courts initially construed this FSIA exception by denying immunity only if the defendant state had expropriated property of a citizen of a nation other …

The Technologies Of Race: Big Data, Privacy And The New Racial Bioethics, Christian Sundquist

Articles

Advancements in genetic technology have resurrected long discarded conceptualizations of “race” as a biological reality. The rise of modern biological race thinking – as evidenced in health disparity research, personal genomics, DNA criminal forensics, and bio-databanking - not only is scientifically unsound but portends the future normalization of racial inequality. This Article articulates a constitutional theory of shared humanity, rooted in the substantive due process doctrine and Ninth Amendment, to counter the socio-legal acceptance of modern genetic racial differentiation. It argues that state actions that rely on biological racial distinctions undermine the essential personhood of individuals subjected to such taxonomies, …

Terry Stops And Frisks: The Troubling Use Of Common Sense In A World Of Empirical Data, David A. Harris, David Rudovsky

Articles

The investigative detention doctrine first announced in Terry v. Ohio and amplified over the past fifty years has been much analyzed, praised, and criticized from a number of perspectives. Significantly, however, over this time period commentators have only occasionally questioned the Supreme Court’s “common sense” judgments regarding the factors sufficient to establish reasonable suspicion for stops and frisks. For years, the Court has provided no empirical basis for its judgments, due in large part to the lack of reliable data. Now, with the emergence of comprehensive data on these police practices, much can be learned about the predictive power of …

Ancient Worries And Modern Fears: Different Roots And Common Effects Of U.S. And Eu Privacy Regulation, David Thaw, Pierluigi Perri

Articles

Much legal and technical scholarship discusses the differing views of the United States and European Union toward privacy concepts and regulation. A substantial amount of effort in recent years, in both research and policy, focuses on attempting to reconcile these viewpoints searching for a common framework with a common level of protection for citizens from both sides of Atlantic. Reconciliation, we argue, misunderstands the nature of the challenge facing effective cross-border data flows. No such reconciliation can occur without abdication of some sovereign authority of nations, that would require the adoption of an international agreement with typical tools of international …

The Persuasive Authority Of Internationalized Criminal Tribunals, Elena Baylis

Articles

After a period in which it seemed as though hybrid criminal tribunals were waning, proposals for such tribunals are proliferating again. The recent success of the Extraordinary African Chambers in trying Hisséne Habré highlights the resurgent trend toward ad hoc internationalized courts and chambers to try cases of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The international community could make strategic choices in designing this new generation of tribunals to maximize their effectiveness. One way that international courts spread their influence is through their persuasive authority. Even if their decisions are not binding on the concerned national courts, by persuading …

Firepower To The People: Gun Rights & Self-Defense To Curb Police Misconduct, Spearit

Articles

This Article represents a polemic against the most harmful aspects of the policing status quo. At its core, the work asserts the right of civilians to defend against unlawful deadly police conduct. It argues that existing gun and self-defense laws provide a practical and principled basis for curbing police misconduct. It also examines legislative trends in gun laws to show that much of most recent liberalizing of gun rights is a direct response to self-defense concerns sparked by mass public shootings. The expansion of gun rights and self-defense comes at a time when ongoing police killings of Black civilians menace …

Keeping It Real: Why Congress Must Act To Restore Pell Grant Funding For Prisoners, Spearit

Articles

In 1994, Congress passed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act (VCCLEA), a provision of which revoked Pell Grant funding “to any individual who is incarcerated in any federal or state penal institution.” This essay highlights the counter-productive effects this particular provision has on penological goals. The essay suggests Congress acknowledge the failures of the ban on Pell Grant funding for prisoners, and restore such funding for all qualified prisoners.

Riley V. California And The Beginning Of The End For The Third-Party Search Doctrine, David A. Harris

Articles

In Riley v. California, the Supreme Court decided that when police officers seize a smart phone, they may not search through its contents -- the data found by looking into the call records, calendars, pictures and so forth in the phone -- without a warrant. In the course of the decision, the Court said that the rule applied not just to data that was physically stored on the device, but also to data stored "in the cloud" -- in remote sites -- but accessed through the device. This piece of the decision may, at last, allow a re-examination of …

Whren's Flawed Assumptions Regarding Race, History, And Unconscious Bias, William M. Carter Jr.

Articles

This article is adapted from remarks presented at CWRU Law School's symposium marking the 20th anniversary of Whren v. United States. The article critiques Whren’s constitutional methodology and evident willful blindness to issues of social psychology, unconscious bias, and the lengthy American history of racialized conceptions of crime and criminalized conceptions of race. The article concludes by suggesting a possible path forward: reconceptualizing racially motivated pretextual police encounters as a badge or incident of slavery under the Thirteenth Amendment issue rather than as abstract Fourth or Fourteenth Amendment issues.

Authority And Authors And Codes, Michael J. Madison

Articles

Contests over the meaning and application of the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”) expose long-standing, complex questions about the sources and impacts of the concept of authority in law and culture. Accessing a computer network “without authorization” and by “exceeding authorized access” is forbidden by the CFAA. Courts are divided in their interpretation of this language in the statute. This Article first proposes to address the issue with an insight from social science research. Neither criminal nor civil liability under the CFAA should attach unless the alleged violator has transgressed some border or boundary that is rendered visible …

What Internationals Know: Improving The Effectiveness Of Post-Conflict Justice Initiatives, Elena Baylis

Articles

The field of post-conflict or transitional justice has developed rapidly over the last thirty years. The United States, the United Nations, and many other international organizations, governments, and institutions have contributed to hundreds of international criminal trials and rule of law programs. International staff, known as “internationals,” travel among post-conflict states and international criminal tribunals to carry out these initiatives. In addition to being a field of work, post-conflict justice also constitutes an emergent body of legal knowledge, composed of substantive standards, rules of procedure, best practices, and other elements. Just as the programs and institutions of post-conflict justice have …

Sonic Jihad — Muslim Hip Hop In The Age Of Mass Incarceration, Spearit

Articles

This essay examines hip hop music as a form of legal criticism. It focuses on the music as critical resistance and “new terrain” for understanding the law, and more specifically, focuses on what prisons mean to Muslim hip hop artists. Losing friends, family, and loved ones to the proverbial belly of the beast has inspired criticism of criminal justice from the earliest days of hip hop culture. In the music, prisons are known by a host of names like “pen,” “bing,” and “clink,” terms that are invoked throughout the lyrics. The most extreme expressions offer violent fantasies of revolution and …

Evolving Standards Of Domination: Abandoning A Flawed Legal Standard And Approaching A New Era In Penal Reform, Spearit

Articles

This Article critiques the evolving standards of decency doctrine as a form of Social Darwinism. It argues that evolving standards of decency provided a system of review that was tailor-made for Civil Rights opponents to scale back racial progress. Although as a doctrinal matter, evolving standards sought to tie punishment practices to social mores, prison sentencing became subject to political agendas that determined the course of punishment more than the benevolence of a maturing society. Indeed, rather than the fierce competition that is supposed to guide social development, the criminal justice system was consciously deployed as a means of social …

Sex And The Shari’A: Defining Gender Norms And Sexual Deviancy In Shi’I Islam, Haider Ala Hamoudi

Articles

This paper demonstrates that modern authoritative jurists working within the Shi’i tradition have developed their rules respecting sex regulation to serve three primary commitments. The first of these is that there is an intense and near debilitating desire on the part of human beings generally, though mostly men, for a great deal of sex. This desire must be satisfied, but it also must be tightly controlled. This is because of the second commitment, which is that excessive licentiousness is a form of secular distraction from a believer’s central obligation to worship God. Finally, and perhaps the most interesting, is the …

Economic Interest Convergence In Downsizing Imprisonment, Spearit

Articles

This Essay employs a variation of the “interest convergence” concept to examine the competing interests at stake in downsizing imprisonment in the United States. In the last few decades, the country has become the world leader in both incarceration rates and number of inmates. Reversing these trends is a common goal of multiple parties, who advocate prison reform under different rationales. Some advocate less imprisonment as a means of tempering the disparate effects of imprisonment on individual offenders and the communities to which they return. Others support downsizing based on conservative values that favor reduced government size, spending, and interference …