Law Commons^™

Criminal Doctrines Of Faith, David Jaros

All Faculty Scholarship

Decisions like Miranda v. Arizona helped popularize a conception of the courts as a protector of criminal defendants and a bulwark against overly aggressive law enforcement. But from arrest through trial, the Court has fashioned criminal constitutional procedure with a deep and abiding faith in the motivations of criminal justice system actors. Even decisions that vindicate individual constitutional rights at the expense of police and prosecutorial power are shaped by the Court’s fundamental trust in those same actors. They establish, in essence, “Criminal Doctrines of Faith.”

Criminal Doctrines of Faith pervade each stage of the criminal process — from cases …

The Subversions And Perversions Of Shadow Vigilantism, Paul H. Robinson, Sarah M. Robinson

All Faculty Scholarship

This excerpt from the recently published Shadow Vigilantes book argues that, while vigilantism, even moral vigilantism, can be dangerous to a society, the real danger is not of hordes of citizens, frustrated by the system’s doctrines of disillusionment, rising up to take the law into their own hands. Frustration can spark a vigilante impulse, but such classic aggressive vigilantism is not the typical response. More common is the expression of disillusionment in less brazen ways by a more surreptitious undermining and distortion of the operation of the criminal justice system.

Shadow vigilantes, as they might be called, can affect the …

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

All Faculty Scholarship

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 …