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Full-Text Articles in Law
Police Misconduct, Video Recording, And Procedural Barriers To Rights Enforcement, Howard M. Wasserman
Police Misconduct, Video Recording, And Procedural Barriers To Rights Enforcement, Howard M. Wasserman
Faculty Publications
The story of police reform and of "policing the police" has become the story of video and video evidence, and "record everything to know the truth" has become the singular mantra. Video, both police-created and citizen-created, has become the singular tool for ensuring police accountability, reforming law enforcement, and enforcing the rights of victims of police misconduct. This Article explores procedural problems surrounding the use of video recording and video evidence to counter police misconduct, hold individual officers and governments accountable, and reform departmental policies, regulations, and practices. It considers four issues: 1) the mistaken belief that video can "speak …
Just A Bit Aside, Howard Wasserman
Just A Bit Aside, Howard Wasserman
Faculty Publications
In "Time to Drop the Infield Fly Rule and End a Common Law Anomaly," Judge Andrew Guilford and Joel Mallord offer the first cohesive scholarly critique of baseball's venerated and venerable Infield Fly Rule. They argue that the rule is grounded in outdated notions of sportsmanship and opposition to deception and that the game would be more exciting if players could be left to their own strategic and skillful devices on infield fly balls. This Response Essay builds on my previous work to argue that, properly understood, the Infield Fly Rule is justified, necessary, and appropriate in order to to …
The Process Of Marriage Equality, Josh Blackman, Howard M. Wasserman
The Process Of Marriage Equality, Josh Blackman, Howard M. Wasserman
Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
Mixed Signals On Summary Judgment, Howard Wasserman
Mixed Signals On Summary Judgment, Howard Wasserman
Faculty Publications
This essay examines three cases from the Supreme Court’s October Term 2013 addressing the standards for summary judgment. In one case, the Court affirmed summary judgment against a civil-rights plaintiff, in a continued erroneous over-reliance on the certainty of video evidence. In two other cases, the Court rejected the grant of summary judgment against civil-rights plaintiffs, arguably for the first time in quite a while. This essay unpacks the substance and procedure underlying all three decisions and considers the effect of the three cases and what signals they send to lower courts and litigants about the proper approach to summary …
No Way Out? The Question Of Unilateral Withdrawals Of Referrals To The Icc And Other Human Rights Courts, Michael P. Scharf, Patrick Dowd
No Way Out? The Question Of Unilateral Withdrawals Of Referrals To The Icc And Other Human Rights Courts, Michael P. Scharf, Patrick Dowd
Faculty Publications
Growing out of the authors' work for the International Criminal Court, which was sponsored by a grant from the Open Society Institute, No Way Out examines one of the most vexing legal questions facing the International Criminal Court - whether a State that has referred a case to the Court can subsequently withdraw its referral as part of a domestic peace agreement? The issue has arisen with respect to Uganda's interest in withdrawing its self-referral as part of a peace deal with the leaders of the Lord's Resistance Army. This article examines the Rome Statute, the drafting history, and the …
Video Evidence And Summary Judgment: The Procedure Of Scott V. Harris, Howard Wasserman
Video Evidence And Summary Judgment: The Procedure Of Scott V. Harris, Howard Wasserman
Faculty Publications
In Scott v. Harris (2007), the Supreme Court granted summary judgment on a Fourth Amendment excessive-force claim brought by a motorist injured when a pursuing law-enforcement officer terminated a high-speed pursuit by bumping the plaintiff's car. The Court relied almost exclusively on a video of the chase captured from the officer's dash-mounted camera and disregarded witness testimony that contradicted the video. In granting summary judgment in this circumstance, the Court fell sway to the myth of video evidence as able to speak for itself, as an objective, unambiguous, and singularly accurate depiction of real-world events, not subject to any interpretation …
Dangers Of Deference To Form Arbitration Provisions, Amy J. Schmitz
Dangers Of Deference To Form Arbitration Provisions, Amy J. Schmitz
Faculty Publications
This Article is part of my larger project exploring what I call "contracting culture," which borrows from legal realism and relational contract theory by considering contextual factors such as negotiators' relations, understandings, and values. As part of this project, I am pursuing various threads, including empirical studies of how contracting realities impact arbitration. In this Article, however, I focus on how these realities in business to consumer contracts combine with the Federal Arbitration Act and formulaic contract law to foster dangerous deference to form arbitration provisions. The Article then invites procedural reforms and offers suggestions for regulations aimed to temper …
Errors And Missteps: Key Lessons The Iraqi Special Tribunal Can Learn From The Icty, Ictr, And Scsl, Michael P. Scharf, Ahran Kang
Errors And Missteps: Key Lessons The Iraqi Special Tribunal Can Learn From The Icty, Ictr, And Scsl, Michael P. Scharf, Ahran Kang
Faculty Publications
In a few months, the trial of Saddam Hussein and other former Iraqi regime leaders will begin before the Iraqi Special Tribunal (IST). The IST is a unique "internationalized-domestic tribunal" whose Statute and Rules of Procedure are modeled upon the UN-created Yugoslavia War Crimes Tribunal (ICTY), Rwanda Genocide Tribunal (ICTR), and the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL), but whose judges are all Iraqis and whose courtroom is in Baghdad. There is much the IST can learn both from the successes and missteps of the ICTY, ICTR, and SCSL; many of the issues that will arise in the trials of …