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Full-Text Articles in Law
The 'Abuse Excuse' In Capital Sentencing Trials: Is It Relevant To Responsibility, Punishment, Or Neither?, Paul J. Litton
The 'Abuse Excuse' In Capital Sentencing Trials: Is It Relevant To Responsibility, Punishment, Or Neither?, Paul J. Litton
Faculty Publications
The violent criminal who was a victim of severe childhood abuse frequently appears in the responsibility literature because he presents a difficulty for theorists who maintain the compatibility of causal determinism and our practices of holding persons responsible. The challenge is based on the fact that learning about an offender's horrific childhood mitigates the indignation that many persons feel towards him, possibly indicating that they hold him less than fully responsible. Many capital defendants present evidence of suffering childhood abuse, and many jurors find this evidence to count against imposing death. The most obvious explanation for a response like this …
Fear And Loathing In Constitutional Decision-Making, Christina E. Wells
Fear And Loathing In Constitutional Decision-Making, Christina E. Wells
Faculty Publications
National security crises are particularly difficult on the judiciary. Faced with a threat to the country's integrity, such cases require judges rationally and fairly to weigh this hefty interest against the rights of persons suspected of posing that very threat. Not surprisingly, judges have rarely lived up to this task as many have fallen sway to the same fear and prejudice that gripped the county during these times. Scholars have written extensively about judicial capitulation to fear and prejudice in such well-known cases as Schenck v. United States, Korematsu v. United States, and Dennis v. United States, with some lamenting …