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Full-Text Articles in Law
Justice Blackmun And The Spirit Of Liberty, Richard C. Reuben
Justice Blackmun And The Spirit Of Liberty, Richard C. Reuben
Faculty Publications
As we see in this symposium, Justice Harry Blackmun is as controversial in death as he was in life. We live in a time of increasing absolutism, where things are either black or white, red or blue, you are either for me or against me, my way or the highway. It is when we are swayed by the sirens of absolutism that we are most likely to make mistakes, for absolutism diminishes our capacity to see nuance, much less to appreciate and account for it in our reasoning. This is a dangerous thing in a court, and in a democracy. …
Beyond Bandaids: A Proposal For Reconfiguring Federal Sentencing After Booker, Frank O. Bowman Iii
Beyond Bandaids: A Proposal For Reconfiguring Federal Sentencing After Booker, Frank O. Bowman Iii
Faculty Publications
This Article proposes a simplified sentencing table consisting of nine base sentencing ranges, each subdivided into three sub-ranges. The base sentencing range would be determined by combining offense facts found by a jury or admitted in a plea with the defendant's criminal history. A defendant's placement in the sub-ranges would be determined by post-conviction judicial findings of sentencing factors. No upward departures from the base sentencing range would be permissible, but defendants might be sentenced below the low end of the base sentencing range as a result of an acceptance of responsibility credit or due to a downward departure motion. …
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 …