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Full-Text Articles in Law
Casual Ostracism: Jury Exclusion On The Basis Of Criminal Convictions, Anna Roberts
Casual Ostracism: Jury Exclusion On The Basis Of Criminal Convictions, Anna Roberts
Faculty Articles
Statutes in forty-eight states permit the exclusion of those with felony convictions from criminal juries; thirteen states permit the exclusion of those with misdemeanor convictions. The reasons given for these exclusions, which include the assumption that those with convictions are embittered against the state, do not justify their costs. Procedural justice theories indicate that embitterment of those with criminal convictions need not – and should not – be assumed. Rather, policymakers should do what they can to avoid such embitterment. This article therefore proposes that automatic statutory exclusions on the basis of criminal convictions should be abandoned. If a juror …
Full Disclosure: Cognitive Bias, Informants, And Search Warrant Scrutiny, Mary Bowman
Full Disclosure: Cognitive Bias, Informants, And Search Warrant Scrutiny, Mary Bowman
Faculty Articles
This article posits that cognitive biases play a significant role in the gap between the rhetoric regarding Fourth Amendment protection and actual practices regarding search warrant scrutiny, particularly for search warrants based on informants’ tips. Specifically, this article examines the ways in which implicit bias, tunnel vision, priming, and hindsight bias can affect search warrants. These biases can affect each stage of the search warrant process, including targeting decisions, the drafting process, the magistrate’s decision whether to grant the warrant, and post-search review by trial and appellate courts. These biases create room for informant falsehoods to go unchecked, with a …
A Twice-Told Tale: Plausibility And Narrative Coherence In Judicial Storytelling, Chris Rideout
A Twice-Told Tale: Plausibility And Narrative Coherence In Judicial Storytelling, Chris Rideout
Faculty Articles
What makes the stories told in court believable, and thus convincing? Part of the answer, this article suggests, lies in narrative coherence. Stories “make sense” and are plausible, not because they necessarily correspond in a direct way to “what really happened,” but rather because they seem structurally whole, consistent, and complete. They have achieved narrative coherence. After considering the role of narrative coherence in the plausibility of narratives, the article presents a typology for narrative coherence, breaking it down into external and internal coherence, with further component parts to each one. The article then turns to the Supreme Court case …
Prison Is Prison, Brooke Coleman
Prison Is Prison, Brooke Coleman
Faculty Articles
Two indigent men stand before two separate judges. Both will be sent to prison if they lose their cases. One receives appointed counsel, but the other does not. This discrepancy seems terribly unjust, yet the Supreme Court has no problem with it. It recently affirmed in Turner v. Rogers, that where an indigent individual is subject to criminal charges that can result in incarceration, he has a right to appointed counsel, but where an indigent individual is subject to civil proceedings where incarceration is a consequence, he does not. In other words, criminal and civil proceedings have different rules, and …