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Full-Text Articles in Law
Defense Counsel And Public Defence, Eve Brensike Primus
Defense Counsel And Public Defence, Eve Brensike Primus
Book Chapters
Public-defense delivery systems nationwide are grossly inadequate. Public defenders are forced to handle caseloads that no one could effectively manage. They often have no funding for investigation or expert assistance. They aren’t adequately trained, and there is little to no oversight of their work. In many jurisdictions, the public-defense function is not sufficiently independent of the judiciary or the elected branches to allow for zealous representation. The result is an assembly line into prison, mostly for poor people of color, with little check on the reliability or fairness of the process. Innocent people are convicted, precious resources are wasted, and …
Left Behind: How The Absence Of A Federal Vacatur Law Disadvantages Survivors Of Human Trafficking, Jessica Emerson, Alison Aminzadeh
Left Behind: How The Absence Of A Federal Vacatur Law Disadvantages Survivors Of Human Trafficking, Jessica Emerson, Alison Aminzadeh
All Faculty Scholarship
After a hamstring injury in October of 2004 forced her to surrender her athletic scholarship at St. John's University, Shamere McKenzie chose to spend her winter break working in order to save the money she needed to pay the remainder of her tuition. In January of 2005, Shamere met a man named Corey Davis, who expressed an interest in dating her. After getting to know him for several weeks, she eventually shared with him the challenges she was having earning the money she needed to continue her enrollment in college. Davis encouraged her to consider exotic dancing as a way …
Resurrecting Miranda's Right To Counsel, David Rossman
Resurrecting Miranda's Right To Counsel, David Rossman
Faculty Scholarship
The regime created by Miranda v. Arizona is at this point in its history bankrupt both intellectually and in terms of practical effect. Justices who have joined the Court after Miranda have cut back its scope by stingy interpretations of the doctrine’s reach and effect. In practice, few suspects actually benefit from the way Miranda is now implemented in police stations and courtrooms. Given the failure of Miranda’s promise, can we envision an alternative? Here is one that may be politically palatable and doctrinally feasible, largely adopted from English practice:
1. Police would give the same Miranda warnings that they …
Pretrial Detention And Bail, Megan Stevenson, Sandra G. Mayson
Pretrial Detention And Bail, Megan Stevenson, Sandra G. Mayson
All Faculty Scholarship
Our current pretrial system imposes high costs on both the people who are detained pretrial and the taxpayers who foot the bill. These costs have prompted a surge of bail reform around the country. Reformers seek to reduce pretrial detention rates, as well as racial and socioeconomic disparities in the pretrial system, while simultaneously improving appearance rates and reducing pretrial crime. The current state of pretrial practice suggests that there is ample room for improvement. Bail hearings are often cursory, with no defense counsel present. Money-bail practices lead to high rates of detention even among misdemeanor defendants and those who …
Ministers Of Justice And Mass Incarceration, Lissa Griffin
Ministers Of Justice And Mass Incarceration, Lissa Griffin
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
Over the past few years, scholars, legislators, and politicians have come to recognize that our current state of “mass incarceration” is the result of serious dysfunction in our criminal justice system. As a consequence, there has been significant attention to the causes of mass incarceration. These include the war on drugs and political decisions based on a “law and order” perspective. Congressional and state legislative enactments increased the financing of the expansion of police powers and provided for severely punitive sentencing statutes, thereby giving prosecutors uniquely powerful weapons in securing guilty pleas. All of this occurred as crime rates dropped. …
Decriminalizing Childhood, Andrea L. Dennis
Decriminalizing Childhood, Andrea L. Dennis
Scholarly Works
Even though the number of juveniles arrested, tried and detained has recently declined, there are still a large number of delinquency cases, children under supervision by state officials, and children living in state facilities for youth and adults. Additionally, any positive developments in juvenile justice have not been evenly experienced by all youth. Juveniles living in urban areas are more likely to have their cases formally processed in the juvenile justice system rather than informally resolved. Further, the reach of the justice system has a particularly disparate effect on minority youth who tend to live in heavily-policed urban areas.
The …
Punishment, Liberalism, And Public Reason, Chad Flanders
Punishment, Liberalism, And Public Reason, Chad Flanders
All Faculty Scholarship
The article argues for a conception of the justification of punishment that is compatible with a modern, politically liberal regime. Section I deals with what some have thought are the obvious social interests society has in punishing criminals, and tries to develop those possible interests somewhat sympathetically. Section II suggests that many of those reasons are not good ones if punishment is regarded (as it should be) from the perspective of political philosophy. Social responses to bad things happening to people cannot be grounded in controversial metaphysical views about what is good for people or what people deserve, but many …
Rationing Criminal Justice, Richard A. Bierschbach, Stephanos Bibas
Rationing Criminal Justice, Richard A. Bierschbach, Stephanos Bibas
All Faculty Scholarship
Of the many diagnoses of American criminal justice’s ills, few focus on externalities. Yet American criminal justice systematically overpunishes in large part because few mechanisms exist to force consideration of the full social costs of criminal justice interventions. Actors often lack good information or incentives to minimize the harms they impose. Part of the problem is structural: criminal justice is fragmented vertically among governments, horizontally among agencies, and individually among self-interested actors. Part is a matter of focus: doctrinally and pragmatically, actors overwhelmingly view each case as an isolated, short-term transaction to the exclusion of broader, long-term, and aggregate effects. …