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Full-Text Articles in Law

Performing Discretion Or Performing Discrimination: An Analysis Of Race And Ritual In Batson Decisions In Capital Jury Selection, Melynda J. Price Oct 2009

Performing Discretion Or Performing Discrimination: An Analysis Of Race And Ritual In Batson Decisions In Capital Jury Selection, Melynda J. Price

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Research shows the mere presence of Blacks on capital juries--on the rare occasions they are seated--can mean the difference between life and death. Peremptory challenges are the primary method to remove these pivotal participants. Batson v. Kentucky developed hearings as an immediate remedy for the unconstitutional removal of jurors through racially motivated peremptory challenges. These proceedings have become rituals that sanction continued bias in the jury selection process and ultimately affect the outcome of capital trials. This Article deconstructs the role of the Batson ritual in legitimating the removal of African American jurors. These perfunctory hearings fail to meaningfully interrogate …


There's A Pennoyer In My Foyer: Civil Procedure According To Dr. Seuss, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch Oct 2009

There's A Pennoyer In My Foyer: Civil Procedure According To Dr. Seuss, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch

Scholarly Works

This is what it purports to be: a Seussian take on civil procedure. It’s a short, fun essay that covers (1) the iron triangle of civil procedure - the role of lawyers, judges, and juries, and (2) prominent civil procedure doctrines, such as personal jurisdiction, Erie, pleading, discovery, and joinder.


Batson, Empowerment And New Jury Models: The Case For ‘Open Inquiry’, Patrick C. Brayer Jul 2009

Batson, Empowerment And New Jury Models: The Case For ‘Open Inquiry’, Patrick C. Brayer

Faculty Works

This 2009 article recommends the practice technique of “open inquiry,” which encourages attorneys and courts to ask jurors to openly identify their race, gender, and ethnicity during voir dire for purposes of appellate review under Batson v. Kentucky and related holdings. An open inquiry helps protect the rights of all jurors to sit. It thus creates a greater chance that juries are more diverse and promotes more voices and experiences during deliberation. The open inquiry method also promotes individual juror participation and increases the group's receptiveness toward individual voices during deliberations. Most importantly, open inquiry forces practitioners to rethink how …


Taking A Stand On Taking The Stand: The Effect Of A Prior Criminal Record On The Decision To Testify And On Trial Outcomes, Theodore Eisenberg, Valerie P. Hans Jan 2009

Taking A Stand On Taking The Stand: The Effect Of A Prior Criminal Record On The Decision To Testify And On Trial Outcomes, Theodore Eisenberg, Valerie P. Hans

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This article uses unique data from over 300 criminal trials in four large counties to study the relations between the existence of a prior criminal record and defendants testifying at trial, between testifying at trial and juries' learning about a criminal record, and between juries' learning about a criminal record and their decisions to convict or acquit. Sixty percent of defendants without criminal records testified compared to 45 percent with criminal records. For testifying defendants with criminal records, juries learned of those records in about half the cases. Juries rarely learned about criminal records unless defendants testified. After controlling for …


'Race Salience' In Juror Decision-Making: Misconceptions, Clarifications, And Unanswered Questions, Samuel R. Sommers, Phoebe C. Ellsworth Jan 2009

'Race Salience' In Juror Decision-Making: Misconceptions, Clarifications, And Unanswered Questions, Samuel R. Sommers, Phoebe C. Ellsworth

Articles

In two frequently cited articles, Sommers and Ellsworth (2000, 2001) concluded that the influence of a defendant’s race on White mock jurors is more pronounced in interracial trials in which race remains a silent background issue than in trials involving racially charged incidents. Referring to this variable more generally as "race salience," we predicted that any aspect of a trial that leads White mock jurors to be concerned about racial bias should render the race of a defendant less influential. Though subsequent researchers have further explored this idea of "race salience," they have manipulated it in the same way as …


The Framers' Search Power: The Misunderstood Statutory History Of Suspicion & Probable Cause, Fabio Arcila, Jr. Jan 2009

The Framers' Search Power: The Misunderstood Statutory History Of Suspicion & Probable Cause, Fabio Arcila, Jr.

Scholarly Works

Originalist analyses of the Framers’ views about governmental search power have devoted insufficient attention to the civil search statutes they promulgated for regulatory purposes. What attention has been paid concludes that the Framers were divided about how accessible search remedies should be. This Article explains why this conventional account is mostly wrong and explores the lessons to be learned from the statutory choices the Framers made with regard to search and seizure law. In enacting civil search statutes, the Framers chose to depart from common law standards and instead largely followed the patterns of preceding British civil search statutes. The …