Law Commons^™

Domestic Terror (The Sniper Suspect's Divorce Records Show Patterns Of Power And Control And Missed Opportunities By The System To Intervene.), Jane C. Murphy

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Over the past few months, we have learned much about the violent, troubled life of sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad. Whether or not he pulled the trigger - some recent reports have pointed to his 17-year-old companion Lee Boyd Malvo as the main shooter - there is no doubt in the minds of domestic-violence experts that this adult is responsible for these deaths.

While many pundits conclude that we will never know what motivated the sniper suspect, to domestic violence experts his is an all-too-familiar story of a man whose relationships with the women and children - possibly including Malvo …

A Community Of Courts: Toward A System Of International Criminal Law Enforcement, William W. Burke-White

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No abstract provided.

Should The Victims' Rights Movement Have Influence Over Criminal Law Formulation And Adjudication?, Paul H. Robinson

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The victims' rights movement has come into increasing influence in setting criminal justice policy. What can be said about where its influence should be heeded, and where it should not? With regard to substantive criminal law in particular, should the victims' rights movement have influence over its formulation and adjudication? The short answer, on which I'll elaborate below, is that it ought to have influence over criminal law formulation but not necessarily over criminal law adjudication. It ought to have influence over criminal law formulation because there is great benefit in formulations that track shared lay intuitions of justice, and …

The Virtues Of Restorative Processes, The Vices Of "Restorative Justice", Paul H. Robinson

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This conference and symposium are important for their ability to make better known the great benefits in the use of restorative processes. Below I try to summarize some of the many promising achievements of those processes, by which I mean to include such practices as victim-offender mediation, sentencing circles, and family group conferences to name just the most common. While many people refer to such processes by the name "Restorative Justice," that term and its originators in fact have a more ambitious agenda than simply encouraging the use of such restorative processes. But that agenda is not one that the …

Juries, Drug Laws & Sentencing (Symposium), Nancy S. Marder

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No abstract provided.

Dealing With Complex Evidence Of Domestic Violence: A Primer For The Civil Bench, Jane C. Murphy, Jane H. Aiken

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New laws and policies aimed at protecting victims of domestic violence have been adopted across the country throughout the last twenty years. The legal approaches taken to protect battered women and control family violence have brought about significant changes in family law. New laws include statutes permitting civil protection or restraining orders, and laws requiring that domestic violence be considered in custody and visitation decisions. Both of these types of statutory reforms can provide protection to adult victims of domestic violence and their children. Evaluating a parent’s fitness by considering past acts of violence to other family members results in …

Mens Rea, Paul H. Robinson

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Mens Rea, or “guilty mind,” marks a central distinguishing feature of criminal law. An injury caused without mens rea might be grounds for civil liability but typically not for criminal. Criminal liability requires not only causing a prohibited harm or evil -- the “actus reus” of an offense -- but also a particular state of mind with regard to causing that harm or evil. For a phrase so central to criminal law, “mens rea” suffers from a surprising degree of confusion in its meaning. One source of confusion arises from the two distinct ways in which the phrase is used, …

How Apprendi Affects Institutional Allocations Of Power, Stephanos Bibas

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No abstract provided.

The Jury's Role In Administering Justice In The U.S. Introduction To Saint Louis Public Law Review Jury Issue, Stephen C. Thaman

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This introduction to the special jury issue of Saint Louis University’s Public Law Review briefly discusses the Conference “Lay Participation in the Criminal Trial in the Twenty-First Century,” in which all of the contributors to this issue participated. The conference took place at the International Institute for Higher Studies in the Criminal Sciences in Siracusa, Italy from May 25-29, 1999. It also discusses select papers and perspectives on the American jury system published in this issue of the journal.

Official Privilege: State Security And The Right To A Fair Trial In The Usa, Stephen C. Thaman

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The emphasis of this paper is on the effect of the state claiming a privilege of national security in a criminal case, either to: (1) prevent the defendant from gaining discovery of classified information which could be important in defending against the criminal charges; or (2) prevent the defendant from introducing classified evidence in his/her own defense, access to which has usually been gained by virtue of the defendant’s own activity with the intelligence services (CIA, FBI) or other police agencies. The state often claims national security in situations where the state itself is either dealing with criminals or using …

Latin America's First Modern System Of Lay Participation: The Reform Of Inquisitorial Justice In Venezuela, Stephen C. Thaman

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This article describes the new Venezuelan jury and mixed court systems that were introduced by Codigo Organico Procesal Penal in 1998, in the context of the code’s radical transition to accusatorial and adversarial procedure.

Criminal Law Scholarship: Three Illusions, Paul H. Robinson

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The paper criticizes criminal law scholarship for helping to construct and failing to expose analytic structures that falsely claim a higher level of rationality and coherence than current criminal law theory deserves. It offers illustrations of three such illusions of rationality. First, it is common in criminal law discourse for scholars and judges to cite any of the standard litany of "the purposes of punishment" -- just deserts, deterrence, incapacitation of the dangerous, rehabilitation, and sometimes other purposes -- as a justification for one or another liability rule or sentencing practice. The cited "purpose" gives the rules an aura of …

Don't Abandon The Model Penal Code Yet! Thinking Through Simons's Rethinking, Kimberly Kessler Ferzan

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No abstract provided.

Double Helix, Double Bind: Factual Innocence And Postconviction Dna Testing, Seth F. Kreimer, David Rudovsky

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No abstract provided.

Excuses And Dispositions In Criminal Law, Claire Oakes Finkelstein

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No abstract provided.

Book Review. Courts And Transition In Russia: The Challenge Of Judicial Reform, By Peter H. Solomon, Jr. And Todd S. Foglesong, Stephen C. Thaman

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This is a book review applauding Peter H. Solomon and Todd S. Foglesong’s book Courts and Transition in Russia: The Challenge of Judicial Reform, written by Professor Stephen C. Thaman. Professor Thaman provides his thoughts on the possibility of Russian reform success.