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Full-Text Articles in Law

Prosecuting Torturers, Protecting "Child Molesters": Toward A Power Balance Model Of Criminal Process For International Human Rights Law, Mykola Sorochinsky Jan 2009

Prosecuting Torturers, Protecting "Child Molesters": Toward A Power Balance Model Of Criminal Process For International Human Rights Law, Mykola Sorochinsky

Michigan Journal of International Law

In the age of terrorism, human rights law globally suffers substantial setbacks. However, at the regional level, human rights law is now more relevant than ever. More cases are decided each year by regional human rights tribunals, particularly in Europe. More importantly, human rights law affects more areas of domestic legal systems than ever before-from trademark law to limits on corporal punishment of children. This growing complexity presents two challenges: first, the challenge of comprehension (or the increasing need to make sense of the ever-expanding case law in many substantive areas) and second, the challenge of responsibility (or the fact …


Extraordinary And Compelling: A Re-Examination Of The Justifications For Compassionate Release, William W. Berry Iii Jan 2009

Extraordinary And Compelling: A Re-Examination Of The Justifications For Compassionate Release, William W. Berry Iii

William W Berry III

Federal law, unbeknownst to many, includes a provision that permits the immediate release of federal prisoners. This safety valve provision requires that the Director of the Bureau of Prisons make a motion on behalf of the prisoner in order to secure the prisoner's compassionate release. Far from being a veiled version of parole, this compassionate release provision is to be used only in circumstances deemed "extraordinary and compelling." While the Bureau of Prisons has read this language very narrowly for many years, considering only terminally ill inmates as candidates for compassionate release, the Sentencing Commission modified its Guideline commentary in …


Post-Modern Meditations On Punishment: On The Limits Of Reason And The Virtues Of Randomization, Bernard E. Harcourt, Alon Harel, Ken Levy, Michael M. O'Hear, Alice Ristroph Jan 2009

Post-Modern Meditations On Punishment: On The Limits Of Reason And The Virtues Of Randomization, Bernard E. Harcourt, Alon Harel, Ken Levy, Michael M. O'Hear, Alice Ristroph

Faculty Scholarship

In this Criminal Law Conversation (Robinson, Ferzan & Garvey, eds., Oxford 2009), the authors debate whether there is a role for randomization in the penal sphere - in the criminal law, in policing, and in punishment theory. In his Tanner lectures back in 1987, Jon Elster had argued that there was no role for chance in the criminal law: “I do not think there are any arguments for incorporating lotteries in present-day criminal law,” Elster declared. Bernard Harcourt takes a very different position and embraces chance in the penal sphere, arguing that randomization is often the only way to avoid …


Neoliberal Penality: A Brief Genealogy, Bernard E. Harcourt Jan 2009

Neoliberal Penality: A Brief Genealogy, Bernard E. Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

The turn of the twenty first century witnessed important shifts in punishment practices. The most shocking is mass incarceration – the exponential rise in prisoners in state and federal penitentiaries and in county jails beginning in 1973. It is tempting to view these developments as evidence of something new that emerged in the 1970s – of a new culture of control, a new penology, or a new turn to biopower. But it would be a mistake to place too much emphasis on the 1970s since most of the recent trends have antecedents and parallels in the early twentieth century. It …


Drug Law Reform--Retreating From An Incarceration Addiction, Robert G. Lawson Jan 2009

Drug Law Reform--Retreating From An Incarceration Addiction, Robert G. Lawson

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.