Law Commons^™

The Ecological Advantages Of Nuclear Power, Fred P. Bosselman

All Faculty Scholarship

Major electric utilities are deciding whether to build nuclear power plants. How will their decision affect ecological processes and systems, both in the United States and globally? The article makes three arguments: (1) if nuclear power plants are not built, the gap will be filled by more coal-fired power plants; (2) the impact of coal-fired power plants on ecological processes and systems is likely to be increasingly disastrous; and (3) nuclear power’s ecological impacts are likely to be neutral or even positive.

The Law Clerk Proxy Wars: Secrecy, Accountability, And Ideology In The Supreme Court, Carolyn Shapiro

All Faculty Scholarship

This piece provides an in-depth review and analysis of two recent books about Supreme Court law clerks, Courtiers of the Marble Palace: The Rise and Influence of the Supreme Court Law Clerk, by Todd C. Peppers, and Sorcerers’ Apprentices: 100 Years of Law Clerks at the United States Supreme Court, by Artemus Ward and David L. Weiden. In addition, the essay addresses a question so obvious that it is rarely asked – why is there so much curiosity about Supreme Court law clerks in the first place? In the essay, I analyze a widespread concern – and one discussed in …

Taking Reasonable Doubt Seriously, Arnold H. Lowey

Chicago-Kent Law Review

In recent years, we have discovered a spate of factually innocent people who have been convicted. In this article, Professor Loewy contends that the failure of juries to take reasonable doubt seriously contributes to this phenomenon. Professor Loewy via an illustrative fictitious case explains that juries might be reluctant to give the defendant the benefit of a reasonable doubt because of their concern about putting dangerous criminals back on the street. He then asks whether we really want juries to take reasonable doubt seriously. Concluding that we do, he examines how we can do that. Loewy concludes that the best …

Deadly Dilemmas Ii: Bail And Crime, Larry Laudan, Ronald J. Allen

Chicago-Kent Law Review

This is another in a series of papers examining the interaction between the implications of the deadly dilemma of governing that virtually all governmental action involves unavoidable conflict between equally laudatory goals and the conventional way of thinking about social errors. Typically the pursuit of any particular goal has as its consequence precisely the kind of harm that is desired to be avoided. For example, serious felons are sent to prison in part to protect innocent parties from their future predations, but those same felons often prey upon fellow prisoners, including murder. Moreover, felonies committed in prison only begin the …

The Fourth Amendment, The Exclusionary Rule, And The Roberts Court: Normative And Empirical Dimensions Of The Over-Deterrence Hypothesis, Donald Dripps

Chicago-Kent Law Review

This essay engages in the risky business of predicting future Supreme Court developments. In the first part, I analyze the evidence suggesting that the Roberts Court might abolish the exclusionary rule. The critique of exclusion in Hudson v. Michigan is both less and more probative than appears at first blush. Part II turns to some less obvious evidence pointing in the direction of retaining the exclusionary rule. First, abolition of the exclusionary rule is inconsistent with the Hudson majority's apparent content with prevailing police behavior. Second, abolition of the exclusionary rule would curtail the power of the Supreme Court. Part …

Replacing The Exclusionary Rule: Fourth Amendment Violations As Direct Criminal Contempt, Ronald J. Rychlak

Chicago-Kent Law Review

The exclusionary rule, which bars from admission evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment's prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures, is a bedrock of American law. It is highly controversial, but there seems to be no equally effective way to protect citizens' rights. This paper proposes that an admissibility standard be adopted that is in keeping with virtually every jurisdiction around the world other than the United States. Thus, before ruling evidence inadmissible, the court would consider the level of the constitutional violation, the seriousness of the crime, whether the violation casts substantial doubt on the reliability of the …

Don't Bet On It: Casino's Contractual Duty To Stop Compulsive Gamblers From Gambling, Irina Slavina

Chicago-Kent Law Review

To address the problem of compulsive gambling, most states with commercial casinos have enacted statewide self-exclusion programs—a mechanism by which patrons petition to be physically removed from a casino if they are discovered on the premises. The casinos in the remaining states voluntarily instituted facility-based programs to assist problem gamblers in fighting their addiction.

But besides having any intended effect, these programs provided gamblers with a new ground for lawsuits—breach of contract. This note argues that neither states nor individual casinos should be liable to self-excluded patrons for breach of contract, even if they enter a casino and lose money …

Table Of Contents - Issue 1, Chicago-Kent Law Review

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

Innocence, Evidence, And The Courts, Morgan Cloud

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Roberts Court's Failed Innocence Project, Janet C. Hoeffel

Chicago-Kent Law Review

In this article, Professor Hoeffel discusses the Roberts Court's obvious struggle with its actual innocence jurisprudence. It is a struggle that was only theoretical in the days before DNA exonerations. While the Court had two opportunities to clarify the role of wrongful convictions in the criminal justice system, it has declined to do so. In House v. Bell, the Court ratcheted up the standard of proof for freestanding constitutional claims of innocence to a level no petitioner could understand, much less meet. Then, in District Attorney's Office for the Third Judicial District v. Osborne, the Court held that …

White Collar Innocence: Irrelevant In The High Stakes Risk Game, Ellen S. Podgor

Chicago-Kent Law Review

When one thinks of "wrongful convictions and reliability in the criminal justice process" one often thinks of street crime convictions of defendants later proven innocent through DNA or other scientific evidence. But this essay presents a new dimension to this issue—the white collar crime context. Three stories are considered here: Arthur Andersen LLP, Jamie Ois, and Jeffrey Skilling—all of whom proceeded to trial after criminal charges were brought against them. These three are contrasted with KPMG, Gene Foster, and Andrew Fastow, all of whom secured plea agreements or deferred prosecution agreements with reduced sentences and finite results. The concern here …

The Role Of Innocence Commissions: Error Discovery, Systemic Reform Or Both?, Kent Roach

Chicago-Kent Law Review

This article examines the role of innocence commissions as emerging criminal justice institutions. It draws a distinction between commissions devoted to the correction of errors in individual cases and commissions which make systemic reform recommendations in an effort to prevent wrongful convictions in future cases. The British and Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission and the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission are examined as examples of the former type of commission while Canadian public inquiries and commissions in Illinois, California and Virginia are examined as examples of the latter type of commission. Innocence commissions have had difficulties combining error correction and …

Second Thoughts On Damages For Wrongful Convictions, Lawrence Rosenthal

Chicago-Kent Law Review

After the DNA-inspired wave of exonerations of recent years, there has been widespread support for expanding the damages remedies available to those who have been wrongfully accused or convicted. In this article, Professor Rosenthal argues that the case for providing such compensation is deeply problematic, whether advanced in terms of no-fault or fault-based liability. Although a regime of strict liability is sometimes thought justifiable as a means of creating an economic incentive to scale back such liability-producing conduct to optimal levels, this rationale has little application to the criminal justice system. Instead, a regime of strict liability would operate as …

Intentional Wrongful Conviction Of Children, Victor Streib

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Intentional wrongful convictions in cases involving child offenders may occur when judges have insufficient evidence proving any crime by the child but feel a strong need for the courts to intervene in the child's life and behavior. They believe that the negative factors attached to such a status are worth suffering if the child gains entry into a desired state program. This is wrongfully convicting the child "for the child's own good." Juvenile court judges too often receive knowledge of the child's background and previous record prior to any trial or hearing in order to devise the best result for …

Reliability, Justice And Confessions: The Essential Paradox, Russell L. Weaver

Chicago-Kent Law Review

This paper deals with the issue of "reliability" in the criminal justice process, and the rising number of wrongful convictions that have been identified in recent years. Using modern evidentiary techniques, a rising number of individuals have been found "innocent" of the crimes for which they have been convicted. These instances of wrongful conviction have involved individuals who spent time on death row, awaiting execution, only to be completely exonerated. There are various reasons for these wrongful convictions, including prosecutorial misconduct and systemic failures such as inadequate indigent representation. This paper focuses on another systemic failure: difficulties with the confessions …

The Irrelevancy Of The Fourth Amendment In The Roberts Court, Thomas K. Clancy

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Since John Roberts Jr. became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, there has been a measurable decline in the number of cases addressing Fourth Amendment questions. This article examines the reasons for that decline and predicts the substantial elimination of Fourth Amendment litigation in the Roberts Court. The prediction is based on several premises, including the lack of interest of the Justices on the Court concerning search and seizures principles and two significant recent cases, Pearson v. Callahan and United States v. Herring, which presage a significant decline in the number of lower court cases addressing the merits of …

Mapp V. Ohio'S Unsung Hero: The Suppression Hearing As Morality Play, Scott E. Sundby

Chicago-Kent Law Review

The exclusionary rule is back under the judicial magnifying glass. Recent opinions, most notably by Justice Scalia, have sparked speculation that the Roberts Court is inclined to overrule Mapp v. Ohio and send Fourth Amendment disputes back to the realm of civil suits and police disciplinary actions. As the Court's rulings have made clear, any reevaluation of the exclusionary rule's future will be conducted under the now familiar rubric of whether the rule's "benefit" of deterring police misbehavior outweighs the "cost" of lost evidence and convictions.

This essay argues that if any such reevaluation does occur, the Court must take …

Fourth Amendment Federalism And The Silencing Of The American Poor, Andrew E. Taslitz

Chicago-Kent Law Review

In Virginia v. Moore, police officers searched Moore incident to an arrest for a minor traffic infraction for which Virginia statutory law in fact prohibited arrest. The officers found cocaine on Moore's person, arresting him for that crime too. The United States Supreme Court ultimately found that the arrest for the traffic infraction and the subsequent search were valid under the federal Constitution's Fourth Amendment. Central to the Court's reasoning was its insistence that the state statute was irrelevant. Any contrary conclusion, explained the Court, would wrongly make the Fourth Amendment's meaning vary from place to place. Professor Taslitz …

Melendez-Diaz And The Right To Confrontation, Craig M. Bradley

Chicago-Kent Law Review

In Crawford v. Washington, the Supreme Court overruled Ohio v. Roberts and adopted new law concerning the use of hearsay testimony at criminal trials. This was based on the Sixth Amendment's command that "In all criminal prosecutions the accused shall enjoy the right . . . to be confronted with the witnesses against him .. " On its face this provision seems to say that the accused has the right to cross-examine anybody who testifies for the prosecution at trial, whether as a live witness or through hearsay. The Supreme Court acknowledged much of this in Crawford, but …

Stacking In Criminal Procedure Adjudication;Symposium On Criminal Procedure: Judicial Proceedings, Luke M. Milligan

Chicago-Kent Law Review

The institutionalist branch of "Law and Courts" studies how judges incorporate institutional constraints into their decision-making processes. Congressional constraints on judicial review, as the literature currently stands, fall into one of two general classes: overrides and Court-curbing measures. This taxonomy, however, is incomplete. Neither overrides nor curbing measures are needed to explain the not uncommon situation where a policy-oriented Justice deviates from a preferred vote based on the belief that such a vote will prompt Congress to alter an "insulated base rule" in a way that disrupts the Justice's larger policy agenda. An "insulated base rule" is a Congressional policy …

No Tax For "Phantom Income": How Congress Failed To Encourage Responsible Housing Consumption With Its Recent Tax Legislation, Rue Toland

Chicago-Kent Law Review

In the midst of the recent housing crisis, Congress passed two key pieces of federal tax legislation in an attempt to stem the tide of foreclosures and prevent further economic collapse. These two bills, the Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act in 2007 and the Housing and Economic Recovery Act in 2008, both sought competing goals: lessening the harm to existing homeowners, and encouraging purchases by new homebuyers. However, neither bill adequately addressed one of the root causes of the housing crisis, namely homeowners obtaining mortgages that, for whatever reason, they could not afford. Indeed, the tax incentives these bills created …

Free Speech & Tainted Justice: Restoring The Public's Confidence In The Judiciary In The Wake Of Republican Party Of Minnesota V. White, Gregory W. Jones

Chicago-Kent Law Review

The United States Supreme Court's 2002 decision in Republican Party of Minnesota v. White was the first shot fired in an ongoing battle over judicial campaign ethics. The White decision invalidated a Minnesota Canon of Judicial Conduct prohibiting judicial candidates from announcing their views on disputed legal or political topics. Subsequent to White, numerous states have faced challenges to their judicial canons of conduct by groups advocating for an increased breadth of permissible speech in judicial campaigns. While White and its progeny have safeguarded the first amendment rights of judicial candidates, significant concerns have been raised regarding how best to …

Separating Church And State: Transfers Of Government Land As Cures For Establishment Clause Violations, Paul Forster

Chicago-Kent Law Review

The note examines one of the issues currently before the Supreme Court in Salazar v. Buono, the case concerning a Latin cross war memorial in the Mojave desert. The issue is whether the government may, by transferring land to private parties, cure Establishment Clause violations caused by permanent displays that contain religious imagery. The article surveys the Court's Establishment Clause jurisprudence as it applies to permanent displays, discussing the sometimes-used and sometimes-ignored Lemon-endorsement standard and the potential shift to a coercion standard. It concludes by arguing that even under the Lemon-endorsement standard, courts should often allow the …

The Sit-Ins And The State Action Doctrine, Christopher W. Schmidt

All Faculty Scholarship

By taking their seats at “whites only” lunch counters across the South in the spring of 1960, African American students not only launched a dramatic new stage in the civil rights movement, they also sparked a national reconsideration of the scope of the constitutional equal protection requirement. The critical constitutional question raised by the sit-in movement was whether the Fourteenth Amendment, which after Brown v. Board of Education (1954) prohibited racial segregation in schools and other state-operated facilities, applied to privately owned accommodations open to the general public. From the perspective of the student protesters, the lunch counter operators, and …

Private Fund Adviser Registration Act Hr-3818, Anita Krug

All Faculty Scholarship

This paper comments on the Obama administration's 2009 proposal for the regulation of hedge fund investment advisers.

Things Fall Apart: The Illegitimacy Of Property Rights In The Context Of Past Theft, Bernadette Atuahene

All Faculty Scholarship

In many states, past property theft is a volatile political issue that threatens to destabilize nascent democracies. How does a state avoid instability when past property theft causes a significant number of people to believe that the property distribution is illegitimate? To explore this question, I first define legitimacy relying on an empirical understanding of the concept. Second, I establish the relationship between inequality, illegitimate property distribution, and instability. Third, I describe the three ways a state can achieve stability when faced with an illegitimate property distribution: by using its coercive powers, by attempting to change people’s beliefs about the …

Vol. 26, No. 4, Betty Cox, Perry A. Zirkel

The Illinois Public Employee Relations Report

Contents:

School Boards' Adverse Employment Actions Against Superintendents: An Empirical Analysis of the Case Law, by Betty Cox and Perry A. Zirkel

Recent Developments

A Long And Winding Road: The Doha Round Negotiation In The World Trade Organization, Sungjoon Cho

All Faculty Scholarship

This article provides a concise history of the Doha Round negotiation, analyzes its deadlock and offers some suggestions for a successful deal. The article observes that the nearly decade long negotiational stalemate is symptomatic of the diametrically opposed beliefs on the nature of the Round between developed and developing countries. While developed countries appear to be increasingly oblivious of Doha’s exigency, i.e., as a “development” round, developing countries vehemently condemn the developed countries’ narrow commercial focus on the Doha Round talks. It will not be easy to untie this Gordian knot since both Worlds tend to think that no deal …

Table Of Contents, Seventh Circuit Review

Seventh Circuit Review

No abstract provided.

Dobbey V. Illinois Department Of Corrections: A Small Piece Of A Growing Policy Puzzle, Ashley M. Belich

Seventh Circuit Review

The First Amendment right to petition is deeply intertwined with the other liberties offered by the Bill of Rights. However, the right to petition is still rarely analyzed in the legal world. This already difficult topic has become even more muddled in the prison system. Although the Prison Litigation Reform Act sought both to help prisoners and reduce the abundance of inmate lawsuits, inmate grievance processes actually suffocate the right to petition in prisons, sometimes going so far as to create a culture that offers barely any First Amendment protection. The Seventh Circuit's decision in Dobbey v. Illinois Dept. of …