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Articles 1 - 8 of 8
Full-Text Articles in Law
The Invisible Man: How The Sex Offender Registry Results In Social Death, Elizabeth B. Megale
The Invisible Man: How The Sex Offender Registry Results In Social Death, Elizabeth B. Megale
Elizabeth B. Megale
This Article establishes that overcriminalization serves to marginalize unwanted groups of society, and particularly regarding the sex offender registry, it results in social death. The author relies upon the notion of crime as a social construct to establish that the concept of “sex offense” changes over time as society and culture evolve. From there, the author incorporates the work of Michele Foucault involving the relationship of power, knowledge, and sexuality to show how the trend toward more repressive social controls over sex-related activity is related to a shift in this relationship. The Author identifies three characteristics and the associated traits …
The Invisible Man: How The Sex Offender Registry Results In Social Death, Elizabeth B. Megale
The Invisible Man: How The Sex Offender Registry Results In Social Death, Elizabeth B. Megale
Elizabeth B. Megale
This Article establishes that overcriminalization serves to marginalize unwanted groups of society, and particularly regarding the sex offender registry, it results in social death. The author relies upon the notion of crime as a social construct to establish that the concept of “sex offense” changes over time as society and culture evolve. From there, the author incorporates the work of Michele Foucault involving the relationship of power, knowledge, and sexuality to show how the trend toward more repressive social controls over sex-related activity is related to a shift in this relationship. The Author identifies three characteristics and the associated traits …
Overcriminalization: Is There A Problem To Solve?, Roger Fairfax
Overcriminalization: Is There A Problem To Solve?, Roger Fairfax
Presentations
No abstract provided.
Sacrificing Quantity For Quality: Better Focusing Prosecutors' Scarce Resources, Stephanos Bibas
Sacrificing Quantity For Quality: Better Focusing Prosecutors' Scarce Resources, Stephanos Bibas
All Faculty Scholarship
This short essay responds to Adam Gershowitz’s and Laura Killinger’s article The State (Never) Rests: How Excessive Prosecutorial Caseloads Harm Criminal Defendants. The authors rightly argue that prosecutorial overwork harms justice in any number of ways: it delays cases, frustrates victims, makes it harder to spot and free innocent defendants, and impedes lowering punishments for sympathetic defendants. The root problem, however, is less about underfunding than about skewed priorities and metrics of success. Too often, prosecutors do not think strategically about using their discretion to proactively set priorities and focus on system-wide tradeoffs. Throwing money at the problem would …
Overcriminalization 2.0: The Symbiotic Relationship Between Plea Bargaining And Overcriminalization, Lucian E. Dervan
Overcriminalization 2.0: The Symbiotic Relationship Between Plea Bargaining And Overcriminalization, Lucian E. Dervan
Law Faculty Scholarship
In discussing imperfections in the adversarial system, Professor Ribstein notes in his article entitled Agents Prosecuting Agents, that “prosecutors can avoid the need to test their theories at trial by using significant leverage to virtually force even innocent, or at least questionably guilty, defendants to plead guilty.” If this is true, then there is an enormous problem with plea bargaining, particularly given that over 95% of defendants in the federal criminal justice system succumb to the power of bargained justice. As such, this piece provides a detailed analysis of modern-day plea bargaining and its role in spurring the rise of …
New Crimes And Punishments: A Case Study Regarding The Impact Of Over-Criminalization On White Collar Criminal Cases, Lucian E. Dervan
New Crimes And Punishments: A Case Study Regarding The Impact Of Over-Criminalization On White Collar Criminal Cases, Lucian E. Dervan
Law Faculty Scholarship
Over-criminalization takes many forms and impacts the American criminal justice system in varying ways. This article focuses on a select portion of the over-criminalization phenomenon by examining two types of over-criminalization prevalent in white collar criminal law. The first type of over-criminalization discussed in this article is Congress’s propensity for increasing the maximum criminal penalties for white collar offenses in an effort to punish financial criminals more harshly. The second type of over-criminalization addressed in this article is Congress’s tendency to create vague and overlapping criminal provisions in areas already criminalized in an effort to expand the tools available to …
Overcriminalization 2.0: The Symbiotic Relationship Between Plea Bargaining And Overcriminalization, Lucian Dervan
Overcriminalization 2.0: The Symbiotic Relationship Between Plea Bargaining And Overcriminalization, Lucian Dervan
Lucian E Dervan
In discussing imperfections in the adversarial system, Professor Ribstein notes in his article entitled Agents Prosecuting Agents, that “prosecutors can avoid the need to test their theories at trial by using significant leverage to virtually force even innocent, or at least questionably guilty, defendants to plead guilty.” If this is true, then there is an enormous problem with plea bargaining, particularly given that over 95% of defendants in the federal criminal justice system succumb to the power of bargained justice. As such, this piece provides a detailed analysis of modern-day plea bargaining and its role in spurring the rise of …
The Criminalization Of Lying: Under What Circumstances, If Any, Should Lies Be Made Criminal?, Bryan H. Druzin, Jessica Li
The Criminalization Of Lying: Under What Circumstances, If Any, Should Lies Be Made Criminal?, Bryan H. Druzin, Jessica Li
Bryan H. Druzin
This paper argues that lying should be a crime. In doing so we propose the creation of a wholly new category of crime, which we term “egregious lying causing serious harm.” The paper has two broad objectives: the first is to make the case why such a crime should even exist, and the second is to flesh out how this crime might be constructed. The main contribution of the paper lies in the radical nature of its stated aim: the outright criminalization of certain kinds of lies. To our knowledge, such a proposal has not previously been made. The analysis …