Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Discipline
-
- Criminal Law (16)
- Criminal Procedure (7)
- Courts (4)
- Human Rights Law (4)
- Law and Society (4)
-
- Civil Rights and Discrimination (3)
- Criminology and Criminal Justice (3)
- Law Enforcement and Corrections (3)
- Legal Studies (3)
- Social and Behavioral Sciences (3)
- Criminology (2)
- Indigenous, Indian, and Aboriginal Law (2)
- Judges (2)
- Sociology (2)
- Constitutional Law (1)
- Fourteenth Amendment (1)
- Immigration Law (1)
- Jurisdiction (1)
- Juvenile Law (1)
- Law and Gender (1)
- Law and Politics (1)
- Legislation (1)
- Military, War, and Peace (1)
- Organizations Law (1)
- Public Law and Legal Theory (1)
- Sexuality and the Law (1)
- Social Control, Law, Crime, and Deviance (1)
- State and Local Government Law (1)
- Institution
- Publication
-
- All Faculty Scholarship (2)
- Articles (2)
- Faculty Scholarship (2)
- Human Rights Institute (2)
- Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications (2)
-
- Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press (1)
- Edward H. Kennedy (1)
- Faculty Publications (1)
- Honors Projects (1)
- Jeffrey J. Rachlinski (1)
- John F. Stinneford (1)
- Mark L Noferi (1)
- Michigan Journal of International Law (1)
- Sheri Lynn Johnson (1)
- Theses & Dissertations (1)
- University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform (1)
- Vanderbilt Law Review (1)
- Publication Type
- File Type
Articles 1 - 22 of 22
Full-Text Articles in Law
Does Unconscious Racial Bias Affect Trial Judges?, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Sheri Johnson, Andrew J. Wistrich, Chris Guthrie
Does Unconscious Racial Bias Affect Trial Judges?, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Sheri Johnson, Andrew J. Wistrich, Chris Guthrie
Jeffrey J. Rachlinski
Race matters in the criminal justice system. Black defendants appear to fare worse than similarly situated white defendants. Why? Implicit bias is one possibility. Researchers, using a well-known measure called the implicit association test, have found that most white Americans harbor implicit bias toward Black Americans. Do judges, who are professionally committed to egalitarian norms, hold these same implicit biases? And if so, do these biases account for racially disparate outcomes in the criminal justice system? We explored these two research questions in a multi-part study involving a large sample of trial judges drawn from around the country. Our results …
Does Unconscious Racial Bias Affect Trial Judges?, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Sheri Johnson, Andrew J. Wistrich, Chris Guthrie
Does Unconscious Racial Bias Affect Trial Judges?, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Sheri Johnson, Andrew J. Wistrich, Chris Guthrie
Sheri Lynn Johnson
Race matters in the criminal justice system. Black defendants appear to fare worse than similarly situated white defendants. Why? Implicit bias is one possibility. Researchers, using a well-known measure called the implicit association test, have found that most white Americans harbor implicit bias toward Black Americans. Do judges, who are professionally committed to egalitarian norms, hold these same implicit biases? And if so, do these biases account for racially disparate outcomes in the criminal justice system? We explored these two research questions in a multi-part study involving a large sample of trial judges drawn from around the country. Our results …
Incapacitation Through Maiming: Chemical Castration, The Eighth Amendment, And The Denial Of Human Dignity, John F. Stinneford
Incapacitation Through Maiming: Chemical Castration, The Eighth Amendment, And The Denial Of Human Dignity, John F. Stinneford
John F. Stinneford
This year marks the tenth anniversary of California's enactment of the nation's first chemical castration law. This law requires certain sex offenders to receive, as part of their punishment, long-term pharmacological treatment involving massive doses of a synthetic female hormone called medroxyprogesterone acetate (MPA). MPA treatment is described as chemical castration because it mimics the effect of surgical castration by eliminating almost all testosterone from the offender's system. The intended effect of MPA treatment is to alter brain and body function by reducing the brain's exposure to testosterone, thus depriving offenders of most (or all) capacity to experience sexual desire …
The Corrections System Must Make More Accommodations For The Needs Of Motherhood During Incarceration And The Parole Period, Susan Bloom
Theses & Dissertations
While the overall prison population has experienced an unprecedented growth period over the past thirty years, no segment has grown at a faster rate than the female population. Since the majority of female inmates in this country are mothers, it is imperative that the corrections system addresses the unique needs of this subset. This thesis investigates problems women face during the pregnancy period, while in labor and delivery, while their progenies are infants, children and adolescents and reunification issues during the parole period.
Abuse And Potential Misuse Of Resources In U.S. Terrorism Prosecutions, Human Rights Institute
Abuse And Potential Misuse Of Resources In U.S. Terrorism Prosecutions, Human Rights Institute
Human Rights Institute
New York, July 21, 2014 – Prosecutions of American Muslims for terrorism offenses are rife with abuse, the Columbia Human Rights Institute says in a new report released today and produced jointly with Human Rights Watch. The report, Illusion of Justice: Human Rights Abuses in US Terrorism Prosecutions, examines 27 federal terrorism cases, some involving aggressive sting operations and others amounting to overbroad prosecutions for material support of terrorism. It also documents the significant human cost of solitary confinement and other restrictive conditions of confinement in these cases.
Challenging Juvenile Life Without Parole: How Has Human Rights Made A Difference?, Human Rights Institute
Challenging Juvenile Life Without Parole: How Has Human Rights Made A Difference?, Human Rights Institute
Human Rights Institute
Human rights standards and strategies play an important role in social justice legal advocacy in the United States. Human rights help frame new arguments, offer new venues for challenging existing policies and practices, provide opportunities for coalition-building, and afford new means to bring attention to rights violations. One example of human rights strategies at work in the U.S. is found in advocates’ efforts to end a practice unique to the United States: sentencing juveniles to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
In Defense Of American Criminal Justice, J. H. Wilkinson, Iii
In Defense Of American Criminal Justice, J. H. Wilkinson, Iii
Vanderbilt Law Review
The American criminal justice system is on trial. A chorus of commentators-often but not exclusively in the legal academy-has leveled a sharp indictment of criminal process in our country. The indictment charges that large flaws infect nearly every stage of the adjudicatory process. And the prescriptions are equally far-reaching, with calls for abolition of many current practices and an overhaul of the entire system. What is more, the critics issue their condemnations essentially as givens, often claiming that all reasonable people could not help but agree that fair treatment of the accused has been fatally compromised. For these critics, "We …
Sentence Creep: Increasing Penalties In Michigan And The Need For Sentencing Reform, Anne Yantus
Sentence Creep: Increasing Penalties In Michigan And The Need For Sentencing Reform, Anne Yantus
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
The governor and several legislators have requested review of Michigan’s sentencing practices with an eye toward sentence reform. Michigan leads the country in the average length of prison stay, and by internal comparisons the average minimum sentence has nearly doubled in the last decade. This Article explores cumulative increases to criminal penalties over the last several decades as reflected in amendments to the sentencing guidelines, increased maximum sentences, harsh mandatory minimum terms, increased authority for consecutive sentencing, wide sentencing discretion for habitual and repeat drug offenders, and tough parole practices and policies. The reality for legislators is that it is …
Experiments In International Criminal Justice: Lessons From The Khmer Rouge Tribunal, John D. Ciorciari, Anne Heindel
Experiments In International Criminal Justice: Lessons From The Khmer Rouge Tribunal, John D. Ciorciari, Anne Heindel
Michigan Journal of International Law
Important experiments in international criminal justice have been taking place at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC or Court), a tribunal created by the United Nations and Cambodian Government to adjudicate some of the most egregious crimes of the Pol Pot era.2 The tribunal opened its doors in 2006, and although its work continues, its first seven years of operations provide an opportunity to evaluate its performance and judge the extent to which legal and institutional experiments at the ECCC have been successful to date. This Article will show that, in general, the ECCC’s most unique and …
A Systems Approach To Error Reduction In Criminal Justice, John Hollway
A Systems Approach To Error Reduction In Criminal Justice, John Hollway
All Faculty Scholarship
The “systems approach” has been used, improved, and refined over time to improve safety and reduce errors in a variety of complex, high-risk industries, including health care, aviation, and manufacturing, among others. Such an approach targets the system for improvement rather than specific individuals within the system, and seeks to provide an environment that maximizes each participant’s ability to act safely and in a way that achieves the goals of the system. It prizes a non-punitive culture of disclosure to identify errors, gathers and applies data to understand the causes of the error, and tests systems changes to prevent future …
Criminal Justice In Indian Country, M. Alexander Pearl
Criminal Justice In Indian Country, M. Alexander Pearl
Faculty Publications
This Article examines the role played by different enacted legislation on California’s Indian tribes criminal justice system. For centuries, tribal governments were the only entities with criminal jurisdiction in Indian Country. In 1883, the Supreme Court in Ex parte Kan-Gi-Shun-Ka (Ex parte Crow Dog) confirmed that a crime committed by an Indian against another Indian did not give rise to federal jurisdiction. In response, Congress passed the Major Crimes Act, granting federal authorities the power to investigate, enforce, and prosecute certain crimes occurring in Indian Country. The federal statutes creating federal jurisdiction did not preclude tribal jurisdiction, but states …
Watching Me: The War On Crime, Privacy, And The State, Kimberly D. Bailey
Watching Me: The War On Crime, Privacy, And The State, Kimberly D. Bailey
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Sentencing And Prior Convictions: The Past, The Future, And The End Of The Prior-Conviction Exception To "Apprendi", Nancy J. King
Sentencing And Prior Convictions: The Past, The Future, And The End Of The Prior-Conviction Exception To "Apprendi", Nancy J. King
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This article traces the fascinating history of early efforts to identify defendants and their prior convictions as well as the evolving use of prior convictions in aggravating punishment; examines how contemporary repeat offender penalties fall short of punishment goals and contribute to the racially lopsided profile of punishment today; and critiques potential justifications for the prior conviction exception to the rule in Apprendi v. New Jersey, arguing that the exception should be abandoned. The article summarizes empirical research testing the relationship between prior convictions and examining the efficacy of repeat offender sentences in reducing recidivism; collects commentary on the use …
Lessons From Inquisitorialism, Christopher Slobogin
Lessons From Inquisitorialism, Christopher Slobogin
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
The adversarial system as it is implemented in the United States is a significant cause of wrongful convictions, wrongful acquittals and wrongful sentences. Empirical evidence suggests that a hybrid inquisitorial regime would be better than the American-style adversarial system at reducing these erroneous results. This paper proposes the integration of three inquisitorial mechanisms into the American trial process, judicial control over the adjudication process, non-adversarial treatment of experts, and required unsworn testimony by the defendant and defends the proposals against constitutional and practical challenges. While other scholars have suggested borrowing from overseas, these three proposals have yet to be presented …
Person(S) Of Interest And Missing Women: Legal Abandonment In The Downtown Eastside, Elaine Craig
Person(S) Of Interest And Missing Women: Legal Abandonment In The Downtown Eastside, Elaine Craig
Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press
Women are disappearing. Sixty-nine of them disappeared from the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver between 1997 and 2002. Northern communities in British Columbia believe that more than 40 women have gone missing from the Highway of Tears in the past thirty years. The endangered do not come from every walk of life. Most of these women are Aboriginal. Many of them are poor. To be more precise then, poor women and Aboriginal women are disappearing. Aboriginal women in particular are the targets of an irrefutable epidemic of violence in Canada today. Robert Pickton is thought to have murdered almost 50 of …
Evidence-Based Sentencing And The Scientific Rationalization Of Discrimination, Sonja B. Starr
Evidence-Based Sentencing And The Scientific Rationalization Of Discrimination, Sonja B. Starr
Articles
This Article critiques, on legal and empirical grounds, the growing trend of basing criminal sentences on actuarial recidivism risk prediction instruments that include demographic and socioeconomic variables. I argue that this practice violates the Equal Protection Clause and is bad policy: an explicit embrace of otherwise- condemned discrimination, sanitized by scientific language. To demonstrate that this practice raises serious constitutional concerns, I comprehensively review the relevant case law, much of which has been ignored by existing literature. To demonstrate that the policy is not justified by countervailing state interests, I review the empirical evidence underlying the instruments. I show that …
Perceptions And Occurrences Of Relationship Abuse And Sexual Assault, Jessica Parenteau
Perceptions And Occurrences Of Relationship Abuse And Sexual Assault, Jessica Parenteau
Honors Projects
Previous research illustrates that college age students experience relationship abuse and sexual assault. I test lifestyle-routine activities theory to determine how college students perceive non-stranger relationship abuse and/or sexual assault and if both are occurring on a college campus, off a college campus, or through technology, including social media. Like previous studies, this one found that alcohol played a role in victimization. Also, more male participants than female participants were likely to be harassed through social media than in actual physical locations, such as at a bar or a private party. Findings from this study show that both women and …
Our Fair City: A Comprehensive Blueprint For Gender And Sexual Justice In New York City, Cindy Gao, Katherine M. Franke
Our Fair City: A Comprehensive Blueprint For Gender And Sexual Justice In New York City, Cindy Gao, Katherine M. Franke
Faculty Scholarship
Columbia Law School’s Center for Gender & Sexuality Law offers this report to aid the de Blasio administration in evaluating the steps it can and should take to eliminate all forms of gender and sexual discrimination, and to assure gender and sexual justice in City policy and programs. After consultation with numerous groups advocating for gender and sexual justice across New York City, the Center for Gender & Sexuality Law at Columbia Law School has synthesized in this report a set of key recommendations to the de Blasio administration, all designed to eliminate a wide range of disadvantages, invisibility, violence, …
Correcting Criminal Justice Through Collective Experience Rigorously Examined, James S. Liebman, David Mattern
Correcting Criminal Justice Through Collective Experience Rigorously Examined, James S. Liebman, David Mattern
Faculty Scholarship
Federal and state law confers broad discretion on courts to administer the criminal laws, impose powerful penalties, and leave serious criminal behavior unpunished. Each time an appellate court reviews a criminal verdict, it performs an important systemic function of regulating the exercise of that power. Trial courts do the same when, for example, they admit or exclude evidence generated by government investigators. For decades, judicial decisions of this sort have been guided by case law made during the Supreme Court's Criminal Procedure Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. It is becoming increasingly clear, however, that the rule-bound, essentially bureaucratic regulatory …
Rate Of False Conviction Of Criminal Defendants Who Are Sentenced To Death, Samuel R. Gross, Barbara O'Brien, Chen Hu, Edward H. Kennedy
Rate Of False Conviction Of Criminal Defendants Who Are Sentenced To Death, Samuel R. Gross, Barbara O'Brien, Chen Hu, Edward H. Kennedy
Articles
The rate of erroneous conviction of innocent criminal defendants is often described as not merely unknown but unknowable. There is no systematic method to determine the accuracy of a criminal conviction; if there were, these errors would not occur in the first place. As a result, very few false convictions are ever discovered, and those that are discovered are not representative of the group as a whole. In the United States, however, a high proportion of false convictions that do come to light and produce exonerations are concentrated among the tiny minority of cases in which defendants are sentenced to …
Rate Of False Conviction Of Criminal Defendants Who Are Sentenced To Death, Samuel Gross, Barbara O'Brien, Chen Hu, Edward Kennedy
Rate Of False Conviction Of Criminal Defendants Who Are Sentenced To Death, Samuel Gross, Barbara O'Brien, Chen Hu, Edward Kennedy
Edward H. Kennedy
The rate of erroneous conviction of innocent criminal defendants is often described as not merely unknown but unknowable. There is no systematic method to determine the accuracy of a criminal conviction; if there were, these errors would not occur in the first place. As a result, very few false convictions are ever discovered, and those that are discovered are not representative of the group as a whole. In the United States, however, a high proportion of false convictions that do come to light and produce exonerations are concentrated among the tiny minority of cases in which defendants are sentenced to …
The Immigration Detention Risk Assessment, Mark Noferi, Robert Koulish
The Immigration Detention Risk Assessment, Mark Noferi, Robert Koulish
Mark L Noferi
In early 2013, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) deployed nationwide a new automated risk assessment tool to help determine whether to detain or release noncitizens pending their deportation proceedings. Adapted from similar evidence-based criminal justice reforms that have reduced pretrial detention, ICE’s initiative now represents the largest pre-hearing risk assessment experiment in U.S. history—potentially impacting over 400,000 individuals per year. However, to date little information has been released regarding the risk assessment algorithm, processes, and outcomes.
This article provides the first comprehensive examination of ICE’s risk assessment initiative, based on public access to ICE methodology and outcomes as a …