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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Devil In Recent American Law, L. Joe Dunman
The Devil In Recent American Law, L. Joe Dunman
Pace Law Review
Despite its secular aspirations, the American legal system is permeated by Christian and other religious ideas. One of the religious ideas that frequently appears in recent American law is the devil—the unholy antithesis of all that is good in the world. Called by many names, such as Satan, Lucifer, or the Antichrist, the devil is no stranger to the United States court system. The devil arises from the hot depths primarily in five contexts: (1) as a source of injury to reputation in defamation cases; (2) as a prejudicial invocation made during criminal trials to secure conviction, harshen sentences, or …
Unreasonable Revelations: God Told Me To Kill, Linda Ross Meyer
Unreasonable Revelations: God Told Me To Kill, Linda Ross Meyer
Pace Law Review
This Article focuses on one extreme example of the law’s response to unreasonable revelations that is starkly presented in a series of unsettling murders: those involving criminal defendants who claim they committed their crime because God told them to do it—known as “deific decree” cases. This example of the conflict between revelation and reason tests the limits of law’s ability to understand and countenance revelation when the stakes are highest. The deific decree cases also present the hardest epistemological problems, because the defendant claims that the experience of God’s command is self-authenticating—a position fundamentally at odds with both scientific and …
The Concrete Jungle: Where Dreams Are Made Of . . . And Now Where Children Are Protected, Samantha A. Mumola
The Concrete Jungle: Where Dreams Are Made Of . . . And Now Where Children Are Protected, Samantha A. Mumola
Pace Law Review
The tragic and unsettling story of Kalief Browder has notably emerged as a prominent illustration of our criminal justice system’s historical failure to protect our youth. Kalief’s story gained massive media attention with the help of a TIME documentary series featured on Netflix and famous A-listers such as music artist Jay-Z and TV host Rosie O’Donnell. It is hard to ignore the fact that Kalief Browder was cheated by the system; he chose suicide to escape his demons, which developed after undeserved time spent at Riker’s – a place he would have never experienced had he initially been tried as …
Empiricism And The Misdemeanor Courts: Promoting Wider, Deeper, And Interdisciplinary Study, Alisa Smith
Empiricism And The Misdemeanor Courts: Promoting Wider, Deeper, And Interdisciplinary Study, Alisa Smith
Pace Law Review
Since 1956, there have been three waves of scholarly attention on the misdemeanor courts. Despite this attention, misdemeanor courts remain understudied and overlooked. The object of this paper is to summarize the empirical research conducted over the last sixty years and identify the scholarly work that should be undertaken on the processing of misdemeanor offenders in our courts. Buoyed by the current interest in studying the misdemeanor courts, scholars should widen and deepen their study by replicating the work of others in a variety of jurisdictions, observing court proceedings, interviewing defendants and the courtroom workgroup, and assessing whether constitutional ideals …
Comrades Or Foes: Did The Russians Break The Law Or New Ground For The First Amendment?, Artem M. Joukov, Samantha M. Caspar
Comrades Or Foes: Did The Russians Break The Law Or New Ground For The First Amendment?, Artem M. Joukov, Samantha M. Caspar
Pace Law Review
This Article discusses the recent decision by the United States Federal Government to indict more than a dozen Russian nationals for conspiracy to defraud the United States of America. The Government accused the Russians of staging protests, distributing false propaganda, and spreading political messages and ideologies online in an effort to affect the outcome of the 2016 Presidential Election. We argue that while the Defendants violated several other laws, the majority of the acts the Government classifies as a conspiracy to defraud the United States should not be considered criminal. Rather, these acts are protected political speech under the First …