Law Commons^™

Extraterritorial State Criminal Law, Post-Dobbs, Darryl K. Brown

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

Like the federal government, states can apply their laws to people beyond their borders. Statutes can reach out-of-state conduct, such as fraud, that has effects within the state, and in some circumstances, states can prosecute their own citizens for out-of-state conduct. Many applications of extraterritorial jurisdiction are well established and uncontroversial; state common law and the Model Penal Code provide for such authority. The practice draws little attention when states’ criminal laws are broadly similar and treat the same activities as crimes. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, however, state laws …

Abolition Of What?, Christopher Lewis, Adaner Usmani

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

This Article defends a structural theory of the brutality of the carceral state. We argue that American penal systems are destined to be inhumane, barring sweeping changes to the social and economic order of the United States; and that prison and police abolition are neither sufficient nor necessary to bring these kinds of changes about.

This theory stands on two premises. First, we defend The Principle of Less Eligibility, which holds that it is politically infeasible for capitalist democracies to permit the incentives to defy the law to exceed those to obey it. As we show, the Principle of Less …

Excessive Force In Prison, Sharon Dolovich

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

Any time a correctional officer (CO) physically assaults someone in prison, their conduct demands an especially compelling justification and robust ex post scrutiny. Instead, governing Eighth Amendment doctrine almost entirely defers to COs’ own judgments as to the need for force. This highly deferential approach is especially ill advised given the institutional culture of the modern American prison, which systematically demonizes and dehumanizes people in custody and thus primes COs to use violence unnecessarily. Even a standard of “objective unreasonableness” would not suffice to prevent case outcomes from reflecting a callous indifference to the safety of people in prison. What …

Law In Inaction: The Origins And Implications Of Chronic Drug Law Underenforcement In One Southern County, Kay L. Levine, Elizabeth Griffiths, Joshua M. Hinkle, Volkan Topalli

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

Common accounts of police and prosecutorial nonenforcement discretion tend to valorize individual declination choices as demonstrations of mercy and resource constraint. Simultaneously, these accounts critique blanket nonenforcement policies as being outside the bounds of executive authority. Both accounts fail to consider the origins and implications of nonenforcement decisions made by police officers and prosecutors in individual cases that, when taken together, amount to significant underenforcement of an otherwise valid law.

This Article fills the gap between these differing perspectives by empirically examining the hidden and habitual underenforcement of technically valid drug-free-zone (DFZ) laws in one Southern county. Data matching the …

Beyond Bars: Exploring Alternative Possibilities To Address Sexual And Gender Based Violence, Rachel Ensign Habliston

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

Many people agree that the United States carceral system is flawed. However, it can be difficult to discuss alternative ways to address violence that do not involve incarceration. Aside from the carceral system, there are other pathways to accountability and healing. Exploring these pathways for perpetrators of heinous crimes, such as sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), is an overwhelming and under-reviewed endeavor. This Comment seeks to broaden perspectives about how society can hold people accountable for committing acts of SGBV by surveying progressive prosecution, restorative justice, and transformative justice as potential alternatives to the current carceral system. Part I provides …

Rubbing Salt Into The Wound: Environmental Injustices In Prisons And The Difficulties Of Obtaining Relief, Savannah Markel

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

American prisons are often built near or on environmentally hazardous lands. Not only do prison locations affect prisoners’ health and well-being, but deteriorating confinement conditions exacerbate such safety and wellness risks. In seeking justice for these environmental violations, prison litigants often choose to raise claims under the Eighth Amendment’s Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause. However, the Clause requires litigants to meet an extremely high—indeed, near-impossible—bar to succeed on their claims. Environmental justice advocates have proposed an alternative remedy which calls on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate environmental injustices in prisons. This Comment analyzes the difficulties of raising an …

Categorical Declinations & Democracy, Brenner M. Fissell

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

The most contentious action taken by reform prosecutors has been the issuance of categorical declination policies. Opponents decry this as bureaucratic nullification of democratically enacted offenses, while the prosecutors themselves counter that they are responding to the will of their local electorate. Democracy claims, it appears, have taken center stage in this debate, and they are deployed by both sides. How should we think about democracy and categorical declinations? The most comprehensive scholarly work on this subject is a 2021 article by Professor Kerrel Murray. In this essay, I hope to continue the work begun by Murray, offering additional insights …

Evidence Of Unfairness: New York's 2020 Discovery Statute Reduced Fairness For Defendants, Victims, And Society, Hannah E. Meyers

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

To ensure fairness and safety for all citizens, it is crucial to evaluate the impact of criminal justice reforms. In this article, I argue that some recent statewide criminal justice reforms legislated with the avowed goal of making the criminal justice system fairer have had the opposite result. As a case study of this phenomenon, I focus on New York State’s discovery statute, which went into effect in January 2020. I detail specifically what the law changed and explain the profound impact of those changes on the functioning of local district attorneys’ offices.

I then analyze data showing a substantial …

Legislatures And Localized Resentencing, Ronald F. Wright, Kay L. Levine

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

Recent legislation, exemplified in statutes from California and Washington, creates new methods for resentencing defendants in old cases. These laws place controlling authority for resentencing in the hands of local officials, especially local prosecutors, and invite variation at the county level.

While some new procedural channels for reducing the sentences of people convicted of past crimes are mandatory, in that they entitle certain defendants to resentencing if they were convicted of certain crimes or were subject to certain penalty enhancements that are no longer valid, other statutes create discretionary resentencing channels. In the discretionary channels, the chief local prosecutor has …

Second Look Myopia: State Sentencing Reform And The Local Prosecutorial Response, Alexandra Harrington

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

This Article advises caution against over-reliance on local prosecutors’ offices to effect second-look reforms and to filter cases worthy of review. Using the lens of New York’s recent second-look law, the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act (DVSJA), I analyze the ways in which the local prosecutor can serve as a functional barrier to statewide implementation of sentencing reform. The New York State Legislature enacted the DVSJA—after advocacy from hundreds of directly impacted individuals, stakeholders, and organizations and after significant opposition from only the District Attorneys’ Association—to change the way the State sentences survivors of domestic violence. The DVSJA also allows …

County Prosecution And State Preemption: The Confusing Politics Of Criminal Legal Reform And Backlash, John Pfaff

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

Urban reform prosecutors, who are generally elected at the county level, find themselves in a tricky political spot. On the one hand. most urban counties are in many ways “too big” for reformers: they include large numbers of suburban voters who generally dislike reform, in no small part because they are relatively unaffected by the decisions prosecutors make. On the other hand, these counties are also often “too small”: they lack the political power to resist efforts by conservative state legislatures and governors to rein in, if not outright remove, reformers. This Article examines both vulnerabilities. It first maps out …

A (Sovereign) License To Kill? The Boundaries Of Jurisdictional Immunities For State-Sponsored Crimes, Thibault Moulin

Emory International Law Review

Thanks to their immunities, states are normally not subject to civil proceedings before foreign courts. While some may argue there are exceptions to this principle, in particular regarding acta de jure gestionis, the International Court of Justice refused to recognize the existence of further limitations to this principle in the Jurisdictional Immunities of the State case. However, even after the judgment, several questions remain unresolved. This article clarifies the boundaries of civil immunities in the field, and especially vis-à-vis state-sponsored crimes. This article finds that state-sponsored crimes may qualify as sovereign acts and that contradiction with jus cogens is …

Self-Determination And Territorial Agreements In The Middle East: From The Ottomans To Colonial Rule, Ilias Bantekas, Moza Al-Thani

Emory International Law Review

A Pan-Arab uprising against the Ottomans must have seemed unlikely in the late nineteenth century. Yet, grounded around a common language, history and culture, Arab nationalists demanded their unification in a single nation state. To achieve this aim, they allied with the British and the Entente but soon discovered that territorial and self-determination commitments made to them were not always forthcoming and were interjected with secret agreements and unilateral acts to which they were not privy. While Gulf sheikhdoms entered into consensual protectorate treaties with the British, the former Ottoman territories of the Middle East and the Levante were still …

Global Value Chains And Workers: Reconstructing An Epistemology For The Transnational Labor Question, Ulla Liukkunen

Emory International Law Review

This article examines transnational labor governance and contractualization in global value chains, arguing that framing the transnational labor question is essential to encapsulate workers’ needs for protection. At the same time, this question is fundamentally epistemological. Framing the question requires an epistemological reconstruction that moves beyond the dominant dichotomies inherent in evolving transnational private law – dichotomies that marginalize workers and obscure the role of employment contracts within transnational regulatory frameworks. The article points not only to the inadequacy of the transnational epistemological foundation, but also to the epistemic imbalance between the Global North and the Global South and the …

Exploring The Nuremberg Trials And Jus Cogens: What Morality?, Joseph Park

Emory International Law Review

No abstract provided.

Comparing Gdpr Against The United States’ Approach To Data Breach Notification By Examining Texas And California And The Feasibility Of A Universal Standard, Amrit Nagi

Cybaris®

No abstract provided.

Ai-Ip? Copyright In An Age Of Internet Propaganda With Artificial Intelligence, Sonya Saepoff

Cybaris®

No abstract provided.

Just For Show: Eliminating Judicial Exceptions To Section 101 Would Render Limits On Patent-Eligible Subject Matter Meaningless, Katie Crocker

Cybaris®

No abstract provided.

Born Too Late To Patent The Engine, Born Too Early To Patent The Lightsaber, Born Just In Time To Patent Space Inventions, Ryan Horejsi

Cybaris®

No abstract provided.

Transformative Play: The Legalities Of Modding In The Video Game Industry, Erika Weisdorfer

Cybaris®

No abstract provided.

Virtually Identical: A Case For Maintaining Architectural Copyright Protections In The Metaverse, Stephen Mcpaul

Cybaris®

No abstract provided.

A Comparative Analysis Of The Prevention Of Pharmaceutical Patenting Abuse In The United States, Japan, And France, Kristen Coan

Cybaris®

No abstract provided.

Protections For Lgbtq+ Students And Athletes: Title Ix In Light Of Bostock V. Clayton County, Katherine Considine

Student Works

No abstract provided.

Foundations And Principles: An Introduction To Islamic Jurisprudence & A Brief Comparison To American Jurisprudence, Zacky H. Sungkar

Student Works

No abstract provided.

Amending New Jersey’S Expungement Law To Reflect The Historical Treatment Of Juveniles: Juveniles Deserve A Second Chance, Jair D. Bodnar

Student Works

No abstract provided.

Fur Farms: Animal Cruelty In The Fashion Industry, Gabriela Gutierrez

Student Works

No abstract provided.

Ai Manipulation At The Uspto: The Patent Bargain The Public Did Not Ask For, Matthew Korwin

Student Works

No abstract provided.

State Regulation Of Cultured Meat: Would A Meat By Any Other Name Taste As Good?, Ethan Granoff

Student Works

No abstract provided.

United States Of America Needs To Learn From The World: "Nonhuman Legal Personhood" - The Right Of Animals, Tiya Singh

Student Works

No abstract provided.

Federal Comprehensive Data Privacy Legislation And Preemption, Tao Pan

Student Works

No abstract provided.