Law Commons^™

The Mob Lawyer's Constitution, Sara Mayeux

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This article reconstructs the constitutional rhetoric of mob lawyers, as well as drug lawyers and other icons of the high-priced criminal defense bar, from the 1970s through the 1990s-the heyday of federal organized crime prosecutions and thus, of the lawyers who defended against them. Drawing upon pop-culture sources including archival television footage, magazine features, newspaper coverage, and ghost-written mass-market memoirs, the article pieces together the constellation of soundbites through which mob lawyers disseminated their views. As the subjects of frequent media coverage, these lawyers advanced a coherent and distinctive (if crude) set of ideas about the proper relationship between individuals, …

Creating A People-First Court Data Framework, Lauren Sudeall, Charlotte S. Alexander

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Most court data are maintained--and most empirical court research is conducted--from the institutional vantage point of the courts. Using the case as the common unit of measurement, data-driven court research typically focuses on metrics such as the size of court dockets, the speed of case processing, judicial decision-making within cases, and the frequency of case events occurring within or resulting from the court system.

This Article sets forth a methodological framework for reconceptualizing and restructuring court data as "people-first"-centered not on the perspective of courts as institutions but on the people who interact with the court system. We reorganize case-level …

Two Countries In Crisis: Man Camps And The Nightmare Of Non-Indigenous Criminal Jurisdiction In The United States And Canada, Justin E. Brooks

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Thousands of Indigenous women and girls have gone missing or have been found murdered across the United States and Canada; these disappearances and killings are so frequent and widespread that they have become known as the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Crisis (MMIW Crisis). Indigenous communities in both countries often lack the jurisdiction to prosecute violent crimes committed by non-Indigenous offenders against Indigenous victims on Indigenous land. Extractive industries—businesses that establish natural resource extraction projects—aggravate the problem by establishing temporary housing for large numbers of non-Indigenous, primarily male workers on or around Indigenous land (“man camps”). Violent crimes against Indigenous …

Historicizing The War(S) On Drugs Across National (And Disciplanary) Borders, Sara Mayeux

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Notwithstanding the title, The War on Drugs: A History, this illuminating book is not "a" history of "the" War on Drugs but an edited collection with a sampling of new research into the intertwined histories of drug regulation and criminalization, deregulation and decriminalization, both in the United States and around the world. To use the parlance of Jotwell, I like this book a lot.

But I am also writing this Jot because I worry that the title may mislead legal scholars into thinking that this is only a book for historians of criminal law or scholars of the "carceral state." …

The Death Of The Legal Subject, Katrina Geddes

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

The law is often engaged in prediction. In the calculation of tort damages, for example, a judge will consider what the tort victim’s likely future earnings would have been, but for their particular injury. Similarly, when considering injunctive relief, a judge will assess whether the plaintiff is likely to suffer irreparable harm if a preliminary injunction is not granted. And for the purposes of a child custody evaluation, a judge will consider which parent will provide an environment that is in the best interests of the child.

Relative to other areas of law, criminal law is oversaturated with prediction. Almost …

The Death Of The Legal Subject, Katrina Geddes

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The law is often engaged in prediction. In the calculation of tort damages, for example, a judge will consider what the tort victim’s likely future earnings would have been, but for their particular injury. Similarly, when considering injunctive relief, a judge will assess whether the plaintiff is likely to suffer irreparable harm if a preliminary injunction is not granted. And for the purposes of a child custody evaluation, a judge will consider which parent will provide an environment that is in the best interests of the child.

Relative to other areas of law, criminal law is oversaturated with prediction. Almost …

Constitutional Limits On The Imposition And Revocation Of Probation, Parole, And Supervised Release After Haymond, Nancy J. King

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In its Apprendi line of cases, the Supreme Court has held that any fact found at sentencing (other than prior conviction) that aggravates the punishment range otherwise authorized by the conviction is an "element" that must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury. Whether Apprendi controls factfinding for the imposition and revocation of probation, parole, and supervised release is critically important. Seven of ten adults under correctional control in the United States are serving terms of state probation and post-confinement supervision, and roughly half of all prison admissions result from revocations of such terms. But scholars have yet …

Rapt Admissions: Comparing Proposed Federal Rule Of Evidence 416 “Rap Shield” With The Rule 412 “Rape Shield”, Patience Tyne

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Creative expression depicting illicit activity can cause jurors to infer improper conclusions about a defendant, even when the jurors attempt to analyze such evidence objectively. When the government seeks to admit a defendant’s creative work into evidence in a criminal trial, courts use existing evidentiary rules to balance the work’s probative value against its risk of unfair prejudice. These rules are supposed to prevent unfair prejudice, but various scholars have shown that courts do not always appreciate how unfairly prejudicial art can be. Rap music presents unique challenges because jurors may fail to discern the work’s literal versus symbolic meaning. …

The Informed Jury, Daniel Epps, William Ortman

Vanderbilt Law Review

The right to a criminal jury trial is a constitutional disappointment. Cases almost never make it to a jury because of plea bargaining. In the few cases that do, the jury is relegated to a narrow factfinding role that denies it normative voice or the ability to serve as a meaningful check on excessive punishment.

One simple change could situate the jury where it belongs, at the center of the criminal process. The most important thing juries do in criminal cases is authorize state punishment. But today, when a jury returns a guilty verdict, it authorizes punishment without any idea …

Cross-Examination Of Witnesses In Chinese Criminal Courts: Theoretical Debates, Practical Barriers, And Potential Solutions, Zhiyuan Guo

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Questioning witnesses is essential for both fact-finding and ensuring the defendant's right to confrontation in criminal trials. Part I introduces the recently released judicial interpretation on the Application of Criminal Procedure Law by China's Supreme Court as a background for discussion of this Article. In Part II, the author sets the stage by arguing that resolution of questions concerning examination and cross-examination of witnesses is essential to the effective achievement of China's trial-centered criminal procedure law reform. In Part III, a historical review is given of the academic debate on the questioning of witnesses in Chinese criminal courts. Part IV …

Gambling On The Blockchain: How The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act Has Opened The Door For Offshore Crypto Casinos, Samuel H. Brown Vii

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Online cryptocurrency casinos have seen a dramatic rise in popularity over the past thirty years as the rate of ownership of cryptocurrencies has risen almost as quickly as the US monetary value of a single Bitcoin. Current US laws and regulations are outdated; the only piece of federal legislation that provides oversight in the area of virtual gambling originated in 2006, more than fifteen years before the publication of this Note. Previous scholarship suggests that a lack of federal action has resulted in a surge of criminal activity, such as money laundering and tax evasion, as well as significant missed …

Big Brother Is Scanning: The Widespread Implementation Of Alpr Technology In America’S Police Forces, Yash Dattani

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Automatic License Plate Readers (ALPRs) are an increasingly popular tool in police departments across the United States. At its core, ALPR technology functions in a relatively simple manner. The technology has two major components: the actual scanners, which record license plates, and the databases which collect, compile, and analyze this information for officers to access at the click of a button. Although this technology first came to the United States in 1998 as a form of rudimentary border security, its purpose and capabilities have rapidly grown. Now, in 2022, ALPR has evolved into a frighteningly powerful piece of technology, potentially …

Criminal Injustice, Edward Rubin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

As its title suggests, Why the Innocent Plead Guilty and the Guilty Go Free is a wide-ranging critique of our criminal justice system. While it is hardly the first, it offers a number of distinctive insights. Most of the now voluminous work on this topic is written by scholars, policy analysts, or journalists and is addressed to the legislature or the executive. This certainly makes sense. External observers are well positioned to critique a system that punishes without purpose, and the major determinants of its dysfunction are the legislature that enacts the criminal law and the executive that enforces it. …

A False Messiah? The Icc In Israel/Palestine And The Limits Of International Criminal Justice, Jeremie Bracka

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This Article challenges the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) quasi-messianic mandate in the Middle-East. It casts doubt over the legal basis and desirability of an ICC intervention in the situation of Palestine. Despite the prosecutor’s formal opening of an investigation in 2021, there exist formidable obstacles to exercising jurisdiction over Gaza and the Israeli settlements. The Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) faces an uphill battle based on complex territorial and temporal dimensions. Indeed, the admissibility hurdles at the ICC of Palestinian statehood, complementarity, gravity and the interests of justice merit close inquiry. This Article also challenges the ICC as an ideal …

Checks And Balances In The Criminal Law, Daniel Epps

Vanderbilt Law Review

The separation of powers is considered essential in the criminal law, where liberty and even life are at stake. Yet the reasons for separating criminal powers are surprisingly opaque, and the “separation of powers” is often used to refer to distinct, and sometimes contradictory, concepts.

This Article reexamines the justifications for the separation of powers in criminal law. It asks what is important about separating criminal powers and what values such separation serves. It concludes that in criminal justice, the traditional Madisonian approach of separating powers between functionally differentiated political institutions—legislature, executive, and judiciary—bears no necessary connection to important values …

Shackling Prejudice: Expanding The Deck V. Missouri Rule To Nonjury Proceedings, Sadie Shourd

Vanderbilt Law Review

Courts in the United States have traditionally held that criminal defendants have the right to be free from unwarranted restraints visible to the jury during the guilt phase of a trial. The term “unwarranted restraints” refers to the use of restraints on a defendant absent a court’s individualized determination that such restraints are justified by an essential state interest. In Deck v. Missouri, the Supreme Court expanded the prohibition against unwarranted restraints to the sentencing phase of a trial. The law regarding the unwarranted shackling of defendants in nonjury proceedings, however, remains unsettled. The U.S. Courts of Appeals for the …

Detecting Mens Rea In The Brain, Owen D. Jones, Read Montague, Gideon Yaffe

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

What if the widely used Model Penal Code (MPC) assumes a distinction between mental states that doesn’t actually exist? The MPC assumes, for instance, that there is a real distinction in real people between the mental states it defines as “knowing” and “reckless.” But is there?

If there are such psychological differences, there must also be brain differences. Consequently, the moral legitimacy of the Model Penal Code’s taxonomy of culpable mental states – which punishes those in defined mental states differently – depends on whether those mental states actually correspond to different brain states in the way the MPC categorization …

Reestablishing A Knowledge Mens Rea Requirement For Armed Career Criminal Act "Violent Felonies" Post-Voisine, Jeffrey A. Turner

Vanderbilt Law Review

Until 2016, federal courts unanimously concluded that predicate offenses for the Armed Career Criminal Act ('ACCA") required a knowledge mens rea. Therefore, any state law crimes that could be com- mitted with a reckless mens rea were not "violent felonies" and could not serve as ACCA predicates. In 2016, however, the U.S. Supreme Court's opinion in Voisine v. United States disrupted that lower court consensus. The Court stated that a reckless mens rea was sufficient to violate 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(9), which bars individuals convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence offenses from possessing firearms.

The ACCA's language is similar to § …

Incapacitating Criminal Corporations, W. Robert Thomas

Vanderbilt Law Review

If there is any consensus in the fractious debates over corporate punishment, it is this: a corporation cannot be imprisoned, incarcerated, jailed, or otherwise locked up. Whatever fiction the criminal law entertains about corporate personhood, having a physical "body to kick"-and, by extension, a body to throw into prison-is not one of them. The ambition of this project is not to reject this obvious point but rather to challenge the less-obvious claim it has come to represent: incapacitation, despite long being a textbook justification for punishing individuals, does not bear on the criminal law of corporations.

This Article argues that …

Misdemeanor Appeals, Nancy J. King, Michael Heise

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

We provide the first estimate of the rate of appellate review for misdemeanors, concluding that appellate courts review no more than eight in ten thousand misdemeanor convictions and disturb only one conviction or sentence out of every ten thousand misdemeanor judgments. This level of oversight is much lower than that for felony cases, for reasons we explain. To develop law and regulate error in misdemeanor cases, particularly in prosecutions for the lowest-level offenses, courts may need to provide mechanisms for judicial scrutiny outside the direct appeal process.

Additional findings include new information about the rate of felony trial court review …

Integrating The Access To Justice Movement, Lauren Sudeall

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Last fall, advocates of social change came together at the A2J Summit at Fordham University School of Law and discussed how to galvanize a national access to justice movement - who would it include, and what would or should it attempt to achieve? One important preliminary question we tackled was how such a movement would define "justice," and whether it would apply only to the civil justice system. Although the phrase "access to justice" is not exclusively civil in nature, more often than not it is taken to have that connotation. Lost in the interpretation is an opportunity to engage …

Decoding Guilty Minds: How Jurors Attribute Knowledge And Guilt, Matthew R. Ginther, Francis X. Shen, Richard J. Bonnie, Morris B. Hoffman, Owen D. Jones, Kenneth W. Simons

Vanderbilt Law Review

Our personal data is everywhere and anywhere, moving across national borders in ways that defy normal expectations of how things and people travel from Point A to Point B. Yet, whereas data transits the globe without any intrinsic ties to territory, the governments that seek to access or regulate this data operate with territorial-based limits. This Article tackles the inherent tension between how governments and data operate, the jurisdictional conflicts that have emerged, and the power that has been delegated to the multinational corporations that manage our data across borders as a result. It does so through the lens of …

Decoding Guilty Minds: How Jurors Attribute Knowledge And Guilt, Owen D. Jones, Matthew R. Ginther, Francis X. Shen, Richard J. Bonnie, Morris B. Hoffman, Kenneth W. Simons

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

A central tenet of Anglo-American penal law is that in order for an actor to be found criminally liable, a proscribed act must be accompanied by a guilty mind. While it is easy to understand the importance of this principle in theory, in practice it requires jurors and judges to decide what a person was thinking months or years earlier at the time of the alleged offense, either about the results of his conduct or about some elemental fact (such as whether the briefcase he is carrying contains drugs). Despite the central importance of this task in the administration of …

The Idea Of "The Criminal Justice System", Sara Mayeux

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The phrase "the criminal justice system " is ubiquitous in discussions of criminal law, policy, and punishment in the United States-so ubiquitous that, at least in colloquial use, almost no one thinks to question the phrase. However, this way of describing and thinking about police, courts, jails, and prisons, as a holistic "system, " became pervasive only in the 1960s. This essay contextualizes the idea of "the criminal justice system" within the longer history of systems theories more generally, drawing on recent scholarship in intellectual history and the history of science. The essay then recounts how that longer history converged, …

Sovereign Display And Fiscal Techniques, Magnus Hornqvist

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Over recent decades, the state has come to increasingly rearticulate sovereignty at the very center of society. To support the thesis of a migration of sovereignty from the periphery to the center, from the punishment of marginalized groups to the regulation of economic transactions, this Article sketches the development of rules, monitoring, and sanctions--the three phases of regulation in the strict sense--with respect to first tax evasion and undeclared work and then organized crime, money laundering, and terrorist financing. Unbounded reasons of state, symbolic authority, and conflicts with formidable foes are found to be expressed in the economic sphere, which …

The Invisible Revolution In Plea Bargaining: Managerial Judging And Judicial Participation In Negotiations, Nancy J. King, Ronald F. Wright

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This article, the most comprehensive study of judicial participation in plea negotiations since the 1970s, reveals a stunning array of new procedures that involve judges routinely in the settlement of criminal cases. Interviewing nearly 100 judges and attorneys in ten states, we found that what once were informal, disfavored interactions have quietly, without notice, transformed into highly structured, best practices for docket management. We learned of grant-funded, problem-solving sessions complete with risk assessments and real-time information on treatment options; multi-case conferences where other lawyers chime in; settlement courts located at the jail; settlement dockets with retired judges; full-blown felony mediation …

Divided We Fall: How The International Criminal Court Can Promote Compliance With International Law By Working With Regional Courts, Tatiana E. Sainati

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Kenya's 2007 presidential elections inflamed deep-seeded ethnic tensions in the country, sparking violence that left thousands dead and more than half-a-million civilians displaced. After the bloodshed, Kenya failed to investigate, prosecute, and punish those responsible for the atrocities. The Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (ICC) launched an investigation into the Kenyan situation, acting under his statutory authority, and eventually brought charges against six high-ranking Kenyans, including President Kenyatta. After years of investigations, the Prosecutor ultimately withdrew the case against the Kenyan President--a potentially fatal failure heralded by some as the death knell of the ICC.

During the course of …

The Faults In "Fair" Trials: An Evaluation Of Regulation 55 At The International Criminal Court, Margaux Dastugue

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Despite its reputation as a "provision of an exceptional nature," Regulation 55 has become one of the most contested procedural devices employed by the judges at the International Criminal Court (ICC). Hailing from civil law tradition, Regulation 55 permits the ICC to modify the charges against an accused at any time--either during or after the trial--if the judiciary decides it cannot convict the accused on the original charges. This use of Regulation 55 in three of the ICC's seven trials has demonstrated that the ICC cannot effectively safeguard a defendant's fundamental trial rights: the right to be informed of charges, …

Criminal Law Pays: Penal Law's Contribution To China's Economic Development, Margaret K. Lewis

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

China's rapid rise to become the second largest economy in the world is nothing short of extraordinary. When economic reforms took off in the late 1970s, China had been without formal criminal law for three decades. China's economic development since the launch of the reform period has occurred directly alongside the development of its criminal law, but the academic literature has failed to ask what role criminal law plays in China's impressive growth. This Article argues that not only has the People's Republic of China leadership historically used criminal law in service of economic ends but also, going forward, criminal …

Copyright Infringement And The Separated Powers Of Moral Entrepreneurship, Joseph P. Fishman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This Article examines the copyright industries’ “moral entrepreneurs,” sociologist Howard Becker’s term for enterprising crusaders who seek to change existing social norms regarding particular conduct. Becker’s conception of moral entrepreneurship consists of two groups performing separate tasks: rule creators work to translate their preferred norms into legal prohibitions, and then a separate class of enforcers administer those prohibitions. In a limited sense, U.S. copyright law hews to this scheme. Legislation such as the No Electronic Theft Act of 1997 and the Artists’ Rights and Theft Prevention Act of 2005 has assigned the federal government an increasing role in defining intellectual-property …