Law Commons^™

An Insidious Interstice: Understanding Cognition And Language Behaviour Through The Eyes Of Juvenile Justice Professionals, Anne M. Perrotti, Allison T. Chappell, Tancy Vandecar-Burdin

Human Movement Studies & Special Education Faculty Publications

Introduction

Despite evidence suggesting language and cognition deficits are prevalent for justice involved youth, little research explores how juvenile justice personnel experience language and cognition behaviours in the youth they serve.

Aims

This qualitative study explored how juvenile justice personnel understand language and cognition skills and deficits in justice involved youth.

Methods

Twenty-two U.S. juvenile justice professionals participated in individual, semi-structured interviews. Questions focused on individual understanding of receptive language, expressive language, social communication, and cognition (i.e., problem-solving, predicting consequences and impulsiveness) in juveniles served. Using a phenomenological lens, transcripts were coded identifying themes and sub-themes of participant responses.

Results …

The Future Of The Furman Challenge To The Death Penalty, Scott W. Howe

Georgia Law Review

This article revisits the core argument against the death penalty that Professor Anthony Amsterdam offered in Furman v. Georgia. The article situates itself, however, in a modern, forward-facing context by accounting for post-Furman death penalty developments. These include the thirteen federal executions during the last six months of President Trump’s first term, the thirty-seven commutations of federal death sentences by President Biden, and the executive order by President Trump, issued on the first day of his second term, directing vigorous use of the federal death penalty and aid and encouragement in the use of capital punishment by the …

Response: Foreign Affairs Prosecutions And Cybercrime, Mailyn Fidler

Law Faculty Scholarship

A response to Professor Steven Koh's new article on how the U.S. makes global criminal justice policy. Prof. Fidler examines what a decade of cybercrime indictments reveals about America's approach to prosecuting foreign hackers. Three things stand out: * Beyond Attribution - These indictments aren't just about naming and shaming, or about the typical dimensions of criminal alw. They're sophisticated foreign policy tools that coordinate and moderate international sanctions and global norms. * Intertwined with Cooperation - The indictments alternately create space for and slow the tempo of international cooperation on this issue, according to U.S. interests. * Power Projection …

Assembly-Line Public Defense, David S. Abrams, Priyanka Goonetilleke

Faculty Scholarship

Each year, millions of Americans rely on public defenders to fulfill their Sixth Amendment right to counsel. Despite being the linchpin of the criminal justice system, public defense remains both underfunded and understudied. This Article provides empirical analysis to contribute to a critical question: How should public defender systems be structured?

Criminal justice advocates, scholars, and the American Bar Association strongly favor vertical representation in public defense. Under this model, a single public defender represents a defendant throughout their case, from their initial appearance through sentencing. The alternative approach—horizontal representation—operates like an assembly line: Different attorneys handle each stage of …

The Reasonable Officer And The Disabled Subject, Jamelia N. Morgan

Vanderbilt Law Review

Police violence against disabled people is a  fundamental problem of policing. Whether through so called wellness checks, quality of life policing, or coercive state civil commitment procedures, disabled people are often on the receiving end of intrusion, violence, and rights violations by law enforcement. Yet, so, too, is everyone else. That disabled people are similarly, and yet uniquely, vulnerable to intrusion, violence, and rights violations by law enforcement might seem like just another group to add to the list of groups harmed by policing and police violence. However, the focus on disability does not merely bring to the forefront problems …

A Fear About Holistic Justice, Farhang Heydari

Vanderbilt Law Review

It is a great irony of our criminal system that the enforcement of our criminal laws has long had aspects of lawlessness. Although criminal statutes define impermissible conduct by members of the public, they generally offer little guidance for state actors enforcing them.' Officers can choose which offenders to cite or arrest and which to let go. Prosecutors can choose which charges to pursue and what pleas to offer. Executives select whom to pardon and how to allocate enforcement resources. Some see the discretion vested in government actors as a virtue-- a safety valve in a system that punishes too …

Waiting For Godot: Thinking About Criminal Law After Mass Incarceration, Jonathan Simon Professor Of Law,

Vanderbilt Law Review

This brilliant set of close observations and careful analyses on some of the most cutting-edge issues arising in criminal law and reform of the criminal-justice system arrives at a time of great uncertainty as to the direction of change in criminal justice in the United States. After roughly a decade of reform and a significant surge in social movements criticizing the excesses of policing and punishment, the national conversation around crime has shifted back toward fear and a preference for "tough" law-and-order policies. Each one of these essays is packed with a great deal of insight and detail about very …

Criminal Court's Disability, Zohra Ahmed

Faculty Scholarship

Do criminal courts meaningfully accommodate psychiatric disability? A review of competency proceedings across the United States suggests not. In competency to stand trial proceedings, criminal court actors offer a narrow vision of psychiatric disability that excludes many defendants. Ultimately, the institutional context of criminal court undermines even the meagre accommodations that the competency framework provides.

Competency proceedings are the constitutional accommodations available to disabled defendants if they can establish that they are unable to consult with their lawyers or if they do not have a rational or factual understanding of the proceedings against them. After a finding of incompetency, the …

The Guilty Plea Discount: An Elaboration On Singapore’S Guidelines, Genieve Zhi Yi Wu

Singapore Law Journal (Lexicon)

Over the past two decades, a defining feature of Singapore’s sentencing regime has been the creation of structured sentencing methodology, with the aim of ensuring broad consistency and fairness across offenders. The exercise of judicial discretion in sentencing has largely been guided by statutory frameworks and guideline judgments. However, beyond the legislature and judiciary, an inter-agency body named the Sentencing Advisory Panel has also been formed to issue persuasive but non-binding guidelines. This article focuses on the first set of guidelines issued by the Sentencing Advisory Panel in 2023, concerning the sentencing of accused persons who plead guilty. It explains …

Jury Decision Rules In Criminal Trials, Emma Archibald

Dalhousie Journal of Legal Studies

Discussions of juries in democratic systems often frame the jury as a symbol of democracy, an essential safeguard for an accused, and a legitimizer of state authority. However, the context in which the jury operates has evolved, and there is a widening gap between our empirical understanding of juries and our commitment to their theoretical value. Piecemeal reforms of the jury have also moved the system away from the historical model, with the consequence of undermining the remaining aspects. This paper argues one such aspect is the decision rule under which a jury renders its verdict. Canada is one of …

Data-Driven Police Profiling, Christopher Slobogin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Police departments increasingly rely on algorithms and other data- driven methods of identifying high-crime areas andpeople who are at high risk for involvement in crime. This Article examines several constitutional obstacles to this type ofpolicing. First, to the extent that these algorithms rely on data entitled to privacy protection, they may violate the Fourth Amendment. Second, the steps police take in response to a "hot" place or person designation must also be subject to constitutional regulation. Further, the principle of legality should prohibit the police from acting on any risk designation, even one that is very likely accurate, in the …

Sheridan Vs. State Of Nevada, 141 Nev. Adv. Op. 22 (Apr. 24, 2025), Austin Cassell

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

THE SUPREME COURT DETERMINED THAT OBSTRUCTING OR RESISTING AN OFFICER BY FLIGHT AND FAILURE TO REGISTER AS A CONVICTED PERSON ARE NOT CATEGORICALLY CRIMES OF VIOLENCE UNDER NRS 176A.510

Misreading The Federal Child Pornography Statutes, Owen Senders

Georgia Criminal Law Review

For the past 40 years, federal courts have committed two grievous textual errors in interpreting the federal child-pornography statutes and sentencing guidelines. These errors have caused hundreds of wrongful convictions—many the bases for decades-long sentences—and have produced a body of caselaw that is profoundly incoherent and in direct conflict with basic tenets of First Amendment doctrine. They have also likely endangered children. This article identifies these errors, surveys their consequences, and suggests legal arguments for people charged or convicted under the child-pornography statutes.

The first error impacts the application of all of the federal child-pornography statutes and sentencing guidelines. These …

Directing Unconstitutional Verdicts: When Judges Become Jurors On Self-Defense, Anjali Pathmanathan

Georgia Criminal Law Review

The right to self-defense is one of the oldest and most universal concepts in Anglo-American criminal law and criminal procedure. Under this defense, an accused person, who honestly believed that using force was necessary to protect themself from imminent danger, did nothing criminal even if another person was harmed as a result. To assert self-defense at trial, however, the accused must admit to intentionally committing the forceful acts alleged to explain how they only used such force to save themself from immediate harm. Once an accused has made such a grave admission, the jury must consider whether the force was …

Research Misconduct Sebagai Suatu Tindak Pidana Penyebaran Berita Bohong: Sebuah Tinjauan Hukum Pidana, Kemal Fikri Royadi, Monte Carlo Faza Harissa

Jurnal Hukum & Pembangunan

Research is one of the gates to uncover wisdom in scientific disciplines. In its implementation, it is often found that there are various interests underlying the research. These various interests also have their own purpose to the extent that it can influence the results of the research which can have implications to form a research misconduct. This research aims to review the national criminal law regarding this behavior by examining the relevant act’s articles as well as scholarly dogmatics due to the absence of laws regulating this matter. The method used in this research is juridical-normative using conceptual approach and …

“17 Going On 23”: Sentencing Young People To Life In Canada, Debra Parkes

Dalhousie Law Journal

Canada is one of 67 countries worldwide that allows young people—those under the age of 18—to be sentenced to life imprisonment. In 2008, the Supreme Court of Canada recognized the presumption of diminished moral blameworthiness of young people as a constitutional principle of fundamental justice and invalidated a law that presumed youth should be sentenced as adults for some serious crimes, including murder. The burden is, therefore, always on the Crown to rebut the presumption and prove that a youth sentence would not be long enough to hold the young person accountable for their behaviour. Where the presumption can be …

Law Enforcement Privilege, Rebecca Wexler

Faculty Scholarship

You can’t question a secret you haven’t been told. The criminal legal system depends on fair and open proceedings to expose and regulate unlawful and unconstitutional police conduct through the courts. If police can use claims of secrecy to systematically thwart criminal defendants’ access to evidence, judicial review will fail. And yet that is exactly what is happening under a common-law doctrine called the “law enforcement privilege.” The privilege empowers police and prosecutors to rely on the results of secret investigative methods while withholding information from the defense about how those methods work. It risks perpetuating unconstitutional conduct, enabling wrongful …

Prevention Of And Response To International Crimes Against And Affecting Children, Diane Marie Amann

Scholarly Works

This submission endeavoured to aid the efforts of Parliament’s Standing Group on Atrocity Crimes to promote within the United Kingdom a comprehensive framework regarding international crimes. The submission stressed that prevention is the preferred course: ex ante prevention avoids present harms, inter-generational traumas, and future risks of retaliatory violence, while ex post responses, in the form of criminal proceedings, are likely to be random and selective, not comprehensive. It urged that when harm does occur, responses must aim not only to exact retribution, but also to repair injuries, heal societies, and foster peaceful settlements of disputes. To these ends, the …

The Real Impact Of General Deterrence: Empirical Insights From The Robbery Data Of Three American Cities, Andrew W. Eichner

Catholic University Law Review

General deterrence theory relies on the critical assumption that prospective offenders will be deterred from committing crimes when they are aware of the apprehension and punishment of others. This idea has been reiterated across thousands of years of Western political thought and has significant implications in modern American criminal sentencing, though it has not been historically subjected to rigorous testing. The recent availability of voluminous crime data permits a deeper examination of the real impact of sentencings on crime trends and allows the opportunity for previously impossible analyses regarding the efficacy of general deterrence.

To examine whether there is evidence …

Right To Jury Trial: Lemieux V. Robbins, Stephen R. Sunenblick

Maine Law Review

A sagacious English liveryman named Tobias Hobson allowed each customer to choose the horse nearest the door, thereby presenting these customers with no real alternative. The State of Maine made a like proposition in Lemieux v. Robbins by implementing a novel criminal procedure whereby a defendant has a "choice" of either accepting his district court misdemeanor conviction as final, or appealing for a de novo trial by jury in superior court and possibly being convicted of a felony for contravening the same statute under which he was originally charged. The implementation of this procedure began with a complaint filed in …

Search And Seizure, Daniel G. Lilley

Maine Law Review

Search and Seizure, authored by Colorado Judge Edward C. Fisher, is a book of better than 300 pages which purports to be a recent survey of the law dedicated to "peace officers of America." The foreword states that it is written for law enforcement officers and is a ready reference for attorneys, judges, and others concerned with the administration of criminal justice. The book is clearly written. It tells police officers how to conduct searches and seizures and it tells them why restrictions are imposed. Where there is still conflict and doubt, it gives the officer some "safe" approaches to …

Retroactivity Rethought: The Hidden Costs, Pierce B. Hasler

Maine Law Review

The validity of Justice Harlan's contention that retroactivity must be rethought is becoming increasingly evident, and it seems likely that extensive reevaluation of the doctrine will soon be necessary. The past six years have been marked by well over a dozen Supreme Court decisions addressed to the question of the retroactive or prospective effect to be given prior constitutional rulings in the area of criminal procedure. Rarely has an important constitutional doctrine achieved such full-blown proportions so quickly, yet several members of the Court would now vote to reject it and start anew. Linkletter v. Walkers was the landmark decision …

Graduated Responsibility As An Alternative To Current Tests Of Determining Criminal Capacity, Maine Law Review

Maine Law Review

When a person breaks the law, inquiry may be made into why he acted in an illegal manner and, if he satisfies the relevant test of criminal exculpation, he will be held blameless under the law. Although a range of explanations of behavior is possible, when examining criminal responsibility, the law is concerned only with those excuses which bear on moral culpability. This comment suggests an alternative to the absolutist notion that the defendant is either completely responsible or completely irresponsible for his unlawful act. It is contended that cognitive and volitive capacities exist by degrees and that a fairer, …

Graduated Responsibility As An Alternative To Current Tests Of Determining Criminal Capacity, Maine Law Review

Maine Law Review

When a person breaks the law, inquiry may be made into why he acted in an illegal manner and, if he satisfies the relevant test of criminal exculpation, he will be held blameless under the law. Although a range of explanations of behavior is possible, when examining criminal responsibility, the law is concerned only with those excuses which bear on moral culpability. This comment suggests an alternative to the absolutist notion that the defendant is either completely responsible or completely irresponsible for his unlawful act. It is contended that cognitive and volitive capacities exist by degrees and that a fairer, …

Due Process And Supremacy As Foundations For The Adequacy Rule: The Remains Of Federalism After Wilbur V. Mullaney, Maine Law Review

Maine Law Review

Stillman E. Wilbur, Jr., was found guilty of murder by a jury in a Maine Superior Court and appealed, contending that the trial judge's instructions violated due process. In essence, the trial court instructed the jury that if it were satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that Wilbur had committed a voluntary and intentional killing, malice aforethought was presumed, and therefore, the defendant would be guilty of murder unless he established by a preponderance of the evidence that he had killed in the heat of passion upon sudden provocation, in which case the jury could find him guilty of manslaughter. The …

What Copyright Can't Do, Blake E. Reid

Pepperdine Law Review

Copyright has become a powerful regulatory regime for modern American life. Copyrighted works, including text, images, video, sounds, music, and software, coupled with routine, frictionless copying, form a large part of the information, cultural and social context, and infrastructure of our increasingly digital society. Copyright law’s powerful remedies are now positioned to intervene in a wide range of everyday activities. As a result, scholars, policymakers, and advocates have increasingly called for modifying and applying U.S. copyright law to solve a wide range of public policy problems, from vindicating disability rights to protecting privacy to promoting competition among wireless carriers. But …

Appointment Of Counsel In Misdemeanor Prosecutions In Maine, Maine Law Review

Maine Law Review

When a criminal defendant appears without a lawyer before a trial court, the trial judge must decide whether to appoint counsel to represent him. The trial judge's decision is one of constitutional magnitude under both the United States and Maine Constitutions, and the decision made in any particular instance affects the integrity of the trial process and the validity of any conviction. The scope of the constitutional right to appointed counsel has lately been the subject of major decisions of the United States Supreme Court and of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court. The United States Supreme Court in Argersinger v. …

White Collar Crimes, Maine Law Review

Maine Law Review

This Article deals with those sections of the Maine Criminal Code which criminalize certain nonviolent conduct. Many of the offenses contained in the Chapters on bribery, fraud and falsification are new to Maine law. Here, as elsewhere, the drafters of the Code have attempted to distinguish between conduct that is sufficiently detrimental to community interests to require the criminal sanction and conduct that is regarded as merely undesirable. These sections in particular represent the societal interests in preserving the integrity of documents, official statements and public offices, and in encouraging honesty in business transactions. This Article focuses on the derivation …

Sentencing, Melvyn Zarr

Maine Law Review

Once the legislature has defined the acts it will punish as criminal, it must then establish a sentencing system. There are two principal features of a sentencing system: it grades crimes according to seriousness, and it apportions sentencing discretion among the legislature, the courts, and administrative agencies. The device for apportionment between the legislature and the courts is the mandatory sentence, by which the legislature may fix a period of imprisonment for a crime and forbid judges to grant probation. Apportionment of sentencing discretion between the courts and administrative agencies, on the other hand, is governed by the choice between …

Sex Offenses, Judy R. Potter

Maine Law Review

A central theme of the Maine Criminal Code is to "distinguish behavior that is merely socially undesirable from that which is sufficiently threatening to require the specialized effort of the criminal law to prevent it." Nowhere in the Code is this distinction more apparent than in the area of sex offenses, which encompasses a wide spectrum of degrees of social harm. At one end of this spectrum are acts which clearly involve dangerous behavior, such as non-consensual sexual acts and acts of sexual imposition on minors and incompetents. At the other end of the spectrum are sexual acts done in …