Law Commons^™

Persuasive Visions: Film And Memory, Jessica Silbey

Faculty Scholarship

This commentary takes a new look at law and film studies through the lens of film as memory. Instead of describing film as evidence and foreordaining its role in truth-seeking processes, it thinks instead of film as individual, institutional and cultural memory, placing it squarely within the realm of contestability. Paralleling film genres, the commentary imagines four forms of memory that film could embody: memorabilia (cinema verite), memoirs (autobiographical and biographical film), ceremonial memorials (narrative film monuments of a life, person or institution), and mythic memory (dramatic fictional film). Imagining film as memory resituates film’s role in law (procedural, substantive …

Corporate Headhunting, Daniel C. Richman

Faculty Scholarship

A wide range of commentators – including some pretty sophisticated ones – have raked through the ruins of the 2008 financial collapse, confident that there are significant criminal prosecutions to bring against individuals and that the Justice Department should be faulted for its failure to bring them. Their confidence that blockbuster criminal cases could have been made rests on shaky grounds. So, too, does their faith that the hunting of heads is a socially productive response to the collapse. If anything, a focus on headhunting will only distract from, and reduce the pressure for, efforts to explain the collapse and …

Comparative Institutional Competency And Sovereignty In Indian Affairs, Michalyn Steele

Faculty Scholarship

While vigorous debate surrounds the proper scope and ambit of inherent tribal authority, there remains a critical antecedent question: whether Congress or the courts are ultimately best situated to define the contours of inherent tribal authority. In February 2013, Congress enacted controversial tribal jurisdiction provisions as part of the Violence Against Women Act reauthorization recognizing and affirming inherent tribal authority to prosecute all persons, including non-Indian offenders, for crimes of domestic violence in Indian country. This assertion by Congress of its authority to set the bounds of tribal inherent authority -- beyond where the United States Supreme Court has held …

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 …

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 …

Beccaria's On Crimes And Punishments: A Mirror On The History Of The Foundations Of Modern Criminal Law, Bernard E. Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

Beccaria’s treatise On Crimes and Punishments (1764) has become a placeholder for the classical school of thought in criminology, for deterrence-based public policy, for death penalty abolitionism, and for liberal ideals of legality and the rule of law. A source of inspiration for Bentham and Blackstone, an object of praise for Voltaire and the Philosophes, a target of pointed critiques by Kant and Hegel, the subject of a genealogy by Foucault, the object of derision by the Physiocrats, rehabilitated and appropriated by the Chicago School of law and economics — these ricochets and reflections on Beccaria’s treatise reveal multiple dimensions …

Lethal Injection Chaos Post-Baze, Deborah W. Denno

Faculty Scholarship

In 2008, with Baze v. Rees, the Supreme Court broke decades of silence regarding state execution methods to declare Kentucky’s lethal injection protocol constitutional, yet the opinion itself did not offer much guidance. In the six years after Baze, legal challenges to lethal injection soared as states scrambled to quell litigation by modifying their lethal injection protocols. My unprecedented study of over 300 cases citing Baze reveals that such modifications have occurred with alarming frequency. Moreover, even as states purportedly rely on the Baze opinion, they have changed their lethal injection protocols in inconsistent ways that bear little …

A Good Name: Applying Regulatory Takings Analysis To Reputation Damage Caused By Criminal History, Jamila Jefferson-Jones

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Actmissions, Luis E. Chiesa

West Virginia Law Review

Most observers agree that it is morally worse to cause harm by engaging in an act than to contribute to producing the same harm by an omission. As a result, American criminal law punishes harmful omissions less than similarly harmful acts, unless there are exceptional circumstances that warrant punishing them equally. Yet there are many cases in which actors cause harm by engaging in conduct that can be reasonably described as either an act or an omission. Think of a doctor who flips a switch that discontinues life support to a patient. If the patient dies as a result, did …

Flawed Forensics And The Death Penalty: Junk Science And Potentially Wrongful Executions, Jessica Dwyer-Moss

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Teach Law Students, Judges, And The Community: Rational Sentencing Policies, Robert J. Levy

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Book Review Of Clarence Darrow: Attorney For The Damned, By John A. Ferrell, Karla Mari Mckanders

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Not Just Kid Stuff - Extending Graham And Miller To Adults, Michael M. O'Hear

Missouri Law Review

Part II more fully unpacks the central jurisprudential values that animate Graham and Miller. By reference to these values, Part III explains how Graham and Miller may be reconciled with Harmelin and Ewing. Finally, Part IV discusses the application of Graham and Miller to one particular category of adult offenders – those sentenced under the three-strikes provision of 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(A) – and concludes that at least some of these offenders may have viable Eighth Amendment claims

Reclaiming The Equitable Heritage Of Habeas, Erica J. Hashimoto

Scholarly Works

Equity runs through the law of habeas corpus. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, prisoners in England sought the Great Writ primarily from a common law court — the Court of King’s Bench — but that court’s exercise of power to issue the writ was built around equitable principles. Against this backdrop, it is hardly surprising that modern-day habeas law draws deeply on traditional equitable considerations. Criticism of current habeas doctrine centers on the risk that its rules — and particularly the five gatekeeping doctrines that preclude consideration of claims — produce unfair results. But in fact four of these …

Imagining Success For A Restorative Approach To Justice: Implications For Measurement And Evaluation, Jennifer J. Llewellyn, Bruce P. Archibald, Don Clairmont, Diane Crocker

Dalhousie Law Journal

Whether restorative justiceis "successful," or not, is a complex question. Attempts to answer this question by practitioners, professionals, and scholars have often been bounded by common notions of success in standard criminal justice terms. The authors of this paper suggest that ifrestorative justice is properly understood in terms of its focus on relationship, success should be measured on new and different dimensions. This paper seeks to bring a relational imagination to the scholarly effort of capturing the essence ofrestorative justice and figuring out how to assess its successes and failures. The authors offer a foundation and agenda for future research …

The Illustrated Guide To Criminal Law, Rebecca Mattson

Law Library Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Chain Gang: Examining The Seventh Circuit's "Chain Of Distribution Test" When Applying Minimum Sentences For Drug-Related Deaths, David Starshak

Seventh Circuit Review

If a person dies or is seriously injured after using illegal drugs, the person who sold them the drugs is subject to mandatory minimum sentences under 21 U.S.C. § 841(b). But what happens when the person who sold the drug is a member of a drug distribution conspiracy? How can the courts go after the other members of that organization?

The Seventh Circuit answered these questions in United States v. Walker, when it held that other members of the conspiracy could also be subject to § 841(b)'s minimum sentences as long as they were within the "chain of distribution" …

A Justified Obligation: Counsel’S Duty To File A Requested Appeal In A Post-Waiver Situation, Lauren Gregorcyk

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Teaching 'The Wire': Fiction As Pedagogical Tool, Roger Fairfax

Presentations

No abstract provided.

Book Review Of The Law Is A White Dog: How Legal Rituals Make And Unmake Persons, By Colin Dayan, Dean Spade

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Contextualizing Legitimacy, Kish Vinayagamoorthy

Scholarly Articles

The article discusses the effects of jurisprudential values on the responsibility to prevent and the relationship between the State sovereignty and the responsibility of the State to prevent its citizens from crime. It evaluates how international law can facilitate the implementation of the responsibility to prevent. It emphasizes that international lawyers and academics should consider the qualities that define law and distinguish legal norms and social norm from principles of society.

"Burglar Of Interest": An Analysis Of South Carolina Burglary Law After State V. Singley, Stephen D. Sutherland

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Rage Against The Machine: A Reply To Professors Bierschbach And Bibas, Erik Luna

Scholarly Articles

The article presents a response to the article by Professor Albert Alschuler on the administrative rulemaking in criminal law enforcement and guiding the power which was wielded by criminal justice officials. It mentions that the increase in the rate of the punishment given to the convicts is less effective in reducing the crime and enhancing public safety. It informs that bureaucratization can be considered as the means to improve the criminal process in the U.S.

Searching For Solutions To The Indigent Defense Crisis In The Broader Criminal Justice Reform Agenda, Roger Fairfax

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

As we mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Gideon v. Wainwright decision, the nearly universal assessment is that our indigent defense system remains too under-resourced and overwhelmed to fulfill the promise of the landmark decision, and needs to be reformed. At the same time, fiscal necessity and moral outrage have prompted a historic reexamination of outdated policies that have led to an overreliance on incarceration and inefficiencies in the administration of criminal justice. This Essay argues that there are synergies between the indigent defense reform agenda and the broader criminal justice reform agenda, which places a premium on cost-effective, evidence-based, …

Deportation Of Aliens For Criminal Convictions, David F. Aberson

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Certification Of Juveniles To Adult Court , Joseph N. Sorrentino, Gary K. Olsen

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Guidelines For Statutes For Transfer Of Juveniles To Criminal Court , Elizabeth W. Browne

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Vol. 4 No. 2, Spring 2013; The “Cowardly Counsel” Exception: Eliminating The Contemporaneous Objection Rule, Elizabeth George

Northern Illinois Law Review Supplement

The contemporaneous objection rule is very clear and precise in its application. However, as the law stands in the Ninth Circuit, failure to contemporaneously object coupled with any mention of race by the sentencing judge is automatic grounds for resentencing. This article explores the origins of this exception to the contemporaneous objection rule. Next, it explores why these statements constitute harmless error on the part of the trial court. Finally, it explains why this “cowardly counsel” exception could have potentially devastating effects to the policies that underlie the contemporaneous objection rule.

Business-Related Criminal Law In Europe: A Critical Inventory, Klaus Tiedemann, Edgardo Rotman (Translator)

University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review

No abstract provided.

Justice For War Criminals: The Trials Of Nazi Concentration Camp Guards At Dachau, Jarrid Trudeau

Honors Projects in History and Social Sciences

This paper will seek to explore whether or not Nazi war criminals tasked with manning and staffing the various concentration and death camps were in any way entitled to due process of law upon their capture and trial. This concept is debated among international Holocaust scholars and often discussed with purely apodictic arguments based upon a lack of understanding of military law. This paper will discuss in detail the rights, liberties, and treatment of Nazi war criminals after World War II in relation to the trials of concentration camp guards. It will also necessarily explore and explicate the misunderstood military …