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Will The Punishment Fit The Victims? The Case For Pre-Trial Disclosure, And The Uncharted Future Of Victim Impact Information In Capital Jury Sentencing, José F. Anderson
Will The Punishment Fit The Victims? The Case For Pre-Trial Disclosure, And The Uncharted Future Of Victim Impact Information In Capital Jury Sentencing, José F. Anderson
All Faculty Scholarship
The United States Supreme Court decision in Payne v. Tennessee, upholding the use of victim impact statements in capital jury sentencing proceedings, marked one of the most dramatic reversals of a precedent in the history of United States constitutional jurisprudence. The decision in Payne expressly overruled Booth v. Maryland decided only four years earlier. The Booth case rejected the use of victim impact statements in capital sentencing cases that involved juries. In Payne, the Supreme Court made it clear that victims were entitled to offer, and juries were permitted to consider, the effect that a "death eligible" homicide had on …
Making Constitutional Doctrine In A Realist Age, Victoria Nourse
Making Constitutional Doctrine In A Realist Age, Victoria Nourse
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
In this article the author considers three examples of modern constitutional doctrine that show how judges have stolen bits and pieces from popularized skepticisms about the job of judging and have molded this stolen rhetoric into doctrine. In the first example, she asks whether constitutional law's recent penchant for doctrinal rules based on "clear law" could have existed without the modern age's obsession with legal uncertainty. In the second, the author considers whether our contemporary rhetoric of constitutional "interests" and "expectations" reflects modern critiques of doctrine as failing to address social needs. In the third, she asks how an offhand …