Constitutional Law Commons^™

The Absentee Post-Conviction Constitutional Safeguards – People V. Zowaski, Danielle M. Hansen

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Revisiting "Special Needs" Theory Via Airport Searches, Alexander A. Reinert

Articles

Controversy has raged since the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) introduced Advanced Imaging Technology, capable of producing detailed images of travelers' bodies, and "enhanced" pat frisks as part of everyday airport travel. In the face of challenges in the courts and in public discourse, the TSA has justified the heightened security measures as a necessary means to prevent terrorist attacks. The purpose of this Essay is to situate the Fourth Amendment implications of the new regime within a broader historical context. Most germane, after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) introduced sweeping new screening of air travelers in the 1960s and 1970s …

When The Cheering (For Gideon ) Stops: The Defense Bar And Representation At Initial Bail Hearings, Douglas L. Colbert

Faculty Scholarship

This article suggests that the absence of representation at the beginning of a State criminal prosecution must come to a screeching halt. The criminal defense bar should take a leadership role and dedicate Gideon's anniversary to making certain that an accused's right to the effective assistance of counsel begins at the initial bail hearing. Indeed, guaranteeing vigorous representation should be the defense bar's number one priority.

Apprendi V. New Jersey, The Scaling Back Of The Sentencing Factor Revolution And The Resurrection Of Criminal Defendant Rights, How Far Is Too Far?, Analisa Swan

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Empty Promises: Miranda Warnings In Noncustodial Interrogations, Aurora Maoz

Michigan Law Review

You have the right to remain silent; anything you say can be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney; if you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided to you at the state's expense. In 2010, the Supreme Court declined an opportunity to resolve the question of what courts should do when officers administer Miranda warnings in a situation where a suspect is not already in custody-in other words, when officers are not constitutionally required to give or honor these warnings. While most courts have found a superfluous warning to be …

The Fifth Amendment Right Against Self-Incrimination: An In-Depth Look At Mckune V. Lile, Heidi Feldman

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Alabama V. Shelton: One Small Step For Man, One Very Small Step For The Sixth Amendment's Right To Counsel, Joshua S. Stambaugh

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Ring V. Arizona: The Sixth And Eighth Amendments Collide: Out Of The Wreckage Emerges A Constitutional Safeguard For Capital Defendants, Jason E. Barsanti

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Brady, Trust, And Error, Samuel R. Wiseman

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

The Slow Wheels Of Furman's Machinery Of Death, Brent E. Newton

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

A Sober Second Thought, Andrew H. Schapiro

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

Can California Save Its Death Sentences? Will Californians Save The Expense?, Scott W. Howe

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Finding The Original Meaning Of American Criminal Procedure Rights: Lessons From Reasonable Doubt’S Development, Randolph N. Jonakait

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “The prosecution must prove every element of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt for a valid conviction. The Constitution nowhere explicitly contains this requirement, but the Supreme Court in In re Winship1 stated that due process commands it. Justice Brennan, writing for the Court, noted that the Court had often assumed that the standard existed, that it played a central role in American criminal justice by lessening the chances of mistaken convictions, and that it was essential for instilling community respect in criminal enforcement. The reasonable doubt standard is fundamental because it makes guilty verdicts more difficult. As Winship …

The Problem Of Policing, Rachel A. Harmon

Michigan Law Review

The legal problem of policing is how to regulate police authority to permit officers to enforce law while also protecting individual liberty and minimizing the social costs the police impose. Courts and commentators have largely treated the problem of policing as limited to preventing violations of constitutional rights and its solution as the judicial definition and enforcement of those rights. But constitutional law and courts alone are necessarily inadequate to regulate the police. Constitutional law does not protect important interests below the constitutional threshold or effectively address the distributional impacts of law enforcement activities. Nor can the judiciary adequately assess …

Juror Privacy In The Sixth Amendment Balance, Melanie D. Wilson

Scholarly Articles

Some eight million citizens report for jury duty every year. Arguably, jury duty is one of the most significant opportunities to participate in the democratic process. For the accused, the jury acts as an indispensable safeguard against government overreaching. One might expect, therefore, that our justice system would treat potential jurors with care and tact. The opposite is true. During voir dire, prospective jurors are required to share insights into their own lives, quirks, proclivities, and beliefs. Litigants have probed jurors’ sexual orientation, criminal histories, criminal victimization, health, family relations, and beyond. A few scholars have chided the system for …

Berghuis V. Thompkins: Retreat From Miranda, Jacquline Grossi

Barry Law Review

No abstract provided.

Requiring The State To Justify Supermax Confinement For Mentally Iii Prisoners: A Disability Discrimination Approach, Brittany Glidden, Laura L. Rovner

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

The Eighth Amendment has long served as the traditional legal vehicle for challenging prison conditions, including long-term isolation or “supermax” confinement. As described by Hafemeister and George in their article, The Ninth Circle of Hell: An Eighth Amendment Analysis of Imposing Prolonged Supermax Solitary Confinement on Inmates with a Mental Illness, some prisoners with mental illness have prevailed in Eighth Amendment challenges to prolonged isolation. Yet an equal or greater number of these claims have been unsuccessful. This Essay considers why some of these cases fail, and suggests that one reason is that Eighth Amendment jurisprudence does not contain a …

Confrontation Control, Pamela R. Metzger

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

After Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36, 42 (2004), face-to-face confrontation between accused and accuser is the constitutionally normative mode of presentation for testimonial evidence. Yet, eight years into the Crawford revolution, courts routinely hold that counsel can waive a defendant's confrontation rights without even discussing the matter with the defendant. Why? Because counsel, not client, has the authority to decide whether to confront and cross-examine government witnesses.

This Essay, written as part of the Texas Tech Sixth Amendment Symposium, explores this peculiar and perplexing rule. If confrontation is essential to a constitutionally valid criminal trial, how can defense …

A Crisis In Federal Habeas Law, Eve Brensike Primus

Reviews

Everyone recognizes that federal habeas doctrine is a mess. Despite repeated calls for reform, federal judges continue to waste countless hours reviewing habeas petitions only to dismiss the vast majority of them on procedural grounds. Broad change is necessary, but to be effective, such change must be animated by an overarching theory that explains when federal courts should exercise habeas jurisdiction. In Habeas for the Twenty-First Century: Uses, Abuses, and the Future of the Great Writ, Professors Nancy King and Joseph Hoffmann offer such a theory. Drawing on history, current practice, and empirical data, King and Hoffmann find unifying themes …

Citizen Participation In Japanese Criminal Trials: Reimagining The Right To Trial By Jury In The United States, Jon J. Lee

Faculty Articles

If the United States were to reform contemporary jury trials to match the Founders’ conception of the right to trial by jury, how might they look? In recent years, we have gained insight into how to answer that question from an unlikely source: Japan. This Article examines the introduction of citizen participation into the Japanese judicial system (the saiban-in seido) from a different perspective. Rather than focusing on the contemporary American jury system, this Article evaluates the Japanese reforms in light of the Founders’ conception of the right to trial by jury. It is this conception of the right to …

Prosecution Appeals Of Court-Ordered Midtrial Acquittals: Permissible Under The Double Jeopardy Clause?, David S. Rudstein

Catholic University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Expectations Of Privacy In Social Media, Stephen E. Henderson

Faculty Articles

This article, which largely tracks my remarks at Mississippi College’s Social Media Symposium, examines expectations of privacy in social media such as weblogs (blogs), Facebook pages, and Twitter tweets. Social media is diverse and ever-diversifying, and while I address some of that complexity, I focus on the core functionality, which provides the groundwork for further conversation as the technology and related social norms develop. As one would expect, just as with our offline communications and other online communications, in some we have an expectation of privacy that is recognized by current law, in some we have an expectation of privacy …

Unintended Consequences: The Impact Of The Court's Recent Cases On Structural Ineffective Assistance Of Counsel Claims, Lauren Sudeall Lucas

Faculty Publications By Year

The Supreme Court’s recent Sixth Amendment cases have garnered much attention for their potential impact on ineffective assistance of counsel claims asserted in the context of a criminal case. This short article explores the unintended consequences of these decisions on structural ineffective assistance of counsel claims made in the civil context alleging that systemic deficiencies are likely to lead to right to counsel violations. The article concludes that the Court’s departure from a trial-centered conception of the right to counsel, its willingness to articulate specific pre-trial duties of counsel and its more pragmatic approach towards enforcing the Sixth Amendment will …

Where Liberty Lies: Civil Society And Individual Rights After 9/11, David Cole

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Had someone told you, on September 11, 2001, that the United States would not be able to do whatever it wanted in response to the terrorist attacks of that day, you might well have questioned their sanity. The United States was the most powerful country in the world, and had the world’s sympathy in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. Who would stop it? Al Qaeda had few friends beyond the Taliban. As a historical matter, Congress and the courts had virtually always deferred to the executive in such times of crisis. And the American polity was unlikely to object …

Constructing The Threat And The Role Of The Expert Witness: A Response To Aziz Rana's Who Decides On Security?, Wadie E. Said

Publications

Aziz Rana's article presents clearly the overlooked but crucial question of "Who Decides on Security?" Namely, is determining who or what groups constitute a threat something that we are capable of making ourselves, or must we necessarily cede that authority to those in power-who supposedly have both the access to knowledge and the ability to understand it-to protect us from threats we cannot perceive? Using Rana's historical analysis as a framework, this Article builds on his thesis to show how the wide latitude granted to the conclusions of the Executive Branch's national security specialists in political matters has migrated into …

Is Color Blind Justice Also Culturally Blind? The Cultural Blindness In Justice, Shiv Narayan Persaud

Journal Publications

As diverse ethnic groups continue to experience numeric growth and societal grounding in America, their advocacies for culturally competent representation within the legal system cannot be ignored or underplayed. Undoubtedly, some professions such as mental and physical health, and their related sectors, have developed and continue to integrate cultural competencies into their respective practices. Others such as the legal profession seem to lag in their advocacies and promotion of culturally competent practices.

In the criminal justice system, where discretionary legal decision-making authority is commonplace and may grossly affect the civil liberties of the citizenry, a paucity of standards requiring cultural …

Exonerating The Innocent: Pretrial Innocence Procedures, Tim Bakken, Lewis M. Steel

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Getting Back To The Fourth Amendment: Warrantless Cell Phone Searches, Mireille Dee

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Coming Clean: The Erosion Of Juvenile Miranda Rights In New York State, Justin Ashenfelter

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Chinese Use Of Administrative Proceedings To Enforce Intellectual Property Rights: Evaluating And Improving Adr In China, Simeng Han

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

Since its entry into the World Trade Organization ("WTO") in 2001, China has significantly reformed its legal system in order to enforce its commitment to protecting Intellectual Property ("IP"). Yet, there remains a lingering suspicion of the actual level of Chinese commitment-as indicated by continuous infringement claims from nations such as the United States. With an increasing number of disputes loading the court dockets and putting pressure on judges, and given China's "deep-rooted historical preference for informal and non-adversarial means of dispute resolution," there is enormous potential for further development of ADR in this field. Indeed, the culturally preferable way …