Criminal Law Commons^™

A Human Rights Perspective To Global Battlefield Detention: Time To Reconsider Indefinite Detention, Yuval Shany

International Law Studies

This article discusses one principal challenge to detention without trial of suspected international terrorists—the international human rights law (IHRL) norm requiring the introduction of an upper limit on the duration of security detention in order to render it not indefinite in length. Part One of this article describes the “hardline” position on security detention, adopted by the United States in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks (followed, with certain variations, by other countries, including the United Kingdom and the State of Israel), according to which international terrorism suspects can be deprived of their liberty without trial for the …

Civil Liberty Or National Security: The Battle Over Iphone Encryption, Karen Lowell

Georgia State University Law Review

On June 5, 2013, Edward Snowden released what would be the first of many documents exposing the vast breadth of electronic surveillance the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National Security Agency (NSA) had been conducting on millions of United States citizens. Although the federal agencies had legal authority under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to collect metadata from companies such as Verizon, many Americans considered this data collection to be a massive invasion of privacy.

Equipped with the knowledge of sweeping domestic surveillance programs, citizens and technology firms fighting for strong privacy and security protection, have started …

Detention By Armed Groups Under International Law, Andrew Clapham

International Law Studies

Does international law entitle armed groups to detain people? And what obligations are imposed on such non-state actors when they do detain? This article sets out suggested obligations for armed groups related to the right to challenge the basis for any detention and considers some related issues of fair trial and punishment. The last part of this article briefly considers the legal framework governing state responsibility and individual criminal responsibility for those that assist armed groups that detain people in ways that violate international law.

Raped Abroad: Extraterritorial Application Of Title Ix For American University Students Sexually Assaulted While Studying Abroad, Brittany K. Bull

Northwestern University Law Review

Female college students who study abroad are five times more likely to be raped than their counterparts who remain on their domestic campuses. Students raped or sexually assaulted on or around campuses in the United States can seek a remedy under Title IX, which provides administrative and judicial remedies. Very few federal cases have ever addressed whether Title IX applies extraterritorially to allegations of sex discrimination occurring abroad, and courts have reached different results in these cases. Moreover, no federal circuit has ever addressed the issue. This Note explores whether Title IX applies extraterritorially to students raped while studying abroad. …

A Silent Epidemic: Revisiting The 2013 Reauthorization Of The Violence Against Women Act To Better Protect American Indian Native Women, Rory Flay

American Indian Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The President's Role In Advancing Criminal Justice Reform, Barack Obama

United States Department of Justice: Publications

Criminal justice is a complex system, administered at all levels of government and shaped by a range of actors. Thanks to the dedicated efforts of so many in my Administration, the bipartisan push for reform from federal, state, and local officials, and the work of so many committed citizens outside government, America has made important strides. We have reduced overlong sentences for offenders and removed barriers for those with criminal records. We have made progress in helping people, especially young people, avoid getting entangled in the justice system in the first place. This Commentary talks about those achievements — and …

Juvenile Or Adult? Lost In Interpretation: The Split On Interpreting A “Prior Record” Under The Federal Juvenile Delinquency Act, Ashley N. Longcor

Mitchell Hamline Law Journal of Public Policy and Practice

No abstract provided.

Exposure To Police Brutality Allows For Transparency And Accountability Of Law Enforcement, 33 J. Marshall J. Info. Tech. & Privacy L. 75 (2017), Kendal Harden

UIC John Marshall Journal of Information Technology & Privacy Law

Thanks to the advancements in technology and valor of citizens, the public is finally able to understand the true severity of police brutality within the United States. The following considerations aim to address the lack of accountability and transparency of police brutality in the United States today. Part III will show how advancements in technology brings police brutality to the forefront of our nation’s issues by creating an informed society. Part IV will describe how individual states control the use of private cameras and cell phones of citizens to capture occurrences of police brutality. States do this by employing anti-wiretapping …

Petitioner’S Response To The Court’S Order To Show Cause, Johnson V. Pfister, Docket No. 1:17-Cv-03997 (N.D. Ill. 2017), J. Damian Ortiz, The John Marshall Law School Pro Bono Clinic

Court Documents and Proposed Legislation

No abstract provided.

The Saving Grace Of Public Defense? Is The “Client-Choice” Method A Cure-All For Problems That Plague This Overburdened System? 50 J. Marshall L. Rev. 307 (2017), Sean Baker

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Following Finality: Why Capital Punishment Is Collapsing Under Its Own Weight, Corinna Barrett Lain

Law Faculty Publications

Death is different, the adage goes - different in its severity and different in its finality. Death, in its finality, is more than just a punishment. Death is the end of our existence as we know it. It is final in an existential way.

Because death is final in an existential way, the Supreme Court has held that special care is due when the penalty is imposed. We need to get it right. My claim in this chapter is that the constitutional regulation designed to implement that care has led to a series of cascading effects that threaten the …

The Consequences Today Of The United States' Brutal Post-9/11 Interrogation Techniques, Peter Jan Honigsberg

Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy

Penetrating the minds and souls of alleged terrorists while still upholding the constitution, federal law, and the human rights obligation to treat the suspects with dignity and without torture or cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment was not the immediate objective for high-ranking American officials and military interrogators in the early years following the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. on September 11, 2001. Although the United States was a party to the Geneva Conventions (GC), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the Convention Against Torture (CAT)—all three …

"A Choice Of Weapons": The X-Men And The Metaphor For Approaches To Racial Equality, Gregory S. Parks, Matthew W. Hughey

Indiana Law Journal

The authors explore The X-Men comic as a metaphor for both racial discrimination in the United States and strategies for addressing such discrimination. In consideration of the recent rise in the shooting of people of color, particular African American men and women, at the hands of law enforcement officers, an increasingly vocal and aggrieved segment of the white populace in the form of the “alt right,” and a presidential candidate that both implicitly and explicitly deploys “law and order” and racist appeals for particular social and political changes, we appear to once again stand at an important crossroads in American …

Blue Lives Have Always Mattered: The Usurping Of Hate Crime Laws For An Unintended And Unnecessary Purpose, Lisa M. Olson

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming.

Trans-Lating The Eighth Amendment Standard: The First Circuit's Denial Of A Transgender Prisoner's Constitutional Right To Medical Treatment, Bethany L. Edmondson

Georgia Law Review

In December of 2014, the First Circuit Court of Appeals
held, en banc, that the Massachusetts Department of
Corrections was not constitutionally obligated to provide
Michelle Kosilek, a transgender prisoner, with sexual
reassignment surgery. Kosilek sued the prison, arguing
that her Eighth Amendment rights against cruel and
unusual punishment were violated. The First Circuit held
that Kosilek did not have a serious medical need, due to
the prison's alternative treatment, and that the prison was
not deliberately indifferent to that need. This Note argues
that the First Circuit erred in applying the "serious
medical need" prong of the cruel and …

Tradition And Culture In Africa: Practices That Facilitate Trafficking Of Women And Children, Norah Hashim Msuya

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

Many states in Africa have adopted legislative, administrative and institutional measures to combat trafficking in human beings. These measures include, among other things, the formulation and implementation of both national and regional action plans by African states to provide for comprehensive and coordinated interventions. Many African countries have also enacted an anti-trafficking legislation at the country level. Despite these measures, African women and children have been trafficked annually worldwide for purposes of forced labor, sexual exploitation, and domestic servitude. Additionally, women and children are trafficked within their countries from rural to urban areas. Misconception and abuse of African tradition and …

Clemency And The Administration Of Hope, Erin R. Collins

Law Faculty Publications

In 2014, President Obama announced his intention to ‘‘restor[e] fundamental ideals of justice and fairness’’ to the criminal justice system by exercising his executive clemency power to commute sentences of those who had ‘‘already served their time and paid their debt to society.’’ Soon thereafter, the Department of Justice (DOJ) specified six criteria it would use to prioritize applications. The primary targets of these criteria were the casualties of the war on drugs: people sentenced to draconian sentences for nonviolent drug offenses, some of which involved less than a handful of narcotics. Most of these individuals had exhausted any available …

Different Lyrics, Same Song: Watts, Ferguson, And The Stagnating Effect Of The Politics Of Law And Order, Lonnie T. Brown

Scholarly Works

This Article critically examines the Watts riots and their aftermath in comparison to the Ferguson situation, and demonstrates how little progress America has made in a span of fifty years in the area of race relations. More importantly, the Article points to the politics of “law and order” as the primary culprit for this static social condition.

The Wrong Decision At The Wrong Time: Utah V. Strieff In The Era Of Aggressive Policing, Julian A. Cook

Scholarly Works

On June 20, 2016, the United States Supreme Court held in Utah v. Strieff that evidence discovered incident to an unconstitutional arrest of an individual should not be suppressed given that the subsequent discovery of an outstanding warrant attenuated the taint from the unlawful detention. Approximately two weeks later the issue of aggressive policing was again thrust into the national spotlight when two African-American individuals — Alton Sterling and Philando Castile — were killed by policemen in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Falcon Heights, Minnesota, respectively, under questionable circumstances. Though connected by proximity in time, this article will demonstrate that these …

The Grand Jury: A Shield Of A Different Sort, R. Michael Cassidy, Julian A. Cook

Scholarly Works

According to the Washington Post, 991 people were shot to death by police officers in the United States during calendar year 2015, and 957 people were fatally shot in 2016. A disproportionate percentage of the citizens killed in these police-civilian encounters were black. Events in Ferguson, Missouri; Chicago, Illinois; Charlotte, North Carolina; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and Staten Island, New York - to name but a few affected cities - have now exposed deep distrust between communities of color and law enforcement. Greater transparency is necessary to begin to heal this culture of distrust and to inform the debate going forward …

Decriminalizing Childhood, Andrea L. Dennis

Scholarly Works

Even though the number of juveniles arrested, tried and detained has recently declined, there are still a large number of delinquency cases, children under supervision by state officials, and children living in state facilities for youth and adults. Additionally, any positive developments in juvenile justice have not been evenly experienced by all youth. Juveniles living in urban areas are more likely to have their cases formally processed in the juvenile justice system rather than informally resolved. Further, the reach of the justice system has a particularly disparate effect on minority youth who tend to live in heavily-policed urban areas.

The …

The Community Politics Of Domestic Violence, Deborah M. Weissman

Brooklyn Law Review

Gender violence has long been identified as a crisis of epidemic proportions that defies facile solution. Despite decades of intellectual and practical engagement, law reform, and notwithstanding increased social services and public health interventions, the rates of gender violence have not appreciably declined. The field of domestic violence advocacy is itself in a crisis, and it has been difficult to discern the best way forward. Reliance on the criminal justice system has tended to fracture the domestic violence movement even as it marginalized itself from disenfranchised populations. This article offers a case study of an incident that occurred between the …

Women, Migration, And Prostitution In Europe: Not A Sex Work Story, Anna Zobnina

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Pulse: Finding Meaning In A Massacre Through Gay Latinx Intersectional Justice, Judith E. Koons

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming.

Exploring The Conflicts Within Carceral Feminism: A Call To Revocalize The Women Who Continue To Suffer, Krishna De La Cruz

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming.

Newsroom: Horwitz On The Trump Effect 12-1-2016, Amanda Milkovits, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Unconventional Methods For A Traditional Setting: The Use Of Virtual Reality To Reduce Implicit Racial Bias In The Courtroom, Natalie Salmanowitz

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

The presumption of innocence and the right to a fair trial lie at the core of the United States justice system. While existing rules and practices serve to uphold these principles, the administration of justice is significantly compromised by a covert but influential factor: namely, implicit racial biases. These biases can lead to automatic associations between race and guilt, as well as impact the way in which judges and jurors interpret information throughout a trial. Despite the well-documented presence of implicit racial biases, few steps have been taken to ameliorate the problem in the courtroom setting. This Article discusses the …

Recording A New Frontier In Evidence-Gathering: Police Body-Worn Cameras And Privacy Doctrines In Washington State, Katie Farden

Seattle University Law Review

This Note contributes to a growing body of work that weighs the gains that communities stand to make from police body-worn cameras against the tangle of concerns about how cameras may infringe on individual liberties and tread on existing privacy laws. While police departments have quickly implemented cameras over the past few years, laws governing the use of the footage body-worn cameras capture still trail behind. Notably, admissibility rules for footage from an officer’s camera, and evidence obtained with the help of that footage, remain on the horizon. This Note focuses exclusively on Washington State’s laws. It takes a clinical …

What’S Wrong With Sentencing Equality?, Richard A. Bierschbach, Stephanos Bibas

Articles

Equality in criminal sentencing often translates into equalizing outcomes and stamping out variations, whether race-based, geographic, or random. This approach conflates the concept of equality with one contestable conception focused on outputs and numbers, not inputs and processes. Racial equality is crucial, but a concern with eliminating racism has hypertrophied well beyond race. Equalizing outcomes seems appealing as a neutral way to dodge contentious substantive policy debates about the purposes of punishment. But it actually privileges deterrence and incapacitation over rehabilitation, subjective elements of retribution, and procedural justice, and it provides little normative guidance for punishment. It also has unintended …

War By Legislation: The Constitutionality Of Congressional Regulation Of Detentions In Armed Conflicts, Christopher M. Ford

Northwestern University Law Review

In this essay, Ford considers provisions of the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which place restrictions on the disposition of detainees held in Guantánamo Bay. These provisions raise substantial separation of powers issues regarding the ability of Congress to restrict detention operations of the Executive. These restrictions, and similar restrictions found in earlier NDAAs, specifically implicate the Executive's powers in foreign affairs and as Commander in Chief. Ford concludes that, with the exception of a similar provision found in the 2013 NDAA, the restrictions are constitutional.