Criminal Law Commons^™

Moral Crimes Post-Mellouli: Making A Case For Eliminating State-Based Prostitution Convictions As A Basis For Inadmissibility In Immigration Proceedings, Kerry Q. Battenfeld

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

The International Criminal Court: Promise And Politics, Makau Wa Mutua

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Penal Incapacitation: A Situationist Critique, Guyora Binder, Ben Notterman

Journal Articles

Incapacitation of offenders has been an influential goal of criminal justice policy during the era of mass incarceration. The Supreme Court’s Eighth Amendment Jurisprudence has accepted incapacitation alone as a justifying purpose for recidivist sentencing enhancements. Yet recent Eighth Amendment decisions have required that severe sentences of incarceration be justified by reference to all purposes of punishment cumulatively, and have tested claims of incapacitative benefits against empirical evidence. This Article critiques penal incapacitation as both theoretically and empirically flawed. Incapacitation theory underestimates situational factors contributing to crime, over-attributes dangerousness to individuals, and fails to account for crime committed in prison. …

Capital Punishment Of Unintentional Felony Murder, Guyora Binder, Brenner Fissell, Robert Weisberg

Journal Articles

Under the prevailing interpretation of the Eighth Amendment in the lower courts, a defendant who causes a death inadvertently in the course of a felony is eligible for capital punishment. This unfortunate interpretation rests on an unduly mechanical reading of the Supreme Court’s decisions in Enmund v. Florida and Tison v. Arizona, which require culpability for capital punishment of co-felons who do not kill. The lower courts have drawn the unwarranted inference that these cases permit execution of those who cause death without any culpability towards death. This Article shows that this mechanical reading of precedent is mistaken, because the …

Solving The Riddle Of Rape By Deception, Luis E. Chiesa

Journal Articles

Is sex obtained by lies an act of lawful seduction or criminal rape? This deceptively simple question has baffled courts and scholars for more than a century. In an influential recent article, Yale Law Professor Jed Rubenfeld argued that our ambivalence towards this question generates what he called the “riddle of rape-by-deception”. The riddle is that if rape is defined as having sex without consent, then rape statutes should prohibit sex by deception just as much as they prohibit sex by force. Yet they don’t. So either rape statutes are guilty of a huge, inexplicable oversight or rape law is …

Africans And The Icc: Hypocrisy, Impunity, And Perversion, Makau Wa Mutua

Contributions to Books

Published as Chapter 3 in Africa and the ICC: Perceptions of Justice, Kamari M. Clarke, Abel S. Knottnerus, & Eefje de Volder, eds.

Forgiveness, Blame, And Punishment, James Staihar

Buffalo Public Interest Law Journal

When someone commits a crime with no exculpatory defenses,he is blameworthy and deserves to be punished. Nevertheless, assuming the criminal were to satisfy some conditions, he could become forgivable. In this Essay I defend a restorative theory of what it means to forgive a criminal and when the forgiveness of a criminal would be warranted. My defense is unique in that I ultimately derive my theory offorgiveness from a novel theory of when criminals deserve to be punished. My restorative theory of forgiveness yields at least two general insights that are generally not appreciated in the prior literature on forgiveness. …

Strenghtening Protections For Survivors Of Domestic Violence: The Case Of Washington, D.C., M. Alexandra Verdi

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Obligation To Establish Sentences For Torture That Are Commensurate With The Gravity Of The Offense, Daniel O'Donnell

Buffalo Human Rights Law Review

No abstract provided.

If You've Got The Money, I'Ve Got The Time: The Benefits Of Incentive Contracts With Private Prisons, Michael G. Anderson

Buffalo Public Interest Law Journal

Governments increasingly rely on private prison companies to manage the daunting demands associated with their ever- increasing prison populations. The private prison industry provides governments at all levels (federal, state, and local) with an alternative to the costly and time-consuming construction of additional public facilities. Governments, however, have all too often adopted a flawed pricing strategy, paying private prison companies fixed per diem rates to house prisoners. This model both incentivized and tolerated poor conditions with greater emphasis placed on the industry's bottom line than benefits to the state, the prison population, or society as a whole.

This article asserts …

Genocide Denial And The Law: A Critical Appraisal, Paul Behrens

Buffalo Human Rights Law Review

Genocide denial carries particular relevance for international law: it is the negation of international crimes, and it can prepare the ground for new crimes of this kind. But its criminalization raises concerns as well. The danger of a clash with human rights, particularly with the freedom of ex- pression, cannot be dismissed lightly. This article explores reasons for and repercussions of the criminalization of denial. It also investigates alterna- tives, including the use of truth and reconciliation, and evaluates methods that focus on direct confrontation of the deniers.

What Is Criminal Law About?, Guyora Binder, Robert Weisberg

Journal Articles

In a recent critique, Jens Ohlin faults contemporary criminal law textbooks for emphasizing philosophy, history and social science at the expense of doctrinal training. In this response, we argue that the political importance of criminal law justifies including reflection about the justice of punishment in the professional education of lawyers. First, we argue that both understanding and evaluating criminal law doctrine requires consideration of political philosophy, legal history, and empirical research. Second, we argue that the indeterminacy of criminal law doctrine on some fundamental questions means that criminal lawyers often cannot avoid invoking normative theory in fashioning legal arguments. Finally, …

A Rational Theory Of Mitigation And Aggravation In Sentencing: Why Less Is More When It Comes To Punishing Criminals, Mirko Bagaric

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Finding Meaning In The Death Of Virtual Identities, Jordan L. Walbesser

Buffalo Intellectual Property Law Journal

Historically speaking, legal fiction assumes that identity and the credentials proving identity are one and the same. It is an important fiction that allows us to access information associated with our identity and restrict others from doing the same. Crimes of identity theft are commonly manifested through the usurpation of one's credentials to falsely verify identity. Legal doctrine such as agency theory makes the assumption that identity and credentials are only transferrable together. Technology, especially the Internet, alters this fiction by allowing the creation of multiple credentials that enable access to multiple identities manifested throughout the world. The one-to-one relationship …

Justice Kennedy, The Purposes Of Capital Punishment, And The Future Of Lackey Claims, Brent E. Newton

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Comparative Criminal Law, Luis E. Chiesa

Contributions to Books

Published as Chapter 47 in The Oxford Handbook of Criminal Law, Markus Dubber & Tatjana Hörnle, eds.

Criminal law is a parochial discipline. Courts and scholars in the English speaking world seldom take seriously the criminal statutes, cases and scholarly writings published in the non-English speaking world. The same is true the other way around. This is unfortunate. Much can be learned from comparing the way in which the world’s leading legal systems approach important questions of criminal theory.

This Chapter introduces the reader to comparative criminal law with the aim of demonstrating how comparative analysis can enrich both domestic …

20 Years Of Domestic Violence Advocacy, Collaborations, And Challenges: Reflections Of A Clinical Law Professor, Suzanne E. Tomkins

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Reframing Domestic Violence As Terrorism Or Torture, Isabel Marcus

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

The Rise And Fall Of The Unwritten Law: Sex, Patriarchy, And Vigilante Justice In The American Courts, Lawrence M. Friedman, William E. Havemann

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Jeremy Horder's Homicide And The Politics Of Law Reform, Guyora Binder

Book Reviews

No abstract provided.

Identifying And Depicting Culture In Intimate Partner Violence Cases, Remla Parthasarathy

Buffalo Journal of Gender, Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.

Conspiracy Of Silence: Honour-Based Violence In North America, Aruna Papp

Buffalo Journal of Gender, Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.

The Reliability And Admissibility Of Fingerprint And Bitemark Analyses, David Chandler

Buffalo Public Interest Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Credit Industry And Identity Theft: How To End An Enabling Relationship, Eric T. Glynn

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Authority To Proscribe And Punish International Crimes, Guyora Binder

Journal Articles

Although criminal jurisdiction is usually exercised by governments, offenses can also be proscribed by international law, and punishment can be imposed by international tribunals. This article critically examines the legitimacy of such exercises of international criminal jurisdiction. It reasons that criminal law can plausibly be justified as a cooperative institution that achieves the public good of a rule of law, with its attendant benefits of social peace and equal dignity of persons. It then argues that such a beneficial rule of law requires a punishing authority with the executive capacity to protect those it claims to regulate. It would follow …

Actmissions, Luis E. Chiesa

Journal Articles

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 …

Bright Lines, Black Bodies: The Florence Strip Search Case And Its Dire Repercussions, Teresa A. Miller

Journal Articles

Part I is a brief history of Search and Seizure law, focusing on seismic doctrinal shifts that occurred from the 1950s to the present. As a framework for the important cases, the Founders’ concerns about abuse of governmental authority are discussed, as well as the rights protected by the Fourth Amendment. Various governmental programs will also be presented, such as the War on Drugs and its call for a large-scale federal anti-drug policy, first initiated by President Richard Nixon in 1969. Part II is a description of the central reasoning presented in Florence v. Board of Chosen Freeholders, including the …

Commentary: Pleau-Sharing, Jonah J. Horwitz

The Docket

In light of recent debate about the proper roles of federal and state governments, Jonah J. Horwitz laments how little attention has been paid to federal encroachment on the prosecution of commonplace crimes, specifically as it pertains to the death penalty controversy in United States v. Pleau.

Our Children, Ourselves: Ensuring The Education Of America's At-Risk Youth, Elizabeth Lamura

Buffalo Public Interest Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Forging Links And Renewing Ties: Applying The Principles Of Restorative And Procedural Justice To Better Respond To Criminal Offenders With A Mental Disorder, Thomas L. Hafemeister, Sharon G. Garner, Veronica E. Bath

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.