Criminal Procedure Commons^™

A Hard Pill To Swallow: The Abysmal Mental Health Standards Of Detained Immigrant Children In The United States, Rama Bankesly

Seattle University Law Review

After setting foot into the U.S., unaccompanied children must learn to navigate academic and legal systems while receiving little support and carrying the heavy burden of effects of trauma on their mental health. They need access to mental health care from qualified professionals, but as this Comment will explain, they systematically fail to receive care, as can be seen in cases like Doe v. Shenandoah Valley Juv. Ctr. Comm’n. In Shenandoah, an unaccompanied child arrived in the U.S. and was placed in a facility that failed to provide remotely adequate mental health care and in fact was subjected …

Crypto: The Prospect Of Regulatory Competition, Charles M. Yablon

Articles

No abstract provided.

Survey Of Capital Cases In Georgia, Jessica Heywood

Scholarly Works

This Article examines five cases decided during the Survey period: two decisions by the Supreme Court of Georgia and three decisions by federal courts involving Georgia defendants. The Georgia Supreme Court cases are a direct appeal and a habeas appeal. All three federal cases are habeas petitions by Georgia state prisoners. We included federal cases because they involve significant points of law and illustrate the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit’s continued lax oversight of habeas claims, decades after the passage of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) by Congress. The small number of cases …

False Accuracy In Criminal Trials: The Limits And Costs Of Cross Examination, Lisa Kern Griffin

Faculty Scholarship

According to the popular culture of criminal trials, skillful cross-examination can reveal the whole “truth” of what happened. In a climactic scene, defense counsel will expose a lying accuser, clear up the statements of a confused eyewitness, or surface the incentives and biases in testimony. Constitutional precedents, evidence theory, and trial procedures all reflect a similar aspiration—that cross-examination performs lie detection and thereby helps to produce accurate outcomes. Although conceptualized as a protection for defendants, cross-examination imposes some unexplored costs on them. Because it focuses on the physical presence of a witness, the current law of confrontation suggests that an …

Criminal Law Minimalisms, Benjamin Levin

Scholarship@WashULaw

What is criminal law minimalism? At first blush, it appears to be the sober and sensible cousin of abolition. Where the language of abolition is radical and absolute, the language of minimalism speaks to moderation, pragmatism, and nuance. While I appreciate calls for nuance, I’m not sure that minimalism offers the clarity it promises or answers the hard questions about how to address the ills of the U.S. criminal system.

As a theory or label, minimalism raises two major questions: (1) a question of scope; and (2) a question of scale. On the question of scope, what exactly should be …

Forced Family Separation At The U.S.-Mexico Border Examined Through Narrative Theory, Emily Ulhman

Theses

An essential argument in grasping the negative impacts of forced family separation, a border policy upheld during the Trump Administration, follows this idea: to better understand the damage of the approaches taken during the Trump Administration's zero-tolerance policy, scholars must look at the narratives of those who experienced it.In my thesis, I use narratology to examine 18 nonfictional personal narratives of family separation enforced throughout the Trump Administration.

Digital Rummaging, Andrew Guthrie Ferguson

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The digital world encodes our lives with incriminating clues. How you travel, live, love, and shop are tracked through growing surveillance technologies. Police have recognized this reality and are actively exploiting new surveillance tools for investigative purposes.

The Fourth Amendment—the constitutional protection meant to limit police search powers—has not kept up with the privacy and security threats of these new digital technologies. Current doctrine has remained stymied by legal tests asking all the wrong questions about “reasonable expectations of privacy” and “trespass” searches. While the Supreme Court has acknowledged that “digital is different,” it has not yet provided a coherent …

The Slow Drip Of Decarceration: Reversing The Flood Of Mass Incarceration And Its Racist Impact, Olinda Moyd

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

For the last four decades, the flood of African Americans pouring into our jails and prisons can be likened to a watershed where someone turned on a faucet full force and opened the floodgates to all the prison doors. Despite the multitudinous efforts to secure the release of people unwittingly swept up in this flood, most spending decades behind bars, their releases have been mediocre and only a few have slowly dripped towards freedom. Racism seeps into every facet of American life and nowhere is it more prevalent than in our criminal legal system and the crisis of mass incarceration. …

The Implications Of Artificial Intelligence In The Criminal Justice System, Natalie Garay

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This thesis focuses on artificial intelligence's recent implications on the criminal justice system regarding its admissibility as evidence in civil and criminal cases. One of the main concerns surrounding artificial intelligence is determining the validity of AI application; application refers to the accuracy "AI measures, classifies, or predicts what it is designed to" (Article: Artificial Intelligence as Evidence by Paul W. Grimm, Maura R. Grossman & Gordon V.Cormack.(https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1349&context=njtip). Privacy law will also be analyzed in this analysis. Is evidence recorded without the individual's consent or knowledge acceptable in determining an individual's guilt? This analysis will primarily focus on …

Elements Of The Criminal Minds, Kelsie A. Esposito Ms.

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Studying human behavior and societal dynamics has captivated scholars across time. From ancient philosophers like Plato to contemporary researchers, the quest to comprehend our distinctiveness and the mechanisms that enable harmonious coexistence remains paramount. This thesis examines the enigmatic realm of the “criminal class,” looking at their identity and actions and the cognitive processes underpinning their behavior. Focusing on violent criminal offenders, this thesis seeks to provide greater meaning and understanding of the criminal mind.

Are Holocaust Denial Laws And Critical Race Theory Bans The Same?, Rob Kahn

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review

Florida's education rules list Holocaust denial and critical race theory ("CRT") as "theories that distort the past." This is not a fair comparison. Holocaust denial laws and CRT bans are analytically distinguishable. Holocaust denial laws were originally intended to fight hate, and this is the only reason they might be legitimate today. By contrast, CRT bans, for all their well-meaning language aboutprotecting childrenfrom race-based accusations of guilt, intend to silence the past. Indeed, the CRT bans are uncannily similar to the laws used in Turkey to ban discussion of the Armenian Genocide in schools. While one might reject both sets …

Reuniting "Active" And "Direct" Participation: The International Criminal Court's Dph Divorce In Lubanga, Josef Danczuk

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review

Throughout treaty-making processes and turn-of-the-century international criminal tribunal decisions, scholars and judges alike determined that the terms "direct" and "active," when referring to participation in hostilities, were synonymous. However, the International Criminal Court ("ICC'), in interpreting the Rome Statute in the Lubanga case, determined that they were not, creating disparity between interpretations of the same terms within International Criminal Law ("ICL") and the Law of Armed Conflict ("LOAC"). Not only is the ICC's interpretation legally wrong, it is also practically unworkable and distorts the well-established doctrine of DPH as defined in LOAC. Lubanga may have broadened protectionfor child soldiers, but …

One Size Does Fit All: A Quasi-Federal Solution To The Euro-Centric Structural Shortcomings Of The Icc, Anivesh Bharadwaj

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review

The article critiques the International Criminal Court's (ICC) centralized structure in The Hague, arguing that it undermines transparency, accessibility, and legitimacy, particularly for victims and witnesses in remote regions. The author proposes a "quasi-federal" framework to decentralize the Court, enabling regional proceedings while maintaining a central Appeals Chamber and Presidency. This restructuring aims to address structural flaws, enhance deterrence, and improve justice delivery by bringing proceedings closer to affected communities.

Keynote Address: Adjudicating Art, Amy Adler

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

The keynote address critiques the Supreme Court's decision in Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith for its flawed approach to interpreting the meaning of art in copyright law, particularly in the context of fair use. It argues that courts are ill-equipped to determine the meaning of art, as art often resists reduction to discrete messages or meanings. The Court's reliance on visual analysis and its failure to provide clear guidance on how to assess meaning exacerbate these problems, leading to confusion in lower courts and potentially stifling artistic expression.

​Thinking Outside Of The "White Box": An Afrofuturistic Critique Of Terry Stops, Nina-Simone Edwards

Library Scholarship

What would the future look like if the privacy invasions that Black Americans are currently subjected to were not so normalized? This Note brings an Afrofuturistic perspective to the analysis of Terry stops, putting forward an alternative legal paradigm that uplifts Black Americans, their privacy, and their experiences, rather than police practices. Part I of this Note looks to the past, drawing on Afrofuturism’s tenant of reclamation, and assesses the development of vagrancy laws. Under these laws, vague legal standards allowed law enforcement to criminalize Black people after the end of slavery, punishing those who fell outside of the “white …

A Law At War With Itself: Character Evidence And The Doctrine Of Chances, Len Niehoff, Shannon Hickey

Articles

Certain legal principles have raging within them a kind of civil war. Important but abstract policy concerns pull the doctrine in one direction; common sense and practical experience pull it in another. Casualties ensue.

Perhaps no body of legal doctrine better exemplifies this sort of internal conflict than the general ban on character evidence, as embodied in Federal Rule of Evidence 404(a)(1). That rule states: “Evidence of a person’s character or character trait is not admissible to prove that on a particular occasion the person acted in accordance with that character or trait.” The rule has deep roots in the …

The Joy Of The Fight: What Litigators Can Learn From The Martial Arts, Len Niehoff, Tim Lynch

Articles

You walk into a martial arts training studio (in Japanese styles, a dojo) and you scan the room. Everything going on here looks, well, unpleasant. In one corner, you observe a group of students performing kata, choreographed sequences of kicks, punches, and blocks that simulate the experience of fighting multiple opponents. Sweat pours off them. In another corner, you see two students engaged in sparring exercises, or kumite. The sharp, smacking noise of one student striking the protective pads worn by another carries across the room. In a third corner, you notice students doing push-ups, working their muscles until their …

Virtual Justice?: An Analysis Of Access To Court For People Experiencing Homelessness, Kaitlin Humer

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Homelessness in Canada remains a wicked social problem that often intersects with compounding forms of marginalization. The criminalization of homelessness and living life in the public sphere explain, in part, why this population is likely to interact with the criminal justice system. Following the onset of the pandemic, the courts were forced to modernize and embrace digital technologies to maintain operations. Now four years since these changes, there are no signs of turning back and the court system is continuing forward with a hybrid model. Despite this, there is minimal research on the impact of virtual court proceedings on people …

Proportionalities, Youngjae Lee

Faculty Scholarship

"Proportionality" is ubiquitous. The idea that punishment should be proportional to crime is familiar in criminal law and has a lengthy history. But that is not the only place where one encounters the concept of proportionality in law and ethics. The idea of proportionality is important also in the self-defense context, where the right to defend oneself with force is limited by the principle of proportionality. Proportionality plays a role in the context of war, especially in the idea that the military advantage one side may draw from an attack must not be excessive in relation to the loss of …

Incorporating Alternative Dispute Resolution At The United Nations: Establishing And Implementing And Arbitration Panel To Determine Whether A Permanent Member Of The Security Council Can Or Cannot Veto Proposed Resolutions Potentially Involving Human Rights Violations And Mass Atrocities, Jillian Leavey

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

No abstract provided.

Regulating Cryptocurrency: A Comparative Analysis Of U.S. And Eu Approaches, Xander Xueyang Peng

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review

The note compares the regulatory approaches of the U.S. and the EU regarding cryptocurrency, focusing on sanctions and anti-money laundering (AML). It argues that while the EU has implemented a comprehensive regulatory framework, the U.S. relies on fragmented enforcement actions and lacks a unified approach. The EU's structured regulations, such as the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) framework, are more effective in addressing the challenges posed by cryptocurrency, including traceability and compliance. The note advocates for the U.S. to adopt a more robust regulatory framework, including know-your-customer (KYC) requirements and stricter AML measures, to enhance accountability and security in the crypto …

Panel 1: Copyright Law, Michael W. Carroll, Peter Karol, Christopher Sprigman, Jacob Noti-Victor

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

The Warhol v. Goldsmith case has reshaped the interpretation of fair use in copyright law, emphasizing market competition and the commercial purpose of the use. The Supreme Court's decision focused on the commercial licensing of Warhol's work, highlighting the importance of assessing whether the use competes with the original work's market. This shift could influence future cases, particularly in technology and art, by potentially altering how transformative use and market competition are evaluated.

Why Courts Should Not Interpret The Meaning Of Art, Amy Adler

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

The article argues that courts are ill-equipped to interpret the meaning of art, particularly in fair use cases, as seen in the Supreme Court's decision in Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith. The Court's reliance on determining the meaning of art exacerbates confusion and inconsistency in fair use jurisprudence, highlighting the need for alternative approaches that avoid judicial interpretation of artistic meaning.

Students For Fair Admissions: Affirming Affirmative Action And Shapeshifting Towards Cognitive Diversity?, Steven A. Ramirez

Seattle University Law Review

The Roberts Court holds a well-earned reputation for overturning Supreme Court precedent regardless of the long-standing nature of the case. The Roberts Court knows how to overrule precedent. In Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (SFFA), the Court’s majority opinion never intimates that it overrules Grutter v. Bollinger, the Court’s leading opinion permitting race-based affirmative action in college admissions. Instead, the Roberts Court applied Grutter as authoritative to hold certain affirmative action programs entailing racial preferences violative of the Constitution. These programs did not provide an end point, nor did they require assessment, review, periodic expiration, or revision for greater …

Principles Of Prosecutor Lenience, Jeffrey Bellin

Faculty Publications

[T]here are profound questions about the when and why of lenience, and particularly prosecutor lenience. The answers speak to one of the great mysteries of American criminal law: the role of the prosecutor. I have taken on this mystery in recent years and continue the effort here by offering a skeletal framework for prosecutor leniency. The framework proposes three principles of prosecutor lenience. Prosecutor lenience should be (1) non-arbitrary, (2) equal, and (3) abundant.

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This Symposium Essay explores prosecutorial lenience through the lens set out above. Part I defines prosecutorial lenience and proposes three principles to guide its exercise. …

Ai-Based Evidence In Criminal Trials?, Sabine Gless, Fredric I. Lederer, Thomas Weigend

Faculty Publications

Smart devices are increasingly the origin of critical criminal case data. The importance of such data, especially data generated when using modern automobiles, is likely to become even more important as increasingly complex methods of machine learning lead to AI-based evidence being autonomously generated by devices. This article reviews the admissibility of such evidence from both American and German perspectives. As a result of this comparative approach, the authors conclude that American evidence law could be improved by borrowing aspects of the expert testimony approaches used in Germany’s “inquisitorial” court system.

Can Judges Help Ease Mass Incarceration?, Jeffrey Bellin

Faculty Publications

A scholar considers how judges have contributed to historically high incarceration rates -- and how they can help reverse the trend.

Elements Of The Criminal Mind, Kelsie A. Esposito Ms.

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Studying human behavior and societal dynamics has captivated scholars across time. From ancient philosophers like Plato to contemporary researchers, the quest to comprehend our distinctiveness and the mechanisms that enable harmonious coexistence remains paramount. This thesis examines the enigmatic realm of the “criminal class,” looking at their identity and actions and the cognitive processes underpinning their behavior. Focusing on violent criminal offenders, this thesis seeks to provide greater meaning and understanding of the criminal mind.

A Qualitative Analysis Of Section 1983 Filings By Incarcerated Plaintiffs, Hollie Macdonald

Theses and Dissertations

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic was a “watershed moment" in human history, transcending its role as a mere health crisis to reveal deeper fissures within societies. The present retrospective longitudinal study examined COVID-19 as an “era” of complexity utilizing it as an intermediate construct that delineates “pre-COVID” and “post-COVID.” In order to understand the impact of the COVID-19 era, the design of the study and hypotheses stem from an assumption of the interconnectedness of issues related to health, social justice, racial justice, politics, and information dissemination.

This study utilized both manifest and latent content analysis to explore the most …

Mercy For The Masses: A Default Rule For Automatically Triggered Commutations, Adam Gershowitz

Faculty Publications

This Essay considers how governors who are interested in reducing mass imprisonment can provide “mercy for the masses” who are in the middle of the criminal justice punishment spectrum. It draws on the successful mass pardons for misdemeanor marijuana offenses, as well as the aspects of the Obama Clemency Initiative that worked well. The proposals that follow offer four variations on a default rule for automatic, but modest, mass commutations.

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This Essay proceeds as follows. First, Part I explains how the modern clemency power has often been focused on death penalty cases and low-level misdemeanors. Part II then recounts …