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On Lenity: What Justice Gorsuch Didn’T Say, Brandon Hasbrouck
On Lenity: What Justice Gorsuch Didn’T Say, Brandon Hasbrouck
Scholarly Articles
This Essay was first published online at 108 Va. L. Rev. Online 239 (2022).
Facially neutral doctrines create racially disparate outcomes. Increasingly, legal academia and mainstream commentators recognize that this is by design. The rise of this colorblind racism in Supreme Court jurisprudence parallels the rise of the War on Drugs as a political response to the Civil Rights Movement. But, to date, no member of the Supreme Court has acknowledged the reality of this majestic inequality of the law. Instead, the Court itself has been complicit in upholding facially neutral doctrines when confronted with the racial disparities they create. …
The Just Prosecutor, Brandon Hasbrouck
The Just Prosecutor, Brandon Hasbrouck
Scholarly Articles
As the most powerful actors in our criminal legal system, prosecutors have been and remain one of the principal drivers of mass incarceration. This was and is by design. Prosecutorial power derives from our constitutional structure--prosecutors are given almost unfettered discretion to determine who to charge, what to charge, and, often, what the sentence will be. Within that structure, the prosecutor's duty is to ensure that justice is done. Yet, in exercising their outsized power, some prosecutors have fully embraced a secondary, adversarial role as a partisan advocate at the significant cost of seeking justice.
The necessary reforms of our …