Law and Society Commons^™

The Right To No: The Crime Of Marital Rape, Women's Human Rights, And International Law, Melanie Randall, Vasanthi Venkatesh

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

More than half of the world’s countries do not explicitly criminalize sexual assault in marriage. While sexual assault in general is criminalized in these countries, sexual assault perpetrated by a spouse is entirely legal. The human rights violations inhere in acts of violence against women are now well recognized. Yet somehow marital rape is a particular form of gendered violence that has escaped both criminal law sanctions and human rights approbation in a great number of the world’s nations.

This silence in the law creates legal impunity for men who sexually assault or rape the women who are their wives …

Trafficked? Aids, Criminal Law And The Politics Of Measurement, Aziza Ahmed

Faculty Scholarship

Since early in the HIV epidemic, epidemiologists identified individuals who transact sex as a high-risk group for contracting HIV. Where the issue of transacting sex has been framed as sex work, harm-reduction advocates and scholars call for decriminalization as a primary legal solution to address HIV. Where the issue is defined as trafficking, advocates known as abolitionists argue instead for the criminalization of the purchase of sex.

Global health governance institutions are porous to these competing ideas and ideologies. This article first historicizes the contestation between harm-reduction and abolition in global governance on health. The paper then turns to a …

Effective Aggressiveness And Inconsistencies In The Bijuridical Treatment Of Aggressive Behaviour: Mixed Martial Arts, Bullying, And Sociolegal Quandaries, Sara Gwendolyn Ross

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This paper seeks to address effective aggressiveness and the treatment of aggressive behaviour in the context of MMA in comparison to the balance of the formal Canadian legal landscape. I choose anti-bullying legislation, and its treatment of aggressive behaviour, as a counterexample to the treatment of aggressive behaviour within the MMA regulatory framework. By intertextually linking and superimposing these two categories of legislation, a critical lens drawing on institutional ethnography is applied. This is done to question and deconstruct the differential treatment of aggressive behaviour and the rationale behind the legislative mixed message sent. This lens also allows me to …

Legal Aid And The Indigent Accused In South Africa: A Proposal For Reform, Lynn Berat

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Sex Offender Law And The Geography Of Victimization, Amanda Y. Agan, J. J. Prescott

Articles

Sex offender laws that target recidivism (e.g., community notification and residency restriction regimes) are premised—at least in part—on the idea that sex offender proximity and victimization risk are positively correlated. We examine this relationship by combining past and current address information of registered sex offenders (RSOs) with crime data from Baltimore County, Maryland, to study how crime rates vary across neighborhoods with different concentrations of resident RSOs. Contrary to the assumptions of policymakers and the public, we find that, all else equal, reported sex offense victimization risk is generally (although not uniformly) lower in neighborhoods where more RSOs live. To …

Racial Disparity In Federal Criminal Sentences, M. Marit Rehavi, Sonja B. Starr

Articles

Using rich data linking federal cases from arrest through to sentencing, we find that initial case and defendant characteristics, including arrest offense and criminal history, can explain most of the large raw racial disparity in federal sentences, but significant gaps remain. Across the distribution, blacks receive sentences that are almost 10 percent longer than those of comparable whites arrested for the same crimes. Most of this disparity can be explained by prosecutors’ initial charging decisions, particularly the filing of charges carrying mandatory minimum sentences. Ceteris paribus, the odds of black arrestees facing such a charge are 1.75 times higher than …

Passing The Torch But Sailing Too Close To The Wind: Congress’S Role In Authorizing Administrative Branches To Promulgate Regulations That Contemplate Criminal Sanctions, Reem Sadik

Legislation and Policy Brief

The Supreme Court has stated that Congress must simply “lay down by legislative act an intelligible principle” to which the agency must conform. If this is done, a court will find the delegation of broad authority to the agency to be constitutional. There is, however, an open issue regarding whether the “intelligible principle” standard applies to delegations of authority that allow for the promulgation of both civil and criminal penalties. In Touby v. United States, the Supreme Court was asked whether “something more than an ‘intelligible principle’ is required” when Congress authorizes an agency to issue regulations that contemplate …

Refusal To Extradite: An Examination Of Canada's Indictment Of The American Legal System, Jami Leeson

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Mexico's Legal Revolution: An Appraisal Of Its Recent Constitutional Changes, 1988-1995, Jorge A. Vargas

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Institutional Sexual Assault And The Rights/Trust Dilemma, Francine Banner

Cardozo Public Law, Policy & Ethics Journal

No abstract provided.

Do All Roads Lead To Islamic Radicalism? A Comparison Of Islamic Laws In India And Nigeria, Amitabha Bose

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Vladimir Putin And The Rule Of Law In Russia, Jeffrey Kahn

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Encouraging Victims: Responding To A Recent Study Of Battered Women Who Commit Crimes, Andrea L. Dennis, Carol E. Jordan

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Cultural Pluralism In Criminal Defense: An Inner Conflict Of The Liberal Paradigm, Sam Beyea

Cardozo Public Law, Policy & Ethics Journal

The note critically examines the cultural defense in American jurisprudence, highlighting its controversial role in criminal cases. While proponents argue that it promotes individualized justice in a diverse society, critics contend that it undermines legal equality, perpetuates stereotypes, and erodes the moral and deterrent functions of criminal law. The analysis explores the tension between cultural plurality and the universal application of legal principles, ultimately advocating for a more constrained approach to the use of cultural evidence in criminal proceedings.

The Conversational Consent Search: How “Quick Look” And Other Similar Searches Have Eroded Our Constitutional Rights, Alexander A. Mikhalevsky

Georgia State University Law Review

One area in which law enforcement agencies have stretched constitutional limits concerns the scope of a suspect’s consent to search his or her vehicle. Police forces across the country have tested the limits of consent by asking vague, conversational questions to suspects with the goal of obtaining a suspect’s consent to search, even though that individual may not want to allow the search or may not know that he or she has the right to deny consent.

Conversational phrases like “Can I take a quick look?” or “Can I take a quick look around?” have “emerg[ed] as . . . …

Incarceration And Reintegration: How It Impacts Mental Health, April M. Marier, Alex Alfredo Reyes

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Background: Previous criminal justice policies have been non-effective leading to overpopulated prisons and unsuccessful reintegration. There is a lack of effective supportive and/or rehabilitative services resulting in high rates of recidivism and mental health implications. Objective: This study investigated the perceived impact that incarceration and reintegration with little to no supportive and/or rehabilitative services has on the mental health status of an individual. The emphasis was on participant perception and not on professional reports because of underreporting and lack of attention to mental health in the criminal justice system. Methods: Focus groups in the Inland Empire and Coachella Valley …

Criminal Procedure Decisions From The October 2006 Term, Susan N. Herman

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Remaking Mexico: Law Reform As Foreign Policy, Deborah M. Weissman

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Of Secrecy And Punishment, Lauren Sudeall Lucas

Faculty Publications By Year

No abstract provided.

Deferred Prosecutions In The Corporate Sector: Lessons From Libor, Justin O'Brien, Olivia Dixon

Seattle University Law Review

Since 2008, the global economic downturn has significantly in-creased operating pressures on major corporations. Additionally, there has been a corresponding increase in corporate tolerance for corruption, which has coincided with a marked preference by regulators in settling, rather than litigating, enforcement actions. This Article argues that the expansion of prosecutorial authority without appropriate accountability restraints is a major tactical and strategic error. It evaluates whether the mechanism can be made subject to effective oversight. It argues that the current frame-work in the United States is highly problematic, leading to settlements that generate newspaper headlines but not necessarily cultural change. It …

The New Policing Of Business Crime, Rachel E. Barkow

Seattle University Law Review

The central goal of this Article is to describe the burgeoning turn to new policing techniques in the business crime context and to offer some initial thoughts on the promises and limits of the approach. Part II begins by explaining the traditional or “old policing” of business crime. After implementing an initial strategy that focused on pursuing individuals, the government turned its attention to the organizations where those individuals operated. It increased the sanctions for violators and sought to target companies in an effort to prompt them to adopt internal compliance pro-grams. The focus on company compliance programs was designed …

When Women Kill Newborns: The Rhetoric Of Vulnerability, Susan Ayres

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter explores feminist jurisprudence regarding women who commit acts of violence, focusing specifically on questions of agency in neonaticide (killing a newborn). A case study approach illustrates the debate in feminist theory between same-treatment and different-treatment of women as compared to men. While some feminist criminologists urge that women who kill must be viewed the same as men (as having agency and responsibility), other feminists question this approach and point out that women who commit crimes that intersect with family law receive disproportionately harsh treatment and should be treated differently than men.

This chapter contends that the paradox raised …

The Trayvon Martin Trial - Two Comments And An Observation, 47 J. Marshall L. Rev. 1371 (2014), Richard Delgado

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Pre-Crime Restraints: The Explosion Of Targeted, Non-Custodial Prevention, Jennifer Daskal

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This Article exposes the ways in which noncustodial pre-crime restraints have proliferated over the past decade, focusing in particular on three notable examples — terrorism-related financial sanctions, the No Fly List, and the array of residential, employment, and related restrictions imposed on sex offenders. Because such restraints do not involve physical incapacitation, they are rarely deemed to infringe core liberty interests. Because they are preventive, not punitive, criminal law procedural protections do not apply. They have exploded largely unchecked — subject to little more than bare rationality review and negligible procedural protections — and without any coherent theory as to …

Criminalizing Revenge Porn, Danielle Citron, Mary Anne Franks

Articles

No abstract provided.

Evidence-Based Sentencing And The Scientific Rationalization Of Discrimination, Sonja B. Starr

Articles

This Article critiques, on legal and empirical grounds, the growing trend of basing criminal sentences on actuarial recidivism risk prediction instruments that include demographic and socioeconomic variables. I argue that this practice violates the Equal Protection Clause and is bad policy: an explicit embrace of otherwise- condemned discrimination, sanitized by scientific language. To demonstrate that this practice raises serious constitutional concerns, I comprehensively review the relevant case law, much of which has been ignored by existing literature. To demonstrate that the policy is not justified by countervailing state interests, I review the empirical evidence underlying the instruments. I show that …

Kids Can Change: Reforming South Dakota’S Juvenile Transfer Law To Rehabilitate Children And Protect Public Safety, Wendy Hess

Faculty Publications

South Dakota, like many other states, permits adult criminal prosecution, sentencing, and imprisonment of certain minors who commit a crime. The mechanism which allows prosecution of a child as an adult is referred to as “juvenile transfer,” because the juvenile court’s jurisdiction over the child is transferred to the adult criminal court. The article discusses how the juvenile transfer mechanism developed — both generally and in South Dakota — as well as how it operates today. The author summarizes research findings about the efficacy and fairness of juvenile transfer. Harsh criminal consequences for juveniles are increasingly disfavored as we learn …

We Are Not Who We Pretend To Be: Odr Alternatives To Online Impersonation Statutes, Kori Clanton

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

This Note focuses on how online dispute resolution ("ODR") processes, as opposed to litigation, offer a more efficient and effective legal solution to resolving online impersonation disputes. The purpose of this Note is to analyze the measures state legislatures and social media websites have implemented to combat online impersonation cases, and to propose a practical ODR solution that will eliminate the burdens of litigation and provide a cost-efficient and time-effective remedy. Section I provides an introduction to the current relevance and rising incidents of online impersonation via social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter. Section II explores the historical …

The War On Drugs Is Over (If You Want It): State Drug Courts As An Alternative To Criminal Courts For Low-Level Nonviolent Drug Offenders, Blake Courlang

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

Part I of this Note describes the social, political, and legal reasons behind the rise of mandatory minimum sentencing in the 1980s and their path towards becoming advisory in the 2000s, as held by the Supreme Court in United States v. Booker. Part II provides a description of drug courts and argues for the use of drug courts as an alternative to the criminal sanctions for all nonviolent, low-level drug offenders. As part of this discussion, this Note examines the use of mandatory minimum sentencing post-Booker and the procedural method of divesting federal jurisdiction of nonviolent, low-level drug offenses …

The Growth Of Incarceration In The United States: Exploring Causes And Consequences, Jeremy Travis, Bruce Western, F. Stevens Redburn

Publications and Research

After decades of stability from the 1920s to the early 1970s, the rate of incarceration in the United States more than quadrupled in the past four decades. The Committee on the Causes and Consequences of High Rates of Incarceration in the United States was established under the auspices of the National Research Council, supported by the National Institute of Justice and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, to review evidence on the causes and consequences of these high incarceration rates and the implications of this evidence for public policy.

Our work encompassed research on, and analyses of, the …