Guns In The Private Square,
2020
Boston University School of Law
Guns In The Private Square, Cody Jacobs
Faculty Scholarship
The regulation of guns has been one of the most hotly debated public policy issues in the United States throughout the country’s history. But, up until recently, it has always been just that — a debate about public policy. Two recent developments have changed the landscape and moved the debate about publicly carrying firearms from the realm of public policy, to the realm of private decision-making and private law. First, laws related to publicly carrying firearms have been dramatically loosened throughout the United States to the point that, in the vast majority of states, anyone who is legally allowed to …
Heads Of State And Other Government Officials Before The International Criminal Court: The Uneasy Revolution Continues,
2020
Washington University in St. Louis School of Law
Heads Of State And Other Government Officials Before The International Criminal Court: The Uneasy Revolution Continues, Leila Nadya Sadat
Scholarship@WashULaw
This essay takes up the current debate about the relationship between article 27 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and article 98 of the Statute concerning the immunity of sitting Heads of State from investigation or prosecution before the Court and the duty of States to cooperate with the Court as regards their arrest and surrender. The essay traces the history of article 27 and its incorporation into the Statute and observes that it represents a rule of customary international law resting upon the adoption of the Nuremberg Principles after World War II, and reiterated in the …
What’S Wrong With Police Unions?,
2020
Washington University in St. Louis School of Law
What’S Wrong With Police Unions?, Benjamin Levin
Scholarship@WashULaw
In an era of declining labor power, police unions stand as a rare success story for worker organizing—they exert political clout and negotiate favorable terms for their members. Yet, despite broad support for unionization on the political left, police unions have become public enemy number one for academics and activists concerned about race and police violence. Much criticism of police unions focuses on their obstructionist nature and how they prioritize the interests of their members over the interests of the communities they police. These critiques are compelling—police unions shield officers and block oversight. But, taken seriously, they often sound like …
Political Wine In A Judicial Bottle: Justice Sotomayor's Surprising Concurrence In Aurelius,
2020
Columbia Law School
Political Wine In A Judicial Bottle: Justice Sotomayor's Surprising Concurrence In Aurelius, Christina D. Ponsa-Kraus
Faculty Scholarship
For seventy years, Puerto Ricans have been bitterly divided over how to decolonize the island, a U.S. territory. Many favor Puerto Rico’s admission into statehood. But many others support a different kind of relationship with the United States: they believe that in 1952, Puerto Rico entered into a “compact” with the United States that transformed it from a territory into a “commonwealth,” and they insist that “commonwealth” status made Puerto Rico a separate sovereign in permanent union with the United States. Statehood supporters argue that there is no compact, nor should there be: it is neither constitutionally possible, nor desirable …
Genetic Evidence, Maoa, And State V. Yepez,
2020
Duke Law School
Genetic Evidence, Maoa, And State V. Yepez, Nita A. Farahany, Roderick T. Kennedy, Brandon L. Garrett
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Presidential Crimes Matter,
2020
University of Georgia School of Law
Presidential Crimes Matter, Julian A. Cook
Scholarly Works
The resignations of United States Attorneys Geoffrey Berman and Jessie Liu from their respective positions in the Southern District of New York and the District of Columbia, and Attorney General William Barr’s and President Donald Trump’s persistent undermining of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russian interference and obstruction of justice investigations and prosecutions are clarion calls to reform the process by which the executive branch criminally investigates itself. But there is another critical circumstance—the Special Counsel regulations—that has been largely overlooked and has been grossly underappreciated in the public discussion about undue executive branch influence. These regulations are foundational, their impact …
Boots And Bail On The Ground: Assessing The Implementation Of Misdemeanor Bail Reforms In Georgia,
2020
University of Georgia School of Law
Boots And Bail On The Ground: Assessing The Implementation Of Misdemeanor Bail Reforms In Georgia, Sandra Mayson, Andrea Woods, Lauren Sudeall, Guthrie Armstrong, Anthony Potts
Scholarly Works
This Article presents a mixed-methods study of misdemeanor bail practice across Georgia in the wake of reform. We observed bail hearings and interviewed system actors in a representative sample of fifty-five counties in order to assess the extent to which pretrial practice conforms to legal standards clarified in Senate Bill 407 and Walker v. Calhoun. We also analyzed jail population data published by county jails and by the Georgia Department of Community Affairs. We found that a handful of counties have made promising headway in adhering to law and best practices, but that the majority have some distance to …
The Concept Of Criminal Law,
2020
University of Georgia School of Law
The Concept Of Criminal Law, Sandra Mayson
Scholarly Works
What distinguishes “criminal law” from all other law? This question should be central to both criminal law theory and criminal justice reform. Clarity about the distinctive feature(s) of criminal law is especially important in the current moment, as the nation awakens to the damage that the carceral state has wrought and reformers debate the value and the future of criminal law institutions. Foundational though it is, however, the question has received limited attention. There is no clear consensus among contemporary scholars or reformers about what makes the criminal law unique. This Essay argues that Antony Duff’s The Realm of Criminal …
Brief Of Amici Curiae Ohio State Bar Association And Academic Experts In Support Of Defendant-Appellee Basim Barnes In State Of Ohio V. Basim Barnes,
2020
University of Akron
Brief Of Amici Curiae Ohio State Bar Association And Academic Experts In Support Of Defendant-Appellee Basim Barnes In State Of Ohio V. Basim Barnes, John P. Sahl
Akron Law Faculty Publications
This amicus curiae brief, submitted by the Ohio State Bar Association and a group of legal academic experts including Professor Jack P. Sahl, supports the position of Defendant-Appellee Basim Barnes before the Ohio Supreme Court. The brief addresses significant constitutional and professional responsibility concerns related to prosecutorial conduct and the integrity of the legal process. Specifically, it examines the potential misuse of judicial and prosecutorial discretion in criminal proceedings and its implications for defendants’ rights, due process, and public trust in the justice system. The amici argue for the protection of procedural fairness, adherence to ethical standards, and restraint in …
Encouraging Healing For Home Health Aides.Pdf,
2020
University of Akron School of Law
Encouraging Healing For Home Health Aides.Pdf, Joann Sahl
Akron Law Faculty Publications
The United States faces a national crisis to provide adequate carefor its aging population. A critical component of this crisis is thenation’s inability to provide enough home health care aides to assistwith important, if not vital, long-term care needs.This Article identifies a labor pool to help resolve this crisis: quali-fied workers with criminal convictions. But home health care aideswith criminal convictions face an inhospitable landscape. Employersin the health care field are risk-averse to hiring these workers.Furthermore, most states’ laws impose permanent employment banson home health aides with criminal convictions.The Article examines the warren of laws used to disqualify homehealth care …
Suspicionless Witness Stops: The New Racial Profiling,
2020
University of Akron
Suspicionless Witness Stops: The New Racial Profiling, Michael Gentithes
Akron Law Faculty Publications
Young men of color in high-crime neighborhoods are surrounded by poverty and crime, yet distrustful of the police who frequently stop, frisk, and arrest them and their friends. Every encounter with the police carries the potential for a new arrest or worse, fostering a culture of fear and distrust of law enforcement. That culture exacerbates the problems facing the officers patrolling these neighborhoods as more crimes go unsolved because witnesses are unwilling to come forward. In the past several decades, officers have responded by using a stop-and-frisk technique of dubious constitutionality to control crime. Despite its disastrous implications for the …
Pandemic Surveillance: The New Predictive Policing,
2020
University of Akron
Pandemic Surveillance: The New Predictive Policing, Michael Gentithes, Harold J. Krent
Akron Law Faculty Publications
In Part I, we examine the growth of predictive policing, which similarly treats some individuals differently based on the likelihood that they will either commit or be the victim of a crime. If such surveillance does not lead to detention, incursion on the right to travel, or other loss of freedom, we believe such efforts to be constitutional, even though not always wise. Use of data to prioritize law enforcement efforts poses no insuperable constitutional obstacles. But deployment of predictive analytics can result in infringement on the right to liberty, as we relate. In Part II, therefore, we apply the …
Felony Disenfranchisement & The Nineteenth Amendment (Symposium),
2020
University of Akron
Felony Disenfranchisement & The Nineteenth Amendment (Symposium), Michael Gentithes
Akron Law Faculty Publications
This Article examines the historical response to those arguments and suggests that they can be applied forcefully in the contemporary debate over felony disenfranchisement. Suffragists raised two arguments in response to coverture-based contentions against women enfranchisement: first, that men simply did not represent women's interests in politics, instead subordinating them ever further both in family structures and the public sphere; and second, that women had something important to add to the political conversation that would be missing as long as they were excluded from the debate. Similarly, felony disenfranchisement laws are based upon the fiction that there is a distinction …
The Case Against Equity In American Contract Law,
2020
Columbia Law School
The Case Against Equity In American Contract Law, Jody S. Kraus, Robert E. Scott
Faculty Scholarship
The American common law of contracts appears to direct courts to decide contract disputes by considering two opposing points of view: the ex ante perspective of the parties’ intent at the time of formation, and the ex post perspective of justice and fairness to the parties at the time of adjudication. Despite the black letter authority for both perspectives, the ex post perspective cannot withstand scrutiny. Contract doctrines taking the ex post perspective – such as the penalty, just compensation, and forfeiture doctrines – were created by equity in the early common law to police against abuses of the then …
Race And Reasonableness In Police Killings,
2020
Columbia Law School
Race And Reasonableness In Police Killings, Jeffrey A. Fagan, Alexis D. Campbell
Faculty Scholarship
Police officers in the United States have killed over 1000 civilians each year since 2013. The constitutional landscape that regulates these encounters defaults to the judgments of the reasonable police officer at the time of a civilian encounter based on the officer’s assessment of whether threats to their safety or the safety of others requires deadly force. As many of these killings have begun to occur under similar circumstances, scholars have renewed a contentious debate on whether police disproportionately use deadly force against African Americans and other nonwhite civilians and whether such killings reflect racial bias. We analyze data on …
Criminal Deterrence: A Review Of The Missing Literature,
2020
Columbia Law School
Criminal Deterrence: A Review Of The Missing Literature, Alex Raskolnikov
Faculty Scholarship
This review of the criminal deterrence literature focuses on the questions that are largely missing from many recent, excellent, comprehensive reviews of that literature, and from the literature itself. By “missing” I mean, first, questions that criminal deterrence scholars have ignored either completely or to a large extent. These questions range from fundamental (the distributional analysis of the criminal justice system), to those hidden in plain sight (economic analysis of misdemeanors), to those that are well-known yet mostly overlooked (the role of positive incentives, offender’s mental state, and celerity of punishment). I also use “missing” to refer to the areas …
In The Shadow Of Shular: Conduct Can Unify The Disjointed Categorical Approaches,
2020
Washington University in St. Louis School of Law
In The Shadow Of Shular: Conduct Can Unify The Disjointed Categorical Approaches, Sheldon Evans
Scholarship@WashULaw
The categorical approach, which is the method federal courts use to ‘categorize’ which state law criminal convictions can trigger an enhanced sentence under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), is one of the most confusing doctrines in criminal sentencing. For thousands of criminal offenders every year, the categorical approach determines whether a previous state law conviction—as defined by the legal elements of the crime—sufficiently matches the elements of the federal crime counterpart that justifies imposing the ACCA’s harsh fifteen-year mandatory minimum sentence. But this elements-based categorical approach has unwittingly undermined one of the most important principles in our determinative sentencing …
Criminal Law In Crisis,
2020
Washington University in St. Louis School of Law
Criminal Law In Crisis, Benjamin Levin
Scholarship@WashULaw
In this Essay, I offer a brief account of how the COVID-19 pandemic lays bare the realities and structural flaws of the carceral state. I provide two primary examples or illustrations, but they are not meant to serve as an exhaustive list. Rather, by highlighting these issues, problems, or (perhaps) features, I mean to suggest that this moment of crisis should serve not just as an opportunity to marshal resources to address the pandemic, but also as a chance to address the harsh realities of the U.S. criminal system. Further, my claim isn’t that criminal law is in some way …
Categorical Nonuniformity,
2020
Washington University in St. Louis School of Law
Categorical Nonuniformity, Sheldon Evans
Scholarship@WashULaw
The categorical approach, which is a method federal courts use to ‘categorize’ which state law criminal convictions can trigger federal sanctions, is one of the most impactful yet misunderstood legal doctrines in criminal and immigration law. For thousands of criminal offenders, the categorical approach determines whether a previous state law conviction—as defined by the legal elements of the crime—sufficiently matches the elements of the federal crime counterpart that justifies imposing harsh federal sentencing enhancements or even deportation for noncitizens. One of the normative goals courts have invoked to uphold this elements-based categorical approach is that it produces nationwide uniformity. Ironically, …
The Lost Promise Of Lambert V. California,
2020
Texas A&M University School of Law
The Lost Promise Of Lambert V. California, Cynthia Alkon
Faculty Scholarship
This Article will start with a brief overview of the Lambert case. It will then discuss the differing views on how to interpret this relatively short case. Next, it will review the cases citing to Lambert that illustrate the narrow approach that courts have taken when applying this case. Finally, it will offer some thoughts on how Lambert could have played a role in preventing some of the excesses of mass incarceration, but failed.
