Criminal Law Commons^™

The Devil's Advocate Also Wears Prada: The Impracticality Of Adr In Counterfeiting Disputes And The Prospect Of Arbitration, Anan Kahari

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

The purpose of this Note is to posit that arbitration, tailored for counterfeiting disputes, could potentially serve as a reliable method for fashion companies to combat counterfeiting. Part II discusses the background of IP rights and the relationship between counterfeiting and fashion. Part III highlights the traditional advantages of ADR and how some of those advantages may become disadvantages when applied to counterfeiting disputes. Lastly, Part IV argues that arbitration can be designed to be applicable to counterfeiting disputes described in this Note.

The Unexpected Scope Of The Cfaa: And How Netflix Users Could Be Committing A Federal Crime, Michael Levy

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review

The Ninth Circuit's broad interpretation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) in United States v. Nosal II criminalizes everyday activities like password sharing, undermining the Act's original purpose to prevent hacking. The court ruled that accessing a computer after authorization has been revoked constitutes a violation, even if the access is for innocuous purposes. This interpretation disproportionately benefits large service providers, allowing them to suppress legitimate user claims and exposing millions of Americans to potential prosecution for common online practices.

The Violence Against Women Act, Implicit Bias, And Judicial Training, Lorena Espino-Piepp

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The note argues that the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) must be amended to include implicit bias training for Family Court judges and staff to address the systemic barriers faced by undocumented Latina immigrant women in accessing justice. These women often face compounded discrimination based on race, ethnicity, and immigration status, which undermines their ability to obtain immigration relief through VAWA protections. The author contends that without such training, the judicial system perpetuates inequities, as judges and court personnel rely on stereotypes that disproportionately harm women of color.

"Dangerous Instruments": A Case Study In Overcriminalization, Chad Flanders, Desiree Austin-Holliday

All Faculty Scholarship

Many states - including Missouri - have provisions that provide greater punishment for some felonies that are committed with, or by the use of, a .. deadly weapon" or "dangerous instrument."1 The definition o f "deadly weapon" tends to be pretty straightforward, usually a list that includes several specific items that just are deadly weapons, such as guns and knives.2 "Dangerous instrument" is deliberately left as a broader, more capacious term - defined not in terms o f a list o f instruments but in terms of those things that could be easily or "readily" used to cause serious physical …

Keeping The Rule Of Law Simple: Comments On Gowder, The Rule Of Law In The Real World, Chad Flanders

All Faculty Scholarship

Let me start by just stating my experience of reading The Rule of Law in the Real World¹ because it will help make sense of the structure of my remarks. The first third of the book: I am utterly convinced, even blown away, by the elegance and persuasiveness of the argument and the analysis; even when there is merely a summary, I am helped and bettered by it. The second third of the book: I am inclined, based on the enormous goodwill generated by the first third of the book to accept-almost uncritically-the historical discussion and the conclusions drawn …

Captured At The Scene: A Proposal For The Admissibility Of Visually Recorded Scene Statements From Domestic Violence Complainants In Western Australia, Benjamin Procopis

Theses : Honours

In 2015, New South Wales introduced a legislative reform termed DVEC, which made admissible as evidence in chief, visually recorded statements from domestic violence complainants. Unlike other pre-recorded evidence, DVEC is captured at the scene of the incident, shortly after the event. The impetus for implementing DVEC was to overcome the issues identified with prosecuting domestic violence offences owing to the power imbalance in the relationship and the vulnerability of the complainant. In Western Australia, visually recorded statements from children and those with mental impairment are presently admissible for the same underpinning reasons. Police prosecutors and defence counsel participated in …

Dangerous Defendants, Sandra G. Mayson

Scholarly Works

Bail reform is gaining momentum nationwide. Reformers aspire to untether pretrial detention from wealth (the ability to post money bail) and condition it instead on statistical risk, particularly the risk that a defendant will commit crime if he remains at liberty pending trial. The bail reform movement holds tremendous promise, but also forces the criminal justice system to confront a difficult question: What statistical risk that a person will commit future crime justifies short-term detention? What about lesser restraints, like GPS monitoring? Although the turn to actuarial risk assessment in the pretrial context has engendered both excitement and concern, the …

Copla: A Transnational Criminal Court For Latin America & The Caribbean, Robert Currie, Jacob Leon

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

States in the Latin American and Caribbean regions have long called for the creation of an independent, international court to prosecute members of transnational organized crime gangs. These organizations not only profit from the illicit traffic in drugs, people and cultural property, but are able to corrupt and undermine the domestic legal systems and judiciaries of the affected states. This paper examines the current proposal for the creation of the "Latin American and Caribbean Criminal Court Against Transnational Organized Crime" (COPLA). It reviews the rationale for creating such a court, examines the main pillars of the current proposal, and suggests …

Facilitators’ Report: A Restorative Review Of The In-Custody Death Of Jason Leblanc, Jennifer Llewellyn, Jacob Macisaac, Heather Mcneil

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This report has been prepared by the process facilitation team made up of: Jennifer Llewellyn, Jake MacIsaac, Heather McNeil. The central parties to the process have reviewed the report for accuracy. The parties committed at the outset of the process to share the facts of what happened in this case and the justice process they undertook together to learn from what happened and to ensure that these lessons contribute to improving the lives of individuals and families in Nova Scotia. As such, this report does not make findings of fact or recommendations. It describes the situation, the parties involved, the …

Can Cyber Harassment Laws Encourage Online Speech?, Jonathon Penney

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Do laws criminalizing online harassment and cyberbullying "chill" online speech? Critics often argue that they do. However, this article discusses findings from a new empirical legal study that suggests, counter-intuitively, that while such legal interventions likely have some dampening effect, they may also facilitate and encourage more speech, expression, and sharing by those who are most often the targets of online harassment: women. Relevant findings on this point from this first-of-its-kind study are set out and discussed along with their implications.

Women And Guns, Elaine Craig

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In Gun Control and Women’s Rights in Context: Reflections of the Applicant on Barbra Schlifer Commemorative Clinic v Canada, Amanda Dale not only provides the reader with an embodied account of law that exemplifies the limits of legal discourse, she also offers a compelling (and disheartening) explication of how and why the Stephen Harper government’s repeal of the long-gun registry threatens the lives of women.

As Dale points out, gun control in Canada is different from that in the United States. Canadian gun control laws are, of course, much more robust. For example, restricted weapons, such as handguns, have been …

Copla: A Transnational Criminal Court For Latin America & The Caribbean, Robert Currie, Jacob Leon

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

States in the Latin American and Caribbean regions have long called for the creation of an independent, international court to prosecute members of transnational organized crime gangs. These organizations not only profit from the illicit traffic in drugs, people and cultural property, but are able to corrupt and undermine the domestic legal systems and judiciaries of the affected states. This paper examines the current proposal for the creation of the "Latin American and Caribbean Criminal Court Against Transnational Organized Crime" (COPLA). It reviews the rationale for creating such a court, examines the main pillars of the current proposal, and suggests …

Understanding The Lagos State Properties Protection Law, 2016, Okanga Ogbu Okanga

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Land is a crucial component of development. This is more so in a place like Lagos State, Nigeria's economic capital, where there is a far greater demand for the asset than nature bestows. The State has for decades endured a damaging form of criminality widely known as land grabbing. This menace manifests itself in various ways, some of which are outlined in this article. The Lagos State Properties Development Law 2016 (“the Law’ or ‘PPL”) aims to curtail unwholesome and unscrupulous land transactions and practices in the State by prescribing strong criminal sanctions against violators. This paper examines the essence …

Judicial Audiences: A Case Study Of Justice David Watt's Literary Judgments, Elaine Craig

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Applicants to the federal judiciary identify three main audiences for their decisions: the involved and affected parties, the public, and the legal profession. This case study examines a set of decisions authored by Justice David Watt of the Ontario Court of Appeal, involving the rape, torture, murder or attempted murder of women, in which he attempts humour or uses puns, parody, stark imagery and highly stylized and colloquial language to introduce the violence, or factual circumstances surrounding the violence, in these cases. It assess these introductions in relation to the audiences judges have identified as important for their decisions. The …

Extradition And Trial Delays: Recent Developments (And Lessons?) From Canada, Laura Ellyson

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Extradition – the formal rendition of criminal fugitives between states – is well-known to be a time-consuming process that often has impacts, minor or major, on the ability of states to complete prosecution in a timely manner. Thus, the extradition process can sometimes be at odds with the right to trial within a reasonable time, which is part of the overall package of fair trial rights enshrined in international human rights law. In Canada, this right is implemented by paragraph 11(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In recent years Canadian courts have developed a series of principles …

Navigating The Federal Sentencing Guidelines: Considerations Of Equitable Impact After United States V. Trinidad, Jonathan Petree

Journal of Air Law and Commerce

No abstract provided.

La Saisie De Données Informatiques En Droit Criminel Canadien, Laura Ellyson

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Les implications de l’intelligence artificielle sont complexes lorsqu’il est question de responsabilité criminelle. En effet, même avec un exemple simple tel que les voitures autonomes, il n’est pas évident de déterminer comment le droit criminel pourrait répondre aux problèmes soulevés par ces nouvelles technologies. Dans ce cas précis, serait-ce l’entreprise fabriquant la voiture qui serait respon- sable en cas de conduite dangereuse ou de délit de fuite, l’individu se trouvant derrière le volant au moment des faits ou plutôt le véhicule lui-même ? Bien que pouvant sembler futuristes ou farfelues, ces questions se retrouveront devant les tribunaux probablement bien plus …

Pluralism In International Criminal Procedure, Jenia I. Turner

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Over the last two decades, international criminal procedure has become a recognized body of law, with textbooks, treatises, and law review articles discussing its rules and principles and theorizing its goals and methods. The term refers to the procedures used at the international criminal courts and tribunals created to address some of the most serious offenses, such as genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. Some of these courts are fully international, like the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), and the permanent International Criminal Court (ICC). Others are “hybrid courts,” …

Invisible Bars: Adapting The Crime Of False Imprisonment To Better Address Coercive Control And Domestic Violence In Tennessee, Alexandra M. Ortiz

Vanderbilt Law Review

On average, three or more women are murdered by their intimate partners in the United States every day. Despite the now well-known correlation between coercive control-the strategic use of oppressive behavior to control primarily female partners-and intimate partner homicide, most states continue to focus their criminal domestic violence laws solely on physical violence. As a result, state laws often fail to protect victims from future and escalating violence. Focusing on Tennessee law and drawing from the work of Evan Stark as well as the United Kingdom's Serious Crime Act of 2015, this Note proposes adapting the preexisting crime of false …

Prosecutors Matter: A Response To Bellin’S Review Of Locked In, John P. Pfaff

Michigan Law Review Online

In this year's Book Review issue, Jeffrey Bellin reviews my book, Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform, and he finds much to disagree with. I appreciate the editors of the Law Review providing me with the opportunity to correct a significant error he makes when discussing some of my data. In the book, I use data from the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) to show that prosecutors filed increasingly more felony cases over the 1990s and 2000s, even as crime fell. Bellin makes two primary claims about how I used …