Criminal Law Commons^™

Compensating Victims Of Crime: Individual Responsibility And Governmental Compensation Plans, Maine Law Review

Maine Law Review

During the last decade, legal scholars, criminologists, and sociologists have extensively discussed proposals for the compensation of injured victims of crime. The scholarly debate will, in all likelihood, soon come to fruition in the form of comprehensive federal legislation designed to provide an orderly and uniform governmental remedy for persons suffering losses as a result of criminally inflicted personal injury. The years following the widespread adoption of compensation programs will be crucial in the development of an effective and therapeutic system of criminal justice. As criminal sanctions are directed more toward reformation than punishment, and as compensation to victims is …

Due Process And Supremacy As Foundations For The Adequacy Rule: The Remains Of Federalism After Wilbur V. Mullaney, Maine Law Review

Maine Law Review

Stillman E. Wilbur, Jr., was found guilty of murder by a jury in a Maine Superior Court and appealed, contending that the trial judge's instructions violated due process. In essence, the trial court instructed the jury that if it were satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that Wilbur had committed a voluntary and intentional killing, malice aforethought was presumed, and therefore, the defendant would be guilty of murder unless he established by a preponderance of the evidence that he had killed in the heat of passion upon sudden provocation, in which case the jury could find him guilty of manslaughter. The …

Law School News: Rising Leaders In Justice: Celebrating Rwu Law's Class Of 2025 Honorees 05-07-2025, Jane Govednik

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Pretrial Decision-Making In Brazil Under Inter-American Human Rights Law, Thiago Nascimento Dos Reis

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

In recent decades, pretrial detention has been a key contributor to Brazil’s mass incarceration. This is true, despite domestic and international norms limiting pretrial detention to exceptional circumstances and mounting evidence linking it to worse outcomes for arrestees in their criminal proceedings and post-release life prospects. As a longitudinal multivariate pretrial research in Brazil, this Article investigates the key mechanisms and factors that explain pretrial detention in relation to inter-American human rights standards. This Article conducts a quantitative case study of the first one hundred days of detention for all 2,158 non-confidential flagrant arrests in the first eight months of …

No Lawyer, No Jail: A Critical Case Study Of Pragmatism And The Flaws Of “Purposeful” Decision Making In Argersinger V. Hamlin, Alisa Smith, Sarah K. Stice

Seattle University Law Review

By releasing conference notes and internal communications, Supreme Court Justices provide insight into the otherwise private decisionmaking process, shedding light on how case outcomes and legal reasoning are framed and negotiated. The watershed case of Argersinger v. Hamlin (1972) extended the constitutional right to counsel to some, but not all, misdemeanor defendants. The case was argued twice, and the Court relied on empirical and authoritative sources to answer complex and practical questions about requiring counsel. This case study employs critical discourse analysis to uncover what influenced the Justices’ decisions and how they framed, shaped, and constructed social realities to foreground …

Volume 48 Masthead, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 48 Masthead

The Race To Erase: Destruction Of Government Documents Undermines Freedom-Of-Information Laws, Frank D. Lomonte

Seattle University Law Review

In August 2019, reporters with Chattanooga’s daily newspaper, the Times Free Press, filed what seemed to be a routine request for access to emails and other public records held by their local county government. The seemingly unremarkable request set the newspaper’s staff on a months-long journey of unpleasant surprises. The first was a demand to pay the county $717 in advance before being allowed to inspect the documents. The second was that—during prolonged haggling over the fee assessment— the county attorney’s office simply destroyed almost all of the disputed records. Third, and most glaringly, the journalists discovered that Tennessee law …

When You’Re Arrested For A Felony In Seattle, You’Ll Meet Me., Austin Field

Seattle University Law Review

In this Essay, Austin Field, a practicing public defender, uses a first-person perspective to describe what it is like to meet a criminal defendant for the first time. He explains the process from start to finish, detailing everything from the way he introduces himself to how bail works.

"I’ll ask you for your name. Most of the time, you tell me. I check your name against my list. On any given day I’m supposed to interview between five and fifteen people. I have a lot of questions for you. We only have about ten minutes."

The Public Square In A Private-Property Obsessed Country: What New York City’S Pops Regulations Get Right And Why Other Cities Should (Mostly) Copy Them, Carson Mcgregor

Seattle University Law Review

When New York City (NYC) was first becoming the metropolitan monolith it is today, it had a problem: the city streets were chock full of skyscrapers, and sunlight, air, and usable open space were at a premium. In response, the City promulgated its first Privately Owned Public Spaces (POPS) regulations, which allowed developers to build skyward in exchange for providing public space on the street level. Unfortunately, in July of 2023, the New York Times (NYT) discovered that New Yorkers received only a fraction of what they were promised. Building owners received billions of dollars’ worth of added floor space, …

Intellectual Property Or Modern Folklore? The Problem With Open Gaming Licenses In Tabletop Gaming, Rosie Midget

Seattle University Law Review

This Note addresses how courts and legislatures should address “Open Gaming Licenses” commonly attached to tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs), which game publishers use to promote a false image of accessibility—misleading consumers and building goodwill from the misunderstanding. Part I discusses what TTRPGs are, including the defining features of the hobby and culture surrounding it, as well as the unique interplay between publishers and players. Part II explores the question of which elements in a TTRPG system may be subject to copyright protection. Part III examines these elements in practice using Wizards of the Coast’s Dungeons and Dragons TTRPG as a …

Modern Day Colonialism Through HawaiʻI’S Quiet Title And Partition Laws, Cheyann Fujii

Seattle University Law Review

This Note will attempt to highlight important aspects of Hawaiian history to provide readers with a clear picture on how Native Hawaiians are still impacted by colonialism, specifically when plaintiffs bring a quiet title or partition action against Native Hawaiian owners of kuleana lands. Before colonization, the concept of private land ownership did not exist in Hawai‘i, and Native Hawaiians adopted a feudal system by dividing land into geographical areas. Missionaries and businessmen brought Western ideas to Hawai‘i and influenced legislation such as the Great Māhele and the Kuleana Land Act of 1850, which solidified the concept of private property. …

Data Advantage And Merger Review: Can Entrenchment Theory Reform Antitrust Enforcement?, Shin-Ru Cheng

Seattle University Law Review

A merger involving giant digital companies is likely to dampen competition, as it allows those companies to combine and control data access, enabling them to entrench their dominant positions in relevant markets and extend those positions into related markets. While competition law in many jurisdictions aims to prohibit mergers that may substantially lessen competition or create a monopoly, arguably the review of digital mergers is failing because antitrust agencies lack an effective approach to identify data-generated anticompetitive harms. This Article demonstrates that entrenchment theory, recently reintroduced in the 2023 U.S. Merger Guidelines, would help reform the process of antitrust enforcement. …

Defining Deference: Impacts Of Abandoning Chevron On Emerging Technology Governance And Administrative Law, R. Aubrey Davis Iii

Seattle University Law Review

Emerging technologies, particularly Artificial Intelligence (AI), often lead to unforeseen legal outcomes. Notable abuses in areas such as facial recognition, employment bias, and housing discrimination are well known. However, legislative responses to these issues either have been largely reactive or there has been no legislative response at all. In lieu of legislation, agencies have sought to fill the gap. For example, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently proposed a rule mandating voter notification for all AI-generated political phone calls citing the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) of 1991 as authority. However, the TCPA was originally passed to curtail telemarketing, not …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Caution: Potholes In E-Scooter Data Collection, Dakota Rakestraw

Seattle University Law Review

Lime scooters keep ending up in major waterways in Washington state metro areas, a testament to the ubiquity of e-scooters in the metropolitan landscape. How they get there is unclear. Why they get there is even murkier. Perhaps the answer lies in the implications of modern geolocation data collection through e-scooters and gaps in current data collection regulation curbing individual liberties.

Since September 2020, electric scooters have run Seattle’s streets and have dramatically overtaken ridesharing bike trips. For example, from September 2020 to September 2021, there were about 1.4 million scooter and bike trips with September 2021 seeing 300,000 scooter …

Machinists Preemption In The New Administrative Law, Andrew J. Ziaja

Seattle University Law Review

This Article assesses Machinists preemption—a labor-specific form of implied field preemption—while freshly considering implications both for and of new developments in administrative law. The radical transformation of administrative law in the Supreme Court, particularly its newfound emphasis on clear-statement rules, provides opportunities to reconsider the Machinists rationale. Aligning with scholars who have called to question the doctrine’s “ossifying” influence on labor and employment policy, it argues that the modern-day version of Machinists preemption clashes with the Supreme Court’s newly constrained view of delegated power and its differing conceptions of the major questions doctrine.

On the other hand, Machinists preemption might …

Inovasi Kolaboratif Dalam Pembentukan Peraturan Perundang-Undangan: Optimalisasi Teknologi Untuk Meningkatkan Partisipasi Publik Dalam Legislasi, Hermawan Prasojo

Jurnal Hukum & Pembangunan

Meaningful public participation in the legislative process in Indonesia is a fundamental element in fostering an inclusive and transparent democracy. Despite the legal mandate for public involvement, as outlined in Law No. 13 of 2022 and Constitutional Court Decision No. 82/PUU-XXI/2023, such participation often remains formalistic and limited in practice. This article highlights the potential of digital technology, particularly the concept of CrowdLaw, as an alternative approach to enhancing public engagement. Case studies from Estonia, Iceland, and Brazil demonstrate that digital participation can effectively increase public involvement and improve the quality of legislative outcomes. With sufficient infrastructure and improved …

Parenting Under Siege: Reckoning With Coercive Control, Courtney Cross, Gillian Chadwick

Connecticut Law Review

Coercive control is a pervasive form of domestic violence in which one partner engages in a prolonged and multifaceted campaign of abuse in order to gain and maintain dominance over the other partner. While some coercively controlling partners employ physical violence to ensure compliance with their demands, others use exclusively non-violent tactics. In co-parenting relationships, coercive control not only inflicts severe harm on the targeted parent but also affects children as co-victims of both direct and indirect abuse. As a result, co-victim children suffer significant emotional, developmental, and social harm, and adverse health outcomes, even in the absence of physical …

Building Layered Defenses To Reduce Illegal Gun Violence, Samuel Kan

Faculty Scholarship

This article examines a multifaceted approach to reducing illegal gun violence in the United States through the implementation of layered defense strategies. While acknowledging the constitutional protections afforded by the Second Amendment, the author argues that targeted legislative and community-based interventions can effectively reduce gun violence without infringing on lawful gun ownership rights. The analysis explores several key defensive measures, including extreme risk laws (risk protection orders), which allow for temporary firearm removal from individuals posing credible threats to themselves or others—a practice recently upheld by the Supreme Court in United States v. Rahimi. The article further examines the constitutional …

Addiction In The Prison System: Recidivism And Alternatives, Daniel R. Bowers

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The United States criminal justice system has the highest number of incarcerated individuals in the world, with nearly 2 million people currently being behind bars, and around 7.5 million arrests per year according to the most recent available statistics. A key factor in this is addiction, specifically substance use disorders. Between 58% to 68% of adults arrested are addicted to one or more substances, with 68% of drug involved individuals being rearrested within three years of being released. This recidivism rate is incredibly high, and when combined with current prison and jail overcrowding, has created massive problems for the United …