Criminal Law Commons^™

Recalibrating Risk Under Dobbs, Yvonne Lindgren, Michelle Oberman

Fordham Law Review

In response to mounting evidence of the devastating harms patients have experienced under abortion bans, abortion opponents and the Supreme Court of Texas have argued that the bans are clear but that doctors are willfully refusing to provide care. Instead of reforming the bans, they argue that doctors should be sued in medical malpractice for their failure to meet the standard of care. This Article interrogates that claim, investigating whether the crisis in reproductive healthcare that has resulted from delayed and denied care can be remedied by suing doctors. Specifically, can medical malpractice litigation provide guardrails against the erosion in …

Killing Through Their Kids, Dyllan Moreno Taxman

William & Mary Law Review

In early 2024, James and Jennifer Crumbley were sentenced to over a decade in prison after their son, Ethan, shot and killed four classmates at Oxford High School in Michigan. The Crumbley parents incurred manslaughter liability by ignoring Ethan’s deteriorating mental state, gifting him the murder weapon, and failing to act on concerns about Ethan’s behavior on the day of the shooting. The Crumbleys were the first parents of a school shooter to be convicted of a homicide in American history. This Article suggests they will be far from the last. Indeed, less than one year after the Crumbley convictions, …

Anti-Holistic Algorithms, Itay Ravid

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Article presents a critical tension in modern criminal justice between holistic criminal justice aspirations and algorithmic governance: whether the holistic rehabilitation and reintegration project can survive technological determinism. As criminal legal systems embrace algorithmic risk assessment tools as solutions to address recidivism, this Article reveals a profound epistemological concern: the fundamental incompatibility between viewing offenders as whole persons capable of transformation and reducing them to statistical probabilities within computational matrices. By doing so, it demonstrates how algorithmic mediation fundamentally alters and potentially destroys the holistic message itself.

In establishing this argument, the Article advances in two stages. It first …

Justice Through Proximity: Theoretical Foundations And Practical Applications Of Collaborative Justice, Federica Coppola, Jarrell E. Daniels

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Article introduces a collaborative justice framework as a model for addressing crime and reimagining approaches to policymaking and legal education. The framework emphasizes the prevention and resolution of criminal matters through holistic strategies that confront the structural and social determinants of crime and victimization including poverty, systemic inequality, trauma, unjust policies, and institutional neglect while also promoting broader systemic change. At its core is the active engagement between legal system actors especially decisionmakers such as judges, prosecutors, and policymakers and legal system impacted individuals and communities, fostering a more equitable distribution of decisionmaking power between justice providers and justice …

Plan-B Activist Defense: Defending Animal-Rights Activists In Courtrooms Hostile To Political Argumentation, Hadar Aviram

Vanderbilt Law Review

In recent years, several animal rights activists faced criminal charges for rescuing animals from factory farms. The standard legal approach in these cases has been relying on the necessity defense, which has a long history in cases of civil disobedience and ideologically driven crime. Animal law scholarship on this topic tends to focus on explaining why the defense applies to open rescue. However, as recent trials have demonstrated, actual courtrooms in rural counties tend to be hostile to the necessity defense, and judges can and do rely on Supreme Court precedent to keep it out of the courtroom.

This Article's …

“Justice Of Our Own”: Defining Success At The Red Hook Community Justice Center, Hadar Dancig-Rosenberg, Peter Dixon

Vanderbilt Law Review

This study examines how success is defined at the Red Hook Community Justice Center in Brooklyn, NYC, through a participatory, community centered lens. Moving beyond standard metrics, it articulates a locally grounded vision of success centered on empowerment, support, systemic accountability, and community trust. Drawing on the Everyday Peace Indicators approach, we convened nine focus groups and two public voting sessions with neighborhood residents, justice professionals, youth, former defendants, and family members. Participants generated and ranked 72 indicators, which we thematically clustered into six key categories reflecting the diverse contexts in which participants perceived the Center's impact: (1) rehabilitation and …

Beyond Autonomy: Rethinking Deception In Sexual Assault Law, Marie Manikis

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Article focuses on recent developments in Britain in which courts have recognised gender deception as a sexual assault by using an autonomy based argument to define deception/fraud that vitiates consent in sexual offences. This Article argues against the defensibility of a framework that criminalizes deception on the basis of an ill defined autonomist based understanding as opposed to a more restrictive standard. It proposes that any adopted standard should incorporate social context and be reflexive of the ways that the state has contributed to these contexts, namely the social conditions under which the deceit takes place as well as …

A Fear About Holistic Justice, Farhang Heydari

Vanderbilt Law Review

It is a great irony of our criminal system that the enforcement of our criminal laws has long had aspects of lawlessness. Although criminal statutes define impermissible conduct by members of the public, they generally offer little guidance for state actors enforcing them.' Officers can choose which offenders to cite or arrest and which to let go. Prosecutors can choose which charges to pursue and what pleas to offer. Executives select whom to pardon and how to allocate enforcement resources. Some see the discretion vested in government actors as a virtue-- a safety valve in a system that punishes too …

Judicial Review Of Prosecutorial Discretion: Missed Opportunities, Benjamin Joshua Ong

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Director of Public Prosecutions v Durham (also called Bouye), decd and others [2024] UKPC 21; [2024] 1 W.L.R. 3900 involved an application for judicial review of a decision to prosecute. The Privy Council rightly refused that application on the ground that the evidence did not disclose a ground for judicial review, and the criminal trial would be the more appropriate forum to investigate any further evidence. Unfortunately, the Privy Council missed several opportunities to address various lingering problems with the law on judicial review of prosecutorial decisions.

Plan-B Activist Defense: Defending Animal-Rights Activists In Courtrooms Hostile To Political Argumentation, Hadar Aviram

Faculty Scholarship

In recent years, several animal rights activists faced criminal charges for rescuing animals from factory farms. The standard legal approach in these cases has been relying on the necessity defense, which has a long history in cases of civil disobedience and ideologically driven crime. Animal law scholarship on this topic tends to focus on explaining why the defense applies to open rescue. However, as recent trials have demonstrated, actual courtrooms in rural counties tend to be hostile to the necessity defense, and judges can and do rely on Supreme Court precedent to keep it out of the courtroom.

This Article's …

Anti-Holistic Algorithms, Itay Ravid

Faculty Publications

This Article presents a critical tension in modern criminal justice between holistic criminal-justice aspirations and algorithmic governance: whether the holistic rehabilitation and reintegration project can survive technological determinism. As criminal legal systems embrace algorithmic risk- assessment tools as solutions to address recidivism, this Article reveals a profound epistemological concern: the fundamental incompatibility between viewing offenders as “whole persons” capable of transformation and reducing them to statistical probabilities within computational matrices. By doing so, it demonstrates how algorithmic mediation fundamentally alters—and potentially destroys—the holistic message itself.

In establishing this argument, the Article advances in two stages. It first identifies the development …

Assembly-Line Public Defense, David S. Abrams, Priyanka Goonetilleke

Faculty Scholarship

Each year, millions of Americans rely on public defenders to fulfill their Sixth Amendment right to counsel. Despite being the linchpin of the criminal justice system, public defense remains both underfunded and understudied. This Article provides empirical analysis to contribute to a critical question: How should public defender systems be structured?

Criminal justice advocates, scholars, and the American Bar Association strongly favor vertical representation in public defense. Under this model, a single public defender represents a defendant throughout their case, from their initial appearance through sentencing. The alternative approach—horizontal representation—operates like an assembly line: Different attorneys handle each stage of …

Drug-Based Coercion And Sex Trafficking: Bridging The Legal Disconnect, Vanessa Bouché, Madeleine Bailey

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Flesh Markets: Sex Trafficking, Opioids, And The Legal Process To Eradicate The Demand, Blanche Bong Cook

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Living Property, Joseph William Singer

Seattle University Law Review

The Supreme Court has increasingly defined property rights that are per se exempt from regulation in the absence of compensation, most recently in Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid (2021) and Tyler v. Hennepin County (2023). The Court claims that it can identify property rights that are categorically protected from regulation by reference to history, tradition, and precedent. Yet this approach is oddly ahistorical; it is inconsistent with the fact that property law changed dramatically over U.S. history, as well as varying tremendously among the states. It is also inconsistent with the historical context of the Founding era. At that time, …

Table Of Contents

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

The Roots Of Credit Inequality, Andrea Freeman

Seattle University Law Review

Debt oppression began before the United States became a country. Settlers enslaved Africans and Indigenous people, treating them as property that they could buy and sell for their economic and personal benefit. When enslavement became illegal, new economic systems and laws that included sharecropping, Black Codes, and Jim Crow kept Black people in servitude. Laws that prohibited enslaved people from owning property or selling goods to white people evolved into restrictions on Black people’s occupations and market participation, both formal and informal. When Black entrepreneurs overcame these obstacles and built wealth within Black business enclaves, white people enforced their racist …

“A Plain Denial”: Reclaiming Equal Protection In American Juvenile Law, Addie C. Rolnick, David S. Tanenhaus, Justin Iverson, Danielle L. Silvestri

Seattle University Law Review

Juvenile courts are based on the premise that children are different from adults and should therefore be treated differently. Children may be treated more informally by courts, punished for different purposes, and brought before the court for different behaviors. Since In re Gault, the Supreme Court has been clear that there are limits to how different juvenile courts can be. Juveniles are entitled to many of the same procedural protections as adult criminal defendants, although the Court has preserved some procedural differences where it has determined that their benefit is outweighed by the need to preserve the informality, flexibility, …

Mandating Fluoride: A Constitutional Exercise Of Police Power, Anita Jahangiri

Seattle University Law Review

This Note addresses the ongoing debate over fluoridation: the regulation of fluoride levels in public water systems. Extensive research indicates fluoridation, when regulated at the recommended concentration, is both safe and highly effective in preventing dental caries. Better known as cavities, dental caries is a preventable yet widespread health issue that disproportionately affects low-income populations. Reducing dental health disparities among economic classes is a pressing public health issue. Fluoridation is not merely a policy option, but a critical, proven tool to address such disparities and uphold the collective welfare of Washingtonians. This Note focuses on fluoridation as a public health …

Neurodiversity In The Courtroom: Expanding Jury Service Accessibility Beyond Physical Disability, Samantha L. Mabe

Seattle University Law Review

The Americans with Disabilities Act has required equal access to jury service for decades; however, efforts to accommodate jurors with disabilities have been slow to develop beyond some minor accommodations for physical disabilities. While neurodivergent people frequently struggle to navigate a world catered toward neurotypical people, jury service remains inaccessible for many neurodivergent people who need accommodations to attend trial and engage in jury deliberations. If courts and advocates do not consider how to develop accommodations to secure the service of neurodivergent jurors, they will miss out on the unique skillsets that neurodivergent people can bring to resolving disputes.

Disabled …