Legal Studies Commons^™

Impact Of The Csi Effect And Authority Bias On Juror Decisions, Meredith Scruggs

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The recent increase in number of crime drama television shows raises the issue that these fictional portrayals may impact real proceedings in the justice system. This phenomenon has become known as the CSI effect. This includes the concept of authority bias, by which laypeople place higher value on information provided by those that they perceive to be in positions of authority. 289 college students completed a survey comparing their likelihood to match an unknown fingerprint to a suspect’s, after actors portraying evidence technicians either confirm the match or provide no conclusion. Results showed no significant interaction between the confirmation condition …

Why Prison Dental Care Matters: Legal, Policy, And Practical Concerns, Anne S. Douds, Eilenn M. Ahlin, Nicholas S. Fiore, Nicholas J. Barrish

Public Policy Faculty Publications

Even when controlling for demographic characteristics, prisoners are far more likely than people in the general population to suffer from periodontal disease, to have unresolved oral health issues, to have decayed teeth, and/or to be missing teeth. Correlates of poor oral health, such as poor nutrition and smoking, are more prevalent among people of lower socioeconomic status, and this same population is at a higher risk than others for offending and incarceration. For some, prison is the only time in their adult lives when they will have seen a dentist. There are few free dental clinics in communities, regardless of …

Reviewing Constitutionality Of Time Spent On Death Row Under Eighth Amendment Jurisprudence, Angie Richardson

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Under the Eighth Amendment, the death penalty is in and of itself not considered cruel and unusual punishment. Although the death penalty is frequently attacked for the numerous death row exonerations (more than 150 in the United States alone), lack of evidence supporting the idea that the death penalty deters crime, and marginalized groups being more likely to receive this sentencing, the death penalty still remains on solid constitutional ground. In fact, the arguments that pose the biggest threat to the constitutionality of the death penalty tend to revolve around the potential risk of substantial pain while executing an offender, …

A Longitudinal Examination Of Risk Factors, Antisocial Outcomes, And Transition Patterns Across Bully Profiles, Sara Bryson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

The current research focuses on the risk factors for bully profiles, antisocial behavior across profiles, and patterns of bullying behavior over the span of four school years. The sample was comprised of 1,817 middle school students from seven school districts. Latent profile analysis, multivariate regression techniques, and latent transition analysis were used to meet the five objectives of this study: 1) identify unique subgroups of youth based on responses to different bully experiences, 2) determine similarities and differences in risk factors that are associated with bully experiences, 3) examine antisocial behavior across identified bully profiles, 4) determine if membership in …

The Cyberworld And Human Trafficking: A Double-Edged Sword, Bridget Dukes

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

This report examines the advantages and disadvantages associated with the growth of technology within the United States, specifically how technology, digital literacy, and cybersecurity can be used to both facilitate and combat sex trafficking and sexual exploitation on the Internet. The first part of the report addresses trafficking statistics in the United States, as well as legal intervention the country has taken against this epidemic, including an explanation of the Trafficking Victims Prevention Act and the FOSTA-SESTA bill. The second part of the report addresses the online recruitment of buyers and sellers, as well as how the use of open-source …

Reproductive Justice Disrupted: Mass Incarceration As A Driver Of Reproductive Oppression, Crystal M. Hayes, Carolyn B. Sufrin, Jamila B. Perritt

School of Social Work Faculty Publications

We describe how mass incarceration directly undermines the core values of reproductive justice and how this affects incarcerated and nonincarcerated women.

Mass incarceration, by its very nature, compromises and undermines bodily autonomy and the capacity for incarcerated people to make decisions about their reproductive well being and bodies; this is done through institutionalized racism and is disproportionately done to the bodies of women of color. This violates the most basic tenets of reproductive justice—the right to have a child, not to have a child, and to parent the children you have with dignity and in safety.

By undermining motherhood and …

The Undeserving Rich: Can They Be Redeemed? Policy Options For Curbing Illegal Wealth, James F. Gilsinan, James E. Fisher, Muhammad Islam, Henry Ordower, Wassim Shahin

All Faculty Scholarship

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to examine the efficacy of various policy options for curbing the accumulation of illegal wealth and suggest ways to close the increasing wealth inequality gap.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper begins with a historical/literary analysis of the place of wealth in American Society and the ambivalent cultural attitudes toward wealth. Different policy approaches that seek to limit wealth inequality and the illegal accumulation of wealth are then examined. Finally, the current policy climate in the USA is reviewed to determine the likelihood of meaningful reform.

Findings – In Europe, the BASEL accords show …

Judging Risk, Brandon L. Garrett, John Monahan

Faculty Scholarship

Risk assessment plays an increasingly pervasive role in criminal justice in the United States at all stages of the process, from policing, to pre-trial, sentencing, corrections, and during parole. As efforts to reduce incarceration have led to adoption of risk-assessment tools, critics have begun to ask whether various instruments in use are valid and whether they might reinforce rather than reduce bias in criminal justice outcomes. Such work has neglected how decisionmakers use risk-assessment in practice. In this Article, we examine in detail the judging of risk assessment and we study why decisionmakers so often fail to consistently use such …

The Costs And Benefits Of Forensics, Brandon L. Garrett

Faculty Scholarship

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously wrote that states can be laboratories for experimentation in law and policy. Disappointingly, however, the actual laboratories that states and local governments run are not a home for experimentation. We do not have adequate information about either the costs or the benefits of forensic testing or allocation of resources. Increased spending and expansion of crime laboratories has perversely accompanied growing backlogs. Poor quality control has resulted in a series of audits and even closures of crime laboratories. In response to these problems, however, some laboratories and some entire states have developed new approaches toward …

The Wandering Officer, Ben Grunwald, John Rappaport

Faculty Scholarship

“Wandering officers” are law-enforcement officers fired by one department, sometimes for serious misconduct, who then find work at another agency. Policing experts hold disparate views about the extent and character of the wandering-officer phenomenon. Some insist that wandering officers are everywhere—possibly increasingly so—and that they’re dangerous. Others, however, maintain that critics cherry-pick rare and egregious anecdotes that distort broader realities. In the absence of systematic data, we simply do not know how common wandering officers are or how much of a threat they pose, nor can we know whether and how to address the issue through policy reform.

In this …

Anti-Lgbtq Hate: An Analysis Of Situational Variables, Jill Kehoe

Publications and Research

The current study aimed to augment the scant body of literature on anti-LGBTQ hate by providing an in-depth examination of anti-LGBTQ hate incident situational characteristics including offender substance use, number of offenders, crime location, and victim-offender relationship. Analysis of situational dynamic variables provided support for the notion that anti-LGBTQ hate is a distinct type of criminal incident. Significantly increased levels of offender substance use, crimes perpetrated by multiple offenders, crimes perpetrated by acquaintances, and crimes taking place in open spaces substantiates the theory that anti-LGBTQ hate is qualitatively unique, typified by different characteristics than other forms of crime. The data …

Mandatory, Fast, And Fair: Case Outcomes And Procedural Justice In A Family Drug Court, Melanie Fessinger, Katherine Hazen, Jamie Bahm, Jennie Cole-Mossman, Roger Heideman, Eve Brank

Center on Children, Families, and the Law: Faculty Publications

Objectives: Problem-solving courts are traditionally voluntary in nature to promote procedural justice and to advance therapeutic jurisprudence. The Family Treatment Drug Court (FTDC) in Lancaster County, Nebraska, is a mandatory dependency court for families with allegations of child abuse or neglect related to substance use. We conducted a program evaluation examining parents’ case outcomes and perceptions of procedural justice to examine whether a mandatory problem-solving court could replicate the positive outcomes of problem-solving courts. Methods: We employed a quasi-experimental design that compared FTDC parents to traditional dependency court parents (control parents). We examined court records to gather court orders, compliance …

Conceptualizing The Unspeakable: A Conceptual Metaphor Theory Analysis Of Sexual Assault Trauma In Creative Nonfiction, Ariana Ciamaricone

West Chester University Master’s Theses

This paper explores the use of conceptual metaphors (CMs) in two works of creative nonfiction, namely Laurie Halse Anderson’s (2019) Shout and Elissa Washuta’s (2014) My Body is a Book of Rules. Anderson’s (2019) poetic memoir centers on her experiences with sexual assault throughout her childhood and the process of writing her young adult novel Speak (1999). Washuta (2014) writes on her experiences with rape and mental illness via prose. Both memoirs detail their authors’ reckoning with the experience of sexual assault, and this paper investigates how trauma narratives attempt to “resolve what cannot be resolved, to generate meaning, …

Salary History And The Equal Pay Act: An Argument For The Adoption Of “Reckless Discrimination” As A Theory Of Liability, Kate Vandenberg

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

The Equal Pay Act (EPA) purports to prohibit employers from paying female employees less than male employees with similar qualifications; however, the affirmative defenses provided in the EPA are loopholes that perpetuate the gender pay gap. In particular, the fourth affirmative defense allows for wage differentials based on a “factor other than sex.” Many federal circuits have read this defense broadly to include wage differentials based on salary history. That is, an employer can pay a female employee less than her male counterparts because she was paid less by her previous employer. While salary history was once viewed as an …

Stepping Into The Shoes Of The Department Of Justice: The Unusual, Necessary, And Hopeful Path The Illinois Attorney General Took To Require Police Reform In Chicago, Lisa Madigan, Cara Hendrickson, Karyn L. Bass Ehler

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.

A Class Action Lawsuit For The Right To A Minimum Education In Detroit, Carter G. Phillips

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.

Necessary And Convenient: The Effect Of Commerce And Necessary And Proper Clause Jurisprudence, Janis Olkowicz

Honors Undergraduate Theses

While reading a news article about the upcoming presidential election one day, I noticed a trend. The vast majority of political articles discuss what the federal government should do, but almost never cover what it could do. In elementary school, American children are taught that the Constitution, a 4,543-word document, is the place from which all federal power is derived; but the Constitution says nothing about the regulation of travel, narcotics, or the vast majority of other areas that affect the way we live our daily lives, so where does that power come from? After some preliminary research, I discovered …

Social Learning Theory And Digital Piracy: Explaining Uploading Behaviors Of Digital Pirates, Cydney J. Lowenstein

Theses and Dissertations

Digital piracy has received significant attention in criminological research but almost no studies have explored illegal uploading and how it may differ from illegal downloading. It is important to examine what theories can explain illegal uploading behaviors and their related factors to develop more effective policies to address digital piracy. This dissertation examined whether Akers’ (1998) social learning theory could explain engagement in digital piracy, both illegal downloading and uploading behavior. Additionally, this research examined the relationship between reciprocity and digital piracy. Questionnaires were administered to 398 university students and 315 visitors to several online communities using a combination of …

In Defense Of The Cy-Pres-Only Class Action, Robert G. Bone

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Cy pres is frequently used to dispose of class action settlement funds, yet it is one of the most controversial aspects of class action practice. Perhaps the most contested use of cy pres is what I call the “cy-pres-only class action”: a settlement class action in which the judge certifies a class and approves a settlement that expressly provides for a third-party charity to receive all the settlement funds. In these cases, the judge exercises her judicial power to enable a lawsuit that compensates a third party who does not have legal rights at stake and does so without providing …

Human Trafficking Definitions To Eradication In Virginia: A Legislative Analysis, Hannah Kay Byrum

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The gap between the reality of human trafficking in Virginia and the necessary legislative systems, remedies, and support afforded to victims, is wide. My research arose from my experience navigating this incongruity in Virginia law and its impacts, through a delegate’s office, the office of a United States Senator, and a government relations firm. This research articulates the significant, material legislative initiatives required in Virginia’s human trafficking legislative landscape. In surveying this landscape, this research articulates where incongruences ex-unified language and legislative definitions, exist in key areas. This research addresses the need for expansion on the parameters to which victims …