Legal Studies Commons^™

Gender Bias As The Norm In The Legal Profession: It's Still A [White] Man's Game, Kimberly Jade Norwood

Scholarship@WashULaw

Women consistently represent over fifty percent of entering law school classes, and one-third of all lawyers in the United States. As more women go to law school and practice as attorneys, two major impediments prevent women from climbing hierarchical ladders in the legal profession. This article examines gender and racially gendered bias in the legal profession, including law schools. It argues that until the existing structure is dismantled, women will continue to face gender and racially gendered bias in the legal profession.

Reconstructing Racially Polarized Voting, Travis Crum

Scholarship@WashULaw

Racially polarized voting makes minorities more vulnerable to discriminatory changes in election laws and therefore implicates nearly every voting rights doctrine. In Thornburg v. Gingles, the Supreme Court held that racially polarized voting is a necessary—but not a sufficient—condition for a vote dilution claim under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The Court, however, has recently questioned the propriety of recognizing the existence of racially polarized voting. This colorblind approach threatens not only the Gingles factors but also Section 2’s constitutionality.

The Court treats racially polarized voting as a modern phenomenon. But the relevant starting point is the 1860s, …

Taming The Prince: Bringing Presidential Emergency Powers Under Law In Colombia, Andrea Scoseria Katz

Scholarship@WashULaw

Can courts check presidential power exercised in a crisis — and should they? The case of Colombia, which recently turned on its head a history of presidential overreach and judicial rubber-stamping, provides an answer in the affirmative. As in much of Latin America, throughout Colombia’s post-independence history, bloodshed fueled authoritarian tendencies, with presidents exploiting the need for “order” to centralize power. One critical weapon in the presidential toolkit was the power to declare a state of emergency. During the twentieth century, these decrees became a routine pretext for the President to govern unilaterally, acquiesced to by the legislature and rarely …

Earth Mothers, Soy Boys, And Cool Dudes: Practicing Law While Protecting The Environment, Elizabeth J. Hubertz

Scholarship@WashULaw

As a public-interest environmental lawyer, this author explores gender in the legal profession. Specifically, gender in environmental law. Through a recognition of the gendered dimensions of environmental law, this Article explores the nature-culture binary, the relationship of meat to masculinity, and perceptions of the risks and threats of climate change.

Smart Contracts And The Illusion Of Automated Enforcement, Danielle D'Onfro

Scholarship@WashULaw

This symposium essay explores the barriers to deploying smart contracts in the consumer finance space: the humans themselves, existing consumer protection laws, and the other businesses who have financial contracts with consumers but that cannot deploy smart contracts. These three barriers render perfectly automated enforcement all but impossible. Nevertheless, there may be room for modifiable smart contracts in the consumer financial space although these contracts may be only marginally more efficient than traditional contracts.

Companies As Commodities, Danielle D'Onfro

Scholarship@WashULaw

Like copper, corn, or crude oil, companies increasingly trade like commodities. Some investors — certain holders of debt, activist shareholders, and controlling shareholders, especially private equity funds — are focused solely on returns. In practice, this means that they care about the fate of the companies in which they invest no more than they care about the fate of any tonne of copper, bushel of corn, or oil barrel they happen to trade. These investors are so immune to reputational concerns that they will even prefer that the companies in which they invest fail if failure maximizes their return on …

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 …

Changing The Law To Change Policing: First Steps, Barry Friedman, Brandon L. Garrett, Rachel Harmon, Christy E. Lopez, Tracey L. Meares, Maria Ponomarenko, Christopher Slobogin, Tom R. Tyler

Faculty Scholarship

Recent events have brought to the fore longstanding concerns about the nature of policing in the United States and how it undermines racial equity. As an institution, policing needs significant reconsideration. It is time to rethink the structure and governance of policing. It is also time to engage in a deeper conversation about the meaning of public safety. In the meantime, however, the following is a list of urgently-needed reforms, compiled by a small group of law school faculty, each of whom runs or is associated with an academic center devoted to policing and the criminal justice system. The reforms …

Justice In Forensic Algorithms, Brandon L. Garrett

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Undeliverable: Suspended Driver's Licenses And The Problem Of Notice, Brandon L. Garrett, Karima Modjadidi, William Crozier

Faculty Scholarship

In North Carolina, one in seven adult drivers currently has a suspended license for nondriving related reasons. As in many other states, in North Carolina, driver’s licenses are commonly suspended, for reasons unrelated to safety, when a person fails to appear in court in response to notice of a traffic court date or fails to pay traffic fines. Notices of traffic court dates are sent by mail, typically to the address on record at the Department of Motor Vehicles, as are subsequent notices that the consequence for nonappearance will be a driver’s license suspension. To better understand the effects of …

Drug Users’ Experiences Of A Residential Rehabilitation Program In Western Australia: A Thematic Analysis Of Drug Users Lived Experiences, Michelle Fullam

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

In the last decade, there has been a marked increase in the awareness of drug use and drug-related crime in Australia. As a result, the demand for drug treatment services has increased and 14 recognised government-funded services are now available in Western Australia (WA). The goal of these services is to reduce drug use through full-time intensive programs that are usually residential. This type of drug treatment has been shown to be effective in reducing drug use and promoting pro-social lives post-treatment. However, little is known of the experiences of participants in this type of treatment in WA. As such, …

Improving Law Enforcement’S Victim-Centric Responses To Sexual Assault: Global Best Practice Catalog, Ayesha Ashraf, Sebastián Galleguillos Agurto, Frederick Geyer, Kamela Gjoka, Jasmine Hwang, Stanley Montinat, Jessica Moor, Pierre Reyes, Tara Ventimiglia, Hongda Xu

Publications and Research

This catalog was compiled as part of a U.S. State Department Diplomacy Lab Project entitled “Improving Law Enforcement’s Victim-Centric Responses to Sexual Assault,” in fall semester of 2019, for American Citizens Services, US Embassy Bangkok. It is intended to cover best practices in law enforcement response to sexual assault across the globe, including laws, policies and programs.Ten multilingual graduate students in the capstone seminar of the Master of Arts Degree Program in International Crime and Justice at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY) established criteria for inclusion and standardized elements for each entry in this catalog. The ultimate aim …

Convenience Theory Of Cryptocurrency Crime: A Content Analysis Of U.S. Federal Court Decisions, Claire Nolasco Braaten, Michael S. Vaughn

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications (Archived)

This article examines cryptocurrency cases decided in the U.S. District and Circuit Courts to determine the applicability of Gottschalk’s convenience theory of white collar crime to cryptocurrency crime litigation and to empirically analyze whether the conditions under which cryptocurrency offenses occurred show support for the convenience theory. Analysis of U.S. federal district and circuit court case law involving cryptocurrency crimes and fraud indicate support for the convenience theory of white-collar crime. Defendants in various schemes were motivated by financial gain, either for the company or for personal use. Their roles and positions in the businesses allowed them access to resources …

Human Rights? What A Good Idea! From Universal Jurisdiction To Crime Prevention, Daniel Feierstein

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Over the last decades, Genocide Studies has entered in a “comfort zone.” With fellowships and support from governments or NGOs, we have developed a very comfortable environment in which the knowledge we produce about genocide prevention is neither critical nor useful. We have become trapped by assumptions we have never checked against reality and many of us have chosen to work inside the circle of those assumptions: genocide and mass violence are horrible acts committed by horrible people; we cannot stand by and do nothing; we have the responsibility to protect civilian populations and that responsibility takes the form, as …

How Gun Control Laws Affect Homicide, Abbey Maloney

Honors Theses

Homicide is an ever-prevalent problem in the United States (U.S.). One solution that is often turned to is the implementation of stricter gun control laws. This causes much divide as many citizens are not in agreement about whether or not these laws do what they are intended to. The aim of this study was to determine whether or not gun control laws have an effect on homicide, and, if so, what this effect is. The U.S. states were evaluated in several different categories to determine how strict or lax their gun laws were. They were scored using the number of …

Effect Of 17a - Ethynylestradiol On The Pupation Rate, Emergence Rate, And Sex Ratio Of Phormia Regina (Calliphoridae), Bethany K. Hoschar

Honors Theses

After death, blowflies are attracted to decomposing remains for feeding and reproduction purposes. Since blowflies are usually the first species to colonize a set of remains, they are important to forensic scientists when estimating the time since death. Using the knowledge of the life cycle of a blowfly and any interferences of the environment that can affect the development, forensic entomologists can estimate the time since the arrival of blowflies, otherwise considered time since deposition. This research investigated how a specific estrogen, 17 a-ethynylestradiol, present in pollutants affects the development time of blowflies, and therefore the time since death estimation. …

Fabricated Forensics: Examining An Undergraduate Population’S Ability To Detect Fallacies In Crime-Based Media, Conner Davis

Senior Capstone Theses

My research examines the effects of general education on students’ perspectives of the CSI effect. The CSI effect is a phenomenon in which people’s perceptions of criminal investigation are distorted from the truth because of the media’s portrayal of criminal investigation. The study sample includes undergraduate students enrolled in a Mid-Atlantic University. To quantify the degrees in which subjects are susceptible to the CSI effect, the subjects will be measured on their ability to identify basic forensic investigation flaws portrayed in three different television series. Subjects were given a worksheet, exposed to a fifteen-minute video compilation, and were told to …

Founding The Domain Of Ai Forensics, Ibrahim Baggili, Vahid Behzadan

Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications

With the widespread integration of AI in everyday and critical technologies, it seems inevitable to witness increasing instances of failure in AI systems. In such cases, there arises a need for technical investigations that produce legally acceptable and scientifically indisputable findings and conclusions on the causes of such failures. Inspired by the domain of cyber forensics, this paper introduces the need for the establishment of AI Forensics as a new discipline under AI safety. Furthermore, we propose a taxonomy of the subfields under this discipline, and present a discussion on the foundational challenges that lay ahead of this new research …

Impact Of High Profile Police Use Of Force Incidents On Violent Crime Rates, Megan Galante

Honors Theses

This research study examined the relationship between high-profile police use of force incidents and local violent crime rates. It is important to analyze the impact that police use of force has on the respective community in regard to crime rates. This study analyzed three incidents of police use of force that have received extensive coverage in the media in order to determine if there was a change in the rates of violent crime in that city. The theory of de-policing suggests that in the aftermath of a high-profile incident of police brutality, police departments in the area change their behaviors …

Evaluation Of Dna From Blood And Saliva Overtime, Janine Smalling

Honors Theses

In this research, we will examine the quantity of DNA over time. In John M. Butlers, "Fundamentals of Forensic DNA Typing", he charts out the average amount of DNA extracted from different bodily fluid samples. Examples include blood, semen, saliva, urine, etc. Though valuable, the values presented are in the cases of a fresh extraction of the sample. It is important to note that in most cases when DNA is being extracted from crime scene evidence, the samples are not fresh and have been degraded to some extent. On a crime scene, time is only one of the factors affecting …