Legal Studies Commons^™

‪Measuring The Effects Of Legal Precedent In Us Federal Courts‬, Jens Frankenreiter, Daniel L. Chen, Susan Yeh

Scholarship@WashULaw

Using data for 2000-2004, our results suggest that new precedent has a strong effect on district court judges’ decision standards. Results are stronger when we focus on decisions in the same area of law. Extending the data to 2012, our results get blurred or even change direction.

Perceptions Of Taxing And Spending: A Survey Experiment, Conor Clarke, Edward Fox

Scholarship@WashULaw

This paper presents the results of an original survey experiment on whether the public prefers “tax expenditures” to “direct outlays” — that is, whether members of the public are more likely to support government spending that takes the form of a tax credit rather than a check or cash. Using a survey that spans a wide variety of policy areas — and with important variations in wording and information — we show that the public strongly prefers tax expenditures even when the “economic substance” of the proposed policies is identical. We also show that the public views tax expenditures as …

The New Financial Order: An Essay For Alan Bromberg - Tributes To Professor Alan R. Bromberg, Joel Seligman

Scholarship@WashULaw

In the aftermath of the 2008-2009 financial crisis, I characterized its causes broadly:

First, there was an ongoing economic emergency, initially rooted in the housing and credit markets, which has been succeeded by the collapse of several leading investment and commercial banks and insurance companies, dramatic deterioration of stock market indices, and a rapidly deepening recession.

Second, there were serious breakdowns in the enforcement and fraud deterrence missions of federal financial regulation, notably as illustrated by matters involving Bear Stearns and the other four then independent investment banks subject to the SEC's former Consolidated Supervised Entities program, the government creation …

Measuring Clinical Legal Education's Employment Outcomes, Robert R. Kuehn

Scholarship@WashULaw

This Article examines evidence of a possible link between learning opportunities in law school and J.D. employment outcomes. It responds to a paper by Jason Yackee that finds, using 2013 data from top 100 ranked schools, “not much evidence” that law clinic opportunities are likely to improve a school’s graduates’ employment outcomes and suggesting that those opportunities may even harm employment prospects.

The Article reexamines Yackee’s methodological approach and then looks beyond both law clinics and his statistical models. The expanded empirical analysis finds it is not possible to draw any reliable conclusion from his models about the likely effects …

In Defense Of Empirical Legal Studies, Christina L. Boyd

Scholarship@WashULaw

The empirical legal studies movement, or ELS, is positioned to provide an important scholarly impact. As noted ELS scholar Theodore Eisenberg once put it, “[a]cross a broad range of legal issues, empirical studies can inform policymakers and the public. Legally trained social scientists have unique opportunities to enhance description and understanding of the legal system.” By all accounts, this influence is well underway. ELS scholarship has been present in law schools since at least the 1920s and is on the rise in recent years, with important empirical insights gained into legal subjects such as error rates in capital punishment convictions, …

Regulating Sex Work: Assimilationism, Erotic Exceptionalism And The Challenge Of Intimate Labor, Adrienne D. Davis

Scholarship@WashULaw

Most commentators on sex markets focus on the debate between abolitionists and those who defend and support professional sex work. This paper, instead, looks at debates within the pro-sex work camp, uncovering some unattended tensions and contradictions. It shows that, within this camp, some stress the labor aspect, urging that sex markets perpetuate a “vulnerable population” of workers, similar to others who perform highly risky and/or exploited labor, and should be regulated accordingly. In this view, sex work would be assimilated into other labor. Others, though, take a more anti-regulatory stance. They exceptionalize this form of labor, arguing that because …

The Promise And Peril Of The Anti-Commandeering Rule In The Homeland Security Era: Immigrant Sanctuary As An Illustrative Case, Trevor George Gardner

Scholarship@WashULaw

Despite the broad powers wielded by the federal government in security administration, the Supreme Court’s holding in Printz v. United States serves as a substantial check against federal overreach. Hand wringing by legal scholars over the Court’s reasoning in Printz and the rigid rules against commandeering attached to this reasoning have obscured the fact that the case now stands as a bulwark against the expansion of federal authority over state, county, and local police. Given the holding in Printz, ICE cannot require the active participation of subnational police in immigration enforcement and must instead—despite its previous assertions to the contrary—solicit …

Race Matters In Jury Selection, Peter A. Joy

Scholarship@WashULaw

Whatever the lawyer fears, whether it is an issue of race in the case or unconscious biases in jurors that may affect how they decide the case, the lawyer must address the fears during jury selection. If the lawyer does not explore what the lawyer fears about the case during jury selection, the lawyer has failed to increase the odds that the jury will consider the client’s case fairly. If the defense lawyer does not mention race during jury selection when race matters in a case, racial bias can be a corrosive factor eating away at any chance of fairness …

Ethics In Criminal Advocacy, Peter A. Joy, Ellen Yaroshefsky

Scholarship@WashULaw

Several ethics issues in criminal advocacy came to the forefront again in 2014. Although the U.S. Supreme Court did not decide important cases that cut across criminal law and the ethical obligations of defense counsel or prosecutors in 2014, there were still several other important developments and stories in the news. For example, decisions of prosecutors in Missouri and New York that they did not have a conflict of interest in considering charges against police officers in the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, both unarmed African America men, led to outcries of injustice and double-standards favoring police. In …

Aboriginal Perspectives About Child Sexual Abuse: Informing The Cultural Dimension In Sex Offending Theories For Use With Aboriginal Offenders, Victoria Elizabeth Hovane

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Child sexual abuse (CSA) and its consequences constitute a serious social issue in Aboriginal and other communities throughout the world. As a result, a number of influential psychological theories about sexual offending have been developed. These theories suggest that the early socialisation and developmental experiences of offenders are implicated in the onset, development and maintenance of sexual offending behaviour. While these theories suggest that culture is important for understanding such behaviour, their specific role has largely been ignored in the literature. Given the paucity of research in this area the aim of this study was to understand the perspectives of …

Decision-Making In The Dark: How Pre-Trial Errors Change The Narrative In Criminal Jury Trials, Kara Mackillop, Neil Vidmar

Faculty Scholarship

Over the past decade and a half, a great deal of attention has rightfully been given to the issue of wrongful convictions. In 2003, Jim Dwyer, Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck published Actual Innocence, an eyeopening treatise on the reality of wrongful convictions in the United States. In the years since, more than 1400 innocent persons have been exonerated, and a very diverse research community of attorneys, academics, social scientists, and activists has developed in response to the realization offlaws in our criminal justice system. In 2012, Brandon Garrett's Convicting the Innocent quantitatively evaluated the first 250 DNA exonerations and …

Decriminalizing Delinquency: The Effect Of Raising The Age Of Majority On Juvenile Recidivism, Charles E. Loeffler, Ben Grunwald

Faculty Scholarship

In the last decade, a number of states have expanded the jurisdiction of their juvenile courts by increasing the maximum age to 18. Proponents argue that these expansions reduce crime by increasing access to the beneficial features of the juvenile justice system. Critics counter that the expansions risk increasing crime by reducing deterrence. In 2010, Illinois raised the maximum age for juvenile court for offenders who commit a misdemeanor. By examining the effect of this law on juvenile offenders in Chicago, this paper provides the first empirical estimates of the consequences of recent legislative activity to raise the age of …

Improving Economic Sanctions In The States, Jessica M. Eaglin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Perception Of Police In Public Housing Communities, Taylor Brickley

Theses and Dissertations

Research on the relationship between police and citizens consistently finds that attitudes toward police (ATP) are least positive among black citizens in areas of concentrated disadvantage. While much of the research in this area focuses specifically on ATP among young black males in low-income communities because they have the most contact with police, there has been relatively little research that has included older and/or female residents. Additionally, research has yet to examine ATP in racial and economic enclaves that may have different social and environmental characteristics than the surrounding community. This study utilizes in-depth interviews with 60 residents of two …

Into The Red: A Look Into The Reasons Why Refugees Decide To Flee, Settle Or Migrate To And From Morocco, Fadeelah E. Holivay

Master's Theses

This research paper explores some of the main reasons why refugees and asylum seekers, particularly from sub-Saharan African countries, embark on a journey and decide to settle, flee or migrate to and from Morocco. Because of this phenomenon, Morocco has seen a 96% increase of refugees migrating to the borders of Morocco each year for the past three years. Many say that this astonishing increase of migrants choosing Morocco is due to such factors as: wars breaking out regionally across central African and Middle Eastern countries causing them to flee; Morocco being a culturaly diverse francophone country whose laws and …

The Role Of Violence Within And Across Self-Identified Gang Youth, J. Michael Vecchio

Dissertations

Whether actual (i.e., direct and vicarious victimization) or anticipated (i.e., fear of crime and perceived risk of victimization) violence, gang youth commonly discuss violence in terms of having an important role in both their gang experiences and daily lives. In particular, violence can play an important role within the specific stages of the gang experience – 1) joining, 2) active membership, and 3) leaving. This includes the importance of protection from violence as a common motivator for joining, the utility of violence as a means of building cohesion between active gang members, as well as the importance of exposure to …

Excited Delirium Syndrome And Conducted Electrical Weapons, Adam A. Nielsen

Regis University Student Publications (comprehensive collection)

Excited delirium syndrome (ExDS) is defined as delirium coupled with extreme agitation (Vilke et al., 2012). ExDS is a bona fide medical condition that requires immediate medical attention, as 8% of patients will die from it. Some research only classifies ExDS as "true ExDS" if the subject dies; most research does not and this research does not wish to exclude the 92% of ExDS cases where the subject does not die. ExDS is well known because it oftentimes comes into play during and after a violent encounter with law enforcement. Because over 7,000 U.S. law enforcement agencies use TASER© brand …

Building The 21st Century Legal Resource Center & Law Library, Portland State University. Hatfield School Of Government. Center For Public Service, Mark G. Harmon, Shannon Grzybowski, Bryan Matthew Thompson, Stephanie Cross

Center for Public Service Publications and Reports

A Report on the Current Status of the Multnomah County’s Law Library and Recommendations for Addressing the Needs of Current Patrons.

Nebraska Department Of Correctional Services Reentry Initiative Vocational & Life Skills Program Grant Announcement - Application For Funding, Uno Nebraska Center For Justice Research

Reports

The NDCS Reentry Initiative involves a systemic approach for individuals to return to their communities. Reentry is not a “program”, it is an intentional mind-set; it is a method of facilitating the incarcerated and/or supervised individual’s return to his/her community as a productive and law abiding citizen.

Successful reentry:

 Provides increased public safety by reducing the number of victims

o This is achieved by reducing the likelihood of continued criminal behavior, essentially lowering the recidivism rate

 Provides a plan for assessing and addressing risks and needs

o This plan involves a reentry-focused case management system from first contact …

Empirical Assessment Of Risk Factors: How Online And Offline Lifestyle, Social Learning, And Social Networking Sites Influence Crime Victimization, Ashley Bettencourt

Master’s Theses and Projects

As technology and social media become more intertwined with our everyday lives, people are more exposed to various types of victimizations. The purpose of this study is to examine how our online and offline lifestyle choices can contribute to our risk of becoming a sexual crime victim. A random sample of college students from a Massachusetts college was used to gather the necessary information. This survey data was analyzed based on major theoretical components derived from the lifestyle exposure and social learning perspectives. This study determined that both online and offline lifestyle and social learning theory have a substantial impact …