Is Juvenile Probation Obsolete? Reexamining and Reimagining Youth Probation Law, Policy, and Practice
Is Juvenile Probation Obsolete? Reexamining and Reimagining Youth Probation Law, Policy, and Practice The dramatic growth of prison populations in the United States during the latter half of the twentieth…
Paying For a Clean Record
Paying For a Clean Record Prosecutors and courts often charge a premium for the ability to avoid or erase a criminal conviction. Defendants with means, who tend to be predominantly…
How Culture Impacts Courtrooms: An Empirical Study of Alienation and Detachment in the Cook County Court System
How Culture Impacts Courtrooms: An Empirical Study of Alienation and Detachment in the Cook County Court System Courtrooms operate as unique microcosms—inhabited by courtroom personnel, legal actors, defendants, witnesses, family…
Fetal Protection Laws and the “Personhood” Problem: Toward a Relational Theory of Fetal Life and Reproductive Responsibility
Fetal Protection Laws and the "Personhood" Problem: Toward a Relational Theory of Fetal Life and Reproductive Responsibility Fetal Protection Laws (FPLs) are laws that define and provide punishments for any…
Protecting the Substantive Due Process Rights of Immigrant Detainees: Using COVID-19 to Create a New Analogy
Protecting the Substantive Due Process Rights of Immigrant Detainees: Using COVID-19 to Create a New Analogy While the Supreme Court has defined certain constitutional protections for incarcerated individuals, the Court…
Theorizing Failed Prosecutions
Theorizing Failed Prosecutions Over the last twenty years, the scholarly field of erroneous convictions has skyrocketed, with multiple articles and books exploring the failures that convict the innocent. However, there…
Reconceiving Coercion-Based Criminal Defenses
Reconceiving Coercion-Based Criminal Defenses Coercing someone is sometimes wrong and sometimes a crime. People subject to coercion are sometimes eligible for criminaldefenses, such as duress. How, exactly, does coercion operate…
Risk-Based Sentencing and the Principles of Punishment
Risk-Based Sentencing and the Principles of Punishment Risk-based sentencing regimes use an offender’s statistical likelihood of returning to crime in the future to determine the amount of time he or…
Civil Rights Litigation in the Lower Courts: The Justice Barrett Edition
Civil Rights Litigation in the Lower Courts: The Justice Barrett Edition Now that Justice Amy Coney Barrett has joined the United States Supreme Court, most observers predict the law will…
Recalibrating Qualified Immunity: How Tanzin v. Tanvir, Taylor v. Riojas, and McCoy v. Alamu Signal the Supreme Court’s Discomfort with the Doctrine of Qualified Immunity
Recalibrating Qualified Immunity: How Tanzin v. Tanvir, Taylor v. Riojas, and McCoy v. Alamu Signal the Supreme Court's Discomfort with the Doctrine of Qualified Immunity In December 2020, the United…
Prison Medical Deaths and Qualified Immunity
Prison Medical Deaths and Qualified Immunity The defense of qualified immunity for claims seeking monetary damages for constitutionally inadequate medical care for people who are incarcerated is misguided. According to…
Policing Suspicion: Qualified Immunity and “Clearly Established” Standards of Proof
Policing Suspicion: Qualified Immunity and "Clearly Established" Standards of Proof This Article explores the intersection of Fourth Amendment standards of proof and the “clearly established” prong of qualified immunity. It…