Thursday, December 31, 2020
Since Bitcoin was invented a decade ago, the phenomenon of Virtual Currencies has been hailed as an ingenious innovation and decried as the preferred transaction vehicle for illicit actors. Despite the numerous headlines discussing the virtues and vices of virtual currencies, heretofore there has been no comprehensive legal response. The present contribution elaborates on the regulation of virtual currencies in the European Legal Area. Starting with a conceptual analysis of virtual currencies and their promising potential, it identifies the financial crime risks posed by the intersection between legitimate and illegitimate users. The research shows that a fragmentary regulation would be ineffective; this promising technology will either be integrated into the lawful economy or it will be exploited by criminals. The paper attempts to fill the regulatory gap by providing a recommendation for the embeddedness of Virtual Currencies into the financial system. It achieves that by redirecting regulation towards the uniqueness of their underlying technology.
December 31, 2020 | Permalink
| Comments (0)
A preliminary comparison of California inmate data before and after the implementation of Proposition 36 to reform Three Strikes and You're Out indicates that Proposition 36 reduced some of the racial disparities between Black and white offenders sentenced under Three Strikes.
December 31, 2020 | Permalink
| Comments (0)
Every year, hundreds of thousands of Internet accounts are copied and set aside by Internet providers on behalf of federal and state law enforcement. This process, known as preservation, is permitted without particularized suspicion. Any government agent can request preservation of any account at any time. Federal law requires the provider to set aside a copy of the account just in case the government later develops probable cause and returns with a warrant needed to compel the account’s disclosure. The preservation process is largely secret. With rare exceptions, the account owner will never know the preservation occurred.
This Article argues that the Fourth Amendment imposes significant limits on the preservation of Internet account contents.
Continue reading
December 31, 2020 | Permalink
| Comments (0)
Wednesday, December 30, 2020
As contemporary criminal justice practices have grown more varied, the equality concerns they raise have grown more nuanced and complex. This essay, written for a symposium on multi-door criminal justice, explores the interplay between equality in criminal justice and the mix of punitive and non-punitive mechanisms that have proliferated in parallel in the criminal justice systems of many post-industrial societies in the last thirty years. Multi-door criminal justice does not fare well under the dominant conception of equality in American criminal law, which seeks to stamp out disparities in punishment and ensure roughly equal outcomes for roughly similar offenders. But we need not view that as fatal to multi-door criminal justice. Tension between a multi-door system and our reigning approach to equality might suggest reasons to question the latter more than it does the former. Alternative, more flexible, more process-oriented conceptions of equality might exist that could better accommodate a multi-door world while still protecting and advancing egalitarian norms and ideals. At the same time, shifting our perspective on equality will not eliminate all equality concerns that flow from multi-door criminal justice, and it likely will reveal new ones. The question then becomes not whether multi-door criminal justice is unequal in some absolute sense. The question is whether it is less unequal — or unequal in more palatable ways — than what we have now.
December 30, 2020 | Permalink
| Comments (0)
To estimate the association between rates of police-related deaths and neighborhood residential segregation (by income, race/ethnicity, or both combined) in the United States. Methods: We identified police-related deaths that occurred in the United States (2015-2016) using a data set from the Guardian newspaper. We used census data to estimate expected police-related death counts for all US census tracts and to calculate the Index of Concentration at the Extremes as a segregation measure. We used multilevel negative binomial models for the analyses. Results: Overall, police-related death rates were highest in neighborhoods with the greatest concentrations of low-income residents (vs high-income residents) and residents of color (vs non-Hispanic White residents). For non-Hispanic Blacks, however, the risk was greater in the quintile of neighborhoods with the highest concentration of non-Hispanic White residents than in certain neighborhoods with relatively higher concentrations of residents of color (the third and fourth quintiles). Conclusions: Neighborhood context matters-beyond individual race/ethnicity-for understanding, preventing, and responding to the occurrence of police-related deaths. Public Health Implications. Efforts to monitor, prevent, and respond to police-related deaths should consider neighborhood context, including levels of segregation by income and race/ethnicity.
December 30, 2020 | Permalink
| Comments (0)
In recent years, the concept of “integrity” has been frequently discussed by scholars, and deployed by courts, in the domain of criminal procedure. In this paper, we are particularly concerned with how the concept has been employed in relation to the problem of the admissibility of evidence obtained improperly. In conceptualising and addressing this problem, the advocates of integrity rely on it as a standard of conduct for the criminal justice authorities and as a necessary condition for the state authority to condemn and punish. We raise a series of challenges that need answering before integrity can perform these roles. Our aim is not to show that integrity is useless in normative theorising about the admissibility of evidence, and about the criminal process in general. Rather, it is to give guidance for the elaboration of a theory of integrity that is cogent, coherent, and has useful implications for the process of proof.
December 30, 2020 | Permalink
| Comments (0)
Tuesday, December 29, 2020
Whereas the literature on post-deportation experiences has emphasized difficult labor market integration and social stigma associated with involuntary return, the broader effects of enforced return in migrants’ communities of origin have remained largely unexplored. This paper postulates that deportations increase levels of violence and crime when migrants are forced to return to a context where labor market opportunities are limited and that are dominated by organized crime. This hypothesis is tested by applying a two-step strategy to the case of Mexico, receiver of more than 3.5 million deportees from the US over the period 2000 to 2015. First step regressions use migrant’s exposure to deportation risk at the level of US states as an exogenous source of variation. This permits predicting rates of enforced return for more than 2,000 Mexican municipalities covering up to four 5-year intervals from 2000 to 2015. Second step regressions trace the causal effect of enforced return on indicators of violence and crime during a period of escalating violence since the mid-2000s, using municipal level indicators and household level survey data. Enforced return leads to more homicides and more cartel competition in migrants’ municipalities of origin, as well as a higher sense of insecurity among the population and a higher probability of being assaulted or kidnapped. These external effects of enforced return are a first step towards unpacking the various direct and indirect channels through which enforced return affects migrants’ communities of origin.
December 29, 2020 | Permalink
| Comments (0)
All around the world, the paralegal program prepares members of marginalized communities to face the legal system. Having a common background with their clients and being capable of conducting flexible work, paralegals' role moves beyond enlarging the beneficiaries of legal aid to addressing intersectional issues around health-related rights. This study assesses the health and other impacts of paralegals recruited by Lembaga Bantuan Hukum Masyarakat (LBHM), a human rights organization which provides legal assistance and operates in Jakarta, Indonesia. The positive results these paralegals can bring in the specific context can contribute to the development of community-based paralegals elsewhere. Methods: This mixed methods research was carried out in 2016-2018. In 2016, a quantitative survey was administered to LBHM-trained paralegals and a sub-set of paralegals who completed the survey were then also interviewed. Quantitative data were analyzed using SPSS, and, for the qualitative data, thematic analysis was conducted. Results: The paralegals make important contributions to health-related rights in four distinct ways. Firstly, most of the paralegals checked their clients' health in all stages of detention, especially regarding their drug dependency status and checking for signs of torture.
Continue reading
December 29, 2020 | Permalink
| Comments (0)
Imagine you are a state legislator. Before you comes the following proposal to amend the state’s penal code:
When a defendant is charged with murder and pleads self-defense, any belief he formed (at the moment he chose to use deadly force) that the use of deadly force was necessary to protect himself against deadly force is unreasonable if he would not have formed that belief but for an implicit racial attitude.
How should you vote?
I believe you should vote to table the proposal. The article explains why I believe you should vote that way.
December 29, 2020 | Permalink
| Comments (0)
Monday, December 28, 2020
The presumption of innocence is unanimously considered a fundamental requirement for criminal justice. This notwithstanding, the meaning of the presumption is hotly disputed in the legal scholarship. This article contributes to the debate, advancing a novel theory of the meaning as well as of the justification of the presumption of innocence. It assesses critically the components of the presumption that are discussed and defended in the literature; and it shows thatthe meaning of the presumption should be unloaded of most of these components. The upshot is a markedly deflationary account, according to which the presumption of innocence consists exclusively of a rule on the allocation of the burden of proof. This rule is justified by appealing to the principle of inertia in argumentation, rather than – as it generally occurs – to the value of protecting the innocent from conviction.
December 28, 2020 | Permalink
| Comments (0)
This is the introductory chapter to the edited collection on 'Data-Driven Personalization in Markets, Politics and Law' (CUP, 2021) that explores the emergent pervasive phenomenon of algorithmic prediction of human preferences, responses and likely behaviors in numerous social domains and subsequent ‘implementation’ - ranging from personalized advertising and political microtargeting to precision medicine, personalized pricing and predictive policing and sentencing. This chapter reflects on such human-focused use of predictive technology, first, by situating it within a general framework of profiling and defends data-driven individual and group profiling against some critiques of stereotyping, on the basis that our cognition of the external environment is necessarily reliant on relevant abstractions or non-universal generalizations. The second set of reflections centers around the philosophical tradition of empiricism as a basis of knowledge or truth production, and uses this tradition to critique data-driven profiling and personalization practices in its numerous manifestations.
December 28, 2020 | Permalink
| Comments (0)
Predictive policing—the use of data, combined with mathematical or machine learning algorithms to predict the risks of crime in specific locations and times—has raised hopes as well as strengthened the rhetoric of using technology for crime control. The apparently enthusiastic uptake of predictive policing software in the US and elsewhere, together with the hype of “Big Data”, has created a new orthodoxy that technology can make policing “smarter” and “information-based” rather than subject to human bias and occupational habits. By reviewing past and current research on the use of technology and innovation by police, this paper develops a framework for conceptualising factors that affect the uptake of predictive policing and processes that influence its impact on police practice.
December 28, 2020 | Permalink
| Comments (0)
The advent of ‘Big Data’ and machine learning algorithms is predicted to transform how we work and think. Specifically, it is said that the capacity of Big Data analytics to move from sampling to census, its ability to deal with messy data and the demonstrated utility of moving from causality to correlation have fundamentally changed the practice of social sciences. Some have even predicted the end of theory—where the question why is replaced by what—and an enduring challenge to disciplinary expertise. This article critically reviews the available literature against such claims and draws on the example of predictive policing to discuss the likely impact of Big Data analytics on criminological research and policy.
December 28, 2020 | Permalink
| Comments (0)
Sunday, December 27, 2020
are here. The usual disclaimers apply.
| Rank |
Paper |
Downloads |
| 1. |
University of Missouri School of Law
|
845 |
| 2. |
Mitchell Hamline School of Law
|
265 |
| 3. |
Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law, Villanova University and Amistad Law Project
|
259 |
| 4. |
Yeshiva University - Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law
|
180 |
| 5. |
The Heritage Foundation
|
128 |
| 6. |
University of Pennsylvania Law School
|
114 |
| 7. |
Southern Methodist University - Dedman School of Law
|
111 |
| 8. |
Gonzaga University School of Law
|
101 |
| 9. |
University of Colorado Law School
Date Posted: 20 Nov 2020 [10th last week]
|
99 |
| 10. |
University of Kansas School of Law
Date Posted: 04 Nov 2020 [9th last week]
|
98 |
December 27, 2020 | Permalink
| Comments (0)
Saturday, December 26, 2020
are here. The usual disclaimers apply.
| Rank |
Paper |
Downloads |
| 1. |
Ohio State University (OSU) - Michael E. Moritz College of Law, University of California, Irvine School of Law and Brooklyn Law School
Date Posted: 23 Nov 2020 [new to top ten]
|
449 |
| 2. |
Brooklyn Law School
Date Posted: 25 Nov 2020 [1st last week]
|
390 |
| 3. |
University of Michigan Law School
Date Posted: 14 Oct 2020 [2nd last week]
|
226 |
| 4. |
Yeshiva University - Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law
|
180 |
| 5. |
University of Chicago Law School
|
164 |
| 6. |
University at Buffalo Law School, University of North Carolina School of Law and University at Buffalo Law School
Date Posted: 02 Dec 2020 [8th last week]
|
124 |
| 7. |
Johns Hopkins University- Department of Political Science
Date Posted: 19 Nov 2020 [6th last week]
|
122 |
| 8. |
University of Utah - S.J. Quinney College of Law
Date Posted: 07 Nov 2020 [7th last week]
|
118 |
| 9. |
University of Ottawa - Faculty of Law
|
113 |
| 10. |
Princeton University and University of Chicago
|
103 |
December 26, 2020 | Permalink
| Comments (0)
Friday, December 25, 2020
The design of empirical research and theory-building projects in the sociolegal literature on criminalization is often premised on a presumed dichotomy between domestic and international planes of criminal lawmaking. However, in a global era in which domestic processes of criminalization are increasingly shaped by norms, institutions, and actors developed and operating outside national borders, criminalization research should develop a new theoretical frame for studying how international and domestic practices of criminal lawmaking interact with one another. This article builds from the theory of transnational legal orders and the recursivity of law to propose a transnational processual theoretical framework for the study of criminalization. This framework provides tools for investigating how criminal prohibitions are constituted through recursive interactions between actors operating in international, national, and local sites of legal practice. It draws on empirical studies to show how the processes of constructing, applying, and contesting definitions of international and transnational crimes are embedded in broader structures of power. The article demonstrates how a processual theory of transnational criminalization sheds light on important sociolegal questions about the driving forces and consequences of current efforts to harmonize the definitions of criminal activities across national jurisdictions.
December 25, 2020 | Permalink
| Comments (0)
Thursday, December 24, 2020
This article addresses the real impacts of conceptual confusion surrounding statutory language linking entities and information for purposes such as privacy, freedom of information, archiving, policing and evidence laws. The idea of ownership of information (which is assumed in the statutory allocation of powers of control and responsibilities) is captured in a confusing miscellany of terminology that differs across jurisdictions and contexts. It uses the example of information sharing for law enforcement purposes as a case study to highlight the practical challenges inherent in the diverse and vague statutory language linking entities and information. It then proposes a new taxonomy for attributing responsibilities and powers with respect to information that is consistent with the ephemeral nature of the subject matter.
December 24, 2020 | Permalink
| Comments (0)
A number of legal developments in recent years suggest that murder sentencing may be becoming increasingly punitive. This study examines two aspects of setting parole ineligibility. First, using cases from three two-year time periods spanning the past three decades, the authors explore whether judicial calculations of parole ineligibility for second degree murder have changed over time. Second, the authors examine changes enacted in 2011 to allow parole ineligibility to be imposed consecutively for those who commit more than one murder. The study finds a national trend towards reduced reliance on the minimum 10-year period of parole ineligibility, a slight increase in parole ineligibility periods over time, and evidence that increasingly harsh parole ineligibility in Ontario may be driving the national trends. With respect to consecutive periods of parole ineligibility, the cases suggest that courts are imposing consecutive parole ineligibility in just less than 45% of the eligible cases with that result being more likely where the victims include strangers. Courts in Ontario and Alberta have thus far shown the highest rates of consecutive parole ineligibility while British Columbia has resisted this trend. The authors conclude that some kind of review mechanism, like a faint hope clause, is necessary to temper the harshness of these increasingly long periods of parole ineligibility and that further study is warranted to explore the preliminary trends identified in this study.
December 24, 2020 | Permalink
| Comments (0)
Wednesday, December 23, 2020
This paper examines the role of prisoner voice in criminal justice reform in the US. Previous research has attributed reform of criminal justice institutions to either political elites or the public. This research has not considered the role of prisoner voice in influencing reform. This paper fills that gap. I argue that prisoner voice—through the avenues of prison journalism and prisoner litigation—serves as an information channel in state criminal justice bureaucracies, holding bureaucrats accountable to their superiors. I conclude that prison journalism is the only avenue for prisoner voice that influences reform in ways that aligns with voters’ interests. Prisoner litigation and prison riots result in reform that drives the growth of state prison systems and loss of prisoner privileges.
December 23, 2020 | Permalink
| Comments (0)
This article examines the demise of the “all reasonable steps” requirement in s. 150.1(4) of the Criminal Code which limits an accused’s ability to assert a mistaken belief in age as a defence to sexual offences against children where he has failed to take such steps. The article demonstrates that the Court of Appeal for Ontario in R v Carbone has rendered this requirement meaningless in Ontario. Even where the Crown has met its burden to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused did not take “all reasonable steps” to ascertain age, the Crown must still go on and prove mens rea as to the fact that the complainant was under the age of consent. The article argues that, where there is no suggestion that a legislative provision is unconstitutional, courts should not use statutory interpretation to effectively read a legislative provision out of existence, especially where it was intended to protect children from sexual contact with adults.
December 23, 2020 | Permalink
| Comments (0)
