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How to Start (or Stop) a War on Crime: A Conceptual Cookbook
Full text linkBeginning in the early 1990s, the Executive Branch began an era of enforcement of federal firearms crime that was different in kind and degree from the prior seventy-five years. The federal crime policies of the 1990s and 2000s led to a significant increase both in the total number of federal firearms prosecutions and in how often mandatoryminimum statutes were charged. But later, in the 2010s and 2020s, there were times when the number of firearms prosecutions stabilized, and the number of mandatory-minimum sentences decreased. This Article seeks to use federal firearms prosecutions, in this era of enforcement, as a lens through which to create a conceptual framework for thinking about Executive Branch crime policy. Specifically, it identifies and explores five essential ingredients of any effective “war on crime.” Then, and perhaps more importantly, it identifies and explores three countervailing ingredients that have shown promise in slowing or even stopping aspects of a war on crime. Its goal is to create definitional and conceptual touchstones through which to discuss—and critique—federal crime policy. Aspirationally, this Article will prove helpful not only to criminal and constitutional law academia but also to policymakers and reform advocates. It also carries a unique relevance as we enter the final stretch of a presidential campaign cycle, with two candidates who likely hold contrasting views on crime policy, reform efforts, and the mission of the Department of Justice
AMERICAN PLASTICS, LLC. v. HOME DEPOT PRODUCT AUTHORITY, LLC, Order on Plaintiff American Plastics, LLC\u27s Motion to Compel Discovery
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Settlement as Construct: Defining and Counting Party Resolution in Federal District Court
No full textMost civil cases settle. Yet generating a definitive settlement rate presents complex definitional and empirical problems, both in what should count as a settlement and how to count it. This Essay makes three contributions to better understanding and defining settlement. First, we propose a flexible, empirically informed, operationalizable definition of settlement as party resolution. Second, we exploit a new federal litigation data source to count party resolutions using machine learning models trained on 11 million docket sheet entries. Third, we offer new findings on party resolution frequency and distribution in the federal courts. Settlement is more widely and differently deployed than previously understood. We uncovered almost 40,000 additional party resolutions that were missing from the main existing source of administrative data on federal litigation. We also observe party resolution appearing alongside other dispositive events, functioning as a trimming device to drop parties, claims, or both as a lawsuit proceeds. We conclude by mapping directions for future work, integrating our settlement findings into a larger discussion of litigation and the courts’ role in achieving resolution, whether by a judge, jury, or the parties themselves