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What Role Should Criminal Justice Play in Foreign Relations?
No full textWhat is the function of criminal justice in foreign relations? Consider the federal criminal case against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. In March 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice publicly unveiled federal international drug trafficking charges against Maduro, just a month after President Trump had met with Juan Guaidó, the head of the Venezuelan National Assembly. The case played an ambiguous role in broader U.S.-Venezuela foreign policy. Some commentators believed that indictments were an integral part of the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign to cabin Maduro, a campaign that included sanctions and political recognition of Guaidó as Venezuelan president. At the same time, the criminal investigation clearly began during the Obama administration and thus potentially represented the natural culmination of years of prosecutorial efforts.
How much control did the White House have over the case? How much should it have had? And how normatively desirable in U.S. foreign relations are such foreign affairs prosecutions—cross-border criminal cases that involve extraterritorial statutory authority, institutional capacity and multilateral cooperation—compared to, say, diplomacy or sanctions against the Venezuelan regime
Inside the Black Box of Prosecutor Discretion
Get PDFIn their charging and bargaining decisions, prosecutors have unparalleled and nearly-unchecked discretion that leads to incarceration or freedom for millions of Americans each year. More than courts, legislators, or any other justice system player, in the aggregate prosecutors’ choices are the key drivers of outcomes, whether the rates of mass incarceration or the degree of racial disparities in justice. To date, there is precious little empirical research on how prosecutors exercise their breathtaking discretion. We do not know whether they consistently charge like cases alike or whether crime is in the eye of the beholder. We do not know what sorts of limits, supervision, or guidelines prosecutors work within. And we do not know what sorts of information prosecutors rely upon, when making their decisions. Prosecutors’ decisions have accordingly been called a “black box” for their inscrutability./= / \u3e/= / \u3eUntil now. We recruited over 500 prosecutors nationwide, and had them charge an identical case given identical substantive law, specify the plea bargain terms that they would seek, and explain their decisions. We also learned about their internal office guidelines and procedures, and the information they rely upon when making charging and bargaining decisions./= / \u3e/= / \u3eOur study tells a story of surprising severity in how prosecutors dispose of a relatively mild case with no harm to victims, creating potentially devastating consequences for an offender suffering from apparent mental illness. Taking advantage of our vignette-survey design, which presents the exact same case to hundreds of prosecutors, we also document wild heterogeneity in prosecutor charging practices, with some dismissing the case out of hand and others demanding months or years of incarceration. We also find that many prosecutors lack meaningful guidelines or supervision. Nonetheless, in our review of their qualitative explanations, we also find prosecutors aspiring to do justice, concerned about harm to victims and the rehabilitation of offenders, and considering their mental health and financial wherewithal. From these findings, we shed light in an otherwise theoretically rich but empirically lacking area of criminal scholarship./= / \u3e/= / \u3eThe National Prosecutor Survery can be accessed at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=3917195
Tax Complexity and Technology
Get PDFThe Federal Income Tax Code has become increasingly complex over time with the implication that many taxpayers no longer understand the connection between their life decisions and their taxes. Some commentators have suggested that increasing computational complexity may be attributable in part to the proliferation of tax preparation software that renders such complexity manageable at filing time, but otherwise does nothing to mitigate the black box nature of the tax system. While such complexity and opacity undercut explicit incentives embedded in the Code, make planning more difficult, and undermine political accountability for taxes, they may also reduce the inefficient distortion or deadweight loss of the income tax, particularly with respect to higher-income taxpayers.
This Article argues that technology represents a potential response to tax complexity and opacity as well as a contributing factor. It argues that tax planning software can and likely will be used to restore \u27functional transparency to the Code, for good or bad, alerting taxpayers to explicit incentives, allowing taxpayers to easily determine the tax consequences of their life decisions, and providing a means for improving fiscal citizenship, but also highlighting tax burdens in such a way as to increase deadweight loss. This Article also makes the case for government provision or subsidization of planning software targeted at lower-income taxpayers. Such a targeted approach will help level the tax planning playing field and improve the take-up of tax incentives by this population, while avoiding facilitating social welfare reducing tax planning by higher-income taxpayers
Second Amendment Realism
Get PDFIn District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court declared a constitutionally protected individual right to keep and bear arms. Subsequently, the scope of the right has been hotly debated, resulting in circuit splits and lingering questions about what, exactly, the right entails. Despite these splits, the Court has denied certiorari to the myriad gun cases to land on its doorstep. But the balance of the Court has shifted, and likely, too, its willingness to hear these cases. Among the most pressing questions in Second Amendment jurisprudence is the constitutionality of public carry restrictions. With a constitutional challenge inevitable given the Court\u27s new makeup, the issue demands scrutiny into how the justices should consider the question in light of a growing gun violence epidemic. This Article argues against a rights-as-trumps approach, instead using a population-based perspective to shift the focus from the scope of the right and properly place the rights and liberties of the general public into the equation. This Article uses public health law principles, such as social determinants and its inevitable balancing of protecting the public and safeguarding individual rights, and empirics to examine the true burden on self-defense in comparison to the state’s ability to protect the wider community. In doing so, this analysis proposes that “good cause” restrictions—which have divided the Circuit courts thus far—are a constitutional approach that respects both the individual right declared in Heller and the state’s interest in protecting its citizens from a public health crisis
BU Celebrates Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Rise to US Supreme Court
Get PDFThe operative word about Ketanji Brown Jackson is “first.” Once she is sworn in to the US Supreme Court, after being confirmed by the Senate Thursday 53-47 (three Republicans joined Democrats in supporting her), she will be the first Black woman on the high court in its 233 years. And she will be the first former public defender to join the court. Brown Jackson—the daughter of a lawyer and a school principal and currently a federal appellate judge in Washington, D.C.—won Senate confirmation after a bruising hearing last week where Republican senators tried to label her as an extreme liberal judge who has been soft on crime in certain rulings. For many, the elevation of Brown Jackson, who will replace Stephen Breyer (Hon.’95), the justice she once clerked for, is more than historic—it is long overdue, finally giving a voice to Black women everywhere on the highest court in the land.
BU Today collected a roundup of reactions from across the campus community
Putting Labor’s Capital To Work For Labor: Restoring A Worker-Centric Vision of Fiduciary Duty
Get PDFThis report has two goals: first, to illustrate how the legal concept of fiduciary duty, designed to protect worker retirement funds, has been captured and distorted in ways that harm workers. Second, to propose means of restoring fiduciary duty to its proper purpose. The state-level fiduciary duties addressed in this report govern the investment of up to $10 trillion in assets and directly shape the retirements of 26 million working-class Americans. They are also just about the only source of worker voice in capital markets and corporate boardrooms. That is why a range of powerful business lobbies have distorted the rules that govern them: to undermine worker voice over how pensions are invested. To restore fiduciary duty is to restore that voice to its proper place, to give workers say over the investment of their own retirement funds, and to advance the cause of economic democracy.This report sets out three ways of doing so. The first is to reform state pension codes to make it clear that pension trustees may consider worker interests in making investment choices. The second is to obtain interpretive letters from state attorneys general opining that existing fiduciary duties permit a worker-first view of fiduciary duty, even without legislative reform. The third is to encourage pension trustees to adopt investment policies consistent with a worker-first view of fiduciary duty. This report also includes an appendix setting forth the relevant provisions in the existing state pension codes, interpretive letters, case law, and investment policies of eighteen states I have identified as appropriate targets for pro-worker action
Comparative effectiveness of mandates and financial policies targeting COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy: A randomized, controlled survey experiment
No full textExperts debate whether COVID-19 vaccine mandates or financial incentives will reduce, rather than increase, interest in vaccination. Among 3,698 unvaccinated U.S. residents, we conducted a randomized, controlled survey-embedded experiment to estimate the absolute and relative psychological effects of vaccine policies specifying: mandates by employers or airlines, bars, and restaurants; lotteries for 200,000, or 1000, 100; and 1,000 cash reward policy were 17.1 (±5.3)% more likely to want vaccination. Employer mandates are more promising than other mandate policies (8.6 [+/- 7.4]% vs. 1.4 [+/- 6.0]%). The full results suggest that neither mandates nor financial incentives are likely to have counterproductive psychological effects. These policies are not mutually exclusive and, if implemented well, they may increase vaccine uptake
Anti-Critical Race Theory Laws Are Actually Pro-CRT
No full textGOP officials have passed a suite of state laws over the past year that regulate how teachers can discuss racism (among other topics) in the classroom. Boston University School of Law’s Jonathan Feingold contends that, ironically, most of these backlash bills call for more anti-racism, more CRT, and more culturally competent pedagogy in the classroom, not less
150 Years of Legal Excellence at BU Law
No full textIn October 1872, 60 students joined the inaugural class at Boston University School of Law. The school swiftly earned its place at the forefront of legal education, initiating advancements such as the sequenced, three-year curriculum that is now the common standard for legal education in the United States. Today, BU Law is recognized among the top US law schools, with 25,000 alumni living in all 50 states and more than 100 countries around the world.
Over the past 150 years, BU Law’s faculty and alumni have made a profound impact. They have argued some of the nation’s most consequential cases. They have advanced the cause of civil rights and equal justice for all people. They have fueled innovation in industries from mass media to technology to healthcare. They have fundamentally reshaped our nation’s understanding of the law and, in some cases, literally changed the course of history
Chapter 6C: Third-Party Funding in International Commercial Arbitration
No full textChapter is an update to a loose-leaf set: International Commercial Arbitration Practice: 21st Century Perspectives. Filed Update: Publication 1530 Release 13, December 2022