Alabama Law Scholarly Commons - The University of Alabama
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The edge of innocence
No full textThe Edge of Innocence is a work of historical fiction based on the 1964 murder trial of Casper Bennett, a man accused of drowning his wife in a bathtub of scalding water in Lorain, Ohio. Bennett\u27s sensational trial pitted an aggressive, mercurial county prosecutor against the author\u27s father, a civil trial attorney who had never before defended anyone for murder. The book not only recreates the tension and excitement of this courtroom battle, but also highlights the uncertain edge that often divides guilt from innocence.The author was ten years old when he answered the phone late at night when Bennett called his father from jail, seeking his legal representation. Forty years later and long after his father\u27s death, the author found the Bennett file in the bottom of his mother\u27s closet. From the moment he began reading the papers, the long-forgotten drama cast a spell on him. As he uncovered more and more of the facts, the story he had known as a child disappeared, replaced by one far different.https://scholarship.law.ua.edu/harper_lee_prize_books_2018/1015/thumbnail.jp
The outsider
No full textA young Supreme Court law clerk finds himself caught in the crosshairs of a serial killer in The Outsider, a breathtaking thriller #1 New York Times bestseller James Patterson called as authentic and suspenseful as any John Grisham novel. Things aren\u27t going well for Grayson Hernandez. He just graduated from a fourth-tier law school, he\u27s drowning in student debt, and the only job he can find is as a messenger. The position stings the most because it\u27s at the Supreme Court, where Gray is forced to watch the best and the brightest—the elite group of lawyers who serve as the justices\u27 law clerks—from the outside. When Gray intervenes in a violent mugging, he lands in the good graces of the victim: the Chief Justice of the United States. Gray soon finds himself the newest—and unlikeliest—law clerk at the Supreme Court. It\u27s another world: highbrow debates over justice and the law in the inner sanctum of the nation\u27s highest court; upscale dinners with his new friends; attention from Lauren Hart, the brilliant and beautiful co-clerk he can\u27t stop thinking about. But just as Gray begins to adapt to his new life, the FBI approaches him with unsettling news. The Feds think there\u27s a killer connected to the Supreme Court. And they want Gray to be their eyes and ears inside One First Street. Little does Gray know that the FBI will soon set its sights on him. Racing against the clock in a world cloaked in secrecy, Gray must uncover the truth before the murderer strikes again in this thrilling high-stakes story of power and revenge by Washington, D.C. lawyer-turned-author Anthony Franze.https://scholarship.law.ua.edu/harper_lee_prize_books_2018/1009/thumbnail.jp
Fractured justice
No full textWhen investigators are called to a meticulously staged crime scene on a canal bank in rural Central California―the latest in a series of murders that have killed three young women in one month―they realize a dangerous serial killer is on the loose, someone who is highly adept at hiding his tracks. And before the murderer can be brought to justice, young assistant DA Matt Jamison will lose his illusions about what justice means. As a fourth victim is abducted and investigators race against time, Jamison must cope with a sophisticated and elusive killer, a politically-minded sheriff eager to claim credit and spread blame, mounting pressure to win a high-profile trial, and his own conscience as part of the machinery of justice. A gripping, fast-paced, and coldly realistic thriller that tracks a killer from the crime scene to the courtroom and to a devastating aftermath, Fractured Justice is a stunning debut crime novel from a former investigator, prosecutor, and judge who intimately knows the real world of attorneys, detectives, and men who kill.https://scholarship.law.ua.edu/harper_lee_prize_books_2018/1000/thumbnail.jp
The Punitive Damages Calculus: The Differential Incidence of State Punitive Damages Reforms
No full textState punitive damages reforms have altered how courts award punitive damages. We model the decision to award punitive damages as a two-step process involving the decision to award any punitive damages and the decision of what amount to award. Using samples of trial court verdicts from the Civil Justice Survey of State Courts, we find that punitive damages caps reduce the amount of damages awarded but do not affect whether they are initially awarded. Additionally, we find that maintaining lower evidentiary standards increases both the probability that punitive damages are awarded and the size of those awards
Unbundling Freedom in the Sharing Economy
Get PDFCourts and scholars point to the sharing economy as the most recent proof that our labor amp employment infrastructure is obsolete because it rests on a narrow and outmoded idea ”namely that only workers subjected to direct personalized control by their employers need workrelated protections and benefits Since they diagnose the problem as being our system\u27s emphasis on control these critics have long called for reducing or eliminating the primacy of the control test in classifying workers as either protected employees or unprotected independent contractors Despite these persistent criticisms however the concept of control has been remarkably sticky in scholarly and judicial circlesbrbrThis Article argues that critics have misdiagnosed the reason why the control test is an unsatisfying method of classifying workers and dispensing workrelated safeguards Controlbased analysis is faulty because it only captures one of the two conflicting ways in which workers scholars and decisionmakers think about freedom at work One of these ways freedom as noninterference is adequately captured by the control test The other freedom as nondomination is not The tension between these two conceptions of freedom both deeply entrenched in American culture explains why the concept of control has been both faulty and sticky when it comes to worker classification brbrDrawing on a firstofitskind body of ethnographic fieldwork among workers and policymakers across several sharing economy industries this Article begins by showing how workers themselves conceptualize freedom as both noninterference and nondomination It then goes on to show that both these conceptualizations of freedom also exist in case law and statutory law pertaining to work In doing so the Article demonstrates that there is no great divide between work law and work practices and that if anything the problem is that classification doctrine reflects and reinforces an irresolvable tension in the way lay and legal actors think about freedom at wor
Bathroom Laws as Status Crimes
Get PDFA growing number of American jurisdictions have considered laws that prohibit trans individuals from using bathroom facilities consistent with their gender identities Several scholars have criticized these socalled bathroom laws as a form of discrimination in violation of federal law Few scholars though have considered the criminal justice implications of these proposalsBy analyzing dozens of proposed bathroom laws this Article explores how many laws do more than stigmatize the trans community ”they effectively criminalize them Some of these proposed laws would establish new categories of criminal offenses for trans individuals who use bathrooms consistent with their gender identity Others would transform bathroom use by trans individuals into an unlawful trespass The existing literature suggests that the criminal justice system is unprepared to handle this newfound responsibilityThis Article concludes that by effectively criminalizing noncriminal conduct so inextricably linked to the status of being trans some proposed bathroom laws may violate the Eighth Amendment\u27s bar on cruel and unusual punishmen
The Killdeer connection
No full textHang out with the wrong friend, end up a wanted terrorist . . . Worn-out lawyer David Thompson is on a mission to prove his innocence. Falsely accused of murdering his friend, he must desert his family and seek out a secret society of bird-watchers in a desperate search for the truth. When the feds talk of adding a terrorism charge, the death penalty looms and Thompson is on the run from both the law and the real killer. With Thompson out of the way, his family becomes a target. Thrust on a riveting thrill ride through the oil fields of North Dakota, Thompson\u27s quest to save his own skin explodes into a race to save both his family and the nation from a deadly tidal wave of terror. But he may be too late . . . Don\u27t miss this action-packed, realistic, and thought-provoking legal thriller filled with mystery, family secrets, conspiracy, financial intrigue, captivating characters, deception, prejudice, greed, courtroom drama, and a bird! The standalone prequel to The Killdeer Connection in the Lawyer David Thompson Series is Saving Babe Ruth. Check it out!https://scholarship.law.ua.edu/harper_lee_prize_books_2018/1022/thumbnail.jp