9571 research outputs found
Sort by
The Real Problem with Plea Bargaining
No full textThis Response critiques Jeffrey Bellin’s argument that plea‑bargaining reform should focus solely on problems uniquely caused by plea bargaining and instead contends that the practice has fundamentally reshaped American criminal justice in ways that extend far beyond Bellin’s narrow framework. The Response argues that plea bargaining exacerbates systemic issues—including harsh sentencing, coercive leverage, and inaccurate convictions—by insulating legislative excess, weakening trial incentives, and pressuring even innocent defendants to plead guilty. It further maintains that Bellin understates how plea bargaining distorts legislative behavior, affects statutory design, and suppresses political pressure for reform. Most importantly, the Response identifies plea bargaining’s central harm as its displacement of constitutionally grounded adjudicative processes with an unregulated system of negotiation dominated by prosecutorial power, where defendants routinely waive discovery, trial rights, and appellate review in pursuit of leniency. Because prosecutors can demand that defendants bargain away any procedural protections, the piece concludes that Bellin’s uncertainty‑reducing reforms are unlikely to succeed without structural limits on prosecutorial leverage. True reform, it is argued, requires addressing how plea bargaining has transformed—and degraded—the rule‑of‑law foundations of the criminal justice system, not merely improving informational symmetry within negotiations
The Prosecutor Lobby
No full textProsecutors shape the use of the criminal law at many points during criminal proceedings but there is an earlier point in the process where prosecutors have influence: during the legislative process. The conventional wisdom in legal scholarship is that prosecutors are powerful and successful lobbyists who routinely support laws that make the criminal law more punitive and oppose criminal justice reform. In this Article, we test that narrative with an empirical assessment of prosecutor lobbying in America. Using an original dataset of four years of legislative activity from all fifty states, we analyze how frequently prosecutors lobbied, the issues on which they lobbied, the positions they took, and how often they succeeded.
Our data tell a complex story of partial success for the prosecutor lobby. Prosecutors are less successful than expected when lobbying against bills, and they are most successful when lobbying in favor of criminal justice reform. By analyzing not only national data, but also data from each state, we document that prosecutorial success is correlated with Republican control of the state legislature. We further conclude that perceived expertise does not drive prosecutorial lobbying success and that legislatures in some contexts respond to the prosecutor lobby much as they would to any other self-interested rent-seeking lobbyists
Consideration of the Beneficiary Inducement Statute on Access to Health Care Systems\u27 Population Genetic Screening Programs
No full textThis article examines how the federal Beneficiary Inducement Statute (BIS) and related anti-kickback laws shape access to population genetic screening (PGS) programs, particularly for Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries, during a critical early-adoption phase in public health genomics. While PGS for Tier 1 conditions—such as hereditary breast and ovarian cancer, Lynch syndrome, and familial hypercholesterolemia—offers significant opportunities for early detection and prevention, large-scale implementation remains limited by cost barriers, uneven insurance coverage, and statutory restrictions that can unintentionally hinder equitable participation. The authors explain how BIS constraints complicate efforts by health systems to offer low- or no‑cost genomic screening, survey legally permissible pathways such as preventive-care exemptions, financial-need determinations, research-based offerings, and self-pay models, and discuss how existing OIG advisory opinions illuminate the potential for compliant program design. They argue that attention to BIS is essential to avoid exacerbating disparities among low-income and older adults, who already underutilize preventive services, and conclude that achieving equitable PGS dissemination will likely require multi-pronged strategies—including research-based access, organizational subsidies, and longer-term policy or insurance reforms—to ensure that emerging genomic innovations benefit diverse populations from the outset
Gender Violence as a Penalty of Poverty
Get PDFThe matter of gender violence, including intimate partner violence (IPV), has long been categorized as a particularly egregious crime. The consequences of IPV are profound and affect all members of the household, family members near and far, and the communities where they live. Gender violence impacts the national economy. Costs accrue to workplaces, health care institutions, and encumber local and state coffers. Survivors are deprived of income, property, and economic stability: conditions that often endure beyond periods of physical injuries. Offenders also experience economic hardship as a result of involvement with the legal system. They often face significant obstacles when seeking housing and employment and encounter other economic difficulties due to their legal status. These circumstances interfere with the tasks of mitigating gender violence.
Economic difficulties are not only after–the–fact–occurrences. Decades of research demonstrate causal relationships between poverty, economic strain, and inequality, on the one hand, and survivor status, on the other. Moreover, studies confirm that economic instability contributes to the very factors that often culminate in offenders’ transgressions. Notwithstanding the IPV discourse that recognizes the entanglement between structural economic conditions and consequences to families and communities, too little economic support either on the front end or the back has been allocated to address these issues.
This essay will address the various economic factors related to survivors and offenders. It critically assesses the ways in which the responses to IPV insufficiently acknowledge economic concerns as a function of a neoliberal economic system that fails to support meaningful social change It offers a brief comparative review of circumstances in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico following the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement and a hyped–up period of economic liberalization and free trade with a model to address gender violence developed in Cuba after the period of Cuba’s post 1959 revolution through the first decade of the twenty–first century based on a political economy built upon principles of social justice and gender equality. These disparate economic circumstances illustrate the ways in which political economies contribute to or mitigate gender violence
\u3ci\u3eAmici Curiae\u3c/i\u3e Brief of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Support of Respondents
Get PDF
Skirting State Action: Section 1983 Challenges to Education and Charter Management Organizations After \u3ci\u3ePeltier v. Charter Day School, Inc.\u3c/i\u3e
Get PDFFund Finance Fraud: JES Global Capital and Implications for Subscription Line Lender Due Diligence
Get PDF
