scholarly journals “A World of Steel-Eyed Death”: An Empirical Evaluation of the Failure of the Strickland Standard to Ensure Adequate Counsel to Defendants with Mental Disabilities Facing the Death Penalty

2020 ◽  
pp. 261
Author(s):  
Michael Perlin ◽  
Tailia Roitberg Harmon ◽  
Sarah Chatt
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Empirical Evaluation ◽  
Therapeutic Jurisprudence ◽  
Full Length ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
Mental Disabilities ◽  
Legal Representation ◽  
Entire Area ◽  
The Law

First, we discuss the background of the development of counsel adequacy in death penalty cases. Next, we look carefully at Strickland, and the subsequent Supreme Court cases that appear—on the surface—to bolster it in this context. We then consider multiple jurisprudential filters that we believe must be taken seriously if this area of the law is to be given any authentic meaning. Next, we will examine and interpret the data that we have developed. Finally, we will look at this entire area of law through the filter of therapeutic jurisprudence, and then explain why and how the charade of “adequacy of counsel law” fails miserably to meet the standards of this important school of thought. Our title comes, in part, from Bob Dylan’s song, Shelter from the Storm. As one of the authors (MLP) has previously noted in another article drawing on that song’s lyrics, “[i]n a full-length book about that album, the critics Andy Gill and Kevin Odegard characterize the song as depicting a ‘mythic image of torment.’” The defendants in the cases we write about—by and large, defendants with profound mental disabilities who face the death penalty in large part because of the inadequacy of their legal representation— confront (and are defeated by) a world of ‘steel-eyed death.’ We hope that this Article helps change these realities.

EXPRESSIVE MEANING, RACE, AND THE LAW:

Legal Theory ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-99
Author(s):  
Andrew Altman
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Legal Reasoning ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Expressive Meaning ◽  
The Law

Recently, legal and social thinkers have turned to the idea that actions possess a nonlinguistic meaning, called “expressive meaning.” In this article I examine the idea of expressive meaning and its role in legal reasoning. My focus is on a series of U.S. Supreme Court cases involving constitutional challenges to election districts drawn on the basis of race. The Supreme Court used the idea of expressive meaning in striking down the districts. After explicating the idea of expressive meaning, I explain and criticize the Court’s reasoning. I distinguish the approach of Justices Thomas and Scalia, who hold that all uses of race in districting do constitutional harm, from that of Justice O’Connor, who distinguishes uses of race that do constitutional harm from those that do not. I contend that Justice O’Connor is right to make the distinction but she draws the line using a questionable standard. A more defensible standard would be more accommodating to the districts that the Court invalidated.

scholarly journals Feu la D.C.D. L'arrêt Miller et la peine de mort

2005 ◽  
Vol 18 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 567-576
Author(s):  
Henri Brun
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Supreme Court Of Canada ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
Right To Life ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Right ◽  
First Time

The Miller case, decided by the Supreme Court of Canada on October 5, 1976, puts the death penalty under the light of the Canadian Bill of Rights which formulates the right to life and the right to protection against cruel and unusual treatment or punishment. The following comment on the case relates to the interpretation given specific clauses of the Bill of Rights by the Court on that occasion. But it stresses especially the law that flows from the case about the compelling weight of the Bill of Rights over acts of Parliament enacted after the Bill came into force. In Miller, the Supreme Court expressed itself on the subject for the first time.

scholarly journals Predicting the Law Area and Decisions of French Supreme Court Cases

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Octavia-Maria Şulea ◽  
◽  
Marcos Zampieri ◽  
Mihaela Vela ◽  
Josef van Genabith ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
The Law

scholarly journals Phase of the trial (Justice and Crime Coverage)

10.34778/2zp ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franziska Oehmer
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Time Frame ◽  
Emotional Reactions ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
Or Education ◽  
Main Trial ◽  
Newspaper Reporting

The variable “phase of a trial” records whether the phase before, during or after the trial is mainly covered in the reporting (vgl. Haney & Greene, 2004; Glark, 2015; Strother, 2017). Studies show that the media’s focus is mainly on the beginning (when the new information about the case has been introduced) and on the end of the trial and the possible emotional reactions to it, while the main trial is usually not or little covered (Vinson & Ertter, 2002; Haney & Greene, 2004).   Field of application/theoretical foundation: The variable serves - among other variables – as an indicator of the representativeness of judicial reporting.   Example study: Haney & Greene (2004)   Information on Haney & Greene (2004) Authors: Craig Haney, Susan Greene Research interest: The study evaluates aspects of newspaper reporting about death penalty cases and capital defendants. Object of analysis: “representative sample of local, mainstream (i.e., non-“tabloid”) newspaper coverage” (134) Time frame of analysis: not mentioned Codebook: not available   Info about variable Variable name/definition: phase of the trial [Phase des Gerichtsprozesses] Level of analysis: article Operationalization/coding instructions: “Generally, the stage of the trial process at which the article was written was stated explicitly. Otherwise, it was inferred from the content of the article or by comparing the date of the article to others written about the same case.” (p.136) Values: pretrial guilt-phase penalty sentencing-phase post trial Intercoder reliability: Cronbach’s alpha of .73 across categories (5 Coder), not mentioned for individual category Reference Clark, T. S., Lax, J. R., & Rice, D. (2015). Measuring the political salience of Supreme Court cases. Journal of Law and Courts, 3(1), 37–65. Haney, C. & Greene, S. (2004). Capital constructions: Newspaper reporting in death penalty cases. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 4(1), 129–150. Strother, L. (2017). How expected political and legal impact drive media coverage of Supreme Court cases, Political Communication, 34(4), S. 571-589. Vinson, C. D., & Ertter, J. S. (2002). Entertainment or Education: How Do Media Cover the Courts? Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, 7(4), S. 80–97.

scholarly journals North Dakota

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
William P. Pearce
Keyword(s):  
North Dakota ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
District Court ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
The North ◽  
Specific Goal ◽  
Energy States ◽  
Vague Concept ◽  
The Law ◽  
Opening Paragraph

The topic of this Article arose from a recent opinion by the North Dakota Supreme Court: Western Energy Corporation v. Stauffer. The case dealt with how the law handles changes in ownership of property, specifically land including underlying mineral interests, that come into dispute after substantial periods of time have passed, resulting in a need for the parties involved in the dispute to turn to the courts for a solution. The passing of a substantial amount of time often becomes the issue in resolving the dispute in these types of situations. The opening paragraph in the Court’s opinion in Western Energy states that “Western Energy appealed from a district court judgment finding its quiet title action pertaining to claimed mineral interests to be barred by applicable statutes of limitation and laches.” Statutes of limitation are fairly straightforward and are discussed below as they are the determinative factor in the case. However, the specific goal here is to examine several of the approaches that can be taken in this kind of situation and how the issue is ultimately resolved. Raising the claim of “laches” is a rather vague concept, but it appears in some of these cases and has an interesting background, as discussed in the last part of this Article. The background of the case in question will be laid out first followed by the discussion of several traditional methodologies for resolving cases of this kind, generally, in the context of other court cases.

Capital Punishment

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucas A. Powe
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
Wide Margin

This chapter examines Supreme Court cases that were filed in Texas over the issue of capital punishment. When it comes to executions, Texas leads the nation by a wide margin. Between 1997 and 2000, Texas executed 132 people—significantly more than any other state since executions resumed after 1976. After the executions of Michael Richard and Carlton Turner, the Court started chipping away at capital punishment in the late 1960s. The chapter discusses cases relating to the constitutionality of the death penalty, including Branch v. Texas and Furman v. Georgia, as well as cases that came after thirty-five states and the federal government passed new legislation reinstating the death penalty. These include Smith v. Texas and cases involving Johnny Paul Penry, Robert Tennard, Jose Ernesto Medellin and Humberto Leal Garcia, Bobby J. Moore, and Duane Buck.

scholarly journals When Nominal Is Reasonable: Damages for the Unpracticed Patent

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oskar Liivak
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
Patent Policy ◽  
Damage Award ◽  
Boston College ◽  
Patented Invention ◽  
The Law ◽  
Significant Change

56 Boston College Law Review 1031 (2015)To obtain a substantial patent damage award a patentee need not commercialize the patented invention; the patentee need only show that its patent was infringed. This surely incentivizes patenting but it dis-incentivizes innovation. Why commercialize yourself? The law allows you to wait for others to take the risks, and then you emerge later to lay claim to “in no event less than a reasonable” fraction of other people’s successes. It is rational to be a patent troll rather than an innovator. This troll-enabling interpretation of patent law’s reasonable royalty provision, however, is wrong as a matter of patent policy. Surprisingly, it is also wrong as a matter of patent history. The courts created the basis for reasonable royalties in the nineteenth century, thereby marking a significant change to patent damages. But this precedent was nowhere near as sweeping as today’s interpretation would suggest. Up to the mid-1800s, the existing routes to patent damages were strict, available only to patentees who had already commercialized their patented invention. Budding innovators who were starting to commercialize but who could not yet prove an established royalty or lost profits were left out. Courts developed reasonable royalties for them. Those cases never extended reasonable royalties to those who simply sat on their patents waiting to extract payment from others. Starting in the 1970s, however, reasonable royalties came unmoored from that historical foundation. Infringement alone, without any evidence of commercialization, now creates a presumption of compensable harm. Today’s view of reasonable royalties is unsupported by patent history and sits in tension—if not outright conflict—with binding Supreme Court cases. Properly understood, some efforts to commercialize or some evidence of copying are still necessary for significant reasonable royalties. As a result, nominal damages are still reasonable to compensate for infringement of an unpracticed patent when asserted against independent inventors.

The Right of Appeal in Naturalization Cases in the Federal Courts

1927 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry B. Hazard
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
Federal Courts ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Right

The Supreme Court of the United States, by Mr. Justice Brandeis, recently handed down its decision in Tutun v. United States, and Neuberger v. United States. This is the latest of the important Supreme Court cases determining the law of naturalization, of citizenship, and of expatriation. During the past fifteen years they have comprised Johannessen v. United States, Mansour v. United States, Luria v. United States, Maibaum v. United States, Mackenzie v. Hare, United States v. Ginsberg, United States v. Ness, United States v. Morena, Ozawa v. United States, Yamashita v. Hinkle, United States v. Thind, Kaplan v. Tod, and Toyota v. United States.

Rights

2020 ◽  
pp. 72-117
Author(s):  
Stephen P. Garvey
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Reasonable Doubt ◽  
Mens Rea ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
Criminal Statute ◽  
Democratic Authority ◽  
Actus Reus ◽  
Subsequent Discussion ◽  
The Law

This chapter uses two well-known Supreme Court cases—Powell v. Texas and Morissette v. United States—to frame the subsequent discussion. It offers the reasonable doubt test as a way for each citizen to decide for himself if a proposed limit on democratic authority is a legitimate limit. It introduces formulations of the actus reus and mens rea meant to pass that test, such that they can serve as immunity rights limiting the authority of a democratic states to ascribe guilt to those accused of crimes. It distinguishes actus reus and mens rea as they are conventionally understood (as tools lawyers use to analyze and dissect the elements of criminal statute) from how they will be understood here (as immunity rights). It explains how actus reus and mens rea so understood mean one thing when applied to defendants who realized they were committing a crime and another thing when they didn’t realize they were committing a crime. It then details how mens rea is ultimately grounded in an ill or indifferent will—a lack of sufficient concern for the law and its ends—and proposes a test (the Jekyll test) for sorting ill and indifferent wills from law-abiding ones.

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