By Jessica M. Eaglin. Full Text. Despite recent modest reductions in state prison populations, Franklin Zimring argues in his forthcoming book that mass incarceration remains persistent and intractable. As a path forward, Zimring urges states to adopt pragmatic, structural reforms that incentivize the reduction of prison populations through a “categorical imperative,” meaning, by identifying subcategories…

By Robert Weisberg. Full Text. This Article places Professor Zimring’s treatment of the boom in imprisonment that led to mass incarceration in the wider context of his decades-long contemplation of our ability to understated changes in crime and punishment. His earlier studies of the great crime decline that began in the 1990s provides a revealing,…

By John F. Pfaff. Full Text. In his forthcoming book, The Insidious Momentum of Mass Incarceration, Franklin Zimring argues that the most effective way to end mass incarceration is to target the policy failures that drive it. He focuses in particular on the “prosecutorial free lunch”: prosecutors are county-funded officials who can send as many…

By Alfred Blumstein. Full Text. In today’s highly polarized political environment, one of the few issues which garners widespread agreement is the desire to reduce prison populations. Thus, it is rather disconcerting to see the recent stability of the incarceration rate since 2000. This raises the concern that this could be a reflection of a…

By Rachel E. Barkow. Full text.  

By Steven L. Schwarcz. Full Text.  International business transactions increasingly are being conducted under “soft law”—a term referring to non-state rules that may be aspirational or reflect best practices but are not yet legally enforceable. In part, this shift reflects a decline in cross-border treaty-making, which needs widespread consensus and is subject to lengthy negotiations.…

By Camille Gear Rich. Full Text. This Article asks a fundamental question: Why does a society ostensibly committed to racial equality allow players in the assisted reproductive technology (ART) market to buy and sell race? As consumers in the ART market well know, human gametes (both eggs and sperm) are packaged, marketed, and sometimes priced…

By Sunita Patel. Full Text.  The view that the Supreme Court has limited judicial review of unconstitutional government practices is evident in varied quarters of legal scholarship. With respect to structural reform litigation against the police there are good reasons for pessimism, particularly when considering three particular lines of Supreme Court case law. City of…

By G. Michael Parsons. Full Text.  The marketplace of ideas features prominently in First Amendment doctrine, with the Supreme Court invalidating laws that purportedly interfere with the free flow of information through society. Yet, the modern version of the market metaphor rests entirely upon contradictory conceptual assumptions, false empirical premises, and an unsupported historical narrative.…

By Justin Sevier. Full Text. Policymakers continue to grapple with the fundamental question of how to maximize the institutional legitimacy of legal conflict resolution. Recently, prominent scholars have begun advocating for a value-based approach to legal regulation, which seeks to maximize voluntary compliance with the law because members of the public believe that legal institutions…