Note: No Longer Available: Critiquing the Contradictory Ways Courts Treat Exclusive Arbitration Forum Clauses when the Forum Can No Longer Arbitrate
By Nicole Wanlass. Full text here. A number of contracts contain clauses mandating that any disputes arising under the contract must be resolved through arbitration by a particular forum. However, disputes over these contracts can end up in court when the exclusive arbitration forum cannot, or will not, arbitrate them. Under 9 U.S.C. § 5, a…
Continue ReadingNote: Inter Partes Review: Ensuring Effective Patent Litigation Through Estoppel
By Ann E. Motl. Full text here. Inter partes review (IPR) is a relatively new proceeding before the Patent and Trademark Office in which a petitioner requests administrative patent judges to review an issued patent and declare its claims invalid. After IPR, the petitioner can continue to litigate patent validity in federal court. However, this second…
Continue ReadingNote: The Case Against Self-Representation in Capital Proceedings
By Max S. Meckstroth. Full text here. In 1972, the Supreme Court decided Furman v. Georgia, holding that the death penalty was being applied arbitrarily and capriciously—rendering its application unconstitutional. Three years later, while the death penalty was still considered unconstitutional, the Supreme Court in Faretta v. California held that the Sixth Amendment implied the right…
Continue ReadingCivil Death in Modern Times: Reconsidering Felony Disenfranchisement in Minnesota
By Mark Haase. Full text here. Civil death is a legal status with roots in ancient Greece and brought to the American colonies from England. It deprived individuals convicted of certain offenses, often those with capital or life sentences, of all of their legal rights. Although civil death mostly disappeared in the mid-twentieth century, one of…
Continue ReadingPiling On: Collateral Consequences and Community Supervision
By Christopher Uggen & Robert Stewart. Full text here. While there has been great legal, media, and policy interest in the collateral effects of imprisonment, far less attention has been devoted to collateral consequences during and after periods of community supervision. Such consequences are wide-ranging, placing limits on education, employment, family rights, gun ownership, housing, immigration…
Continue ReadingImproving Economic Sanctions in the States
By Jessica M. Eaglin. Full text here. Economic sanctions in the United States justice system have acquired newfound attention from the public and policymakers across the country in recent years. As states reconsider excessively severe sentences for low level offenders captured in the justice system, there is a renewed interest in using alternatives to incarceration—including…
Continue ReadingThe Benefits and Costs of Economic Sanctions: Considering the Victim, the Offender, and Society
By R. Barry Ruback. Full text here. A consideration of economic sanctions must distinguish between the types and purposes of the different sanctions. Costs and fees refer to charges the offender must pay to reimburse the state for the administrative costs of operating the criminal justice system, although there is some variance in how the terms…
Continue ReadingThe Economic Rehabilitation of Offenders: Recommendations of the Model Penal Code (Second)
By Kevin R. Reitz. Full text here. It is well known that the United States. is the most punitive society in the world in the use of incarceration, and is in the “upper” tier of worldwide severity in use of the death penalty. Very recently, awareness has been growing that the United States, is equally exceptional…
Continue ReadingThe Burdens of Leniency: The Changing Face of Probation
By Ronald P. Corbett, Jr. Full text here. Since its inception in the mid-1800s, probation has been the sentence of choice in America’s criminal courts, accounting for approximately two-thirds of those under state correctional control, the balance of offenders incarcerated. As such, probation has been widely conceived of as a grant of leniency, a humane alternative…
Continue ReadingHOPE Probation and the New Drug Court: A Powerful Combination
By Judge Steven S. Alm. Full text here. Traditional felony probation programs in the United States often suffer from poor probationer compliance. In spite of dedicated and skilled probation officers using Evidence Based Principles, many probationers fail to successfully complete probation nationwide. Part of this systemic problem is an inability of Probation Officers and the Court…
Continue Reading