For next time:
- Edwards v. Aguillard (482 U.S. 578 (1987)), https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/482/578/case.html. Read the syllabus, skim and sample the opinions. See background materials here: https://www.oyez.org/cases/1986/85-1513.
Two words to know about the law: legal fees.
Some basic distinctions
The Dangers of the Law
- Tocqueville (p. 267): "Our written laws are often hard to understand, but everyone can read them, whereas nothing could be more obscure and out of reach of the common man than a law founded on precedent.”
- How many federal crimes are there?
- Prosecutorial discretion
- Three felonies a day
- Costs
- Most district attorneys are elected officials.
- "In most developed countries, particularly in continental Western Europe, Canada, and Japan, prosecutors are resolutely nonpolitical and nonpartisan. They are expected to make decisions about individual cases on their merits, without regard to public attitudes, opinions, and emotions or to politicians’ preferences or priorities. In the United States, however, local chief prosecutors in 45 states are elected (Perry 2006).1 In the federal system, US attorneys are appointed on the basis of partisan and sometimes ideological criteria. American prosecutors sometimes openly and unashamedly take media reactions, public opinion, and political considerations into account when deciding what cases to prosecute and how to handle them."
- Most sheriffs are elected officials.
- Many states elect judges -- key Wisconsin race is under way right now.
Trials and Juries
- Less than three percent of criminal cases go to trial. The rest end in plea deals.
- The "joy" of jury duty
- My jury experience
- Also watch this clip from the 1959 movie Anatomy of a Murder. Read background here, which explains why law school profs show this clip in courses on criminal law. Note: the scene includes brief references to sexual assault.
- Tocqueville (p. 275):
Juries invest each citizen with a sort of magisterial office; they make all men feel that they have duties toward society and that they take a share in its government. By making men pay attention to things other than their own affairs, they combat that individual selfishness which is like rust in society.
Juries are wonderfully effective in shaping a nation’s judgment and increasing its natural lights. That, in my view, is its greatest advantage. It should be regarded as free school which is always open and in which each juror learns his rights, comes into daily contact with the best-educated and most-enlightened members of the upper classes, and is given practical lessons in the law, lessons which the advocate’s efforts, the judge’s advice, and also the very passions of the litigants bring within his mental grasp. I think that the main reason for the practical intelligence and the political good sense of the Americans is their long experience with juries in civil cases.
Civil, Criminal, and Public Law (Lowis, 242)
- Even if they win acquittal in a criminal cases, defendants might still face civil suits. See O.J. Simpson
State and Local Judges
Federal Judges
Appellate Courts
- Guide to Supreme Court decisions
- The Senate and Supreme Court nominations
- SCOTUS demographics
- Tocqueville (p. 270): “There is hardly a political question in the United States which does not sooner or later turn into a judicial one”
No comments:
Post a Comment