401 - 410 of 873 results for: LAW

This seminar will grapple with the issue of firearm regulation in the face of the aggrandized Second Amendment articulated by the Supreme Court in Heller in 2008 and Bruen in 2022. An important function of law is to establish the rules through which the government regulates and constrains the actions of individuals. Given the high level of firearm violence in the United States compared to other affluent nations, most Americans tell pollsters they would like to see greater levels of controls over firearms. Many other Americans -- including a majority of the Supreme Court and many state legislatures -- place a higher value on eliminating constraints on the ability to purchase and use firearms. As with all forms of regulation, the decision to regulate firearms involves complex questions concerning 1) the cost and benefits of government action; 2) the empirical resolution of these issues; 3) the determination about what institution is best equipped to reach or evaluate these empirical judgments; and 4) the competing visions about the rights of the individual versus the public welfare. We will explore all of these issues in light of the currently evolving complexity of constitutional constraints imposed by the right to keep and bear arms, which will involve a focus on the complex interactions of law, regulation, social science, history, and constitutional law on an issue of considerable present political and substantive salience. Elements used in grading: Attendance, class participation, written assignments, & final paper.

While capital punishment has decreased significantly in recent years, both internationally and in the United States, it remains in high use in some regions of this country. In this course, we will (1) explore the modern death penalty over the past 50 years, diving deep into a wide survey of cases that set the doctrine around the death penalty and its limitations, (2) discuss the role that racial biases play in capital punishment and jury selection, (3) detail the capital litigation process in both state and federal courts, including the many procedural hurdles that a litigant must overcome for relief on even meritorious claims, and (4) examine in detail the types of claims that can be raised in capital litigation to obtain relief. PLEASE NOTE: The content of this course, by its nature, will be very triggering for some students -- please feel free to reach out to me in advance to discuss. Readings will include cases, statutes, and rules, as well as reports. Students can choose to write four 5-page reflection papers throughout the quarter, or, with instructor consent, students can choose to write a final R-paper (of at least 26 pages). The paper will be due at the law school's paper deadline. After the term begins, students accepted into the course can transfer from section (01) into section (02), which meets the R-paper requirement, with consent of the instructor. Elements used in grading: Class participation and reflection papers or R-paper.

Human decision making is increasingly being displaced by predictive algorithms. Judges sentence defendants based on statistical risk scores; regulators take enforcement actions based on predicted violations; advertisers target materials based on demographic attributes; and employers evaluate applicants and employees based on machine-learned models. One concern with the rise of such algorithmic decision making is that it may replicate or exacerbate human bias. This course surveys the legal and ethical principles for assessing the equity of algorithms, describes statistical techniques for designing fair systems, and considers how anti-discrimination law and the design of algorithms may need to evolve to account for machine bias. Concepts will be developed in part through guided in-class coding exercises. Admission is by consent of instructor and is limited to 20 students. CONSENT APPLICATION: To enroll in the class, please complete the course application by March 15, 2021 available at: https://5harad.com/mse330/. Elements used in grading: Grading is based on response papers, class participation, and a final project. Cross-listed with Comparative Studies in Race & Ethnicity ( CSRE 230), Management Science & Engineering (MS&E 330), Sociology ( SOC 279).

This will be a 2-hour advanced criminal procedure class, designed to acquaint students with the challenges confronting judges as they apply the Fourth Amendment to the bewildering array of search and surveillance techniques available to law enforcement in the 21st century. Various surveillance techniques will be examined, such as cell site simulators, GPS and RFID tracking devices, remote computer access (NITs), biometric identification, facial recognition technology, and automated license plate readers. The novel legal and practical issues generated by computer-based search techniques will be explored, for example: Should the plain view exception apply to computer searches? Are ex ante conditions on computer search warrants necessary, or even advisable? When is compulsion of biometric device identifiers appropriate? Can providers be compelled to decrypt locked cell phones? What are the notice requirements for search warrants directed to service providers? What limits should be placed on border searches of electronic devices? After the Supreme Court's 2018 decision in Carpenter, what rules govern law enforcement access to medical or genetic databases maintained by third parties? How is a cell tower dump order distinguishable from a general warrant? What are the particularity requirements for search warrants seeking electronically stored information? Should there be super-warrant requirements pertaining to minimization and overcollection for such searches? What about extraterritoriality and conflict of law issues raised by U.S. law enforcement access to data stored on foreign servers? Broader policy questions will also be addressed. For example, is it sensible to rely on the exclusionary rule to develop Fourth Amendment doctrine in this "golden age of surveillance"? Are courts or legislatures better equipped to regulate modern police investigations? What lessons can be learned from comparative approaches to police regulation in other countries? The course will build upon foundations laid in the Criminal Procedure--Investigation and Criminal Procedure--Adjudication courses. Those classes touch upon the basics of search warrants and the Fourth Amendment, and both are recommended prerequisites for this class. The next generation of judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and civil rights advocates will be forced to apply existing legal precedent to unprecedented surveillance technologies generated by the digital era. This course is designed to help them meet that daunting challenge. Elements used in grading: Attendance, Class Participation, Final Exam.

This seminar on selected issues in search and seizure for criminal lawyers will enhance your future clinic experience. Students will explore thorny issues raised in suppression motions using fact patterns and investigative materials from actual, prior clinic cases. Assigned readings will include briefs and governing caselaw on each topic. Students can take the course for either 2 or 3 units. Students electing 3 units will write an additional 10 page brief. After the term begins, students enrolled in the course can transfer from section 01 (2 units) into section 02 (3 units) with consent of the instructor. Elements used in grading: Attendance, Class Participation, Written Assignments, Final Paper. This seminar will be offered to students who were enrolled in the Spring 2020 Criminal Defense Clinic (which was cancelled). Depending on enrollment, other students may be considered with the consent of the instructors.

In this course students will participate in direct dialogs with major national experts and institutional leaders from a variety of perspectives on the country's criminal law system. We will hear from experts and leaders from law enforcement, prosecution, public defense, the judiciary, and corrections, and policy experts (including from the academic world). The thematic coverage of the course will be broad, covering empirical assessments of the state of criminal justice in the US, efforts to bring the country out of the phase of mass incarceration while maintaining record-low crime rates, reforms in our sentencing laws (including the death penalty), assessing what is meant by the rubric "progressive prospection," the workload challenges of public defenders, addressing the problem of wrongful convictions, and racial discrimination in both investigation and adjudication of crime. Each week there will be a Zoom interview with a guest. The instructors will interview the guests, and students will then participate in a Q and A phase. The interview sessions will generally run 90 minutes. For each guest there will be preassigned material to be read before the interview. Within 2 days after each interview, students will turn in 3-page reflection papers derived from the interview and reading. The final product will be a 10-page essay on a topic that has emerged from the course. This 10 page paper need not me a scholarly or research endeavor. It can be, in effect, a more extended reflection essay. We anticipate that for most weeks we will have one guest, either Monday or Wednesday, and the other day will be reserved for more elaborate discussions of the most previous guest's presentation or of reading for the next guest. There may be one or 2 weeks where we have 2 guests. While we are just now settling the guest list and anticipate some very exciting additions, for sure it will include Barry Scheck, founder of the famed Innocence Project. Professor Rachel Barkow of NYU. Leading authority on criminal justice administration. Earlonne Woods, former California life prisoner and co-creator and now co-producer and writer for of the Ear Hustle podcast. George Gascon, former Police Chief and former District Attorney of San Francisco and now candidate for Los Angeles County District Attorney. Professor John Donohue of Stanford, widely regarded as the nation's leading empirical researcher of crime and sentencing. Professor Sherri Lynn Johnson of Cornell, expert on the death penalty, who successfully argued the dramatic Flowers v. Mississippi case in SCOTUS last year (overturning a death verdict because of racial discrimination in jury selection.). Enrollment: Limited to 25 students; slots are guaranteed for students who had been enrolled in the Three Strikes Project course or Advanced Criminal Law for Spring term. Schedule. There may be a few sessions at a different time to accommodate our guests' schedules and constraints. The attendance rule for students is that they must ensure live attendance at least 8 of the sessions. For any missed session, the student must view the recorded video of the session within 24 hours and submit the reflection paper on schedule. Elements used in grading: Attendance, Class Participation, Written Assignments, Final Paper. CONSENT APPLICATION: To apply for this course, students must complete and submit a Consent Application Form available on the SLS website (Click Courses at the bottom of the homepage and then click Consent of Instructor Forms). See Consent Application Form for instructions and submission deadline.

Prosecutors wield enormous power over life, liberty and reputation and are subject to ethical standards higher than those that apply to other attorneys. As former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sutherland recognized in the context of federal prosecutors, "[t]he United States Attorney is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all, and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done." A U.S. Attorney may "strike hard blows" but not "foul ones." This course examines the distinct roles and responsibilities of U.S. Attorneys in the enforcement of federal criminal laws. We will review the ways in which a federal prosecutor exercises discretion in deciding whether or not to charge, what crimes to charge, and what punishments to seek. We will examine charging both individuals and corporate entities in the context of the priorities and policies of different administrations as well as the prosecutor's individual ethical obligations. This will be done on both a practical and conceptual level. Introductory sessions will focus on the historical evolution of the office, beginning with the Judiciary Act of 1789, and examine the office's complex (and unique) role within the system of separation of powers (including the appointment of Independent Counsel, Special Counsel and the judicial appointment of United States Attorneys). It will also explore related theoretical questions involving the prosecutorial role as well as challenges to the constitutionality of the judicial role in selecting US Attorneys. The bulk of the course will involve class sessions centered on different federal cases that involved difficult questions of prosecutorial decision-making. We will discuss the tools prosecutors use in exercising their discretion, including non-prosecution agreements, deferred prosecution agreements and cooperation agreements. The course will also explore the relationship between the U.S. Attorney and "Main Justice" and the extent to which the U.S. Attorney has independent decision-making authority. It will delve into the conflicts that may arise, and it will examine the appropriate framework for resolution of those conflicts. All students will write a paper for the class. Students may optionally elect to write an independent research paper for R credit. Students should submit at least 15 pages in the non-R (01) section. Students receiving R credit must abide by the Law School's research paper requirements -- which have the effect, because this is a three-credit course, of imposing a 26-page minimum. After the term begins, students accepted into the course can email registrar@ law.stanford.edu to transfer from section (01) into section (02), which meets the R requirement. Please observe the Registrar's deadline (final study list deadline) for switching into the R section. Elements used in grading: Attendance, class participation, research paper.

How is the crisis of American criminal justice connected with the crisis in American democracy? How can policing, prosecution, and punishment best be reformed in an era of polarization? What does the rise of exclusionary forms of populism mean for criminal law and criminal procedure? This seminar will address the opportunities for, and obstacles to, rethinking criminal justice in the current political moment. Topics of discussion may include police reform and police defunding, progressive prosecution, holistic defense, juries, clemency, and balancing expertise, professionalism, and popular participation in criminal justice. Students may elect to write a substantial research paper or a series of short response papers. Students taking the course for R credit can take the course for either 2 or 3 units, depending on the paper length. After the term begins, students accepted into the course can transfer from section (01) into section (02), which meets the R requirement, with consent of the instructor. Elements used in grading: attendance, class participation, response papers or final paper.

This course is an advanced criminal law class in which we will be studying selected criminal law/procedure issues. The only prerequisite is having taken Criminal Law. Each week you will be asked to watch a particular episode of the long-running television series Law and Order. Although there are nearly 1000 episodes, we will be watching and discussing only a handful, each one chosen because it presents a useful starting point to discussions of law, trial strategy, and public policy. We will discuss the role of the courts, prosecutors, defense lawyers and police as they navigate a difficult and somewhat incoherent system. We will also discuss such the role of plea bargaining, novel theories of prosecution and defense, the role of different non-lawyer actors in the system and so much more. The class will meet twice a week for 90 minutes. Classes will alternate between lectures and on-your-feet exercises, where a group of students will be "on panel," but in a slightly unusual way---they will be assigned roles in a scenario, and asked to carry out those roles by arguing for release or confinement at an arraignment, cross examining a witness, conducting voir dire or negotiating a proffer agreement...all with the participation and support of their fellow classmates, who will serve as judges, jurors, and, occasionally, clients. This is a class where students will get to sample not only the ideas of criminal law practice, but the feeling of lawyering: speaking, strategizing, and crafting beautiful arguments. For that reason, we invite students to only consider this course if collaborative, participatory learning is of special interest. All students will be expected to write a paper on a criminal law topic raised during the class in lieu of a final exam. Special Instructions: This course can satisfy the Research "R" requirement. The instructor and the student must agree whether the student will receive "R" credit. For "R" credit, the paper is substantial and is based on independent research. After the term begins, students accepted into the course can transfer from section (01) into section (02), which meets the R requirement, with consent of the instructor. Elements used in grading: Attendance, Class Participation, Group Exercises, and Final Paper.