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This seminar will explore how the law thinks about violence. Across various legal domains---e.g., criminal law, criminal procedure, juvenile justice, immigration, domestic violence, family law, civil rights, free speech, firearms regulation---we will study when and to what extent the law marks off violence as a category of distinct concern, how violence is defined, and what ideas the law reflects about how violence operates. Students may elect to write a substantial research paper or a series of short response papers. 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.

Over the course of the past two decades there has been increasing recognition that, despite its commitment to the concept of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, our criminal justice system yields a steady stream of wrongful convictions. This Seminar will focus on some causes, preventions and potential remedies for this phenomenon. Subjects to be addressed include eyewitness identification, interrogations and confessions, jailhouse informant testimony, forensic evidence, the psychology of tunnel vision and confirmation bias, the role of appellate review and habeas corpus, the role of clemency, the impact of the problem on the death penalty, and issues around compensation of those who have been wrongly convicted. As we study these subjects, we will also reflect on whether taking some reforms too far will impair on the efficacy of legitimate law enforcement. The class will meet for two hours each week. In addition, there will be three additional evening or weekend sessions (to be scheduled at the convenience of the participants). During each of these additional sessions, students will watch a film involving a wrongful conviction and will engage in conversation about the particular case involved. Each student will be responsible for preparing a paper on an appropriate topic to be chosen in consultation with the instructor. Consent Instructions: 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: Class participation; Paper.

This course examines the theoretical foundations of criminal procedure---political, historical, and, above all, philosophical. What are the ideas at work in the American system of criminal procedure? How, historically, did the system develop, and why does it presently function as it does? Is the system broken and, if so, what principles should orient us in fixing it? This theoretical inquiry has a practical point. Procedure plays a major role in the present crisis of American criminal justice. By examining criminal procedure's theoretical foundations, this course aims to develop competing "big picture," synthetic perspectives on the criminal justice crisis as a whole. Thus, for students interested in criminal justice reform, this course will equip you to take a philosophically richer view of the underlying policy issues. For students thinking about a career in criminal law, this course will equip you to engage in large-scale thinking about how criminal procedure should change, rather than just working within the doctrinal and institutional structures that exist at present. For students interested in legal academia, this course will develop your ability to read sophisticated theoretical material, to write in the same vein, and to relate theoretical ideas to policy prescriptions. Elements used in grading: Class participation and, based on individual student preference, either a final reflection paper or a final research paper. 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. Students taking the course for R credit can take the course for either 2 or 3 units, depending on paper length. Cross-listed with Philosophy ( PHIL 375K).

This seminar will deal with the history of criminal justice in the United States, since the colonial period. The emphasis will not be on doctrines of criminal law, or (for the most part) on reported case law; but rather on the relationship between the working criminal justice system and American society. Indeed, throughout our history, there has been a huge gulf between the formal law and the way the system actually operated. At all points, the criminal justice system has responded to social, economic, political and cultural factors; and it is these that the course will focus on. The students will read a number of original sources that bear on the relationship between law and society, including sources on the rise of the penitentiary, the death penalty, the development of correctional methods, such as parole and indeterminate sentences; also race and gender relations and their influence on criminal justice. The course will also look at the rise and fall of laws controlling moral and sexual behavior. Students will be expected to write brief reflection papers (roughly two pages) before each of the sessions in which readings will be discussed. The reflection papers should not be mere summaries of the readings, rather, students will explain how the readings bore on the general theme or themes of the course; and the student's reaction to the writer's point of view. Each student will also be asked to develop a topic, carry out research, and write a paper on one or more aspects of the history of criminal justice. Papers can either be synthetic (a review of the literature on some aspect of the history of criminal justice) or embody original research, using such material as court files, older treatises, and newspaper and periodical literature. After the term begins, students accepted into the course can transfer, with consent of the instructor, from section (01) into section (02), which meets the R requirement. Automatic grading penalty waived for writers. Elements used in grading: The grade in the seminar will be based on the paper, and (to a degree) also on class participation, including the reflection papers and an extended take-home exam or an independent research paper.

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.

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.