Since 1933, the U.S. House of Representatives has maintained a procedure, the self-executing rule, that permits a single floor vote to pass multiple independent bills. Using this procedure, the House can pass a bill and, at the same time, “deem passed” entirely separate bills via a single floor vote. Some legal scholars have argued that this procedure is constitutionally unobjectionable, provided that members of the House clearly understand the legislative…
This study gathers data from two mass exonerations resulting from major police scandals, one involving the Rampart division of the L.A.P.D., and the other occurring in Tulia, Texas. To date, these cases have received little systematic attention by wrongful convictions scholars. Study of these cases, however, reveals important differences among subgroups of wrongful convictions. Whereas eyewitness misidentification, faulty forensic evidence, jailhouse informants, and false confessions have been identified as the…
The decision of the U.N. Security Council to authorize military intervention in Libya in 2011 was greeted as a triumph of the power of shame in international law. At last, it seemed, the usually clashing members of the Council came together, recognizing the embarrassment they would suffer if they stood by in the face of an imminent slaughter of civilians, and atoning for their sins of inaction in Rwanda, Bosnia,…
For some, it comes after their team squanders away a fourth quarter lead in the playoffs, engages in a hasty trade, or makes an ill-advised substitution. For others, an indefensible draft choice, announcement of team relocation, or decision not to re-sign a star player triggers the thought. Whether at a sports bar or on their own living room couch, at one time or another, every sports fan has transported him…
Although admiralty is among the law’s oldest practices, it continues to play a vital role in modern litigation—whether that be through the transportation of goods on rivers or people on cruise ships. Prior to 1966, a federal court exercising its admiralty jurisdiction relied on a different set of rules than when it acted in law or equity.To accommodate this distinction, cases were placed on separate dockets based on the court’s…
Matthew Creed, a young entrepreneur in suburban Kansas City, decided to start a business. He created a website called BlabberMouth featuring the names, addresses, and mugshot photographs of local people recently arrested. He then mailed letters to the arrestees, informing them about the website and offering to delete the information upon payment of a $199.99 fee. “We have already started blabbing to the world about your release from jail,” the…
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