Volume 2018, No. 3
Table of Contents
Articles
The Jurisprudence of Uncertainty: Knowledge, Science, and Abortion
Mary Ziegler
While the outcome of abortion cases seems to depend exclusively on the undue-burden standard, we have mostly missed the linchpin of recent decisions: conclusions about who has the authority to resolve uncertain scientific or moral questions. Using original archival research, this Article traces the history and present-day impact of the law and politics of uncertainty doctrine in abortion law.
Racial Character Evidence in Police Killing Cases
Jasmine B. Gonzales Rose
The United States is facing a twofold crisis: police killings of people of color and unaccountability for these killings in the criminal justice system. In many instances, the officers’ use of deadly force is captured on video and often appears clearly unjustified, but grand and petit juries still fail to indict and convict, leaving many baffled. This Article provides an explanation for these failures: juror reliance on “racial character evidence.” Too often, jurors consider race as evidence in criminal trials, particularly in police killing cases where the victim was a person of color. Instead of focusing on admissible evidence, jurors rely on race to determine the defendant’s innocence, the victim’s propensity for violence, and the witnesses’ credibility. This Article delineates the ways in which juror racial bias is utilized to take on evidentiary value at trial and constructs evidence law solutions to increase racial equality in the courtroom.
Law and Social Movements: Reimagining the Progressive Canon
Scott L. Cummings
This Article examines the “progressive legal canon”—iconic legal campaigns to advance progressive causes—and explores the implications of canon construction and critique for the study of lawyers and social movements. Looking backward, it reflects on why specific cases, like Brown v. Board of Education and Roe v. Wade, have become fundamental to progressive understandings of the role that lawyers play in social movements and how those cases have come to stand for a set of warnings about lawyer and court overreach. It then explores what might be gained from constructing a contemporary progressive legal canon and under what criteria one would select cases for inclusion. A core contribution of the Article is to synthesize examples of significant contemporary campaigns that respond to original canon concerns and complicate notions of lawyering in current movements of social import around labor, the War on Terror, LGBT rights, immigrant rights, and racial justice.
The LGBT Disconnect: Politics and Perils of Legal Movement Formation
Marie-Amélie George
The LGBT movement is facing a crucial dilemma. Although the movement presents itself as a coalition of gays, lesbians, and transgender individuals, many Americans accept and approve of the former (LG), but not the latter (T). Opponents of LGBT rights have capitalized on this social and political disconnect in local ballot measure campaigns, convincing voters to repeal sexual orientation anti-discrimination laws by highlighting that the statutes also contain gender identity protections. There is thus a sufficiently large gap between the identity categories that lesbian and gay legal victories have not built support for transgender rights, and yet they are integrated enough that one can be deployed against the other.
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The Explosive Recall: Proposing Solutions to Handle the Void Left by the Takata Bankruptcy
Justin Top
Since 2004, Takata Corporation knowingly manufactured defective airbags capable of causing death. In 2008, Honda recalled the first 4,000 cars with Takata airbags. Since then the Takata recall has grown to the largest automobile recall in history. However, in June of 2017, Takata declared bankruptcy which has limited the recovery of injured owners and passengers. The recent bankruptcy has renewed the focus on notifying consumers of the harm these airbags present and ensuring recovery in the event of injury.
The Use of Wisconsin’s Bail Jumping Statute: A Legal and Quantitative Analysis
Amy Johnson
Wisconsin passed its bail jumping statute in 1969 as part of a larger overhaul of the State’s criminal procedure. Enacted to coincide with other changes which adopted flexible bail provisions, the statute created the crime of bail jumping. This allows for defendants who violate the conditions of bond to also be prosecuted criminally, regardless of whether the violation is a standalone crime or not. However, the statute does not specifically call out the unit of prosecution; that has been left to the Wisconsin courts to decide. The holdings in the cases that have interpreted the statute have created ambiguity regarding the unit of prosecution and raise concerns about double jeopardy. Wisconsin courts’ interpretations of the bail jumping statute defy the plain meaning of the statute and do not pass the two-prong multiplicity test for double jeopardy.