Current Issue
In the landmark case of New York Times v. Sullivan, the Supreme Court established the “public official” doctrine to protect the press in its reporting on government officials. Since that…
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All The President’s Lawyers—Problems and Potential Solutions in Prosecuting Presidential Criminal Conduct
Following the presidential election of 2016, the United States has found itself in a constitutional crisis, the likes of which the Framers could not have anticipated. The evidence currently mounting…
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Overstating America’s Wrongful Conviction Rate? Reassessing the Conventional Wisdom About the Prevalence of Wrongful Convictions
A growing body of academic literature discusses the problem of wrongful convictions—i.e., convictions of factually innocent defendants for crimes they did not commit. But how often do such miscarriages of…
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Where Have All the Innocents Gone?
The DNA revolution has revealed that, contrary to received wisdom, the conviction of an innocent defendant by the vaunted American criminal justice system is far from a freakish event. The…
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Jurisdiction-Specific Wrongful Conviction Rate Estimates: the North Carolina and Utah Examples
Determining an error rate for wrongful convictions remains among the most pressing problems in the criminal justice literature. In a response to my earlier article, Professor George Thomas has offered…
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The Institutional Design of Punishment
For the past 40 years, policymakers have engaged in a debate over which institution should wield the principal power over punishment. Should courts and parole boards have the dominant role…
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