Symbol and Substance in the Massachusetts Commission Report

Symposium: Toward A Model Death Penalty Code: The Massachusetts Governor\u27s Council Report

The Opinion Volume 11 Number 8 – April 29, 1971

The Opinion newspaper issue dated April 29, 1971https://digitalcommons.law.buffalo.edu/the_opinion/1037/thumbnail.jp

Rethinking the Death Penalty: Can We Define Who Deserves Death? A Symposium Held at the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, May 22, 2002

In light of the defects of the capital punishment system and recent calls for a moratorium on executions, many are calling for serious reform of the system. Even some who would not eliminate the death penalty entirely propose reforms that they contend would result in fewer executions and would limit the death penalty to a category that they call the worst of the worst. This program asks the question: Is there a category of defendants who are the worst of the worst? Can a crime be so heinous that a defendant can be said to deserve to be executed? Would such a limited death penalty be supportable morally, philosophically, and constitutionally

Procedural Labyrinths and the Injustice of Death: A Critique of Death Penalty Habeas Corpus (Part Two)

The following is part two of a two-part article that critiques death penalty habeas corpus. Partone of this article included discussionsof the ineffective assistanceof counsel and the federal habeas corpus exhaustion requirement. 29 U. RICH. L. REV. 1327 (1995). Part two of this article,which follows, discusses issues related to retroactivity in habeas corpus proceedings and procedural default

Deciding to Kill: Revealing the Gender in the Task Handed to Capital Jurors

Day after day, across this country, ordinary people are summoned to court for a selection process that ultimately leaves them in a room deciding, with other jurors, whether a criminal defendant should be killed. The task handed to these jurors is an awesome, personal, moral decision, encased within the complex legal standards and procedures that constitute modern capital jurisprudence. The doctrine that created and sustains this moment of conscience reflects an ongoing struggle of rule against uncertainty, reason against emotion, justice against mercy, and thus, at one level, male against female. Capital jurisprudence -- the law for deciding whether to kill -- is also a hidden battleground of gender. As participants in an entrenched system of legal thought, we organize our thinking about law within this series of dichotomies, which include reason versus emotion, distance versus connection, and rule versus context. The dichotomous choices are not complementary, but rather conflict with and challenge each other. Those dualisms have a hierarchy; maleness is associated with the top end of the hierarchy, female with the bottom. Thus law is a gendered structure of power and meaning. I test these premises by examining one awesome moment in law, the decision of a jury to punish someone by death. The power of the law is manifest in this moment. If gendered structures in fact operate within apparently neutral legal principles and procedures, they will be deeply at work in the legal procedures that give the ultimate task -- deciding life or death -- to a person, a juror

Probing Life Qualification through Expanded Voir Dire

The conventional wisdom is that most trials are won or lost in jury selection. If this is true, then in many capital cases, jury selection is literally a matter of life or death. Given these high stakes and Supreme Court case law setting out standards for voir dire in capital cases, one might expect a sophisticated and thoughtful process in which each side carefully considers which jurors would be best in the particular case. Instead, it turns out that voir dire in capital cases is woefully ineffective at the most elementary task--weeding out unqualified jurors. Empirical evidence reveals that many capital jurors are in fact unqualified to serve. Moreover, the ineffectiveness of the process is far from even-handed. A juror is not death-qualified if she would always vote against a death sentence, regardless of the circumstances, and a handful of the jurors who actually serve in capital cases are in fact unqualified for this reason. On the other hand, a juror is not life qualified” if she would always vote for a death sentence upon the proof of capital murder; if she is a burden shifter, a person who requires the defendant to demonstrate why she deserves to live; or because she is mitigation impaired, a person who is unwilling to consider one or more mitigating factors that the Supreme Court has said jurors must be willing to consider. In contrast to the small number of death unqualified jurors who actually serve in capital cases, far larger numbers of jurors who are not life qualified serve in capital cases. Part II of this article will summarize the law relevant to determining who is qualified to sit as a juror in a capital case, and then demonstrate the magnitude of the problem of unqualified jurors as revealed by the current empirical findings of capital juror studies. Part III then examines how and why voir dire malfunctions in capital cases, thereby allowing unqualified jurors to sentence defendants to death. Part IV will suggest several ways in which courts may help rectify the problem of the unconstitutional empanelment of jurors who are uncommonly willing to condemn a man to die

Pensions and Productivity

Employers typically view their investment in pension plans as a means of providing retirement income for their workers. Economists, on the other hand, view pension programs as a way to increase workplace productivity. Dorsey, Cornwell and Macpherson explore the theoretical and empirical basis for this perspective and, in the process, offer a complete and up-to-date discussion on the productivity theory of pensions.https://research.upjohn.org/up_press/1067/thumbnail.jp

Dept. of Enviromental Quality v. Gibson Clerk\u27s Record Dckt. 46217

https://digitalcommons.law.uidaho.edu/idaho_supreme_court_record_briefs/8647/thumbnail.jp

Senate journal 1996.

Titles and imprints vary; Some volumes include miscellaneous state documents and reports; Rules of the Senat