EASY VICTIMS OF THE LAW: Protecting the Constitutional Rights of Juvenile Suspects to Prevent False Confessions

The inherently coercive nature of custodial interrogation is the very reason the Supreme Court handed down the famous Miranda v. Arizona decision; the court recognized the increased vulnerability that suspects under questioning are subjected to when placed in a situation designed to elicit incriminating information.1 Legal scholars and judiciaries alike agree that the likelihood of police questioning resulting in a false admission of guilt or self-incriminating statements is disproportionately more probable if the subject of the questioning is a minor.2 The constitutional protections that are afforded to juvenile suspects subjected to custodial interrogations are those set out in Miranda, and as evidenced by the rampant incidence of juvenile false confessions, clearly these protections are either facially insufficient or improperly carried out by investigators.3 As the law currently stands, there are few protections afforded above and beyond the standard protections for adult defendants as it relates to the voluntariness of confessions.4 The most common suggestions to reduce the chances that a juvenile suspect will falsely confess are to reform police procedure during the questioning itself or to suppress any statement resulting from involuntary, coerced, or un-Mirandized statements at subsequent proceedings.5 Adding a requirement that counsel be present during the custodial interrogation of juvenile suspects seems to be the most effective and efficient means of preventing false confessions. The most steadfast and all-encompassing protection is to propose a Constitutional Amendment. As the most difficult legislation to enact, it will ensure that the individual requirements are tempered to both proponents’ and opposers’ predilections and will most likely stand the test of time provided it is well-rounded and comprehensive enough.6 Regardless of what the first step is that the law takes to protect the especially vulnerable members of our society in the criminal justice system, it cannot come soon enough to extend a helping hand towards anyone that has the misfortune of being “an easy victim of the law.”

Sovereign debt markets in turbulent times : creditor discrimination and crowding-out effects

En 2007, los países de la periferia europea disfrutaban de un crecimiento estable, y défi cits fi scales y primas de riesgo reducidos. Sin embargo, la crisis fi nanciera global empujó a estas mismas economías a profundas recesiones, aumentando sus défi cits públicos y volúmenes de deuda pública de tal forma que en 2010 estas economías comenzaron a sufrir episodios de crisis de deuda soberana muy severos. Al tiempo que las primas de riesgo aumentaban, también lo hizo la proporción de la deuda pública en manos de inversores residentes. De esta forma, el crédito disponible fue reasignado del sector privado al sector público, lo que vino acompañado de una caída en la inversión privada y un agravamiento de la recesión económica. En este trabajo proponemos un modelo de riesgo soberano, en el que la deuda pública se negocia en mercados secundarios, y que es capaz de racionalizar todos estos hechos estilizados. El modelo tiene dos ingredientes principales: discriminación entre acreedores y «efecto expulsión» (crowding-out effect, en inglés)..In 2007, countries in the euro periphery were enjoying stable growth, low defi cits and low spreads. Then the fi nancial crisis erupted and pushed them into deep recession, raising their defi cits and debt levels. By 2010, they were facing severe debt problems. Spreads increased and, surprisingly, so did the share of the debt held by domestic creditors. Credit was reallocated from the private to the public sector, reducing investment and deepening the recession even further. To account for these facts, we propose a simple model of sovereign risk in which debt can be traded in secondary markets. The model has two key ingredients: creditor discrimination and crowding-out effects.

Employment fluctuations in a dual labor market

In light of the huge cross-country differences in job losses during the recent crisis, we study how labor market duality - meaning the coexistence of "temporary" contracts with low firing costs and "permanent" contracts with high firing costs - affects labor market volatility. In a model of job creation and destruction based on Mortensen and Pissarides (1994), we show that a labor market with these two contract types is more volatile than an otherwise-identical economy with a single contract type. Calibrating our model to Spain, we find that unemployment fluctuates 21% more under duality than it would in a unified economy with the same average firing cost, and 33% more than it would in a unified economy with the same average unemployment rate. In our setup, employment grows gradually in booms, due to matching frictions, whereas the onset of a recession causes a burst of firing of "fragile" low-productivity jobs. Unlike permanent jobs, some newly-created temporary jobs are already near the firing margin, which makes temporary jobs more likely to be fragile and means they play a disproportionate role in employment fluctuation

The Independent Existence: A Look at Florida\u27s Wrongful Death Statute in the Wake of Dobbs and Changing State Abortion Laws.

Following the Supreme Court’s overturning of the federally mandated fundamental right to abortion founded in Roe1 and Casey,2 the decision of whether a woman may terminate a pregnancy has returned to the states with the current Court’s implementation of Dobbs v. Jackson Woman’s Health.3 In Florida, the state government decided to reduce the gestational age for termination to fifteen weeks in July 2022, and further reduced the gestational age to six weeks in April 2023 provided that the Florida Supreme Court upholds the fifteen week ban.4 This note operates under the fifteen week standard as the six week ban is not yet effective. While the executive and legislative branches have decided to reduce the gestational age of termination to fifteen weeks, the state still refuses to allow for a parent’s recovery for the wrongful death of a fetus, holding that a fetus is not a person within the scope of the wrongful death act.5 This creates a congruity issue in the law surrounding fetuses and fetal rights in the states. This note argues that Florida should resolve the issue of legal inconsistency created through the fetal laws of abortion, feticide, and fetal wrongful death by abrogating the Born Alive Rule where a parent could not recover for the death of a fetus unless the fetus was born alive.6 Now that states can once again determine the issue of abortion, Florida should allow for the recovery for the tortious death of a fetus. If Florida allows for the wrongful death of a fetus, this will not give legal personhood rights to the fetus, but rather would allow for a greater understanding of parental rights for their fetus under the theory of subjective fetal personhood. The state has shown that it wishes to protect the interests of the potential future life and allowing for the recovery for the wrongful death of a fetus would further promote this interest

John Hume : origins of a Derry icon 1960-74

John Hume held executive office for just five months out of a political career lasting more than 30 years. Yet he became one of the most influential politicians of the past 50 years and was instrumental in changing the course of politics not just in Northern Ireland, but also Dublin, London and Washington. This thesis examines Hume’s political origins from his earliest appearances in public life in the 1960s and how he rejected much of the received political ideology which endured for 40 years after the Partition of Ireland. It explores how Hume synthesised and entwined various strands of fresh thought and formed a distinctive approach which he made his own. It explains his rise from relative obscurity using a thematic approach. A chapter explores the “hidden history” of Hume’s Derry and its formative effect on him. Another chapter details Hume’s efforts to supplant the Nationalist Party and, along with five others, to create a new political force to further his distinctive approach to the Irish question. The third chapter examines in detail Hume’s efforts to reformulate the Northern Ireland policy of the Irish government and a fourth details his efforts to harness the power of the US. Hume’s troubled and arguably counter-productive relations with unionists in Northern Ireland are explored in chapter five and an explanation is offered as to why Hume failed to convince so many unionists of his case. It plots the changes in Hume’s approach which occurred in response to the eruption of the Troubles. The final chapter examines Hume’s relations with the British government and cites his insistence that London, as a sovereign power, involve itself fully in the search for a settlement. Throughout, constant reference is made to Hume’s Derry origins and the centrality of the city’s history and politics in his political make up