The Mandatory Pretrial Release Provision of the Adam Walsh Act Amendments: How Mandatory Is It, and Is It Constitutional?

(Excerpt) This Article analyzes each of those decisions and, by way of two hypothetical cases, addresses the applicability and constitutionality of the AWA Amendments. Part I examines the applicability of the mandatory pretrial release conditions of the AWA Amendments, concluding that the conditions are not as automatic as Congress may have wished. Part II sets forth a brief history of the Bail Reform Act and discusses the seminal constitutional attacks made upon its bail provisions, including those made in United States v. Salerno. Part III applies the lessons learned from Salerno and its progeny to the recent attacks on the AWA Amendments under the Excessive Bail Clause of the Eighth Amendment, the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, and the separation of powers doctrine. It concludes that the mandatory pretrial release provision is facially unconstitutional under the Fifth and Eighth Amendments or, at the very least, unconstitutional as applied to the vast majority of defendants charged with an AWA-enumerated offense, and that the provision violates the separation of powers doctrine if it has the effect of mandating detention without any role for the district court in the bail calculus. Recognizing the lack of political room for meaningful legislative reform on the criminal war against sex crimes, the Conclusion of this Article calls instead for Congress to repeal or redraft the mandatory pretrial release provision of the AWA Amendments to cure the unconstitutional defects that are poisoning our criminal justice system at the pretrial stage. In the alternative, the Conclusion urges Congress to bolster the legislative record of the Amendments with findings that explain why mandatory-as opposed to discretionary-conditions are necessary to fulfill the AWA\u27s goal of protecting children from sexual exploitation and violent crime. Beyond assisting Congress or opening the scholarly debate on this topic, this Article will be useful to the practitioners and judges who face these cases on a regular basis. The issues raised in this Article should give pause and provide guidance to the federal bench and bar in an area where sex offense legislation grows more complex and onerous; where law enforcement technology evolves rapidly, yet unevenly; and where unconstitutional dangers lurk behind even the most well-intentioned laws

The Mandatory Pretrial Release Provision of the Adam Walsh Act Amendments: How Mandatory Is It, and Is It Constitutional?

(Excerpt) This Article analyzes each of those decisions and, by way of two hypothetical cases, addresses the applicability and constitutionality of the AWA Amendments. Part I examines the applicability of the mandatory pretrial release conditions of the AWA Amendments, concluding that the conditions are not as automatic as Congress may have wished. Part II sets forth a brief history of the Bail Reform Act and discusses the seminal constitutional attacks made upon its bail provisions, including those made in United States v. Salerno. Part III applies the lessons learned from Salerno and its progeny to the recent attacks on the AWA Amendments under the Excessive Bail Clause of the Eighth Amendment, the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, and the separation of powers doctrine. It concludes that the mandatory pretrial release provision is facially unconstitutional under the Fifth and Eighth Amendments or, at the very least, unconstitutional as applied to the vast majority of defendants charged with an AWA-enumerated offense, and that the provision violates the separation of powers doctrine if it has the effect of mandating detention without any role for the district court in the bail calculus. Recognizing the lack of political room for meaningful legislative reform on the criminal war against sex crimes, the Conclusion of this Article calls instead for Congress to repeal or redraft the mandatory pretrial release provision of the AWA Amendments to cure the unconstitutional defects that are poisoning our criminal justice system at the pretrial stage. In the alternative, the Conclusion urges Congress to bolster the legislative record of the Amendments with findings that explain why mandatory-as opposed to discretionary-conditions are necessary to fulfill the AWA\u27s goal of protecting children from sexual exploitation and violent crime. Beyond assisting Congress or opening the scholarly debate on this topic, this Article will be useful to the practitioners and judges who face these cases on a regular basis. The issues raised in this Article should give pause and provide guidance to the federal bench and bar in an area where sex offense legislation grows more complex and onerous; where law enforcement technology evolves rapidly, yet unevenly; and where unconstitutional dangers lurk behind even the most well-intentioned laws

Hyman Hurwitz and the Possibilities and Limitations of the Sympathetic Imagination in the Work of Hazlitt, Wordsworth, and Coleridge

The article offers information on the book Hebrew Tales, by Hyman Hurwitz and notes that the traditional Jewish wisdom is harmonized with contemporary British culture. The author offers his views on Hurwitz\u27s work towards the Talmud, in comparison to the work and lives of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge on the profound possibilities and limitations of Romantic sympathy. It discusses the contributions of the Jews of England to either Enlightenment or Romantic thought and how William Hazlitt, an advocate of Jewish naturalization had managed to balance respect for the Enlightenment ideals

Bind the Republic Together : Immigrant Labor and American Progress

Railroad construction labor has historical ties to the worst types of “common” or “unskilled” wage labor and to the labor of enslaved peoples and convicts. It is linked, as well, to canal construction labor. Charles Dickens, writing to a U.S. audience in 1842, noted that without Irish immigrants, “It would be hard to keep your model republics going . . . for who else would dig, delve, and drudge . . . and make canals and railroads, and execute great lines of internal improvement!” Railroad officials and contractors enlisted a moving army of “wild” Irish immigrants and Famine-era refugees, luring them from County Cork and County Longford in Ireland, from Canada, and from neighboring canal and railroad projects in America. Augmented by indigenous peoples, African Americans, and Asian immigrants, the results of this movable construction labor force were impressive

"The invisible spirit alone" : the romance of reform in Grace Aguilar's theological writings.

The Anglo-Jewish author Grace Aguilar lived in the early nineteenth century when England was experiencing revolutions and reforms in philosophy, politics, and religion. The daughter of Sephardic immigrants, Aguilar authored novels, poetry, essays, theology, and midrash. She is perhaps the most well-known and the most prolific nineteenth-century Anglo-Jewish woman writer. Aguilar's works, especially her theology, channel various ideological streams that were running through English thought in the early nineteenth century. Aguilar, who is usually considered a "traditionally observant" Jew, presents herself as a Victorian woman who values the very "Victorian" concepts of domesticity and womanhood present in much nineteenth-century literature for women. The ideal Victorian woman is pure and good, tends to the needs of her children, husband, and home, and is the religious center of the home; Aguilar preached the importance of these domestic values in her theological work. Though ostensibly traditional in these respects, her theological works argue for the political emancipation of the Jews, for radical reforms in Jewish belief and practice, and for the value and dignity of Jewish women, all while she defends Judaism against disparagement from Christians and provides a model of conduct for Jewish women. This work seeks to present the "spirit" of Grace Aguilar's theological works The Women of Israel (1845) and The Spirit of Judaism (1842) through three different historical lenses. By "spirit" I mean the driving force behind her theology, that which moves her arguments: her own unique concept of the "Jewish spirit.

Simulating a Chromotomographic Sensor for Hyperspectral Imaging in the Infrared

Hyperspectral imaging systems passively sense radiant electromagnetic energy from a remote scene to form a three dimension profile of the remote scene. The data contained in this profile describes real images of the remote scene for a certain number of spectral wavelength bands across a finite spectral range of electromagnetic radiation. Typical grating type hyperspectral imaging systems collect spectral electromagnetic radiation in the visible and near infrared spectral range, by incrementally scanning across the spatial extent of the remote scene. The legacy of low optical throughput because of the optical scanning techniques employed in these systems means adapting these systems for spectral ranges extending into the mid wave and long wave infrared is difficult. A chromotomographic imaging system utilizing a sensor optics system with significantly greater optical throughput of electromagnetic radiation has been reported to demonstrate reasonable quality hyperspectral images for finite spectral ranges in the visible, mid wave, and long wave infrared. The spectral electromagnetic radiation collected through the sensor optics system angularly multiplexes the electromagnetic radiation collected from the remote scene using a rotating prism to disperse and spatially separate the electromagnetic radiation spectral components onto a focal plane array detector. Using optics principles and wave optics propagation theory, a software model was designed based on linear systems principles to emulate the point spread function attributes of the chromotomographic sensor, equivalent to the impulse response for a linear system

Measuring the Intangible Values of Natural Streams, Part I

The purpose of this study was to apply the uniqueness concept to the quantification of the intangible values of natural streams. The methodology is based on procedures developed by Luna B. Leopold and Maria O. Marchand of the U.S. Geological Survey. It involves the evaluation of a set of characteristics or factors for selected stream sites. Each factor is rated for each site on a numerical scale indicative of the range of possible values for that factor. An uniqueness ratio (the reciprocal of the number of stream sites sharing a given category rating) is then computed for each stream for each factor in the set. Summing the uniqueness ratios for all the factors for a given stream yields a total uniqueness ratio . Those streams with the highest total uniqueness ratio are considered to be the most unique. The present study utilized an inventory of fifty-four factors which were evaluated for each study stream. The inventory was divided into five factor groups: Physical Measures, Land Use Measures, Water Quality Measures, Disvalues and Esthetic Impression Measures. Two types of streams were studied: Preference streams and Random streams. Sixteen Preference streams were selected from lists of wild, scenic and recreational streams prepared by two state agencies. Forty-two Random streams were selected, using a random number table, from a small watershed inventory prepared by the U.S. Soil Conservation Service. The sampling process insured that streams be selected from each of the eight physiographic regions of Kentucky. Thus, a total of fifty-eight streams were studied. Conclusions reached were: The uniqueness ratio concept can successfully be used to evaluate relative uniqueness within a group of streams. Higher values of the total uniqueness ratio were obtained for those streams that were in bad condition or that had been abused by man\u27s activities than for those streams that were of relatively high quality. Some of the streams ranking highest in total uniqueness were those situated in highly developed areas, an indication of the essentially rural nature of the state of Kentucky and the effects of development and urbanization on the environmental quality of small watersheds. Streams located in the Eastern Coal Field generally represented the most natural, rugged, and esthetic streams of the study. The streams located in the Western Coal Field generally represented the most highly exploited and least esthetic streams of the study