Criminal Justice and the Challenge of Family Ties

This Article asks two basic questions: When does, and when should, the state use the criminal justice apparatus to accommodate family ties, responsibilities, and interests? We address these questions by first revealing a variety of laws that together form a string of family ties subsidies and benefits pervading the criminal justice system. Notwithstanding our recognition of the important role family plays in securing the conditions for human flourishing, we then explain the basis for erecting a Spartan presumption against these family ties subsidies and benefits within the criminal justice system. We delineate the scope and rationale for the presumption and under what circumstances it might be overcome. When the presumption is overcome, we urge distributing the benefit on terms that are neutral to family status, if possible, with a focus instead on functions served by established relationships of care-giving responsibility

Overcoming Tradeoffs in the Taxation of Punitive Damages

As explained in a companion piece, there is a curious anomaly in the law of punitive damages. Jurors assess punitive damages in an amount that they believe will best “punish” the defendant. But, in fact, business defendants are not always punished to the degree that the jury intends. This is because jurors do not take into account the fact that these businesses are allowed to deduct their punitive damages awards. To solve this problem, President Obama recently proposed to make all punitive damages nondeductible, a proposal that has in the past been supported by a number of policy makers and academics. Unfortunately, the nondeductibility rule is doomed to fail in practice. Instead, the under-punishment problem is better solved through making juries and courts aware of the tax implications of punitive damages awards. While tax awareness would better address the under-punishment problem, it would at the same time increase plaintiffs’ windfalls. Sadly, there is simply no way under current punitive damages law to reduce under-punishment without simultaneously augmenting plaintiff windfalls. The tradeoff is a byproduct of the jumbled way current punitive damages law engrafts “public law” values on a private dispute resolution system not entirely capable of effectuating those values. To avoid such an unfortunate tradeoff, reform of punitive damages law would be required. This Article sketches a vision of such reform and describes its corresponding tax rules. In particular, the appropriate tax treatment of tort damages should depend on the particular purpose(s) being pursued and vindicated. In this respect, the recommendations here stake out a more nuanced middle path between those scholars and policy makers touting nondeductibility for all punitive damages and those endorsing the current rule allowing a deduction for all punitive damages paid by business defendants

Rethinking Criminal Law and Family Status

In our recent book, Privilege or Punish: Criminal Justice and the Challenge of Family Ties (OUP 2009), we examined and critiqued a number of ways in which the criminal justice system uses family status to distribute benefits or burdens to defendants. In their review essays, Professors Alafair Burke, Alice Ristroph & Melissa Murray identify a series of concerns with the framework we offer policymakers to analyze these family ties benefits or burdens. We think it worthwhile not only to clarify where those challenges rest on misunderstandings or confusions about the central features of our views, but also to show the deficiencies of the proposed alternatives. While we appreciate and admire the efforts of our critics to advance this important conversation, we hope this Essay will illuminate why the normative framework of Privilege or Punish remains a more helpful structure to policymakers assessing how family status should intersect with the criminal law within a liberal democracy such as our own