A non-linear transport method for detecting superconducting stripes

We theoretically study the effect of stripe-like superconducting inclusions on the non-linear resistivity in single crystals. Even when the stripe orientation varies throughout the sample between two orthogonal directions due to twinning, we predict that there should be a universal scaling relationship between the nonlinear resistivity curves measured at different angles relative to the crystal axes. This prediction can be used to verify or rule out the existence of superconducting stripes at and above the superconducting transition temperature in cuprate superconductors.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Sex, Threats, and Absent Victims: The Lessons of Regina v. Bedingfield for Modern Confrontation and Domestic Violence Cases

In 2004, Crawford v. Washington, authored by Justice Antonin Scalia, revolutionized the law of confrontation by requiring that, aside from two discrete exceptions, all testimonial statements (those made with the expectation that they will serve to prosecute the accused) be subject to cross-examination. This new interpretation of the Sixth Amendment confrontation clause has profoundly affected domestic violence cases, making it much harder to prosecute them successfully. Although Justice Scalia’s approach to confrontation is new, it is strikingly similar to the analysis in Regina v. Bedingfield, a notorious English murder case, which excluded from the evidence an alleged statement by the murder victim. The analysis of the res gestae hearsay exception, which was central to excluding the victim’s statement in Bedingfield, focused on the timing of her statement, her intent in making it, and whether an ongoing emergency existed when the declaration was made. Justice Scalia’s rigid, formalistic approach to testimonial statements in Davis v. Washington, another in the line of new confrontation cases, is analogous and ultimately as confusing and unworkable as Bedingfield’s res gestae analysis.Although Bedingfield arose in 1879, its facts, replete with verbal abuse, intoxication, unheeded pleas for police protection, and ultimately, murder when the victim tried to break off the relationship, resonate with modern experiences of domestic violence. Both the Bedingfield case and Justice Scalia’s confrontation jurisprudence fail to account for the practical realities of domestic violence cases and ignore the voices of victims who cannot or will not testify on their own behalf. The facts of Bedingfield, which present a serious question whether the victim’s statement was ever uttered, demonstrate another flaw in Justice Scalia’s new approach. In addition to being too rigid in rejecting unconfronted testimonial statements, the new confrontation doctrine it is also too lax regarding nontestimonial statements, which now receive no constitutional protection at all

Debunked, Discredited, but Still Defended: Why Prosecutors Resist Challenges to Bad Science and Some Suggestions for Crafting Remedies for Wrongful Conviction Based on Changed Science

Flawed science has significantly contributed to wrongful convictions. Courts struggle with how to address such convictions when the mistaken science (such as bogus expert claims about the differences between accidental fires and intentionally set ones) significantly affected the guilty verdict but there is no DNA evidence to directly exonerate the accused. My short piece explores why prosecutors often defend bad science. Mistakes in science tend to serve the prosecution, but there are other more subtle factors that explain prosecutors’ reluctance to address flawed forensic testimony. Such reluctance may arise from fondness for the status quo and a resistance to subverting the authority of experts or questioning long-accepted courtroom traditions. Thus, many judges and prosecutors cling to established legal precedent even when the underlying science has been discredited. This reflects, at least in part, larger intellectual and scientific debates; those who refuse to question previous orthodoxies may be expressing resistance to the whole scientific enterprise, which constantly calls for challenging and revising hypotheses, unsettling prior beliefs. Judges and prosecutors resisting challenges to questionable science seem to resent the challenge to established expert authority and reject the horrifying notion that convictions could have been wrongful. In the cases of bite mark and microscopic hair analysis (two discredited types of forensic expertise), some prosecutors display almost a religious fervor, insisting that each human being is identifiably and unmistakably unique, wrongly insisting that scientist can accurately differentiate among the bite marks and hairs of different people (one so-called expert couldn’t even distinguish a human from a dog hair). After analyzing the culture of prosecutors’ offices and discussing how prosecutorial resistance to abandoning bad science reflects prosecutors’ self-image as justice seekers, I suggest strategies and mechanisms for encouraging prosecutors to abandon bad science

The Seductive Power of Patriarchal Stories

This essay develops a theme introduced in Rape and Culture of the Courtroom written by Andrew Taslitz. It examines the cases in which judges allow evidence of the victim’s sexual history and proclivities because, in their estimation, excluding such evidence would violate the constitution (an exception to rape shield in Fed. R. Evid 412). The review of these cases demonstrates the persistent power of patriarchal stories and documents how the constitutional exception sometimes indicates a resistance to the entire enterprise of rape shield. In particular, it focus on Gagne v. Booker, an en banc decision from the Sixth Circuit, which presents a fascinating case study of the tension between rape shield protections and concerns for the accused’s right to present a full defense. It is particularly interesting because the accused’s concerns about deprivation of vital evidence rely squarely on rape myths and assumptions about women’s sexuality. Finally, the author speculates on what she believes are the truly difficult cases, those involving charges of interracial rape, where knowledge of the victims proclivities might be essential for countering jurists racist assumptions about the accused