Last year, as the State of California struggled with a $42 billion budget deficit, its financial inability to correct constitutionally-deficient prison conditions led a federal court to order the release of 40,000 state prisoners. In Oregon, Michigan, Connecticut, Vermont, and Delaware, spending...

In this response to Erik Luna and Paul Cassell's article, Mandatory Minimalism, 32 Cardozo L. Rev. 1 (2010), I argue that the authors' theory of federal crime legislation is misplaced – in the literal sense that it is directed to the wrong place. A minimalist strategy of finding the available...

We propose a test of bias based upon patterns of judicial errors. We model the trial court as minimizing a weighted sum of type I and II errors. We define racial bias a situation where the weight depends on defendant/victim race. If the court is unbiased, the error rate should be independent of...

Evidence has repeatedly shown that disparities in crime sentences can be attributed to certain variables considered outside the legal dimensions of the case. The majority of research that investigates factors that contribute to such disparities has primarily focused on crimes of varying...

This essay reflects on the relevance, if any, of inmate vulnerability as a basis for sentencing determinations. It is widely recognized that some criminal offenders are more vulnerable to abuse at the hands of other inmates—especially young men of small stature and those convicted of sex...

Article 181(5) of Ghana's 1992 Constitution requires parliamentary approval of international business transactions to which the government is party, a term defined to include state procurement contracts and various public-private investment projects. This paper traces the origin of that...