In Camera Inspections of Privileged Records in Sexual Assault Trials: Balancing Defendants' Rights and State Interests Under Massachusetts's Bishop Test

1995 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-164
Author(s):  
Ellen M. Crowley
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Assault ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
State Legislature ◽  
Fair Trial ◽  
Criminal Trials ◽  
Public Scrutiny ◽  
Constitutional Right ◽  
Case Basis

A sexual assault trial requires a court to balance evidentiary privileges enacted by a state legislature against a criminal defendant's constitutional trial rights. State legislatures enact various privileges which either limit or prohibit the discovery of confidential communications in criminal trials. Such statutes reflect a firmly based legislative effort to protect citizens’ private and personal confidences from unwarranted public scrutiny. When a defendant charged with sexual assault seeks to compel discovery of the victim's privileged medical, psychiatric, or counseling records, a conflict inevitably arises. States and victims assert that courts must respect statutory assurances of confidentiality; defendants assert that their constitutional right to a fair trial and their right to confront the witnesses and evidence against them mandates disclosure. Resolution of this pressing conflict requires a careful balancing of both the state's and defendant's interests on a case by case basis.

scholarly journals State Legislatures Have the Courage to Pass Antiabortion Laws and Test the Ideology of the “New” United States Supreme Court

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 136-150
Author(s):  
Jill Oeding
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
United States Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Undue Burden ◽  
Constitutional Right ◽  
Reported Data ◽  
The Right

Many state legislatures are racing to pass antiabortion laws that will give the current Supreme Court the opportunity to review its stance on the alleged constitutional right to have an abortion. While the number of abortions reported to be performed annually in the United States has declined over the last decade, according to the most recent government-reported data, the number of abortions performed on an annual basis is still over 600,000 per year. Abortion has been legal in the United States since 1973, when the Supreme Court recognized a constitutional right to have an abortion prior to viability (i.e. the time when a baby could possibly live outside the mother’s womb). States currently have the right to forbid abortions after viability.  However, prior to viability, states may not place an “undue burden” in the path of a woman seeking an abortion. The recent appointments of two new Supreme Court justices, Neil Gorsich and Brett Kavanaugh, give pro-life states the best chance in decades to overrule the current abortion precedent. The question is whether these two new justices will shift the ideology of the court enough to overrule the current abortion precedent.

scholarly journals Facebook and a Fair Trial: Caution, Challenge and Contradiction

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-151
Author(s):  
Kate Tubridy
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Digital Communication ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Fair Trial ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Criminal Trials ◽  
Legal Principles ◽  
High Profile ◽  
To Receive

This article explores the often fraught intersections between social media, fair trial principles and community engagement with high-profile crimes. Specifically, a detailed analysis is undertaken of the Facebook response to the arrest of Adrian Ernest Bayley for the murder of Ms Gillian (Jill) Meagher in Victoria, Australia in 2012. As one of the first Australian crimes to receive a significant social media response, this research provides empirical insights into the dynamic and evolving relationship between social media, the community and criminal trials. By drawing on a critical discourse analysis of over 3,000 comments on the R.I.P Jill Meagher Facebook page, this article identifies and critiques a ‘Discourse of Challenge’ in which digital communication enabled the reinterpretation of legal principles. Further, this article provides empirical insights into the meaning-making processes of Facebook discourses and focuses on how fair trial principles are contested on Facebook in novel and, at times, contradictory, ways.  

Law, Presence to Absence

2021 ◽  
pp. 72-88
Author(s):  
Kate Leader
Keyword(s):  
Fair Trial ◽  
Criminal Trial ◽  
Performance Theory ◽  
Criminal Trials ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Technological Advances ◽  
New Challenges ◽  
Being There ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Right

The live presence of a defendant at trial is a long-standing feature of adversarial criminal trial. So much of what constitutes the adversarial method of adjudication is dependent on qualities that arise from this presence: confrontation and demeanor assessment, among other factors, play important roles in how truth is constructed. As such, performative matters—how a defendant enacts and inhabits her role, how she is positioned or silenced-- have long been of concern to legal scholars. These performative concerns are also centrally implicated in defendant rights, such as the right to a fair trial. But today we face new challenges that call into question fundamental beliefs around trials, defendant presence, and fairness. First, technological advances have led to defendants appearing remotely in hearings from the prison in which they are held. Second, the trial itself is arguably vanishing in most adversarial jurisdictions. Third, the use of trials in absentia means that criminal trials may take place in a defendant’s absence; in England and Wales for less serious offenses this can be done without inquiring why a defendant isn’t there. This chapter therefore seeks to understand the performative implications of these challenges by shifting the conversation from presence to absence. What difference does it make if a defendant is no longer there? Does being there facilitate greater fairness, despite the obvious issues of constraint and silencing? Drawing on sociolegal, political, and performance theory the chapter considers the implications of absence in the criminal trial, asking what happens when the defendant disappears.

The Democratic Deficit of United States Federalism? Red State, Blue State, Purple?

2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 645-667
Author(s):  
Vicki C Jackson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Legislature ◽  
Democratic Deficit ◽  
The Us ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Us Senate ◽  
The One ◽  
Over Time

Aspects of an entrenched constitution that were essential parts of founding compromises, and justified as necessary when a constitution was first adopted, may become less justifiable over time. Is this the case with respect to the structure of the United States Senate? The US Senate is hardwired in the Constitution to consist of an equal number of Senators from each state—the smallest of which currently has about 585,000 residents, and the largest of which has about 39.29 million. As this essay explains, over time, as population inequalities among states have grown larger, so too has the disproportionate voting power of smaller-population states in the national Senate. As a result of the ‘one-person, one-vote’ decisions of the 1960s that applied to both houses of state legislatures, each state legislature now is arguably more representative of its state population than the US Congress is of the US population. The ‘democratic deficit’ of the Senate, compared to state legislative bodies, also affects presidential (as compared to gubernatorial) elections. When founding compromises deeply entrenched in a constitution develop harder-to-justify consequences, should constitutional interpretation change responsively? Possible implications of the ‘democratic’ difference between the national and the state legislatures for US federalism doctrine are explored, especially with respect to the ‘pre-emption’ doctrine. Finally, the essay briefly considers the possibilities of federalism for addressing longer term issues of representation, polarisation and sustaining a single nation.

Public Law in the State Courts in 1926–1927

1927 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 573-597
Author(s):  
Robert E. Cushman
Keyword(s):  
Metropolitan Areas ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
State Legislature ◽  
Public Law ◽  
Fixed Number ◽  
The State ◽  
State Courts ◽  
Large Cities ◽  
The City ◽  
Equal Population

Legislative Apportionment. The problem of the representation of large cities or metropolitan districts in state legislatures is becoming increasingly difficult and acute. The number of states in which a single center of population is with each census approaching a size which entitles it, on the basis of its inhabitants, to a controlling proportion of the representatives in the state legislature grows steadily as the current of population toward the city continues to flow. Certain states have dealt with this situation by frankly and openly discriminating against these metropolitan areas by specifying that they shall never be entitled to more than a fixed percentage of the representatives. The constitutions of certain other states do not permit this, however, but require that after each decennial census a total fixed number of members in the legislative body shall be allotted equally to districts of equal population. If this is done the metropolis is guaranteed under each apportionment the increase in representation to which its proportionate increase in population entitles it. And the answer volunteered to this problem by several state legislatures has been steadily to refuse to reapportion the state.

The Committee System in State Legislatures

1918 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 607-639 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Lysle Smith
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Legislature ◽  
Legislative Organization ◽  
Practical Operation ◽  
Conference Committee ◽  
Committee Assignments

Every state legislature in the United States is divided into a considerable number of standing committees. In spite of obvious advantages which seem to render it indispensable, the development of the committee system has been attended by great evils. Indeed, it is perhaps not too much to say that with the committee system the worst evils connected with legislative organization and procedure are intimately associated.It is the chief purpose of this paper to point out the principal weaknesses or defects of the committee system in connection with state legislatures generally, and particularly the defects which have appeared in the practical operation of the system in the Illinois legislature; and at the same time to discuss certain proposals designed to remedy these defects.These weaknesses and proposed remedies will be taken up in the following order:I. Defects in the methods of making committee assignments.II. Defects due to the number of standing committees.III. Defects due to the size of committees.IV. Defects due to the lack of a definite and fixed schedule of committee meetings.V. Defects due to the lack of publicity and to the irresponsibility surrounding committee proceedings.VI. Defects due to the insufficient control of each house over its committees.VII. Defects peculiar to the committee on rules and the conference committee.

Single-Member Districts and the Representation of Women in American State Legislatures: The Effects of Electoral System Change

2002 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
James D. King
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Design ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
System Change ◽  
State Legislature ◽  
The State ◽  
Representation Of Women ◽  
Quasi Experimental ◽  
Election Results ◽  
American State

This study assesses the effects of changing electoral structure on the representation of women in American state legislatures. Specifically, how does converting from multimember districts (MMDs) to single-member districts (SMDs) affect the proportion of women serving in the state legislature? I use a quasi-experimental design, comparing election results from the four states that eliminated MMDs during the reapportionment following the 1990 census to those in eight states whose systems did not change during this period. The weight of the evidence suggests that abandoning MMDs for SMDs decreases the representation of women in state legislatures.

scholarly journals Alaska

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 322-337
Author(s):  
George R. Lyle ◽  
Adam D. Harki ◽  
Traci N. Bunkers
Keyword(s):  
Oil And Gas ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
State Legislature ◽  
Legislative Session ◽  
Regular Session

The Alaska State Legislature was scheduled to convene its Second Regular Session of the Thirty-First Legislative Session from January 21, 2020, through May 20, 2020. However, on March 29, 2020, the Alaska State Legislature, like other state legislatures, suspended its session effective immediately, in response to the coronavirus pandemic (“COVID-19”). While the suspension was initially continued through May 18, 2020, the Alaska Legislature formally adjourned on May 20, 2020. Given the adjournment, the legislature did not pass any substantive oil and gas legislation.

scholarly journals Term Limits and the Increased Election of Women: Evidence From State Legislatures and the U.S. House of Representatives

2009 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 275-287
Author(s):  
Stanley M. Caress
Keyword(s):  
Growth Rate ◽  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Initial Period ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
State Legislature ◽  
Term Limits ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Female Candidates ◽  
Time Period ◽  
The U.S

This study seeks to determine if term limits increase the likelihood of women being elected to legislative seats. Using a simple comparison of growth rates, we found that, during the initial period of term limit implementation (1991 to 2009), the increase of females elected to state legislatures with term limits was approximately the same as to those without term limits. Additionally, a comparison of the growth rate of females elected to the non-term-limited United States House of Representatives with those of the state legislatures during this same time period shows that the U.S. House actually had a greater increase than state legislatures both with and without term limits. Moreover, in California, which has a full-time, professional state legislature with electoral dynamics similar to the U.S. House, the proportion of women elected to the state’s non-term limited U.S. House delegation from 1990 to 2009 exceeded the proportion of women elected to its term-limited state legislature. These comparisons all suggest that term limits do not facilitate the election of female candidates to legislative seats.

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