Bargaining in the Dark

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 434-493 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Kupfer Schneider ◽  
Cynthia Alkon
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Plea Bargaining ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Criminal Cases ◽  
Defense Counsel ◽  
Negotiation Theory ◽  
Crucial Component ◽  
Criminal Legal System

Plea bargaining is the primary, and unavoidable, method for resolving the vast majority of criminal cases in the United States. As more attention is paid to reform and changes in the criminal legal system, plea bargaining has also come into the spotlight. Yet we actually know very little about what happens during that process—a potentially complex negotiation with multiple parties that can, at different times, include prosecutors, defense counsel, judges, defendants, and victims. Using negotiation theory as a framework, we analyze why more information about the process itself can improve this crucial component of the system. More information—more data—would permit informed judicial oversight of pleas, improve lawyers’ capacities to negotiate on behalf of clients and the state, and increase the legitimacy of the bargaining between parties where one side tends to have far more resources and power. Without increased transparency, many of the players in the criminal legal system are just bargaining in the dark.

scholarly journals The Emperor’s New Clothes

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 385-432 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Schehr
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Due Process ◽  
United States Supreme Court ◽  
Plea Bargaining ◽  
The United States ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
Criminal Cases ◽  
Homo Economicus ◽  
The Supreme Court

United States Supreme Court and jurisprudential rationalizations for the constitutionality, centrality, and finality of plea-bargaining signify intellectual dishonesty, ignorance of human behavior and decision-making, and a statesanctioned threat to personhood and liberty in the United States of America. It is the Author’s purpose to expose the imperious practice of plea-bargaining for what it is—a cynical and intellectually dishonest institutional remedy for an unwieldy judicial system that has knowingly rationalized the practice to facilitate expedient resolution of ever-increasing caseloads. In order to establish plea practice as constitutional, the Supreme Court was forced to employ a jurisprudential discourse that shifted from the due-process language found in criminal law, especially the protections afforded by the Fifth and Sixth Amendments, towards contract law where defendants personifying homo economicus are “free” to negotiate away their rights. Beginning in 1930, and again in 1970, the Supreme Court applied an entirely novel standard to the adjudication of criminal cases, and it rationalized its decision on the need for efficiency. What is at stake is nothing less than the integrity of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and whatever still remains of an American sense of personhood under the law. The erosion of our rights that are so intimately associated with freedom due to plea-bargaining is an unprecedented injustice that cannot continue.

THE AMERICAN CRIMINAL THE AMERICAN CRIMINAL JURY TRIAL – JUSTICE AND JURY TRIAL – JUSTICE AND DEMOCRACY IN ACTION DEMOCRACY IN ACTION

Law and World ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-20
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
State Level ◽  
Federal Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Jury Trial ◽  
Criminal Cases ◽  
Jury Trials ◽  
Civil Cases

Only 2% of roughly 80,000 persons charged with crimes in 2018 in federal court in the United States of America had their cases heard by juries of their peers. In those trials, 83% of defendants were convicted and 17% were acquitted. Approximately 90% of criminal cases are resolved by way of plea agreement and sentencing with only 8% dismissed.1 The percentages of jury trials and plea agreements are roughly the same at the state level. Civil cases are also tried by juries but are not the focus of this article.

Prosecuting Misdemeanors

2021 ◽  
pp. 512-538
Author(s):  
Jenny Roberts
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Plea Bargaining ◽  
The United States ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
Discretionary Power ◽  
Criminal Cases ◽  
Prosecutorial Discretion ◽  
A Minor ◽  
Exercise Of Discretion

Although violent crime gets the most media, public, and legislative attention in the United States, misdemeanors make up approximately 75 percent of all criminal court cases, with more than 13 million new misdemeanor cases filed each year. This chapter discusses the role of prosecutors in the misdemeanor system. First, it addresses prosecutorial discretion and mass misdemeanor criminalization. Prosecutors, with near-unfettered discretionary power, are characterized as the most powerful actors in criminal cases. Yet often, prosecutors fail to properly exercise their discretion in low-level cases or are completely absent from the charging and sometimes even the adjudicatory processes. This is particularly problematic in misdemeanor cases, where informed prosecutorial decision-making is critical given the enormous volume of arrests and structural and institutional realities that weaken the role of other lower court actors. Proper exercise of discretion is also critical given well-documented racial disparities in the misdemeanor realm and the need to mitigate the myriad disproportionate effects of the ever-growing number of collateral consequences that flow from even a minor criminal record. Second, the chapter examines the misdemeanor prosecutor’s role at key stages: charging, bail, plea bargaining, sentencing, expungement, and post-conviction innocence claims. The chapter draws on examples of prosecutorial practice as well as theoretical and empirical research about prosecutorial discretion. Some recently elected so-called progressive prosecutors have already implemented significant promised changes. Although implementation of such reforms is nascent, time will tell whether a newly attentive electorate and a fresh prosecutorial approach will begin to roll back the extreme overuse and disproportionate impact of misdemeanor prosecutions in the United States.

Is This the Care We Need?: An Examination of Childcare Policy in Pennsylvania

Commonwealth ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennie Sweet-Cushman ◽  
Ashley Harden
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Child Care ◽  
Current System ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Federal State ◽  
Women And Politics ◽  
Richard Nixon ◽  
State And Local ◽  
Childcare Policy

For many families across Pennsylvania, child care is an ever-present concern. Since the 1970s, when Richard Nixon vetoed a national childcare program, child care has received little time in the policy spotlight. Instead, funding for child care in the United States now comes from a mixture of federal, state, and local programs that do not help all families. This article explores childcare options available to families in the state of Pennsylvania and highlights gaps in the current system. Specifically, we examine the state of child care available to families in the Commonwealth in terms of quality, accessibility, flexibility, and affordability. We also incorporate survey data from a nonrepresentative sample of registered Pennsylvania voters conducted by the Pennsylvania Center for Women and Politics. As these results support the need for improvements in the current childcare system, we discuss recommendations for the future.

Development of the Concepts for Providing Close Air Support

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-74
Author(s):  
Hristov Manush
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Air Force ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The State ◽  
World War ◽  
Present Stage ◽  
Combat Experience ◽  
Second World

AbstractThe main objective of the study is to trace the perceptions of the task of an aviation component to provide direct aviation support to both ground and naval forces. Part of the study is devoted to tracing the combat experience gained during the assignment by the Bulgarian Air Force in the final combat operations against the Wehrmacht during the Second World War 1944-1945. The state of the conceptions at the present stage regarding the accomplishment of the task in conducting defensive and offensive battles and operations is also considered. Emphasis is also placed on the development of the perceptions of the task in the armies of the United States and Russia.

Studies of Islam, Economics, and Governance

1994 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-70
Author(s):  
Florence Eid
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Ford Foundation ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Edward Said ◽  
The Subject ◽  
State Of Research ◽  
Traditional Approaches ◽  
Islamic Values

IntroductionThis paper is a report on the state of research in two areas of Islamicstudies: Islam and economics and Islam and governance. I researched andwrote it as part of my internship at the Ford Foundation during the summerof 1992. On Discourse. The study of Islam in the United States has moved far beyondthe traditional historical and philological methods. This is perhapsbest explained by the development of analytically rigorous social sciencemethods that have contributed to a better balance between the humanisticconcerns of the more traditional approaches and efforts at systematizingthe study of Islam and classifying it across boundaries of communities,religions, even epochs. This is said to have s t a d with the developmentof irenic attitudes towards Islam, which changed the direction of westemorientalist writings from indifference (at best) and often open hostility toand contempt of Islamic values (however they were understood) to phenomenologicalworks by scholars who saw the study of Islam as somethingto be taken seriously and for its own sake, which is best exemplifiedby Clifford Geertz's Islam Observed.The work of Edward Said contested this evolution, and the publicationof his Orientalism has been described as "a stick of dynamite"' that,despite its impact in mobilizing a reevaluation of the field, was unwarrantedin its pessimism. In any case, the field has continued to evolve,with the most powerful force moving it being the subject itself. Thephenomenological/orientalist approach, if we can point to one today, ...

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