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Spring 2002 - Criminal Justice

Volume 29 Issue 3  

Featured Articles

Civil Rights & Constitution

Protecting Constitutional Rights in an Age of Anxiety: A New Approach

This article looks at why the traditional "rights/remedy" paradigm has failed and proposes a fundamentally different approach. Employing the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, this new approach would generate proactive rather than reactive solutions to the problem of maintaining constitutional protections for human rights. In particular, we will see how the right to travel, now firmly established as a privilege of national citizenship, could be used to address the problem of racial profiling.

Civil Rights & Constitution

Behind Bars in America

Judging simply by the numbers, one might expect that the subject of incarceration in the United States would be too big to be ignored. Some two million adults are behind bars, and over $40 billion a year is budgeted toward keeping them there. But despite the enormous human and financial costs, there is little public debate over the country’s imprisonment policies, certainly much less than that accorded education, health care, and other serious issues of the day.

Civil Rights & Constitution

A Federal Prosecutor's Pursuit of Justice

As U.S. Attorney, I am considered the chief federal law enforcement officer in western Washington, with responsibility for counterterrorism, drugs, cybercrime, and a myriad of criminal prosecutive and civil representation duties on behalf of the United States. In this article, I do not purport to speak for the Department of Justice (DOJ); rather, as a personal perspective, I seek to describe one lawyer’s journey in the law.

Civil Rights & Constitution

Three Strikes Laws: A Real or Imagined Deterrent to Crime?

The 1990s were dominated by get-tough-on-crime measures, dramatically increasing the nation’s prison population and the length of prison sentences. Those measures culminated with the enactment of "three strikes" legislation around the nation. Beginning with Washington State in 1993, by the end of the decade, the federal government and over half of all states had enacted some form of a "three strikes" law.

Civil Rights & Constitution

Human Rights Hero: Honorable Nancy Gertner

Standing at five-foot, three inches, Judge Nancy Gertner, of the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts, may or may not be physically able to carry someone from a burning building, but in her twenty-three-year career as a criminal defense and civil rights lawyer, and—since 1994—in her capacity as a federal judge, Judge Gertner has rescued an untold number of people from the imminent danger of unjust imprisonment. In doing so, she has become a human rights hero.