Big new Heritage report takes stock of DOJ's risk and needs assessment system resulting from FIRST STEP Act
The Heritage Foundation has this week released this new 30-page report authored by Charles Stimson that takes a close look at the risk and needs assessment system created by the Justice Department as required by the FIRST STEP Act. The title of the report captures its basic theme: "The First Step Act’s Risk and Needs Assessment Program: A Work in Progress." Here is a summary from this Heritage webpage:
And here is the conclusion of the full report:
via Blogger http://jehtroolewis.blogspot.com/2020/06/big-new-heritage-report-takes-stock-of.html June 10, 2020 at 07:24AM
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Rounding up some carceral headlines and stories as COVID continues
With other criminal justice news grabbing more headlines these days, it is dangerously easy to forget the dire realities that persist as incarceration nation continues to confront a coronavirus pandemic. Here is a quick round-up of some recent headlines and stories to remind everyone that this tale is still unfolding in many particulars:
While the 11 pieces above report mostly disconcerting news, I will finish here with two pieces reporting more hopeful news from two states:
via Blogger http://jehtroolewis.blogspot.com/2020/06/rounding-up-some-carceral-headlines-and.html June 10, 2020 at 05:24AM [Ilya Somin] Part II of Interview About my Book "Free to Move" with Yale Law Professor Jack Balkin6/9/2020
[Ilya Somin] Part II of Interview About my Book "Free to Move" with Yale Law Professor Jack Balkin
[It is now up on his Balkinization blog.] Yale Law School Professor Jack Balkin has posted Part II of an interview he did with me on his Balkinization blog, about my new book Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom. Part I was posted yesterday, and is available here. In Part II, we discussed a number of important issues, including how foot voting relates to the internet, the role of families and children in foot voting, and my response to Albert Hirschman's famous argument that exit rights are often harmful because they forestall beneficial uses of "voice" to improve existing institutions. I discuss several of these issues in greater detail in the book. I would like to once again thank Jack Balkin for this opportunity, and for his insightful questions! Via Law http://www.rssmix.com/via Blogger http://jehtroolewis.blogspot.com/2020/06/ilya-somin-part-ii-of-interview-about.html June 10, 2020 at 05:24AM
[Eugene Volokh] Vandalism of Gandhi Statues
In Washington (The Hindu):
In London (Times of India):
Gandhi, as I understand it, indeed said quite a few racist things, and indeed his work on behalf of Indians in South Africa was apparently often supportive of repression of blacks (see this BBC story). But of course he was a man of his time, flawed and partly blinded the way all people are. Who in the past fully lives up to our moral norms of today? How many of us today will be seen a century hence as living up to the moral norms of the future? That actually is good reason not to try to sanctify Gandhi, or any man (consider also the Churchill statue incident)—but not a good reason to vandalize statues of him, or reject his historical importance. Great people are great not because they are perfect (and indeed many people who are closer to perfect aren't great). They are great because they have accomplished great things, usually things that have on balanced helped humanity—often including ourselves—in important ways. We should pay respect to their greatness, and to what they've done for all of us, despite the errors that they had inevitably made. Via Law http://www.rssmix.com/via Blogger http://jehtroolewis.blogspot.com/2020/06/eugene-volokh-vandalism-of-gandhi.html June 10, 2020 at 05:24AM
[Eugene Volokh] One Win, One Loss for Second Amendment Claims in the Epidemic
[A federal court in Connecticut struck down a policy that effectively stopped gun purchases; a week ago, a federal court in California upheld such a policy.] [1.] In Altman v. County of Santa Clara (N.D. Cal.) (Jon Tigar, J.), decided a week ago, the court basically concluded that the Santa Clara County lockdown of "non-essential businesses," which included gun stores, didn't violate the Second Amendment, in large party because it was just a "waiting period":
The court also noted that, "the Order, … unlike the handgun ban in Heller, is facially neutral" rather than singling out gun stores for special restrictions. Partly because of these factors, the court concluded that the order should be evaluated only "intermediate scrutiny," which the Order passed:
[2.] On the other hand, the Connecticut decision posted today (Connecticut Citizens Defense League v. Lamont (D. Conn.) (Jeffrey Alker Meyer, J.), issued a preliminary injunction against a Connecticut policy that effectively blocked many gun purchases:
The court rejected the "temporary delay" argument (explicitly as to the question whether plaintiffs have standing to challenge the policy, and implicitly as to the constitutionality of the policy):
And the court concluded that the policy would fail intermediate scrutiny: Via Law http://www.rssmix.com/ via Blogger http://jehtroolewis.blogspot.com/2020/06/eugene-volokh-one-win-one-loss-for.html June 10, 2020 at 05:24AM
"Prosecutors and Their Legislatures, Legislatures and Their Prosecutors"
The title of this post is the title of this book chapter authored by Russell Gold recently posted to SSRN. Here is its abstract:
via Blogger http://jehtroolewis.blogspot.com/2020/06/prosecutors-and-their-legislatures.html June 10, 2020 at 05:24AM [Jonathan H. Adler] "The Oft-noted Hollowing Out of the Middle Class is a Metropolitan Phenomenon"6/9/2020
[Jonathan H. Adler] "The Oft-noted Hollowing Out of the Middle Class is a Metropolitan Phenomenon"
[Income inequality is increasingly a phenomenon driven by big cities.] It used to be the case that there was greater income inequality in rural areas than in metropolitan ones. Big cities and surrounding communities typically had a substantial middle class. Rural areas, on the other hand, had limited economic opportunities, and the wealth of a few individuals—such as owners of local industries or large land holdings, were outliers in rural parts of the country who would drive measures of inequality. As Michael Petrilli writes in the WSJ, this is no longer the case. Dramatic increases for high-wage workers are driving increases in income inequality in major cities, such that income inequality is now just as much an urban phenomenon as a rural one. He writes:
According to Petrilli, this has some important policy implications.
As many policy analysts have noted, a consequence of increasing urban wealth is an increase in housing prices. This can make things particularly difficult for power-income workers. Petrilli thinks this also has implications for education:
Whether these are the necessary policy implications is certainly open for debate, but it seems clear that the increase in income inequality in major cities is a phenomenon that matters, and policymakers should consider how existing policies exacerbate this trend. Via Law http://www.rssmix.com/via Blogger http://jehtroolewis.blogspot.com/2020/06/jonathan-h-adler-oft-noted-hollowing.html June 10, 2020 at 12:24AM
[Josh Blackman] Download the Powerpoint Slides for 100 Supreme Court Cases
[All of the files are now available on a shared drive. ] Randy Barnett and I prepared powerpoint slides for the 100 cases in our new book, An Introduction to Constitutional Law: 100 Supreme Court Cases Everyone Should Know. These slides include photographs of the people and places involved, study guide questions, and brief summaries of the facts of the case. Last week, I offered to email anyone a link to the library. The reaction was overwhelmingly positive. I heard from law school professors, professors who teach political science and other related disciplines, high school teachers, as well as several longtime VC readers (including one from 2002). I decided to post all of the files to a shared drive so everyone can benefit from the slides. I hope they are useful for this upcoming year of Zoom Law School. They should work with just about any ConLaw casebook. (Our 100 cases appear in virtually every text). If any professors or teachers would like a review copy of 100 Cases, please let me know. You can access the entire library at this link: http://bit.ly/100CasesSlides. Or you can pull up the slides for each individual case here:
via Blogger http://jehtroolewis.blogspot.com/2020/06/josh-blackman-download-powerpoint.html June 10, 2020 at 12:24AM
[Josh Blackman] Today in Supreme Court History: June 9, 1970
6/9/1970: Justice Harry Blackmun (no relation) takes oath. Via Law http://www.rssmix.com/ via Blogger http://jehtroolewis.blogspot.com/2020/06/josh-blackman-today-in-supreme-court_9.html June 09, 2020 at 10:24PM
[David Bernstein] Public Health Experts are Embarrassing Themselves
[While the current protests are certainly well-meaning and anger over police violence and racism justified, claiming that the protests' positive effects on public health will exceed the harms from the spread of coronavirus is an assertion of faith, not science.] For several months, epidemiologists have been warning about the dangers of coronavirus spread from large gatherings, including large outdoor gatherings. Much has been made, in particular, of the cautionary example of a big war bond rally held in Philadelphia in September 1918. Philadelphia's failure to cancel that rally as the flu epidemic hit is said to be responsible for thousands of additional deaths; St. Louis, which canceled its planned rally, suffered many fewer flu deaths. The Philadelphia rally attracted some 200,000 people, far fewer than have attended the recent protests (though, to my knowledge, no individual protest rally has attracted that many people). Yet epidemiologists and other public health gurus have been overwhelmingly reluctant to criticize the loosening of public health restrictions on public gatherings to accommodate the current large public protests. Some, including hundreds who signed a public letter to that effect, have explicitly supported them. In doing so, some of the latter group have blatantly contradicted their own prior public statements on the dangers of public gatherings. One Ivy League epidemiologist, for example, claimed that President Trump was putting "millions" of people in danger of contracting the virus by encouraging reopening rallies. This was, purportedly, Trump's "arguably most dangerous act" in a series of corona-related actions that amounted to the equivalent of "genocide." That was in late April. By early June, much larger outdoor protests were somehow a significantly lower public health threat, with the same epidemiologist asserting that "The new infections that may be generated by protests pale in comparison to the larger drivers of the epidemic in the U.S…." What happened to the the "millions" of people that were put at risk by reopening rallies, and encouraging such rallies being especially dangerous? That said, everyone seems to acknowledge that the protests will cause more, perhaps many more, Covid-19 cases and deaths. Public health types, in general, believe their mission is to focus on public health above all else, so they obviously need to explain why the protests are nevertheless justified from a public health perspective, or, for more moderate figures, why they are reluctant to be critical of the failure of authorities to crack down the protests in the name of public health. The basic rationale they have provided is that protests against racism and state violence are different from other activities they have criticized and sought to have banned in the name of public health because racism and state violence are also public health problems. On the extreme pro-protest side, public health experts have argued that the damage from racism is so great that the rallies will have a more positive effect on public health than any harm caused by the spread of coronavirus. Even more sober analysts who have been sounding alarm about (but usually without much criticizing, much less calling for a shutdown of) the protests have felt obliged to pay lip service to such concerns, acknowledging, for example, that concerns about the spread of coronavirus must be balanced against the fact that "racism and state sponsored violence are critical public health issues." It's not that public health folks are wrong that racism and police brutality have significant public health consequences; while coronavirus has the potential to kill hundreds of thousands in a short period of time, over the long-term racism and state violence can cause even greater harm. But here's the thing: while it's understandable that people want to take to the streets to protest racism and state violence, there is no epidemiological or other scientific evidence that such protests will have positive public health effects by spurring positive social and political change. Any scientist or public health expert who suggests otherwise is engaging in political and sociological speculation that is not only beyond their expertise, but that really beyond anyone's expertise. But it's worse when such speculation purports to be scientific, from experts whose credibility is crucial for containing the current and future pandemics. Will the protests raise public consciousness about the pernicious effects of racism? Surely, and that will likely have positive effects. But beyond that, things are very uncertain. Will violence/rioting continue and cause a "reactionary" backlash? Will reforms advocated by protesters, such as those encompassed by the slogan "Defund the Police," actually be enacted? If enacted, will they have positive effects on public health, or will they lead to a surge in violent criminal activity, itself a huge threat to public health and wellbeing?–it wasn't that long ago that violent crime rates were triple what they are now, with tens of thousands more people killed and injured each year. What will be the effect of social disorder on the economic health of big cities in general, and the poorer neighborhoods within them in particular, and what effect will that have on public health and wellbeing? The public health folks who are comparing the negative Covid-related health effects of the rallies to the health effects of racism and police violence are committing a fundamental methodological error. On the one side, there is a real public health problem of coronavirus, and we know, based on what the experts have been telling us since March, that large public gatherings will likely kill a large but indeterminate number of people. On the other side, racism harms people's well-being, and state violence directly harms their health. However, and this is key, no one has any idea what overall effect the protests (and any attendant violence) will have on racism and state violence, even whether it will be positive or negative. When public health experts express implicit or explicit belief that political rallies and protests will lead to desirable social and political outcomes, they are not engaging in science, they are not relying on public health research, they are relying on something akin to faith. In short, the situation we are faced with is that large pubic rallies will almost certainly kill and injure many Americans through Covid spread, and we don't have the slightest non-speculative idea as to whether the protests will have a positive effect on public health, much less whether any such positive effects will outweigh the health harms from virus spread. To the extent public health experts claim to be relying on their expertise, rather than faith as political activists or fortune-tellers, there is only one plausible "public health" answer to having large, public protests: based on what we can actually measure and predict, they are a significant net threat to public health. How authorities should balance that threat against the public's undeniable right to protest, and the possibility that banning or limiting such protests would iteslf cause civil unrest with public health consequences, is a separate question. Via Law http://www.rssmix.com/via Blogger http://jehtroolewis.blogspot.com/2020/06/david-bernstein-public-health-experts.html June 09, 2020 at 10:24PM |