Faculty Bibliography
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One of America's leading appeal lawyers, Alan Dershowitz was the man chosen to prepare the appeal should O.J. Simpson have been convicted. Now Professor Dershowitz uses this case to examine the larger issues and to identify the social forces - media, money, gender, and race - that shape the criminal-justice system in America today. How could one of the longest trials in the history of America's judicial system produce a verdict after only hours of jury deliberation? Was this really a case of circumstantial evidence?
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Symposium on the Policies and Legal Theories Underlying the Proposed Federal Criminal Code.
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The criminal sentence seeks to reduce the frequency and severity of crimes by employing the following mechanisms: (a) isolating the convicted criminal from the rest of the population, so that he is unable to commit crimes during the period of his enforced isolation; (b) punishing the con victed prisoner, so that he—and others contemplating crime —will be deterred by the prospect of a painful response if convicted; (c) rehabilitating the convicted criminal, so that his desire or need to commit future crimes will be diminished. During different periods of our history, the power to deter mine the duration of a convicted criminal's sentence has been allocated to different agencies: first to the legislature; then to the judiciary; and now—under indeterminate sentencing—to the parole board. The locus of sentencing authority has a con siderable effect on such factors as the length of sentences, the degree of discretion, and the disparity among sentences. The century-long trend in the direction of indeterminancy seems to be ending. It is likely that the coming decades will witness a return to more legislatively-fixed sentences.