STATUTES

Court responses to Tarasoff statutes.

Twenty-three states have enacted Tarasoff statutes applicable to psychiatrists. Since the first such statute was enacted in California in 1985, a significant number of courts in states with this and similar statutes have reviewed Tarasoff-type claims. This article reviews courts' analyses in 76 such cases. There were five basic categories identified, including cases that (I) did not reference t...

Commentary: Children's minds and adult statutes.

In “Competency to Stand Trial in Preadjudicated and Petitioned Juvenile Defendants,” Baerger et al. report the results of their investigation of competency to stand trial of juveniles charged with various offenses. The findings support the expected positive correlations between age and competency and cognitive ability and competency. The importance of the paper, however, lies in its contributio...

The Political Economy of Takeover Statutes

Assessing Compensation Statutes For The Wrongly Convicted

As the discovery of wrongful convictions grows, so does concern in the legal community and public sphere about actual innocence. Though research on miscarriages of justice has grown tremendously, most has focused on the factors contributing to wrongful convictions, with relatively little attention paid to the post-release struggles of exonerees. Specifically, social scientists have not yet exam...

Bias Crime Statutes: a Qualified Liberal Defense

Since American legislatures began passing bias crime statutes (which set more severe penalties for crimes committed from biased motives) in the 1980s, many legal philosophers have argued that such statutes are unjust on the grounds that they punish character traits and feelings rather than actions and intentions. It is unjust to punish character traits and feelings, these authors have supposed,...