Recent theories oflaw and public policy have stressed that judicial, executive and legislative roles can best be understood in relationship to each other. Instead of independently declaring or enforcing rights and rules, judges, administrators and legislators participate in a dialogue, seeking mutual understanding. 1 Effective dialogue, in tum, embodies the democratic process. The evolution of ...

Janice Larue and Goering Orndorff married in 1993. By 2000, the marriage had begun to unravel. Suspecting that her husband was unfaithful, Ms. Orndorff consulted a divorce attorney and told her mother-in-law that she “would see him dead before he left her for another woman” (Orndorff v. Commonwealth, 628 S.E.2d 344 (Va. 2006)). Given her professions of love at other times, the mother-in-law was...

The current research examines the utility of the evil woman hypothesis by examining sentencing discrepancies between male and female sex offenders. National Corrections Reporting Program data are used to identify sex offenders for the years 1994 to 2004 and the sentences they received for specific sex offenses. Statistical analyses reveal a significant difference in sentence length between men ...

To ensure public trust and confidence, courts must routinely examine the management of their operations and continuously explore improvement opportunities. Although technology can be a catalyst for improving judicial administration, without the requisite planning, organizational capital (e.g., people, process, and system alignment), and evaluation it is unlikely that such initiatives will be su...

Executive Summary Nationally, more than two million people are serving time in prison on any given day. Missouri ranks eighth in the nation in terms of imprisonment and has experienced substantial growth in incarceration over the past two decades. The reality of mass incarceration and the accruing cost of corrections have led many states to consider implementing alternatives to traditional inca...

Variably called bias-based policing, racial profiling, or Driving While Black or Brown, the phenomenon of apparent disparate treatment of minorities by police has received considerable attention from the media, academics, politicians, and government organizations in recent years. A common contention is that the history of racial discrimination in the U.S. combined with practices employed by loc...