Midyear Meeting | | Program Speakers | Housing Joseph Singer Speech |
Program

Sessions by Program:

Sessions by Date & Time:
4:00pm - 8:00pm
Registration

10:30am - 10:45am
Monday AM Refreshment Break

10:45am - 12:00pm
Plenary Session: The Competitive Advantage of Grounded Scholarship: Finding New Opportunities and New Reasons to Bridge the Gap between Academics and Practitioners
Chief Justice John Roberts stated, “I think it’s extraordinary these days — the tremendous disconnect between the legal academy and the legal profession. They occupy two different universes. What the academy is doing, as far as I can tell, is largely of no use or interest to people who actually practice law.” This panel challenges this assertion by looking at projects that successfully utilize scholarship in practice. It offers practitioners and scholars an opportunity to learn about how scholarship can add value to practice, and practice can inform new scholarship. Panelists will discuss new services that exist to translate legal scholarship into relevant and usable forms that offer real tactical advantages for knowledgeable practitioners, as well as discuss lessons from successful scholar/practice collaborations. This panel will include an interactive dialogue to help practitioners find legal resources helpful to particular client issues.

12:00pm - 1:45pm
Monday's Luncheon

2:00pm - 3:30pm
Plenary Session: Fresh Ideas for Intractable Problems in Criminal Law
This plenary session—the sole plenary to include panelists selected from a call for proposals—offers new solutions to seemingly intractable problems in the criminal justice system, with an eye on solutions that are practical, cost-effective, and capable of achieving broad support. How to address the “hidden” problem of misdemeanor convictions, and add teeth to the right to counsel, are just two of the topics that will be addressed.

9:15am - 10:30am
Plenary Session – The End of Criminal Justice as We Know It?: The Impact of Science on Criminal Law and Procedure
This panel will analyze how technological and scientific developments are affecting law enforcement, adjudication of crimes and sentencing. Among the issues addressed will be the impact of GPS tracking, camera and drone surveillance, and computer-based data mining on Fourth Amendment law; the impact of improvements in forensic science, including DNA analysis, on discovery, jury decision-making and other aspects of the criminal process; the impact of neuroscience on determinations of criminal responsibility; and the impact of risk assessment science on sentencing and release decision-making.

10:45am - 12:15pm
Plenary Discussion Group

10:45am - 12:15pm
Works-in-Progress

11:15 am - 12:15 pm
Paper Presentations I

11:15 am - 12:15 pm
Paper Presentations II

2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Paper Presentations I

2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Paper Presentations II

2:00pm - 3:30pm
Plenary Session - Discretion as the Exercise of Prudence or an Abuse of Power?: Evaluating and Regulating the Judgments of Police and Prosecutors
Discretion is a significant source of the power that police and prosecutors have, and also an essential component of their effectiveness. The judgments they make about how to allocate resources, who they will stop or arrest, whether to bring charges, and when to negotiate cooperation and plea deals have broad impact on both individual defendants and the criminal justice system. Yet while discretion pervades the investigation and prosecution of crime, it largely evades scrutiny. Panelists will address the empirical study of discretionary decision-making, the key points where it is exercised, and how it might be regulated.

3:45pm - 5:00pm
Plenary Discussion Group

3:45pm - 5:00pm
Works-in-Progress

9:00am - 10:15am
Plenary Session - A Man’s Castle?: The State, Crime, and the Home
The home—once the most private of spheres, given special protection in criminal law and under the Fourth Amendment—is increasingly becoming a place of both state intervention and state surveillance. For example, violence and marital rape in the home is no longer just a private affair. At the same time, state access to the home—through surveillance, through consent, and through administrative searches—has never been easier. What are we to make of the growing intersection of criminal justice issues and family law? What are we to make of the shifting relationship between the state, crime, and the home? And what are the collateral consequences of this shift? This panel will explore these and other questions.

10:30 am - 11:30 pm
Paper Presentations I

10:30 am - 11:30 pm
Paper Presentations II

10:30am - 12:00pm
Plenary Discussion Group

10:30am - 12:00pm
Works-in-Progress

11:45 am - 12:45 pm
Paper Presentations I

11:45 am - 12:45 pm
Paper Presentations II

2:00pm - 4:00pm
Plenary Session - Mass Incarceration, Criminal Sentencing, and the Politics of Crime and Punishment
Mass incarceration, with its staggering human and financial costs, ranks among the most urgent challenges facing U.S. criminal justice systems. Sentencing law and practice, including mandatory minimum sentences, “three strikes” laws, and limits on judicial discretion, have contributed to the problem. But in recent years lawmakers also have turned to sentencing as part of the solution, with some states reducing penalties, emphasizing alternatives to incarceration, and reforming “back end” reentry and revocation. This panel will analyze how changes in sentencing law, policy, and procedure might counteract mass incarceration. At the same time, panelists will consider how the politics of crime and punishment fuel punitive sentencing laws, and the moral and practical challenges in reconciling proposed reforms with public opinion.