NPR ran a story on Saturday about one high school in Michigan and its use of a “conflict resolution room” and peer mediators to help students to either prevent conflicts from becoming worse, or to deal with them after they have become violent. The story also discusses how the high school uses restorative justice processes … Continue reading A Good Story About High School
Late last week the Supreme Court unanimously decided U.S. v. Davila, the full decision is here. This is not a ground-breaking case, and the holding is not a surprise. Yet it is the bigger question about how our criminal justice system routinely works that is embedded into this case, although not confronted or even explicitly … Continue reading Plea Bargaining Harmless Error
OJ Simpson will be back in court this week in Las Vegas bringing an appeal from his 2008 armed robbery and kidnapping conviction in 2008. He has apparently filed, through his new lawyer, a 94-page petition for a new trial—which reportedly includes 19 specific issues that the court has agreed to hear “mostly claiming that … Continue reading Was OJ Simpson’s Lawyer Ineffective?
The Texas state legislature meets every other year for a five month term of frenzied law-making. This spring we are in the midst of one of these legislative sessions. I recently learned of a proposed bill that involves restorative justice, which has some interesting pieces to it. This bill, S.B. 1237 , expressly authorizes the … Continue reading Who will pay? Restorative Justice in Texas
Rishi Batra, currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at Whittier Law, and soon to be an Assistant Professor at Texas Tech Unveristy School of Law (congratulations Rishi!), has a new article that is being published by the Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution: Lafler and Fry: A New Constitutional Standard For Negotiation, available here . The abstract is: … Continue reading New article on Negotiation and Plea Bargaining
The New York Times reported here yesterday that the judge in the Martha Stewart-JC Penny-Macy’s contract dispute ordered the parties into mediation. This is after three weeks of testimony in a bench trial that consolidated two law suits. According to the NY Times this will be the first mediation in this case. Apparently, previously, JC Penny … Continue reading Martha Stewart Ordered into Mediation
When I read news articles on-line I now make a conscious habit of not reading the comments. It turns out this is probably a good thing for more reasons than just that the comments are often annoying. As one commentator noted, “The online peanut gallery can get you so riled up that your ability to … Continue reading The Problem with Comments
I started the New Year by welcoming a new member of the family, Ernest, my ten week old Welsh Corgi Puppy. In the grand Indisputably tradition (thank you Andrea!) I am posting a photo of the world’s cutest Welsh Corgi Puppy. My new puppy is named in honor of Ernest Shackleton, one of the great … Continue reading In Honor of Ernest Shackleton
Last week the New York Times reported an interesting, and unusual, use of restorative justice in a murder case in Florida. The parents of a young woman who was killed by her boyfriend, along with the boyfriend, his parents, and the prosecutor, all participated in a pre-trial restorative justice process. Ultimately the prosecutor offered a plea … Continue reading Restorative Justice for Murder?
The NY Times published a little piece about negotiation and the gender wage gap on Friday. You can read it here.
