Franklin Zimring Notes Arbitrariness of Death Penalty Rulings

-The Salt Lake Tribune, June 11, 2010 by Christopher Smart
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/home/49749347-73/death-penalty-gardner-execution.html.csp?page=1

“The law is not very good at specifying who should live and who should die,” argues Franklin E. Zimring, a law professor at University of California at Berkeley.

-Los Angeles Times, June 12, 2010 by Maria L. La Ganga
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-fort-bragg-killing-20100612,0,2242136,full.story

Franklin Zimring, a law professor at UC Berkeley, said that deciding on an appropriate sentence will be “a nasty balancing act” for Brown. “It’s not like there’s a long list of these,” Zimring said. “These are head-on collisions between the severity of the criminal harm and the enormity of the long-term mitigating circumstances.”

Eric Stover Believes ICC Needs to Reach Out to War Victims

The Guardian, Guardian Legal Network, June 10, 2010 by Stephen Hubbell
http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2010/jun/10/international-courts-osi

“People see this court and tend to say, ‘Well, why doesn’t this court come in and arrest my neighbor down the road who also committed crimes?’ That’s not in the mandate of the court. The court is only going out to those most responsible for the most heinous crimes. So it’s important for the court to engage with the population, to hear them and learn from them too. We have to understand that the communities that were affected by mass violence have different feelings. Some feel like the victimized communities, others feel they’re being singled out. So you have to develop different messages for different communities.”

David Kirp Bemoans Kids-Last Politics

New America Foundation, Early Ed Watch, June 10, 2010 by David L. Kirp
bit.ly/bb3MWO

Despite the widespread recognition that good early education can alter the arc of children’s lives, the conventional wisdom, that children don’t matter because they don’t vote, endures. In national politics, children come last.

Chris Kutz Questions Expansion of College Athletic Conferences

Inside Higher Ed, June 9, 2010 by David Moltz
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/06/09/conferences

“In general, of course, more revenue (assuming it is applied towards existing program costs) would be a good thing, though all the predictions are very speculative, of course,” wrote Kutz in an e-mail. “On the other hand, the faculty would certainly be concerned if the change in the league led to a lessening of the commitment of academic excellence of the member schools (or a greater tolerance for pressure on athletes at students). And there is worry that a bigger division will increase the pace of the spending arms race that has proven so costly to college sports.”

John Yoo Hails High Court Miranda Ruling

The Wall Street Journal, June 8, 2010 by John Yoo
bit.ly/afF6kO (requires registration; go to G:\Law School in the News\News Clips for article)

It may well be the Supreme Court that rides to Mr. Obama’s rescue. Even as it rejects the administration’s symbolic terrorism legislation, the court’s new flexibility may lead to its own Miranda modifications to ease the burdens on our military, intelligence and police. That would give the administration more flexibility to fight terrorism within the criminal-justice paradigm, though at the expense of weakening the civil liberties of all Americans.

Chris Kutz Says It’s Premature to Examine UC Contract with BP

The Fresno Bee, June 6, 2010 by Laurel Rosenhall
http://www.fresnobee.com/2010/06/06/1959655/bp-funds-search-for-green-fuels.html

“If it turns out that BP is guilty of serious criminal misconduct in relation to its environmental obligations, that could raise a question under this clause” of the contract, Chris Kutz, a UC Berkeley law professor who chairs the academic Senate, wrote in an e-mail to The Bee. “But I believe it is premature to begin any serious discussion until more facts are known.”

Franklin Zimring and Malcolm Feeley Discuss Pros of Plea Bargains

Contra Costa Times, June 4, 2010 by Thadeus Greenson
http://www.contracostatimes.com/california/ci_15226179?nclick_check=1

“Plea negotiations are not common in California criminal justice, they’re pervasive,” said Franklin Zimring, William G. Simon Professor of Law … adding that more than 90 percent of criminal cases in the state end with guilty pleas.

“In a world in which so many sentences are draconian and the prosecutor has the capability to lay on so many charges just to build up huge liabilities, the answer is there should be some flexibility,” Feeley said.

Steven Weissman Criticizes PG&E and Prop. 16

-The Bay Citizen, June 3, 2010 by Katharine Mieszkowski
http://www.baycitizen.org/politics/story/pges-lonely-proposition-fight/

“It will have enough of a chilling effect to eliminate some public power initiatives going forward. Those that do go on the ballot—it’s likely that many of those might lose,” said Steven Weissman, associate director of the UC Berkeley School of Law’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment.

-The Bay Citizen, June 9, 2010 by Katharine Mieszkowski
http://www.baycitizen.org/june-8-election/story/proposition-16-fails/

“This is a stunning reversal of the normal expectation that money can buy results in California elections,” said Steven Weissman, associate director of the UC Berkeley School of Law’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment.