Limiting instructions and instructions to disregard inadmissible evidence are widely believed to be both ineffective and necessary. Courts presume that juries follow evidentiary instructions, but the presumption is almost universally acknowledged to be false, a kind of professional myth. This Article argues that we have it backwards. The real “myth” about evidentiary instructions is not that they work; the real…
In several jurisdictions in the United States, a rapist who causes his victim to become pregnant commits an aggravated sexual assault. Having committed an aggravated crime, he will be subjected to a longer prison sentence relative to his counterpart whose victim does not become pregnant consequent to the rape. The rapist who causes a woman…
The Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, the most significant patent law reform effort in two generations, may have a dark side: it seems likely to decrease the patenting behavior of individual inventors, a category which occupies special significance in American innovation history. In this Article, we empirically predict the effects of the major change in the law, which shifts the…
In Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court struck down a Texas law criminalizing sexual relations between individuals of the same sex. The Court held that laws based on nothing more than moral disapproval lack a legitimate basis and are therefore unconstitutional. Despite the Court’s strong language, state and lower federal courts have adopted contradictory interpretations of Lawrence. In particular, the…
If there is an animating imperative behind the Supreme Court’s decision in Bell v. Wolfish, it is this: when confronted with a question regarding stripsearching arrestees, courts must seek a careful balance. Decades later, the Court appears to have deviated from Bell’s moorings. Last Term, in Florence v. Board of Chosen Freeholders, the Court examined the constitutionality of…
