This topic contains a solution. Click here to go to the answer

Author Question: Briefly trace the history of due process, from the adoption of the U.S. Constitution to the present. ... (Read 19 times)

Yolanda

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 757
Briefly trace the history of due process, from the adoption of the U.S. Constitution to the present.
 
  What will be an ideal response?

Question 2

Explain the impact of empirical evidence on judicial decision making.
 
  What will be an ideal response?



Related Topics

Need homework help now?

Ask unlimited questions for free

Ask a Question
Marked as best answer by a Subject Expert

kswal303

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 316
Answer to Question 1

From the passage of the Constitution to the Civil War, criminal justice was considered a local affair. The Bill of Rights extends protection against only the federal, not the state, government. The Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause changed that.

Courts, however, defined due process differently. Some decisions emphasized procedural due process, contending that due process guarantees fair procedures for deciding cases. The question then became which fair procedures are guaranteed. The Bill of Rights lists several. Are they due process guarantees?

Experts differed. Some claimed that the Bill of Rights codifies a specific list of procedures to protect people against governmental excesses and the Fourteenth Amendment requires that all these procedures apply to the states.

Others claimed that if due process is shorthand for the Bill of Rights, the Fourteenth Amendment due process clause is wasted language, because the Fifth Amendment already includes a due process clause. They thought the meaning of due process should evolve to meet the needs of an ever-changing society.

Until the 1930s, SCOTUS refused to apply the Fourteenth Amendment due process clause to state criminal proceedings. After World War I came the rise of totalitarian governments in the late 1920s and 1930s, which gave rise to American suspicions of arbitrary government. In 1932, SCOTUS ruled, in Powell v. Alabama, that the state of Alabama had denied the defendant's due process during the trial. In Brown v. Mississippi (1936), the Court ruled the defendants were denied due process when confessions obtained by brutality and torture were used against them.

These two cases established the fundamental fairness doctrine. According to this doctrine, due process commands the states to provide the basics of a fair trial. These include (1) giving defendants notice of the charges against them and (2) assuring a full hearing before conviction. However, even after these two cases, SCOTUS refused to hold that the Bill of Rights now automatically applied to state criminal justice.

During the 1940s and 1950s, all the Justices agreed that the Bill of Rights imposes limits on state criminal procedures, but they disagreed about what those limits are. This view was opposed by Justices who believed in the total incorporation doctrine. They believed that all the provisions of the Bill of Rights should be incorporated through the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and applied to state criminal justice proceedings. A third approach, selective incorporation, took a middle ground. Under this doctrine, some rights in the Bill of Rights would be incorporated through the Fourteenth Amendment and others would not. This doctrine was adopted by the Court in the 1960s in a series of decisions called the due process revolution, and the pendulum swung in favor of individuals' procedural rights.

Answer to Question 2

The new generation of criminal procedure calls for accurate, reliable, impartial empirical and social scientific evidence primarily aimed at answering two questions: (1) How effective are crime-controlling practices? and (2) What is their effect on individual liberty and privacy? As a compelling example, DNA exonerations conclusively demonstrate that our criminal justice system has wrongfully convicted innocent citizens. DNA exonerations we know about may only be the tip of the iceberg, so we must not only remember the innocents, but also be aware of any possible shortcomings in the data presented to us.




Yolanda

  • Member
  • Posts: 757
Reply 2 on: Aug 13, 2018
Great answer, keep it coming :)


kthug

  • Member
  • Posts: 332
Reply 3 on: Yesterday
Gracias!

 

Did you know?

The use of salicylates dates back 2,500 years to Hippocrates’s recommendation of willow bark (from which a salicylate is derived) as an aid to the pains of childbirth. However, overdosage of salicylates can harm body fluids, electrolytes, the CNS, the GI tract, the ears, the lungs, the blood, the liver, and the kidneys and cause coma or death.

Did you know?

Not getting enough sleep can greatly weaken the immune system. Lack of sleep makes you more likely to catch a cold, or more difficult to fight off an infection.

Did you know?

All adverse reactions are commonly charted in red ink in the patient's record and usually are noted on the front of the chart. Failure to follow correct documentation procedures may result in malpractice lawsuits.

Did you know?

Though the United States has largely rejected the metric system, it is used for currency, as in 100 pennies = 1 dollar. Previously, the British currency system was used, with measurements such as 12 pence to the shilling, and 20 shillings to the pound.

Did you know?

Children of people with alcoholism are more inclined to drink alcohol or use hard drugs. In fact, they are 400 times more likely to use hard drugs than those who do not have a family history of alcohol addiction.

For a complete list of videos, visit our video library