This study was designed to examine the potential biasing effect of gang evidence on jury verdicts. Two hundred four participants viewed one of two versions of a simulated trial that included opening statements and closing arguments by the prosecution and defense, and direct and cross-examination of the eyewitness and investigating officer. Half of the participants saw a version of the trial that...
Call for Submissions: Volume 62
The UCLA Law Review is seeking submissions for publication in Volume 62: Issues 1, 2, and 3; and for publication in its online component, Discourse.
How to Feel Like a Woman, or Why Punishment Is a Drag
If a man in prison says that he was made “to feel like a woman,” this is commonly understood to mean that he was degraded, dehumanized, and sexualized. This association of femininity with punishment has significant implications for the way our society understands not only the sexual abuse of men in prison but also sexual abuse generally. These important implications are usually overlooked...
Free: Accounting for the Costs of the Internet’s Most Popular Price
Offers of free services abound on the Internet. But the focus on the price rather than on the cost of free services has led consumers into a position of vulnerability. For example, even though internet users typically exchange personal information for the opportunity to use these purportedly free services, one court has found that users of free services are not consumers for purposes of...
The Case for Tailoring Patent Awards Based on Time-to-Market
One of the hallmarks of our patent system is that it provides a one-size-fits-all reward for innovation. The uniform patent laws offer insufficient incentives to develop some socially valuable inventions, and they offer excessive rewards for other inventions, which imposes an unnecessary tax on consumers and subsequent innovators. If the government could adequately tailor patent awards to account...
Here Comes the Sun: How Securities Regulations Cast a Shadow on the Growth of Community Solar in the United States
The cascading cost of solar photovoltaic technologies over the past five years presents a ripe opportunity to change the way people think about solar energy, and the nascent community solar model offers the vehicle for such change. Community solar offers any electricity ratepayer the opportunity to purchase a small portion—as little as one panel—of an offsite, local solar array in exchange for...
Restoration Remedies for Remaining Residents
The foreclosure crisis left its mark on neighborhoods in countless ways. Remaining residents, those who continue to live in neighborhoods with many foreclosures, suffer unique harms because of adjacent foreclosed homes: depressed property values, higher crime, safety hazards, and reduced city services. In the current aftermath, attention has focused on preventing additional foreclosures and...
The Fifth Amendment, Encryption, and the Forgotten State Interest
This Essay considers how the Fifth Amendment’s Self-Incrimination Clause applies to encrypted data and computer passwords. In particular, it focus-es on one aspect of the Fifth Amendment that has been largely ignored: its aim to achieve a fair balance between the state’s interest and the individual’s. This aim has often guided courts in defining the Self-Incrimination Clause’s scope, and it...