Athletes Behaving Badly

Did Michael Vick get off easy when he was reinstated by the NFL?  Or would the League overstep its proper role in imposing further punishment on an athlete who has already paid his proverbial debt to society?  Variations on these questions arise every time a famous professional athlete breaks the law — an all-too-common occurence, it seems.  

Janie Kim and Matt Parlow make a thoughtful contribution to the debate with a new paper on SSRN entitled “Off-Court Misbehavior: Sports Leagues and Private Punishment.”  Here is the abstract:

This Essay examines how professional sports leagues address (apparently increasing) criminal activity by players off of the field or court. It analyzes the power of professional sports leagues and, in particular, the commissioners of those leagues, to discipline wayward athletes. Such discipline is often met with great controversy — from players’ unions and commentators alike — especially when a commissioner invokes the “in the best interest of the sport” clause of the professional sports league’s constitution and bylaws. The Essay then contextualizes such league discipline in criminal punishment theory — juxtaposing punishment norms in public law with incentives and rationales for discipline in professional sports — and analyzes the legal and cultural limitations to this approach.

As Kim and Parlow point out, one of the troubling aspects of league-administered punishment for off-court misconduct is that the procedures and standards seem so informal and ad hoc compared with those of the criminal justice system.  This raises legitimacy problems for league punishment — all the more so when the league itself is perceived to have unclean hands (see, e.g., MLB and steroids).

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Restorative Justice and the Big Tent

tentI have a new paper on SSRN discussing some of the pitfalls that the restorative justice movement may encounter.  The paper responds to Professor Erik Luna’s essay “In Support of Restorative Justice.” Luna extolls the capacity of restorative justice practices to accommodate diverse theories of punishment, but I argue that such a “big tent” approach may undermine the ability of the restorative justice movement to bring meaningful reform to the American system of mass incarceration. This comment was published along with Luna’s essay and additional responses in Criminal Law Conversations (Paul H. Robinson et al. eds., 2009).

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What’s Your Archetype?

Saint_george_raphaelThis past year I came across a terrific article by Professor Ruth Anne Robbins on using archetypes to develop a client’s story.  (Harry Potter, Ruby Slippers and Merlin: Telling the Client’s Story Using the Characters and Paradigm of the Archetypal Hero’s Journey, 29 Seattle U. L. Rev. 767 (2006)).  An archetype is an innate prototype, or epitome, of a personality.  The Swiss psychologist Carl Jung advanced the theory that some personality types or characteristics are universally recognized.  The American mythologist Joseph Campbell was influenced by Carl Jung’s work on archetypes and considered how archetypes manifest in mythology.  Professor Robbins examines how Jung’s and Campbell’s theories can be used in a practical litigation and courtroom setting.   

In her article, Professor Robbins suggests that archetypes, as universally recognized symbols, can be used to create a compelling image of a client.  As Professor Robbins states, “Because people respond — instinctively and intuitively — to certain recurring story patterns and character archetypes, lawyers should systematically and deliberately integrate into their storytelling the larger picture of their clients’ goals by subtly portraying their individual clients as heroes on a particular life path.”  (768-69.)  The key to using archetypes is to tap into a judge or jury’s unconscious to align the client’s story with a hero’s transformative journey. 

How do you put your client on the path of a hero’s journey? 

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