Reflections from a Semester Abroad

It is as though I am back in my college years, spending my semester abroad. This fall I am living in the beautiful city of Leuven, Belgium, a city of about 100,000 people and located about twenty miles outside of Brussels. I am teaching at the Catholic University of Leuven Law School’s Criminology Institute where there is a vibrant and well-known restorative justice department. A group of professors here, led by highly respected Dr. Ivo Aertsen, as well as many Ph.D. students and researchers, are examining and writing about the impact of restorative justice programs in many different countries and cultures.

The university was founded in 1425, making it the oldest Catholic university in the world. There are 40,000 students here (and I think they all ride bicycles). I also have the privilege of living in what is called the Groot Beginjnof (or for us French speakers “the Grand Beguinage.”) In about 1325, groups of women from the Low Countries decided to create their own religious communities and build small towns in which they lived. They were strong, independent women who did not want to attach themselves to religious orders (and wanted to maintain control over their personal finances rather than give them to the Catholic Church).

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SCOTUS to Revisit Life Without Parole for Juveniles

Yesterday, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in two new cases that will test the limits of the Court’s important 2010 ruling in Graham v. Florida, which banned the sentence of life without possibility of parole for most juvenile offenders.  Graham recognized an exception, however, for juveniles convicted of homicide.  It is this exception that is at issue in the two new cases, both of which involve fourteen-year-old killers.

The two cases are Miller v. Alabama (opinion below: 63 So. 3d 676 (Ala. Crim. App. 2010)) and Jackson v. Hobbs (2011 Ark. 49).  The question granted in each case is the same, and they are to be argued together.  It appears that the defendants are presenting a categorical challenge to the constitutionality of “LWOP” as applied to fourteen-year-olds.

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The Libya Intervention: Legality and Lessons (Part III)

In my last two posts, I discussed some of the legal and practical issues raised by the U.S. intervention in Libya, including the issue of whether the Obama Administration violated the War Powers Resolution by declining to seek congressional approval for participation in the conflict. Although there is room for debate, I concluded that the Administration probably did violate the Resolution insofar as the statutory meaning of “hostilities” aligns with the word’s colloquial meaning. But the question of meaning probably depends on more than text alone. As with most other questions of statutory interpretation, we should also look to precedent as an interpretive guide. My purpose in this post is to identify some relevant precedent and discuss how it might affect the analysis.

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