Twenty years ago, Professor William Stuntz wrote an arti-cle, The Pathological Politics of Criminal Law, that has become a classic of the field. His thesis was that criminal law is beset by political problems (mostly collusive incentives) that cause it to steadily expand, with ever more statutes criminalizing ever more conduct, and punishing more harshly as well.
The last several years have seen “a truly astounding” and “unprecedented” outpouring of scholarship and commentary decrying the large number of individuals held in pretrial detention, measuring the negative social consequences of such detention, and debating what to do about it.
In 2020, the U.S. federal government carried out ten exe-cutions, more than in any year since 1896. In a single week in January 2021, it carried out three more.
Vickie Sanders was convicted in a California state court of felony drug possession, sixteen years before California voters would pass Proposition 47. Proposition 47, which was passed in 2014, reduces most possessory drug offenses from felonies to misdemeanors, and allows California courts to retroactively redesignate individuals’ felonies as misdemeanors.
On August 30, 2019, the New Mexico Supreme Court prospectively abolished the state’s spousal communications privilege.
For the uninitiated, a brief rehearsal of the facts of the matter: The United States presently incarcerates over two million individuals, with another four million under other forms of correctional supervision.
