Scholarship
The Center conducts criminal justice research in a variety of areas, but primarily collects and organizes data on the administration of criminal justice as it occurs in settings other than trials. In particular, the Center focuses mainly on prosecutorial decisionmaking before trial and at sentencing.
The Center engages in various projects that rely upon interviews and surveys of prosecutors and other government officials, past and present, about prosecutorial charging and plea bargaining policies, investigation methods, the use of cooperators, office structure and design, and the training and assignment of attorneys. There is a significant need for this type of centralized and organized data collection on prosecution. This information is not available in published sources, yet it is critical to understanding the administration of criminal justice, which takes place largely inside prosecutors’ offices and not in trials. The Center’s sentencing research consists largely of state-by-state comparisons of sentencing practices. There is currently little academic analysis that seeks to learn more about best sentencing practices by comparing and contrasting different approaches.
The Center’s research is used by scholars affiliated with the Center – including its Faculty Director and other faculty affiliates, its Executive Director, and its Fellows – to produce scholarship on a range of criminal justice topics.
Prosecutors In the Boardroom: Using Criminal Law to Regulate Corporate Conduct
The Center is proud to announce that it will publish a book, tentatively entitled Prosecutors In the Boardroom: Using Criminal Law to Regulate Corporate Conduct, comprised of papers contributed by scholars who participated in the Center's Inaugural Annual Conference, "Regulation By Prosecutors." The book will be published by New York University Press. To read more about the book, follow this link.
Representative publications by Faculty Director Rachel E. Barkow include:
- "The Court of Life and Death: The Two Tracks of Constitutional Sentencing Law and the Case for Uniformity," 107 Michigan Law Review 1145 (2009)
- "Institutional Design and the Policing of Prosecutors: Lessons from Administrative Law," 61 Stanford Law Review 869 (2009)
- “The Politics of Forgiveness: Reconceptualizing Clemency,” 21 Federal Sentencing Reporter 153 (2009)
- "The Ascent of the Administrative State and the Demise of Mercy," 121 Harvard Law Review 1332 (2008)
- The Rise and Fall of the Political Question Doctrine, in The Political Question Doctrine and the Supreme Court of the United States (Bruce Cain & Nada Mourtada-Sabbah, eds., 2007)
- "Delegating Punitive Power: The Politics and Economics of Sentencing Commission Formation," 84 Texas Law Review 1973 (2006) (with Kathleen O'Neill)
- "Separation of Powers and the Criminal Law," 58 Stanford Law Review 989 (2006)
- "The Political Market for Criminal Justice," 104 Michigan Law Review 1713 (2006)
- "The Rehnquist Court's Sentencing Revolution: The Intersection of Originalism, Politics, and the Criminal Law," 74 George Washington Law Review 1043 (2006)
- "Administering Crime," 52 UCLA Law Review 715 (2005)
- "Federalism and the Politics of Sentencing," 105 Columbia Law Review 1276 (2005)
- "Our Federal System of Sentencing," 58 Stanford Law Review 119 (2005)
- "The Devil You Know: Federal Sentencing After Blakely," 16 Federal Sentencing Reporter 314 (2004)
- "Recharging the Jury: The Criminal Jury's Constitutional Role in an Era of Mandatory Sentencing," 152 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 33 (2003)
- "More Supreme than Court? The Fall of the Political Question Doctrine and the Rise of Judicial Supremacy," 102 Columbia Law Review 237 (2002)