Professor Traum Places Latest Article in the Florida Law Review

The Boyd School of Law is very pleased to announce that Professor Anne Traum placed her latest article, "Using Outcomes to Reframe Guilty Plea Adjudication," in the Florida Law Review.

The abstract for Professor Traum's article provides:  "The Supreme Court’s 2012 decisions in Lafler v. Cooper and Frye v. Missouri lay the groundwork for a new approach to judicial regulation of guilty pleas that considers outcomes.  These cases confirm that courts enjoy robust authority to protect defendants’ Sixth Amendment right to effective counsel and that plea outcomes are particularly relevant to identifying and remedying prejudicial ineffective assistance in plea bargaining. The Court’s reliance on outcome-based prejudice analysis and suggestions for trial court level reforms to prevent Sixth Amendment violations set the stage for trial courts to take a more active, substantive role in regulating guilty pleas. This Article traces these significant doctrinal shifts and argues that they supply both impetus and authority for trial courts to regulate guilty pleas by monitoring plea outcomes. This proposal builds on market-based concepts while strengthening the judicial role in safeguarding constitutional values. By monitoring outcomes, courts can detect and correct factors in the plea market, like prosecutorial overreaching and deficient counsel, which can distort the parties’ ability to negotiate fair results. Outcomes monitoring is justified for practical reasons because it builds on courts’ expertise and unique place in the plea markets, it can be implemented at the trial court level, it reinforces courts’ traditional sentencing authority, and it can prevent litigation of prejudicial ineffective assistance in post-conviction proceedings."

Professor Traum's Florida Law Review article follows three other Traum articles recently placed in Hastings Law Journal, Cardozo Law Review, and Maryland Law Review.  See Anne R. Traum, Mass Incarceration at Sentencing, 64 Hastings L.J. 423 (2013); Anne R. Traum, Constitutionalizing Immigration Law on Its Own Path, 33 Cardozo L. Rev. 491 (2011); and Anne R. Traum, Last Best Chance for the Great Writ: Equitable Tolling and Federal Habeas Corpus, 68 Md. L. Rev. 545 (2009)).

Congratulations, Anne! 

Professor Traum Publishes in Cardozo Law Review

Congratulations to Professor Anne Traum on the publication of her recent article in Volume 33 of the Cardozo Law Review.

The abstract for "Constitutionalizing Immigration Law on its Own Path" provides: "Courts should insist on heightened procedural protections in immigration adjudication. They should do so under the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause rather than by importing Sixth Amendment protections from the criminal context. Traditional judicial oversight and the Due Process Clause provide a better basis than the Sixth Amendment to interpose heightened procedural protections in immigration proceedings, especially those involving removal for a serious criminal conviction. The Supreme Court’s immigration jurisprudence in recent years lends support for this approach. The Court has guarded the availability of judicial review of immigration decisions. It has affirmed that courts are the arbiters of constitutional issues (including due process) and criminal statutory interpretation. The Court has accorded agency deference on matters of agency expertise, which does not include interpretation of criminal law and convictions. And the Court has created generally applicable procedural protections in order to minimize court interference with substantive immigration policy. Guided by these core concepts, courts are poised to develop procedural protections for immigrants in removal proceedings that are tailored to the institutional interests at stake and protective of immigrants. By constitutionalizing immigration on its own path, courts may also avoid some of the pitfalls of a Sixth Amendment–based criminal-rights model."

The article's full text (Anne Traum, Constitutionalizing Immigration Law on Its Own Path, 33 CARDOZO L. REV. 491 (2011)) is available for download at UNLV's Scholarly Commons as well as SSRN.