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Volume 37, Issue 2 (Winter 2020)

Distinguishing Plea Discounts and Trial Penalties

We know that criminal defendants who plead guilty receive lower sentences than those convicted at trial, but there’s widespread disagreement about why. One camp of scholars believes this plea-trial differential represents a deeply troubling and coercive penalty; a second believes it’s merely a freedom-enhancing discount; and a third

Georgia’s Approach to Proportionality and Sanctions for the Spoliation of Electronically Stored Information

The rapid evolution and implementation of technology in society has resulted in the increasing use of data as evidence in court. While the scope of discovery is limited by, among other things, the burden imposed on the producing party, the sheer magnitude of electronic evidence compared to its physical counterpart

How and Why Did it Go So Wrong?: Theranos as a Legal Ethics Case Study

The Theranos saga encompasses many discrete areas of law. Reporting on Theranos, most notably John Carreyrou’s Bad Blood, highlights the questionable ethical decisions that many of the attorneys involved made. The lessons attorneys and law students can learn from Bad Blood are highly complex. The Theranos story touches on

Reluctance Or Apathy? Examining Georgia’s Continued Adherence to a Strict Mutuality Issue Preclusion Doctrine

The common law doctrine of issue preclusion, also known as collateral estoppel, prevents parties from relitigating an issue in subsequent lawsuits if a prior judgment already conclusively decided the issue. Issue preclusion traditionally required strict mutuality of parties; the first and second lawsuits had to involve the exact same litigants.

Violent Videos: Criminal Defense in a Digital Age

Digital video evidence has exploded into criminal practice with far-reaching consequences for criminal defendants, their attorneys, and the criminal legal system as a whole. Defense attorneys now receive police body-worn camera footage, surveillance video footage, and cell phone video footage in discovery in even the most routine criminal cases. This

Who Calls the Shots?: Parents Versus the Parens Patriae Power of the States to Mandate Vaccines for Children in New York

Vaccines are one of the top ten public health interventions of the twentieth century, lengthening lifespans and drastically reducing the burden of infectious disease in many nations. Childhood immunizations in particular have significantly impacted rates of infant and child mortality and morbidity, and nearly eliminated the presence of diseases like