Criminal Justice News And Events

Ruben will work with the Colorado Center on Law and Policy to support the development of an automated process for criminal record sealing. Read More

VLS students are working for government and nonprofit legal employers in 15 states, Washington, D.C., and The Hague, Netherlands during summer 2022. Read More

22 members of the class of 2022 were honored with academic, citizenship and journal awards at Commencement. Read More

Newton has been a senior adviser to the Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues in the U.S. State Department. In this interview with Natasha Fatah of CBS News, he talks about how the International Criminal Court will investigate possible war crimes by Russia while the war is ongoing. Read More

Chris Slobogin, who directs the law school's Criminal Justice Program, moderated "Reform for Redemption," a March 18 discussion on criminal justice reform with Cyntoia Brown-Long, who was incarcerated as a juvenile, and former Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam, who granted Brown clemency. Watch the event, which was sponsored by the Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American Democracy, now. Read More

Cheng’s 2022 Vanderbilt Law Review article, “The Consensus Rule: A New Approach to Scientific Evidence,” will be the focus of a day-long symposium March 18 at Villanova Law School, where Cheng’s proposal that the legal system should defer to expert communities rather than reach independent decisions will be critically evaluated by scholars in the field. Read More

The event, “Reform for Redemption: Cyntoia Brown Long and Gov. Bill Haslam on Criminal Justice Reform and the Power of Mercy,” will be held in Langford Auditorium and livestreamed at 6 p.m. March 15. Now an author and advocate, Brown was a trafficking victim when she was convicted of murder at 16. She was later granted clemency by Gov. Haslam. Professor Slogobin will moderate a discussion about criminal justice reform. The public is invited to attend in person or virtually. Read More

Newton's work with Iraqi judges is funded by a grant from the U.S. State Department. The goal is to help Iraqi courts prosecute ISIS and process counterrorism cases in accordance with international human rights norms. The article quotes Practice Lab students Emily Webb '22 and Cait Martins '22, who worked to develop a 300-page manual to support the casework of attorneys in international criminal tribunals. Read More

"How this Vanderbilt law professor and his student are helping Iraqis handle thousands of ISIS cases," an article by Mariah Timms, appeared in the Dec. 13, 2021, edition of The Tennessean. Timms' article profiles Newton's work helping Iraqi judges rebuild their nation's court system and prosecute a backlog of ISIS cases, some involving genocide charges. Read More

Mayeux's book is one of three books addressing public defenders and how public defense has evolved since its inception in the Progressive Era. Seo writes that Mayeux's book "leaves readers with a provocative thought: If we moved beyond adversarialism, what kind of legal representation could defendants receive?" Free Justice, published by the University of North Carolina Press, received the 2020 David J. Langum Prize in American Legal History. Read More