What objections would a defendant’s lawyer raise to these public humiliation punishments?

Business managemen by Geoffrey
  1. Jonathan Rauch argued that America is making a mistake in allowing what he calls Hidden Law to be replaced by what he calls Bureaucratic Legalism. Hidden Law refers to unwritten social codes, whereas Bureaucratic Legalism refers to state-provided due process for every problem. Thus, universities formerly expected insults and epithets

148 Unit Two

Introduction to Law

among students to be resolved via informal modes such as apologies, while today many universities have written codes forbidding offensive or discriminatory verbal conduct. Similarly, four kindergarten students in New Jersey were suspended from school for three days because they were observed “shooting” each other with their fingers serv- ing as guns.

  1. Should we leave campus insults and schoolyard finger “shootings” to the Hidden Law? Explain.
  1. Can you think of other examples where we have gradually replaced Hidden Law with Bureaucratic Legalism?
  2. RaucharguedthatthebreakdownofoneHiddenLaw,therulethatamanmustmarry a woman whom he has impregnated, may be “the most far-reaching social change of our era.” Do you agree? Explain. See George Will, “Penalizing These Kids Is Zero Tolerance at a Ridiculous Extreme,” The Des Moines Register, December 27, 2000, p. 11A.
  1. Should we remove criminal penalties from all of the so-called victimless crimes including vagrancy, pornography, and gambling? Should we regulate those practices in any way? Explain.
  2. A 19-year-old woman who didn’t pay the fare for a 30-mile cab ride was given the choice of spending 30 days in jail or taking a 30-mile walk; she chose to take the walk.7 One Florida judge has sentenced hundreds of shoplifters to carrying in public a sign that reads: “I stole from this store.” Constitutional law expert Jonathan Turley says “creative sentencing” is growing, a trend he disapproves of and regards as a strategy for entertaining the public more than deterring crime.8
  1. What objections would a defendant’s lawyer raise to these public humiliation punishments?
  2. Would you impose a “humiliation sentence” if you were the judge? Explain.

Part Two—The Judicial Process