Daily Archives: November 11, 2003

Indefinite Lockup (No, Not Gitmo)

The Miami Herald | 11/11/2003 | State's sex predator law goes too far, some argue

The issue is the so-called Jimmy Ryce Act, §§ 394.910-394.931, Fla. Stat.

The statute provides for indefinite confinement of sexual offenders who are currently incarcerated, to continue until they are pronounced ‘cured’ which in the very large majority of cases so far means ‘never’. The statute doesn’t actually say that they must be incarcerated for the sex crime — and the plaintiff in this case committed a rape 20 years ago, was released in 1991, but has been re-arrested since for various crimes of violence.

The Florida Supreme Court has said the Ryce Act is basically constitutional but it has yet to rule on whether the statute can be applied to inmates who committed a sexual offense in the past, but are currently incarcerated for a non-sexual offense.

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DRAFT International law exam question writing rules

DRAFT International Law Exam Write-a-Question ground rules

1. Your task is to write a question that could form part of the final exam in International Law.

2. Participation in this question-writing program is not optional. The quality of your participation will be factored into your class participation grade.

3. Questions should be no shorter than two sentences and no longer than one page, single-spaced, with ordinary type face and margins. They can be theoretical questions, hypothetical questions, purely legal/interpretive questions, or any other standard law school exam question.

4. In addition, you should append an outline of your suggested answer. In so doing you should note whether you think there is only one possible answer, or whether there are multiple possible (or arguable) answers. You should also note the most relevant cases, treaties, or other readings, i.e. those that one would ordinarily expect a student to discuss/cite in her/his answer.

5. Generally speaking, I tend to prefer questions for which more than one answer is plausible but this is not a requirement.

6. Questions are due by Tuesday Nov. 25, which is our last regularly scheduled class. E-mail submissions to [email] are preferred, but paper turned in in class is acceptable. I will acknowledge receipt of emails, and you should resubmit anything that isn't acknowledged within 24 hours.

7. I will read all the question and separate them into two groups: those that I think couldn't be on the exam, and those that (perhaps with light editing) could be part of the exam (the “possible pile”).

8. If there are two or fewer questions in the “possible pile”, I will so inform the class. I may or may not use one of the questions on the exam.

9. If there are three or more questions in the “possible pile”, I will publish them on the class web page by Dec. 1. At least one of these questions, and possibly more, will appear on the exam, either as an optional or required question.

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Silence is Golden

Wow. A day I'm so buy I can't post, and traffic goes through the roof suddenly bringing me to over 10,000 unique visitors in less than two months! (The 'unique visitor' is counted on a daily basis, so anyone who visited fifteen times over seven days would be counted seven times.) I moved well over a gigabyte of data in the last 30 days, and that's with few graphics. Good thing my hosting contract allows me about ten times what I used.

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Posted in Discourse.net | Leave a comment