SAGE Journal Articles

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Journal Article 1: Federman, C. (2004). Who has the body? The paths to habeas corpus reform. The Prison Journal84, 317–339.

Abstract: The purpose of this article is to place the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) of 1996 within a political and historical framework that describes the effort by the Supreme Court and various interested parties to restrict prisoners’ access to the federal courts by way of habeas corpus. Of principal concern here is how an act of terrorism against the United States provides an opportunity for Congress to restrict death row prisoners from obtaining habeas corpus review. Along with an analysis of Supreme Court decisions, three attempts to limit federal habeas corpus review for state prisoners from the late 1980s to the middle 1990s are described, all of which helped Congress to pass the AEDPA, a law that ratified the Supreme Court’s most restrictive habeas corpus decisions dating back some 35 years.

Journal Article 2: Collins, T., & Moyer, L. (2008). Gender, race, and intersectionality on the federal appellate bench. Political Research Quarterly61, 219–227.

Abstract: While theoretical justifications predict that a judge’s gender and race may influence judicial decisions, empirical support for these arguments has been mixed. However, recent increases in judicial diversity necessitate a reexamination of these earlier studies. Rather than examining individual judges on a single characteristic, such as gender or race alone, this research note argues that the intersection of individual characteristics may provide an alternative approach for evaluating the effects of diversity on the federal appellate bench. The results of cohort models examining the joint effects of race and gender suggest that minority female judges are more likely to support criminal defendants’ claims when compared to their colleagues on the bench, even after controlling for other important factors. This suggests that our understanding of judicial behaviors may be assisted by the inclusion of how individual characteristics overlap rather than examining those characteristics alone.