Critical confessions now

Critical Constitutionalism Now

In the fall of 1999, Mark Tushnet published a celebrated foreword to the Supreme Court edition of the Harvard Law Review arguing that the Rehnquist Court’s decisions could be understood as part of an era marked by divided government and sharply reduced ambitions for the transformative potential of constitutional law.1 Almost exactly two years later, on September 11, 2001, airplanes crashed into...

Confessions and expert testimony.

In this clinical paper, the author discusses criminal confessions from the point of view of the expert witness who may be asked to comment on the reliability of the statement and waiver of rights. From the time a suspect is in police custody, constitutional protections against self-incrimination and for due process are in place. The Supreme Court set the standard for these situations in the 196...

Interrogations and Confessions

The Confessions of Montaigne

Montaigne rarely repented and he viewed confession—both juridical and ecclesiastical—with skepticism. Confession, Montaigne believed, forced a mode of self-representation onto the speaker that was inevitably distorting. Repentance, moreover, made claims about self-transformation that Montaigne found improbable. This article traces these themes in the context of Montaigne‘s Essays, with particul...

Internalized False Confessions