UCLA Criminal Justice Law Review

This Article explores why abortion is being recriminalized in the United States in sharp contrast to the historical evolution of reproductive rights. Its thesis is that abortion exemplifies American exceptionalism in the original sense of the phrase that America is an "exception," especially within the Western world. Yet exceptionalism should not be misunderstood as historical determinism or cultural essentialism. By the early 1970s, America was converging with peer Western democracies in liberalizing abortion. This process of convergence was ultimately halted by the mounting influence of the U.S. pro-life movement in an age when tolerance or support for reproductive rights increasingly became the norm abroad. When Dobbs overruled Roe, it not only exacerbated polarization within America, but also the divide between America and other Western democracies. This divergence was epitomized by the criticism that Dobbs garnered from U.S. allies, which led to remarkable public statements by Justice Samuel Alito defending his decision from condemnation by foreign leaders. While abortion is often analyzed in isolation, this multidisciplinary Article focuses on its interrelationship with wider features of American exceptionalism. A distinctive religious landscape sheds light on the intensity of opposition to abortion among the substantial minority of Americans who share a traditionalist worldview. The history of Catholicism and evangelicalism in America has notably diverged from fellow Western societies in ways that are largely overlooked. This unique social environment has contributed to the resilience of the U.S. anti-abortion movement, which has an outsized impact due to the exeptional weight of lobbying by special interests over American government. By holding that religious opposition to abortion can legitimately be channeled through secularized law and policies, the U.S. Supreme Court has further enabled this movement to be highly effective. In contrast, organized opposition to abortion has declined elsewhere in the West concurrently with the decline of organized religion, especially traditionalist conceptions of Christianity. Modern America is now an outlier, refighting and relitigating an endless battle over abortion.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court in Gregg v. Georgia reinstated the death penalty in 1976, approximately ten percent of those executed in the United States have been "volunteers." Volunteers are death-sentenced individuals who waive their right to appellate review and post-conviction relief to seek prompt "voluntary" execution. Fewer than one in six death sentences result in execution. Volunteers distort this statistic. Many states continue to accede to volunteers' death wishes, often citing the individual's "dignity" as a reason for granting them execution. Volunteers similarly  argue that their "worth" and "dignity" depend on the state executing them. This is the volunteer paradox: Death-sentenced individuals waive dignity-enhancing procedures (like appellate review). This Article lays out the dignitary interests at stake, consciously juxtaposing death row volunteerism against physician-assisted suicide. Whether states have a constitutional obligation to prevent volunteering would be a case of first impression for the U.S. Supreme Court. This Article argues that when the volunteering dilemma reaches the Court, volunteering must be declared unconstitutional based on both dignitary and legal considerations. Death row is a crucible of dignity lashes. Death row volunteerism thus presents a unique and extreme paradigm to wade into the larger "dignity in the law" debate. On one side of the debate are dignity skeptics who believe dignity can only be thematic dicta in jurisprudence because dignity is too fragile and subjective of a concept to be operational in the law. On the other side are dignity proponents who argue dignity can and should be part of a judge's assessment. This Article ultimately advances the use of dignity in the law, providing normative arguments for prioritizing certain conceptions of dignity over others and outlining the kinds of dignitary arguments judges should embrace, as well as those they should reject.

In State v. Gutierrez , the New Mexico Supreme Court became the first high court in the United States to abolish the spousal communications privilege, declaring it a “procedural rule which has outlived its justification.” In doing so, the court rejected both utilitarian and humanist rationales long used to defend the privilege, departing from centuries of Anglo-American legal tradition and the practices of every other U.S. jurisdiction. This Article critically examines that decision and its constitutional, philosophical, and jurisprudential consequences. The court’s utilitarian analysis treats the privilege as an instrumentally ineffective deterrent to spousal testimony, arguing it protects communications that would occur even without its existence. But this logic, adapted from professional privileges such as attorney-client confidentiality, misunderstands the privilege’s function as a protection of personal rather than procedural integrity. Moreover, the court’s “humanistic” dismissal of marital autonomy and intimacy as mere sentiment ignores the constitutional dimensions of privacy and liberty embedded in the marriage relationship. Drawing on theorists such as Milton Regan, D.C. Schindler, and Hegel, this Article reframes the privilege not as an evidentiary anomaly, but as a legal expression of relational self-authorship—a dimension of human dignity protected by substantive due process. In response, this Article advances a normative and constitutional defense of the spousal communications privilege. It argues that the privilege safeguards a constitutionally protected sphere of intimate autonomy recognized since Griswold v. Connecticut and reaffirmed in Obergefell v. Hodges . Further, it contends that the logic underlying these cases calls not for the contraction but for the expansion of non-professional privileges to similarly profound relationships. Rather than being a sentimental relic, the spousal communications privilege is a vital legal recognition of the communal nature of personhood and an indispensable component of the administration of justice in a free society.

Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs) have become a critical tool to help law enforcement collect and analyze vehicle records to locate stolen cars and cars sought in connection with other crimes. ALPRs capture images of license plates, accompanied by timestamps and location data, to generate real-time alerts and support the investigation of crimes after the fact. Because vehicles are a nearly inevitable fact of American life, the widespread use of ALPR technology raises profound privacy concerns. Lower courts have begun to address the privacy risks posed by expansive and long-term ALPR surveillance, at times drawing parallels to the cell-site location data in Carpenter v. United States. Accordingly, this Comment explores the constitutional implications of warrantless ALPR data collection and use, analyzing the technology’s potential to infringe on the rights guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment. With privacy in mind, this Comment proposes a judicial rule consistent with Carpenter that would require a warrant to access ALPR data that is older than six days. This would limit the retention of data about vehicles not tied to criminal investigations while balancing individual privacy interests with law enforcement’s needs. As ALPR technology evolves, so too must the legal frameworks governing its use to ensure that privacy rights are not unduly compromised in the name of public safety.

The U.S. immigration system continues to detain immigrants who seek to enter the country at incredibly high rates. Only 19.4 percent of detained noncitizens are represented in their immigration hearings, which often effectively have life-or-death consequences. Noncitizens face a host of physical and informational barriers in detention that impede their ability to find legal representation or successfully represent themselves in immigration court. The access to justice framework seeks to address this problem by identifying various ways to provide competent legal support to immigrants in detention. This Article examines the opportunities and limitations of universal representation programs, accredited representatives, and the Legal Orientation Program. While all three provide partial relief to this issue, this Article argues that the programs working in conjunction with one another would be most effective to begin to tackle this massive crisis.