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The United States Supreme Court decided Ramos v. Louisiana in 2020, requiring all states to convict criminal defendants by a unanimous jury. However, this case only applied to petitioners on direct, and not collateral, appeal. In this thesis, I argue that the Ramos precedent should apply to people on collateral appeal as well, exploring the implications of such a decision and the criteria that should be used to make the decision in the case before the court, Edwards v. Vannoy (2021). Ultimately, I find that because the criteria currently used to determine retroactivity of new criminal precedents does not provide a clear answer to the question posed in Edwards, the Court should give more weight to the defendant's freedoms pursuant to the presumption of innocence while considering the potential for any disastrous outcomes.
This study analyzed currently existing statute at the state, federal, and international level to ultimately build a criteria of recommendations for policymakers to consider when building regulations for facial recognition technology usage by law enforcement agencies within the United States.
The relationship between science and religion in the modern day is complex to the point that the lines between them are often blurred. We have a need to distinguish the two from each-other for a variety of practical reasons. Various philosophies, theories, and tests have been suggested on the interaction between the two and how they are subdivided. One of the sets of criteria which has been shown to work was originally introduced in the opinion of Judge Overton in the case of McLean v Arkansas. McLean v Arkansas is a pivotal case in that it gave us a useful definition of what science is and isn’t in the context of the law. It used the already established Lemon test to show what counts as the establishment of religion. Given the distinction by Judge Overton, there are questions as to whether or not there is even overlap or tension between science and religion, such as in the theory of Stephen Jay Gould’s Nonoverlapping Magisteria (NOMA). What we find in this thesis is that the NOMA principle is doubtful at best. Through the discussion of McLean v. Arkansas, NOMA, and the commentaries of Professors Larry Laudan and Michael Ruse, this thesis develops a contextualization principle that can be used as a guide to develop further theories, particularly regarding the divisions between science and religion.
