Last week Ken Strutin, the Director of Legal Information Services for the New York State Defenders Association and a contributor to the New York Law Journal, published an annotated bibliography on solitary confinement. The bibliography provides links to reports, law review articles, expert statements, standards, books, news, and organizations pertaining to solitary confinement. Here are a few examples:

LLRX publishes many bibliographies on a wide variety of topics to help jumpstart your research. Browse or search here.

In “The Torture Lawyers” published at 51 Harv. Int’l L.J. 193 (2010) and available in Scholarship@Cornell Law, Cornell Law Professor Jens Ohlin examines the use of the justified necessity and excused necessity defenses by government agents who engaged in acts of what many consider to be torture during the Bush Administration. Professor Ohlin then discusses why Bush Administration attorneys who advocated the use of torture and may be considered accomplices in torture cannot successfully use these same defenses under the “flow-down” theory. To counter the objection that attorneys cannot be prosecuted simply for giving advice, Professor Ohlin examines two cases from the Nuremberg trials:

  • Prosecutor v. Altstoetter et al. (the Justice Case), in which members of the German Justice Ministry were charged with giving legal effect to Nazi statutes and decrees that stripped the right to due process of law from many groups and individuals throughout Germany and German-controlled territories.
  • United States v. von Weizsaecker et al. (the Ministries Case), in which members of Nazi ministries, including the Foreign Policy Office, were charged with war crimes stemming from their advisement of Nazi leaders regarding the deportation of Jews to concentration camps and other actions.

For other work by Professor Ohlin, see his faculty publications page. I recommend the following:


Snitching by Alexandra NatapoffA blog can be a great place to dip into a new topic. Take the Snitching Blog, for example–an excellent resource for news and information about criminal informants, how they operate, and how they affect the U.S. criminal justice system. The blog has entries about cases in which an informant played a critical role, a heads-up about a recent NPR series on a confidential informant and the House of Death murders, and legislative reform efforts. You can find links to reports, data, and government hearings in the blog’s sidebar.

Alexandra Natapoff, a professor at Loyola Law School, authors the blog. She recently published a book entitled Snitching: Criminal Informants and the Erosion of American Justice, Cornell Law Library call number KF9665 .N38x 2009. You also may want to check out Ethan Brown’s Snitch: Informants, Cooperators & the Corruption of Justice, Cornell’s Olin Library call number HV8141 .B74 2007. Ancient history buffs should try Imperial Inquisitions: Prosecutors and Informants from Tiberius to Domitian by Steven H. Rutledge, Olin Library call number JC89 .R87x 2001.

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