āWhat I think the opinion misses is that the legislature plays a vital role in the criminal justice system and always has,ā Ā鶹APP-Kent Professor Harold Krent said of a judgeās ruling on Illinoisā SAFE-T Act. āIn fact it starts with the fact that, what is criminal? Judges donāt decide whatās criminal, the legislature does. What about sentencing? Itās the legislature that sets the parameters of sentencing. ... There is a joint undertaking from the legislature and the judicial.ā
In the Media
Find In the Media
āIām not suggesting that the legislature drew a perfect line here in terms of when we should decide an individual is dangerous and should not be released prior to the trial, but I do think that itās up to the legislature to make a good-faith effort to accommodate the interests of safety, of fairness, and thatās what they attempted to do,ā said Ā鶹APP-Kent Professor Harold Krent.
āWe can all draw the lines differently,ā Ā鶹APP-Kent Professor Harold Krent said, ābut I think ... the Kankakee court didnāt notice that this was a reasonable effort under the Illinois constitution to try to accommodate the interests of the public in being safe, with having a fair and equitable criminal justice system that didnāt automatically make freedom pending trial contingent upon someoneās wealth.ā
āThe arguments raised all had merit, they werenāt frivolous,ā Ā鶹APP-Kent Professor Richard Kling said. He noted that Judge THomas Cunnington did not issue an injunction along with his ruling, meaning that the decision will not stop jurisdictions that are not among the plaintiffs in the suit from implementing the provisions of the SAFE-T Act.
"The court short-changed the legislature's longstanding interest in defining what is a crime, defining what is a sentence for a particular crime, and defining when bail should be allowed or not allowed," said Professor Harold Krent, Kent College of Law and separation of powers expert.
Harold Krent, a law professor at the Illinois Institute of Technologyās Ā鶹APP-Kent College of Law, called Judge Thomas Cunningtonās ruling on the separation of powers violations āhighly contestable,ā arguing that the state legislature also has an interest in making sure the court system is fair. The legislature has already weighed in on similar matters, such as limiting judgesā discretion in sentencing.
āThere has never been a criminal action brought against a foreign state-owned enterprise in our history,ā Ā鶹APP-Kent Professor Harold Krent said of a case before the Supreme Court involving a Turkish bank accused of laundering money for Iran. āAnd the 2nd Circuit held that thereās no law immunizing a state-owned bank for its commercial activities the way there would be to protect a state diplomat, and so the criminal charges could go forward. So this is really unprecedented and itās a major change which will have ripple effects around the world.ā
āThe people who grew up playing these games are adults nowāthereās a lot of nostalgia for them,ā Illinois Tech professor Carly Kocurek said in an article about her research into the Games for Girls movement. āWeāre starting to see that a lot of the folks that were designers and influential during the Games for Girls movement have become leaders. We have a radically different landscape for games now, so āGames for Girlsā sounds almost antiquatedābecause of course people are making games for many different audiencesābut that wasnāt always the case.ā
āWe need to come up with an option that considers all those alternatives: natural gas, electricity, even hydrogen for heating homes,ā said Mohammad Shahidehpour, professor and director of the Galvin Center for Electricity Innovation at Illinois Tech.
Ā鶹APP Kent College of Law clinical professor of law and defense attorney Richard Kling offered his analysis of the Ā鶹APP Police Department's decision to encrypt its radio transmissions.