Russell Gold's Avatar

Russell Gold

@profrgold.bsky.social

Bainbridge-Mims Professor of Law, University of Alabama. I write about Criminal Law and Procedure, sometimes by drawing comparisons to Civil Procedure. I also write about prosecutors. https://law.ua.edu/faculty_staff/russell-gold/

563 Followers  |  222 Following  |  36 Posts  |  Joined: 13.11.2024
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Posts by Russell Gold (@profrgold.bsky.social)

Yes!

02.02.2026 15:32 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 1
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Fiscally Restraining Criminal Lawmaking is under submission to law journals now. Please send it to your favorite journal editors. Or your least favorite😁. We examine how legislative process could make costs more salient in criminal law, hopefully prompting greater deliberation about benefits too.

30.01.2026 16:37 β€” πŸ‘ 5    πŸ” 2    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

Forcing defendants to tell a false tale about their own crime is troubling in its own right. More broadly, stifling counterstories about the role of systemic forces underlying crime and wildly divergent opportunities impedes potential public safety reform.

07.01.2026 16:39 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Look What You Made Me Do <p>We have understood for centuries that crime is both the product of social forces and individual choice. We know now that crime is affected by economic depriv

My article Look What You Made Me Do is now published in Washington & Lee Law Review: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers..... I argue that criminal process flattens the narrative of crime into one of solely individual actors making bad choices, and it coerces defendants into telling that story.

07.01.2026 16:39 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

Agree. It was a nice place to live.

21.11.2025 03:54 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

Definitely wish our law school offered state con law.

17.09.2025 20:35 β€” πŸ‘ 3    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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NACDL - Empty Pockets and Empty Promises: How Federal Restitution Law Fails Everyone Criminal restitution is intended to have dual goals: victim compensation and offender punishment. The way criminal restitution operates in practice gives short shrift to compensating the average victi...

Hot off the presses! In conjunction with @nacdl.org, I’ve written a report that examines criminal restitution in the federal system. The report debunks prevailing myths about restitution & presents recommendations for reform. www.nacdl.org/Document/Emp... 1/2

17.09.2025 19:48 β€” πŸ‘ 6    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

I’m not one of them. But don’t inchoate crimes already do that?

07.08.2025 23:35 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

Even *if* you accept Stephen Miller’s (textually, historically, and morally indefensible) claim that undocumented immigrants are not entitled to due process, you’d *still* need due process to ensure that the individuals at issue are, in fact, undocumented.

His argument fails even on its own terms.

05.05.2025 20:53 β€” πŸ‘ 38177    πŸ” 7968    πŸ’¬ 798    πŸ“Œ 255

It ignores that systemic factors make it much harder for some people to comply
with the law than others. It entrenches the status quo of more cages to threaten punishment by suppressing counternarratives about root causes of crime. It prioritizes feeling safe over being safe.

05.05.2025 16:46 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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I posted a draft of Look What You Made Me Do to SSRN: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers..... I argue that criminal procedure coerces defendants into embracing the narrative that their crime was solely their bad choice. That narrative obscures important systemic factors like trauma, addiction, and poverty.

05.05.2025 16:46 β€” πŸ‘ 5    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 1
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I’m excited to report that Look What You Made Me Do is now forthcoming in Washington & Lee Law Review.

27.03.2025 20:46 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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Gov. Kay Ivey says she will sign parental leave bill for state employees, educators β€’ Alabama Reflector The bill would give eight weeks of paid leave to a woman who gives birth or suffers a miscarriage, and two weeks to a father.

Via @annabjournalist.bsky.social: The Alabama House of Representatives Thursday gave final approval to a bill extending paid parental leave to all state and education employees staring July 1, sending the bill to Gov. Kay Ivey.

21.03.2025 12:10 β€” πŸ‘ 18    πŸ” 5    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

A really interesting project that’s currently under submission, for the journal editors out there.

04.03.2025 23:39 β€” πŸ‘ 3    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Usually they say it more metaphorically.

04.03.2025 23:38 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

It felt like deep engagement with the work from folks who read and are trying to improve the piece. What more could a guest ask for?

04.03.2025 23:32 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

What a great conversation with a thoughtful group! Thanks for reading and for your helpful comments, Corey.

04.03.2025 21:32 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

BTW, feel free to highlight this submission for your favorite law review editors. Or even your least favorite. It has been 2.5 weeks and no offers yet. Is this cycle moving slowly for others too?

03.03.2025 13:30 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 1

I’m not a business law person, but Andrew Verstein has a real knack for letting the rest of us in to complex topics in business law.

03.03.2025 13:28 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Interesting. Thanks!

03.03.2025 13:25 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

It’s not, but I’m happy to share a draft. I’ll email you.

03.03.2025 13:24 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

If I can get title help from my daughter or perhaps my students then it might be. At the moment I’m pondering a new paper about legislative exceptionalism for criminal law bills. Miss Americana? All Too Well? Not seeing it. If I were writing about habeas or accomplice liability that would be easier.

02.03.2025 17:33 β€” πŸ‘ 3    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

In this article I examine how criminal process flattens the complex narratives of crime into a simple story of defendants making bad choices. It sometimes coerces defendants into reciting this narrative too.

02.03.2025 17:15 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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Look What You Made Me Do is currently under submission to law journals. Here’s the abstract.

02.03.2025 17:12 β€” πŸ‘ 16    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 4    πŸ“Œ 3

Congratulations! Send them out by snail mail. That’s my vote.

15.01.2025 19:01 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

This looks like a fantastic event, and I think it’s especially well-timed for folks getting early feedback on their summer projects that they haven’t written yet.

27.12.2024 22:13 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
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Positioning UA for an AI Future The University of Alabama is taking steps to ensure The University and its students are positioned at the forefront of the AI wave.

Building a large langauge model trained on the Alabama Code is a great resource, but we ought to be careful to understand that it still won’t tell us everything about Alabama law. news.ua.edu/2024/11/arti...

24.12.2024 17:28 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Alice Ristroph’s open-source book is fantastic and does cover property crimes. Happy to discuss that or anything else about teaching Crim if I can be helpful.

20.12.2024 16:46 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

Re-reading Bostock on the eve of tomorrow's big trans healthcare case at SCOTUS, I think the law's defenders have their work cut out to explain why Gorsuch's reasoning there doesn't apply to TN's ban on puberty blockers & cross-sex hormones for trans youth. Three points...

03.12.2024 23:51 β€” πŸ‘ 15    πŸ” 5    πŸ’¬ 2    πŸ“Œ 2