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67 U. Miami L. Rev. 827 (2012-2013)
Shoot to Kill: A Critical Look at Stand Your Ground Laws

handle is hein.journals/umialr67 and id is 851 raw text is: Shoot to Kill: A Critical Look at Stand Your Ground Laws TAMARA RICE LAVE* I. INTRODUCTION ...................................................... 827 II. OVERVIEW OF FLORIDA'S STAND YOUR GROUND LAW ..................... 832 A. Comparing Florida's Self-Defense Law Before and After Stand Your G round ........................................................ 832 B . Rationale ....................................................... 8 35 C. Passage of Stand Your Ground .................................... 836 III. THE ORIGINAL POSITION .............................................. 840 A. An Introduction to John Rawls ..................................... 841 B. Applying the Original Position to Stand Your Ground ................. 843 C. Would Citizens Choose to Allow Self-Defense? ....................... 844 D. Would They Choose Stand Your Ground? ............................ 846 1. EXPANSION OF THE CASTLE DOCTRINE ........................... 846 2. MAKING IT EASIER FOR A PERSON WHO USED DEADLY FORCE TO PREVAIL .................................................... 847 IV. SHOULD STATES KEEP STAND YOUR GROUND? ........................... 847 A. Stand Your Ground Laws Create Incentive to Kill ..................... 848 1. How STAND YOUR GROUND CREATES INCENTIVE TO KILL .......... 849 B. Stand Your Ground Laws Lower State's Legitimacy ................... 850 1. FOSTERING RACISM ........................................... 850 2. ERODING THE RULE OF LAW ................................... 854 C. Studies Show Stand Your Ground Does Not Deter .................... 855 V . C ONCLUSION ........................................................ 857 I. INTRODUCTION On November 14, 2007, 61-year-old retiree Joe Horn called 911 to report that two African-American men had broken into the house next door to him in Pasadena, Texas.' Two months earlier, on September 1, Texas' recently enacted Castle Law (modeled on Florida's Stand Your * Associate Professor, University of Miami School of Law. Ph.D., Jurisprudence and Social Policy, University of California Berkeley; J.D., Stanford Law School; B.A. Haverford College. This article has benefited immeasurably from the careful reading and astute comments of Scott Sundby. I am also indebted to Charlton Copeland for his helpful advice and to Adam Tapley for his insightful suggestions during the revising of this piece. I would also like to thank the University of Miami Law Review for their attentive editing. Finally, I am grateful to the Center for Law and Society at the University of California, Berkeley where I worked on this article as a visiting scholar during the summer of 2013. 1. Adam B. Ellick, Grand Jury Clears Texan in the Killing of 2 Burglars, N.Y. TIMES, July 1, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/01/us/0ltexas.html?r=-O.