Shedding the Burden of Sisyphus: International Law and Wrongful Conviction in the United States

Abstract

Efforts to address the scourge of wrongful conviction in the United States would benefit from a theoretical framework for applying international law. Mythology has long been acknowledged as perhaps the most effective way to propagate values within a culture and to the external world. A new sort of mythology—one that can seamlessly accommodate local cultural variations—should be mobilized to enforce transcultural values and norms. This conception of mythology calls for the primacy of justice, the abrogation of sovereignty to the extent it precludes justice, and cultural variation within the parameters of human rights. Although the United States was founded on the law of nations and the U.S. Supreme Court has long extended comity to international law, in recent years American jurisprudence—particularly in the Supreme Court—has assumed an isolationist approach. This regrettable development is largely responsible for the systemic failures in the criminal justice system that have allowed wrongful conviction to become the pervasive problem that it is today.