Letter from the Editor, Volume XIV, Issue I

Dear Readers,

Thank you for your interest in The Criminal Law Practitioner. On behalf of our Editorial Board and Staff, I am proud to share with you Volume 14, Issue 1 (Spring 2024). This issue continues our mission of producing informative and timely content for criminal law practitioners, as authors Caroline Vordtriede and Major Adam Crane provide their insight on, respectively, reverse affinity fraud and hostile work environments in the military. 

In “Hostility is in the Eye of the Beholder: Why Congress Should Decriminalize Hostile Work Environment Sexual Harassment in the Military,” Major Crane provides his perspective as a Service member and examines the deficiencies and constitutionality of Section 539D of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022 (currently codified under Article 134, UCMJ), as well as the consequences of criminalizing hostile work environment-type sexual harassment in the military setting. Major Crane concludes by advocating for the repeal of Section 539D and the implementation of non-punitive alternatives to address hostile work environments. 

Through an evaluation of two famous case studies in “Vulnerable Fraudsters: Reverse Affinity Fraud in Cases of Public,” Vordtriede introduces and discusses a unique type of internet fraud that federal law has yet to specifically address. Through analysis of fraud and online financial giving schemes, she proposes ways to fix this gap in the law. Vordtriede concludes by discussing how prosecutors should handle these types of fraud cases in the future until such changes are implemented at a federal level. 

Thank you to the authors for the time and effort they committed to the production of their articles. Second, I appreciate the Editorial Board and the Fall 2023 Staff for their incredibly hard work in spading these articles. I especially want to thank our Executive Editor, Equity & Inclusion Editor, Managing Publications Editor, Managing Design Editor, and Articles Editors for their dedication, efficiency, and skill in preparing these articles for publication. 

Finally, readers, I encourage you to visit our website, CrimLawPractitioner.org, to read our latest legal analysis and our profiles of criminal law practitioners. If you are interested in publishing with The Criminal Law Practitioner, or you would like to be featured in our practitioner profiles, please contact CLP@wcl.american.edu.

Sincerely,

Jackie Solomon

Editor-in-Chief