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[Introduction To] Rap On Trial: Race, Lyrics, And Guilt In America, Erik Nielson, Andrea L. Dennis, Killer Mike

Bookshelf

A groundbreaking exposé about the alarming use of rap lyrics as criminal evidence to convict and incarcerate young men of color

“If you believe that I’m a cop killer, you believe David Bowie is an astronaut.” —Rapper Ice-T, on the persona he adopted in the song “Cop Killer”

Should Johnny Cash have been charged with murder after he sang, “I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die”? Few would seriously subscribe to this notion of justice. Yet in 2001, a rapper named Mac whose music had gained national recognition was convicted of manslaughter after the prosecutor quoted …

Republicanism And The Foundations Of Criminal Law, Richard Dagger

Political Science Faculty Publications

This chapter makes a case for the republican tradition in political philosophy as a theory that can provide a rational reconstruction of criminal law. It argues that republicanism offers a reconstruction of criminal law that is both rational and plausible. In particular, it shows that republicanism can help us to make sense of three important features of criminal law: first, the conviction that crime is a public wrong; second, the general pattern of development of criminal law historically; and third, the public nature of criminal law as a cooperative enterprise. To begin, however, it explains what republicanism is and why …

African Americans And Aboriginal Peoples: Similarities And Differences In Historical Experiences, David E. Wilkins

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

In August of 2003, Harvard University hosted a major conference, organized by the Civil Rights Project, titled Segregation and Integration in America's Present and Future. The conference was appropriately subtitled the Color Lines Conference, in reference to W.E.B. Du Bois's classic 1903 study The Souls of Black Folk. This sprawling conference brought together some of the more significant actors in the Civil Rights arena—including Gary Orfield, Julian Bond, Antonia Hernandez, Glenn Loury, William Julius Wilson, and Gerald Torres—to reflect on the dynamics of residential segregation, racial identity, institutional barriers to racial integration, inequalities in higher education, and, or …

Play Fair With Punishment, Richard Dagger

Political Science Faculty Publications

If we want to provide a justification for legal punishment, then, we must answer two distinct questions: (1) What justifies punishment as a social practice? and (2) What justifies punishing particular persons? The principle of fair play is an especially attractive theory of punishment, I shall agree, because it offers plausible and compelling answers to both these questions. I shall also suggest that there is a third question - How should we punish those who commit crimes? - that fair play cannot answer without help from other sources.

Harm, Utility, And The Obligation To Obey The Law, Richard Dagger

Political Science Faculty Publications

In a recent essay, "Political Obligation", R. M. Hare sets out a utilitarian account of the obligation to obey the law which he believes to be immune to an objection often brought against such accounts. In what follows I shall briefly review this objection and Professor Hare's response to it; than I shall go on to argue that Hare's response, ingenious as it is, fails to defeat the objection. Hare's argument is instructive nonetheless, for its failure tells us something about wrongs and harm as well as utility and political obligation.