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Full-Text Articles in Law
Guns And Drugs, Benjamin Levin
Guns And Drugs, Benjamin Levin
Publications
This Article argues that the increasingly prevalent critiques of the War on Drugs apply to other areas of criminal law. To highlight the broader relevance of these critiques, this Article uses as its test case the criminal regulation of gun possession. This Article identifies and distills three lines of drug war criticism and argues that they apply to possessory gun crimes in much the same way that they apply to drug crimes. Specifically, this Article focuses on: (1) race- and class-based critiques; (2) concerns about police and prosecutorial power; and (3) worries about the social and economic costs of mass …
Race To Incarcerate: Punitive Impulse And The Bid To Repeal Stand Your Ground, Aya Gruber
Race To Incarcerate: Punitive Impulse And The Bid To Repeal Stand Your Ground, Aya Gruber
Publications
Stand-your-ground laws have come to symbolize, especially for many in the center-to-left, the intense racial injustice of the modern American criminal system. The idea now ingrained in the minds of many racial justice-seekers is that only by narrowing the definition of self-defense (and thereby generally strengthening murder law) can we ensure Trayvon Martin's death was not in vain. However, when the story of Martin's killing first appeared on the national stage, the conversation was not primarily about the overly lenient nature of Florida's self-defense law. It was a multi-faceted dialogue about neighborhood warriors, criminal racial profiling, and especially the racially …