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Articles 1 - 8 of 8
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
The Conflict Among African American Penal Interests: Rethinking Racial Equity In Criminal Procedure, Trevor George Gardner
The Conflict Among African American Penal Interests: Rethinking Racial Equity In Criminal Procedure, Trevor George Gardner
Scholarship@WashULaw
This Article argues that neither the criminal justice reform platform nor the penal abolition platform shows the ambition necessary to advance each of the primary African American interests in penal administration. It contends, first, that abolitionists have rightly called for a more robust conceptualization of racial equity in criminal procedure. Racial equity in criminal procedure should be considered in terms of both process at the level of the individual, and the number of criminal procedures at the level of the racial group—in terms of both the quality and “quantity” of stops, arrests, convictions, and the criminal sentencings that result in …
Reflections On “Personal Responsibility” After Covid And Dobbs: Doubling Down On Privacy, Susan Frelich Appleton, Laura A. Rosenbury
Reflections On “Personal Responsibility” After Covid And Dobbs: Doubling Down On Privacy, Susan Frelich Appleton, Laura A. Rosenbury
Scholarship@WashULaw
This essay uses lenses of gender, race, marriage, and work to trace understandings of “personal responsibility” in laws, policies, and conversations about public support in the United States over three time periods: (I) the pre-COVID era, from the beginning of the American “welfare state” through the start of the Trump administration; (II) the pandemic years; and (III) the present post-pandemic period. We sought to explore the possibility that COVID and the assistance programs it inspired might have reshaped the notion of personal responsibility and unsettled assumptions about privacy and dependency. In fact, a mixed picture emerges. On the one hand, …
What’S Wrong With Police Unions?, Benjamin Levin
What’S Wrong With Police Unions?, Benjamin Levin
Scholarship@WashULaw
In an era of declining labor power, police unions stand as a rare success story for worker organizing—they exert political clout and negotiate favorable terms for their members. Yet, despite broad support for unionization on the political left, police unions have become public enemy number one for academics and activists concerned about race and police violence. Much criticism of police unions focuses on their obstructionist nature and how they prioritize the interests of their members over the interests of the communities they police. These critiques are compelling—police unions shield officers and block oversight. But, taken seriously, they often sound like …
Mens Rea Reform And Iis Discontents, Benjamin Levin
Mens Rea Reform And Iis Discontents, Benjamin Levin
Scholarship@WashULaw
This article examines the debates over recent proposals for “mens rea reform.” The substantive criminal law has expanded dramatically, and legislators have criminalized a great deal of common conduct. Often, new criminal laws do not require that defendants know they are acting unlawfully. Mens rea reform proposals seek to address the problems of overcriminalization and unintentional offending by increasing the burden on prosecutors to prove a defendant’s culpable mental state. These proposals have been a staple of conservative-backed bills on criminal justice reform. Many on the left remain skeptical of mens rea reform and view it as a deregulatory vehicle …
The Consensus Myth In Criminal Justice Reform, Benjamin Levin
The Consensus Myth In Criminal Justice Reform, Benjamin Levin
Scholarship@WashULaw
It has become popular to identify a “bipartisan consensus” on criminal justice reform, but how deep is that consensus, actually? This article argues that the purported consensus is largely illusory. Despite shared reformist vocabulary, the consensus rests on distinct critiques that identify different flaws and justify distinct policy solutions. The underlying disagreements transcend traditional left/right political divides and speak to deeper disputes about the state and the role of criminal law in society. The article offers a typology of the two prevailing, but fundamentally distinct, critiques of the system: (1) the quantitative approach (what I call the “over” frame); and …
Guns And Drugs, Benjamin Levin
Guns And Drugs, Benjamin Levin
Scholarship@WashULaw
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, the Article uses as its test case the criminal regulation of gun possession. The 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, the Article focuses on: (1) race- and class-based critiques; (2) concerns about police and prosecutorial power; and (3) worries about the social costs of mass incarceration. Scholars have …
Bad Girls Of Art And Law: Abjection, Power, And Sexuality Exceptionalism In (Kara Walker’S) Art And (Janet Halley’S) Law, Adrienne D. Davis
Bad Girls Of Art And Law: Abjection, Power, And Sexuality Exceptionalism In (Kara Walker’S) Art And (Janet Halley’S) Law, Adrienne D. Davis
Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies Research
This paper seeks to make some connections between legal theorist Janet Halley and contemporary artist Kara Walker. It compares their recent oeuvre to show how both reject understandings of the interplay of sex, power, and subordination proffered by conventional "justice projects" - specifically civil rights’ and feminism’s articulations of bodily violence and violation as key modes of racial and gender injury and subordination. Neither of these two is the first to dispute such accounts of injury and identity; yet, what distinguishes them is that both attempt to ground their theoretical and aesthetic indictments in the notion of abjection, or the …
Historic And Modern Social Movements For Reparations: The National Coalition For Reparations In America (N’Cobra) And Its Antecedents, Adjoa Aiyetoro, Adrienne D. Davis
Historic And Modern Social Movements For Reparations: The National Coalition For Reparations In America (N’Cobra) And Its Antecedents, Adjoa Aiyetoro, Adrienne D. Davis
Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies Research
Most of the legal scholarship on reparations for Blacks in America focuses on its legal or political viability. This literature has considered both procedural obstacles, such as statutes of limitations and sovereign immunity, as well as the substantive conception of a defensible cause of action. Indeed, Congressman John Conyers introduced H.R. 40, a bill to study reparations, in 1989 and every Congressional session since, and there have been three law suits that have received national attention. This Essay takes a different approach, considering reparations as a social movement with a rich and under-explored history. As Robin Kelley explains, such an …