Justice In America Research Articles

Black and Blue

The tangled web of race, policing, and justice in America.

Grooming Tomorrow's Change Agents: The Role of Law Schools in Helping to Create a Just Society

Numerous authorities have lamented the fact that America’s criminal justice system is broken. To address this crisis, experts have proposed a range of policy proscriptions. But these proposals overlook a fundamental driver of this state of injustice. The criminal justice system as it now exists is defined by a value system inconsistent with justice. And many professionals responsible for administering criminal justice – politicians, judges, prosecutors, and defense counsel – have been shaped by this corrupted value system. As a result, those responsible for justice in America frequently promote unjust outcomes. If we are ever to realize meaningful reform, we must groom a generation of professionals who embrace those ideals fundamental to American justice, and work together to infuse the criminal justice system with these values. Because so many of these professionals are lawyers, our nation’s law schools must play an indispensable role in this effort. Critics have identified some significant shortcomings in legal education. Many have pointed to the failure of law schools to teach skills and values essential to the practice of law. Some have urged law schools to inspire graduates to find careers that promote the public interest. But largely overlooked is the need to equip lawyers with strategies to promote justice in broken systems. If law schools are going to fulfil their obligation to help us realize our most noble ideals, they must develop curricula designed to not only teach lawyers values and motivate them towards social justice careers; but to also arm them with tools to resist systems hostile to the principles that define us as a nation. This article discusses this challenge and examines two efforts to equip young lawyers with tools and strategies to become the change agents necessary to drive reform; one through an innovative law school curricula and the other through the training and mentoring of lawyers post law school in the crucial arena of indigent defense.

“Anything That Gets Me in My Heart”: Pat Parker's Poetry of Justice

This article argues that love and justice are interlocking themes that undergird and motivate the poetry and activism of the Black lesbian feminist Pat Parker. Parker was a prolific working-class poet, a committed Black lesbian feminist, and an international trailblazer whose poems, like her famous “Womanslaughter” discussed in this article, document the many injustices that Black women endured in an anti-Black, rabidly homophobic, and patriarchal U.S. during the last decades of the twentieth century. In a political moment where righteous cries of #BlackLivesMatter are heard across the United States I use this article to remind us all of the historical importance that Black lesbians played and continue to play in the struggles of anti-racist justice in America.

The Constitution and the Future of Criminal Justice in America. Edited by John T. Parry and L. Song Richardson Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. 348 pp. $36.99 paper.

The and the Future of Criminal Justice in America. Edited by John T. Parry and L. Song Richardson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. 348 pp. $36.99 paper.The and the Future of Criminal Justice in America asks the question, is the future of constitutional criminal law in the United States? (p. 2). In seventeen chapters, the volume provides an array of responses by an outstanding collection of scholars to issues at the intersection of constitutional doctrine and criminal justice. In so doing, the volume's title invites an understanding of a single, unified object of study-the Constitution-directed towards something yet to be realized-the future-in which a governing system-criminal justice-might function in a specific place. But, what we discover in the pages that unfold is not one Constitution but a multiplicity of constitutional doctrines, often in significant internal tension, that are highly dependent on past political and interpretive decisions creating a fragmented, at times inconsistent, system. More than being trapped between past and future, in Hannah Arendt's phrase, we are trapped in a doctrinal present, on which the volume focuses unapologetically (p. 9) in its attempt to shed light on the current state of constitutional law so that we can better understand how we might intervene to shape the future. This is an ambitious volume that rewards careful study.Across a range of constitutional criminal procedure doctrines, the volume addresses familiar stories of constitutional failures with new insights and recommendations. A few examples will be illustrative. Though fundamental to the effective functioning of an adversarial system, as Stephen Bright explains, the right to counsel is in a crisis created by neglect, indifference, underfunding, and excessive workloads. Doctrines related to consent searches belie the underlying social reality, as Janice Nadler makes clear. Racial bias is deeply imbedded in doctrinal implementation of stop and frisk and other policing practices, as L. Song Richardson demonstrates. Fourth Amendment doctrine is focused on physical searches, but Christopher Slobogin argues that this doctrinal paradigm fails to protect against the growing use of technologically-enabled virtual searches. Richard Leo shows how Miranda warnings, and the doctrine on which they are based, fail to protect against use of false confessions. And in light of subsequent Supreme Court opinions undermining its efficacy, Emily Hughes argues that police have conflicting incentives to engage in interrogation practices outside of the Miranda framework. Acquiring additional, and exceptional, powers to combat the threat of terrorism leads to mission amnesia that alters ordinary criminal procedure, as Susan Herman explores, and according to Stephen Vladeck, leads to increased civilianization of military court jurisdiction over nonservice members and with expanded categories of offenses. In each of these varied cases, existing constitutional doctrines fall short, requiring either their reconsideration or new institutional development.At every turn, this volume illustrates how past political and interpretive decisions constitute a present that is described in these essays in roughly one of three overlapping ways: a state of crisis relative to particular consequences; a failure of ht between doctrine and social fact; or a change in institutional practice ungoverned by existing values. If we are to avoid giving too much power to a national security sovereign (p. 310) over criminal law enforcement authority increased by the domestic effects of transnational processes, we must take action through judicial and congressional checks on executive power. …

White Protestants and the Civil Rights Movement in Kentucky

White Protestants and the Civil Rights Movement in Kentucky Carolyn Dupont (bio) A mere two weeks after the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision declared racially segregated schools unconstitutional, Southern Baptists flocked to St. Louis for their annual convention. Attendees at that June 1954 meeting heard a stirring report that lauded the High Court’s action as “in harmony with the constitutional guarantee of equal freedom to all citizens and the Christian principles of equal justice and love to all men.” Although the ten thousand Baptists who gathered in St. Louis represented every state in the nation, two Kentuckians dominated the debate that followed. W. M. Nevins of Lexington warned that the Brown decision put the nation on a dangerous path toward racial amalgamation: “If we are going to eat with [blacks], and go to school with them, and go to church with them, the time is going to come … when some of you that sit in this audience today will have grandchildren with Negro blood.” Another Kentuckian, J. B. Weatherspoon, sprang to the report’s defense. The Southern Seminary professor urged that rejecting the progressive statement would send the message that America could “count Baptists out in the matter of equal justice.” “I don’t think we want to do that,” he concluded, to enthusiastic applause. The report sailed to victory on the wings of Weatherspoon’s oratory, his hearers approving it by an overwhelming voice vote. As if to acknowledge this commitment to a perilous but worthy path, [End Page 543] the convention then burst into a chorus of “He Leadeth Me,” the traditional Baptist hymn of surrender.1 Yet the dispute between Nevins and Weatherspoon more accurately prophesied Southern Baptists’ response to the civil rights movement than the resounding convention affirmation. Back home in their churches, parishioners objected strenuously to the progressive report. In the ensuing years, heated altercations erupted over other convention measures that seemed to challenge the racial hierarchy or to endorse black activism. Indeed, the quest for black equality ignited an argument about the meaning and merits of racial justice in America’s white Protestant communities. The two Kentuckians’ leadership in an opening salvo of this debate strongly suggests that faith communities in the Bluegrass State may offer keys to understanding the relationship of American religion to the civil rights struggle. Writing Religion in Kentucky The subfield of American religious history has mushroomed in recent years. Important scholars have turned to religious history to explain the thorniest issues in the national past, and a new generation of younger historians has launched their careers with groundbreaking treatments that place Americans’ faiths at the center of their story. A variety of new conferences, journals, and blogs devoted to the history of religion attests to the vitality of this field and its ability to deepen our understanding of politics, economics, and race relations.2 Kentucky has benefitted unevenly from this attention. For periods before Reconstruction, scholars seem to have long regarded the Blue-grass State as a place where the religious story illuminates significant issues in American history. From John Boles, in his 1976 classic Religion in Antebellum Kentucky, to Luke Harlow, in the recently published [End Page 544] Religion, Race, and the Making of Confederate Kentucky, 1830–1880, historians maintain that Kentucky’s religious life registered the national pulse on key concerns such as slavery and race. Indeed, Harlow argues that the religious debates over slavery unfolded in Kentucky with both wider range and sharper distinctions than anywhere in the nation. A border state such as Kentucky could easily appear a mushy middle, where converging streams dilute one another to the point of bland meaninglessness. Yet, in these treatments, the collision of ideas casts each in brighter and more distinct light.3 The landscape changes dramatically for the period after Reconstruction, when religious histories of Kentucky nearly evaporate. A pitifully short list of narrowly focused articles and a few monographs focused on Appalachia—Richard Callahan’s Work and Faith in the Kentucky Coal Fields and Deborah Vansau McCauley’s Appalachian Mountain Religion, for example—comprise the scholarly attention to religion in Kentucky after about 1880. If we gauge by the attention of historians...

Life and Liberty in the Pursuit of Housing: Rethinking Renting and Owning in Post-Crisis America

The recent housing crisis's devastating effects on U.S. households’ economic situations provides reason to examine the risks, pitfalls and assumptions underlying contemporary housing policy. This paper examines issues associated with renting and owning housing in America. It argues that housing operates as (1) a dimension of the U.S. system of stratification, (2) a method for the unfair distribution of resources in metropolitan space, and (3) a mechanism for the construction of the “other” and as a vehicle for social exclusion. Homeownership restricts people to homogeneous neighborhoods, renders low-income families and renters of all types unacceptable, makes neighborhoods fertile ground for learning who is socially undesirable, breeds class-based distinctions, and puts people in financially risky situations. Rethinking questions about renting and owning may allow consideration of how housing can play a more constructive role in pursing economic opportunities, redistribution and social and economic justice in America.

MarkPeffley and JonHurwitz. Justice in America: The Separate Realities of Blacks and Whites. Published by Cambridge University Press, 2010

Political PsychologyVolume 35, Issue 2 p. 304-305 BOOK REVIEW Mark Peffley and Jon Hurwitz. Justice in America: The Separate Realities of Blacks and Whites. Published by Cambridge University Press, 2010 Leonie Huddy, Leonie Huddy Stony Brook UniversitySearch for more papers by this author Leonie Huddy, Leonie Huddy Stony Brook UniversitySearch for more papers by this author First published: 20 March 2014 https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12181Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Volume35, Issue2April 2014Pages 304-305 RelatedInformation

The Fire Next Time in the civil sphere: Literary journalism and justice in America 1963

As a form of communication that can inspire solidarity through appeals to democratic ideals, literary journalism can play a constitutive role in social and political struggles for justice and freedom in democratic societies. In 1963, at a pivotal moment in the US Civil Rights Movement, James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time helped many Americans, including those in the highest offices of the federal government, understand the moral good of the goals of the African American freedom struggle and the democratic imperative to enact and protect the civil rights of all Americans. In this way, Baldwin’s work, along with other key historical forces, helped to expand the civil sphere and build a more just and democratic society in the United States. Civil sphere theory helps explain the role of such communication in social struggles for democracy.

Class conflict: the pursuit and history of American justice

In a just society the law not only applies to all equally, but also arises from the consent of the people it embraces. As such, justice implies that people have access to governance. A just society provides and guards social and individual rights for all its members. The freedom of speech, therefore, is a right of all, and society has institutionalised processes to guarantee that freedom. Due to the American people's understanding of exclusion and rank, the meaning of justice was fragmented by social status and class. While this book views American justice through a prism of social-class conflict, Gregory C. Leavitt argues that it would be incorrect to portray this perspective as somehow whole. American justice is relative to many cultural groupings and conditions and is thus at the same distance from its encompassing ideal understood by common Americans. Beginning with the late eighteenth century and ending in the late twentieth century, Leavitt traces the history of class conflict and the struggle for justice among Americans. He argues that class struggles remain a significant factor in American social problems, because the American situation grew out of government promises of freedom and liberty to the lower class and the development of a powerful middle class. This is a provocative contribution to the debate over the future of social justice in America.

The Social history of crime and punishment in America: an encyclopedia

Several encyclopedias overview the contemporary system of criminal justice in America, but full understanding of current social problems and contemporary strategies to deal with them can come only with clear appreciation of the historical underpinnings of those problems. Thus, this four-volume work surveys the history and philosophy of crime, punishment, and criminal justice institutions in America from colonial times to the present. It covers the whole of the criminal justice system, from crimes, law enforcement and policing, to courts, corrections and human services. Among other things, this encyclopedia will: explicate philosophical foundations underpinning our system of justice; chart changing patterns in criminal activity and subsequent effects on legal responses; identify major periods in the development of our system of criminal justice; and explore evolving debates and conflicts on how best to address issues of crime and punishment. Its signed entries provide the historical context for students to better understand contemporary criminological debates and the contemporary shape of the U.S. system of law and justice.

Antinomies and the Automobile: A New Approach to Criminal Justice Histories

In the twentieth century, the antinomy of freedom and coercion served as the dominant paradigm for understanding issues of crime and punishment. Roscoe Pound in Criminal Justice in America (1930) and Herbert Packer in The Limits of the Criminal Sanction (1968) described a tension between the values of individual liberty and general security to explain the problems with the justice system and the public's disagreements over their solution. Historians of twentieth-century criminal law have also adopted this framework to explain causation and change. This essay argues that an antinomic perspective of criminal justice history, while useful, has obscured important historical questions. A focus on social changes, such as the transformations that the automobile brought about in the commission of crimes and police practices, instead of on contrasting values, offers a different account of how proceduralism became inextricably tied to notions of American freedom in the twentieth century. This approach also historicizes the “paradigm of antinomies” and shows how people in the past, like Pound and Packer, mobilized dualistic thinking, which shaped a criminal legal culture based on an antagonism—both real and perceived—between citizens and law enforcement.

Justice in America: The Separate Realities of Blacks and Whites. By Mark Peffley and Jon Hurwitz. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 276 pp. $27.00 paper.

<i>Justice in America: The Separate Realities of Blacks and Whites</i>. By Mark Peffley and Jon Hurwitz. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 276 pp. $27.00 paper.

A Roadmap to Justice

This white paper explores the gap between principle and practice concerning access to justice in America and what should be done to address it. The analysis grows out of a Roadmap to Justice forum involving over one hundred leading experts, co-sponsored by the Stanford University Center on the Legal Profession and the James Sokolove Charitable Fund.One group of Forum participants met in Boston in October 2008, and another in Stanford in March 2009. Their discussions centered on three main questions, which we examine more fully here: goals and priorities for the delivery of civil legal assistance; inadequacies in the current structure; and cost-effective strategies for addressing those inadequacies.

Criminal Justice in America: Constitutionalization Without Foundation

Criminal justice in America lacks foundation in three senses: historical, political, and substantive. The U.S. Constitution will continue to fail to place meaningful limits on American penal power without a radical reconceptualization of the challenge of state punishment in a modern democracy, i.e., ultimately as a fundamental question of political legitimacy. This paper explores the prospects for a constitutionalization of American criminal law, with some comparative glances at developments in other countries, notably Canada and Germany.

Categories are alive: interview with Brackette F. Williams

Brackette F. Williams is an American anthropologist and a Senior Justice ­Advocate, currently an associate professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of ­Arizona. She studied at the University of Cornell, the University of Arizona, and received her doctorate from Johns Hopkins University. Her work interweaves ­matters of race, gender, class, ideology and politics in a unique manner – as seen in the article “A class act: Anthropology and the race to nation across ethnic terrain” (Annual Review of Anthropology, 18, 1989), the innovative monograph Stains on My Name, War in My Veins: Guyana and the Politics of Cultural Struggle (Duke University Press, 1991), and the edited volume Women Out of Place: The Gender of Agency and the Race of Nationality (Routledge, 1996). She is also the recipient of the MacArthur “genius” award, aimed at helping “creative people to improve the human condition”.Over the last years, Brackette Williams approached multi-racial communities with an original interpretation of the theory of social conflict. Her forthcoming book Classifying to Kill: An Ethnography of the Death Penalty System in the United States, based on ethnographic work, addresses the death penalty schemes as a classification process for making concepts and categories designed to objectify the dynamics surrounding the death penalty. Williams examines how the ways to kill, present in the contexts and debates of death penalty, influence and display social ideas about revenge, retribution and punishment. She argues that those categories “fight with each other” all the time in order to define justice in America, a country in which ideas and practices about race, class and gender present in informal practices join those in the formal legal system.Brackette Williams shares with us some biographical memories, finding in the past the ground for her alternative and provocative view for Anthropology: “I never thought of our life as good or bad. It was just something we did”, she said of her migrant worker family. “But I was very much aware of how certain ethnic groups were treated; how some were punished for speaking Spanish, how some flowed in and out, while others never could. And I was very much aware of power, the power the white managers and landowners could hold over others. I don’t think it is at all necessary to have lived that kind of life to become a good anthropologist, but I do know that I have been conscious of those issues all my life” ( , November 2011.

"These Conversations are Long Overdue": An Interview with Ifa Bayeza

"These Conversations are Long Overdue":An Interview with Ifa Bayeza* Corey D. B. Walker (bio) "Just as justice for Emmett Till is long overdue, these conversations are long overdue." —Ifa Bayeza Walker: Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview. I have so many questions for you it is hard to know where to begin. So, let's begin by discussing your motivation and vision behind The Ballad of Emmett Till. Specifically, what is it about Emmett Till that continues to haunt you so? In what ways does your concern about the plight of young black men inform your artistic vision? How and why did you choose the form of the ballad for your engagement with Till? Is your choice similar to your adoption of the form of the Greek tragedy in Homer G. & the Rhapsodies in the Fall of Detroit?1 Bayeza: You just gave me a flurry of questions, all of which are really exciting. But let me start with the last one, which was your question about the connection of The Ballad of Emmett Till to my earlier piece Homer G. & the Rhapsodies in the Fall of Detroit. That's really where my journey with Emmett Till begins. Homer G & the Rhapsodies was an experimental theater piece that I started back in 1986 as a way to address the crisis I was witnessing with our young men, particularly boys on the threshold of manhood. I decided like, "Well, somebody needs to be addressing this. I know I'm not male, but as a writer, as a cultural worker, as a black activist, who is the descendant of black activists, I've got to do something." So I started working on Homer G & the Rhapsodies, transposing the fall of Troy to modern day Detroit. I was inspired by the Iliad and by a passage from The Autobiography of Malcolm X, where Malcolm X postulates that Homer might have been a black poet, a conquered, blinded African warrior.2 The ferocity in the Iliad, a story of warfare, bore such strong similarities to what I was sensing on the streets of urban America. Then I read Black Athena, which also describes ancient warfare and casts it in terms of race, and I thought, "Ah, I can use this. I can use this whole imagining."3 As I was working on Homer G, one of my characters, a factory worker named Prime started hallucinating and thought someone was following him. It looked like this angel [End Page 731] to me, this avenging angel. I couldn't see its face, but it was kind of a combination of bird and man—and it only said two words: "Bear witness." I was like, "Bear witness to what?" And it came to me that my character had been a witness in the murder of Emmett Till and had not come forward. I said, "Oh shoot I've got to go back to the library and research this." Just get some background—I thought! I thought, like many, I knew the story, but what did I know really? Walker: —The face? Bayeza: I only knew the face. I knew there had been an incident and I think I knew about the whistle, but it had been a very long time since I even thought about Emmett Till. So I went to the Schomburg Center in New York and started researching, getting into what was then the extant information, primarily based on the William Bradford Huie Look magazine story and some Chicago Defender articles, but it was mostly Huie.4 While I grew increasingly intrigued by Emmett's story, the more I researched the more problematic the information became for me. Walker: You just said something, you said "Emmett's story." Bayeza: Yes. Walker: In many ways, Emmett Till's story indexes a whole range of political and ideological positions regarding race, politics, sex, violence, and justice in America, but it became Emmett's story for you. Bayeza: It did, and a lot of things converged when I began the research. It brought back my own childhood memories of the experience of first seeing the photograph of his face from the funeral. My first...

Encouraging innovation on the foundation of evidence

Criminology & Public PolicyVolume 10, Issue 3 p. 609-616 POLICY ESSAY Encouraging innovation on the foundation of evidence On the path to the “adjacent possible”? James H. Burch, II, James H. Burch, II Bureau of Justice AssistanceSearch for more papers by this author James H. Burch, II, James H. Burch, II Bureau of Justice AssistanceSearch for more papers by this author First published: 19 July 2011 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-9133.2011.00749.xCitations: 2 James H. Burch, II, Bureau of Justice Assistance, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice, 810 Seventh Street NW, Fourth Floor, Washington, DC 20531 (e-mail: jim.burch@usdoj.gov). Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume10, Issue3Special Issue: Special Issue on Mass IncarcerationAugust 2011Pages 609-616 RelatedInformation

Radicals in their own time: four hundred years of struggle for liberty and equal justice in America

1. Roger Williams: freeborn 2. Thomas Paine: revolution 3. Elizabeth Cady Stanton: gender wars 4. W. E. B. Du Bois: American apartheid 5. Vine Deloria, Jr: betrayals and bridges.

Justice in America: The Separate Realities of Blacks and Whites. By Mark Peffley and Jon Hurwitz. (Cambridge University Press, 2010.)

<i>Justice in America: The Separate Realities of Blacks and Whites</i>. By Mark Peffley and Jon Hurwitz. (Cambridge University Press, 2010.)

Book Review: Debating God's Economy: Social Justice in America on the Eve of Vatican II

Book Review: Debating God's Economy: Social Justice in America on the Eve of Vatican II