Search Records(10 total)
- Subject contains "Courts"
Alexis Hoag: Race and the Death Penalty
Alexis Hoag, Practitioner in Residence at Columbia Law School’s Holder Initiative, discusses the systemic racial issues at the heart of our Judicial system. Professor Hoag is an anti-death penalty advocate who recently published, "Valuing Black Lives: A Case for Ending the Death Penalty" and argued before the Ohio Supreme Court advocating for Glen Bates.
Vida Johnson: Police Bias and Testimony
Vida B. Johnson is an Associate Professor of law at Georgetown Law where she teaches in the criminal defense clinics. She writes about policing and criminal procedure. She received her law degree from NYU and her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California, Berkeley. Professor Johnson discusses her two articles on police bias. First, we talk about her article, "Bias in Blue: Instructing Jurors to Consider the Testimony of Police Officer Witnesses with Caution" where…
Cullen Sweeney: Race and the Justice System
The Cuyahoga County Office of the Public Defender has been led by Chief Public Defender Cullen Sweeney since January 2021. Chief Public Defender, Cullen Sweeney, discusses the role of the Public Defender’s role in advocating for systemic criminal justice reform. We discuss bail reform, race equity, police and prosecution discretion, and sentencing reform.
Steve Luxenberg: Plessy V. Ferguson
Steve Luxenberg is an associate editor at The Washington Post and an award-winning author. Steve Luxenberg discusses his nonfiction book, "Separate: The Story of Plessy v. Ferguson, and America’s Journey from Slavery to Segregation," which was published in 2019 to critical acclaim. He discussed the people most influential in arguing and deciding the Supreme Court case - civil rights author Albion W. Tourgée, the Great Dissenter John Marshall Harlan, and Henry Billings Brown who wrote…
Alexandra Natapoff: Misdemeanor System
Alexandra Natapoff, Lee S. Kreindler Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, is an award-winning legal scholar and criminal justice expert. Professor Alexandra Natapoff discusses her book, Punishment without Crime. How America's Misdemeanor justice system targets the innocent, taxes the poor, and generates revenue for the public and private sector. We discuss why people plead guilty to low level infractions and how that impacts minority and at-risk populations.
Fran Shor: Weaponized Whiteness and Gun Violence
Why does the United States have so much gun violence and why is it so difficult to overcome? Obviously, there are numerous contributing factors to the persistence of gun violence from the legacy of a frontier past to the proliferation of guns to toxic masculinity. However, one significant aspect, often overlooked, is the role of systemic racism. This power point presentation will explore the long history of racist currents in American gun violence. Francis Shor is a Professor Emeritus of History…
Erica Meiners: Childhood and Carceral Society
Erica R. Meiners is a Professor of Education and Women’s and Gender Studies at Northeastern Illinois University. Professor Erica Meiners discusses her book, For the Children? Protecting Innocence in a Carceral State, in which the definition of childhood become an ideological state used to push back against resistance and reform. Childhood, Meiners states, depends on social constructions and differ based on the group it refers to - freed slaves were talked about as children, while white wealthy…
Andrew McKevitt: Gun Rights and Consumerism
Professor Andrew McKevitt talks about his book, “Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture, and Control in Cold War America.” America’s gun culture was not an inevitable outcome of the Second Amendment and Professor McKevitt explains why. Framing America’s obsession with guns as essentially a consumerist market, not unlike another other collectible or commodity, Prof. McKevitt uncovers one potential origin – post-War European military surplus. Professor Andrew McKevitt is the John D. Winters Endowed…
Giuliana Perrone: Abolition’s Legal Failures
Giuliana Perrone, Professor of History, University of California, Santa Barbara, discusses her book, Nothing More than Freedom: The Failure of Abolition in American Law. Professor Perrone explains how emancipation and abolition stalled and were ultimately defeated in the Courts. After the Civil War, State courts became the location that set the terms of racial identity, civil rights, and national belonging. These decisions posed a purposeful resistance to the post-War reimagining of the American…
Jonathan Witmer-Rich: Cuyahoga County Bail Reform
Jonathan Witmer-Rich discusses his work on the ”Cuyahoga County Bail Task Force: Report and Recommendations.” Professor Witmer-Rich explains the bail situation in Cuyahoga County. Looking at cash bail as a means to secure future appearances and reduce risk, courts are actually preemptively incarcerating and punishing citizens who are presumed innocent. We talk about how the Ohio Supreme Court and Ohio voters responded to recommendations for felony bail reform. Jonathan Witmer-Rich is the…