Justice and Domestic Affairs

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    Lockdown is nothing like being in jail. But it should change the way we think about imprisonment.

Lockdown is nothing like being in jail. But it should change the way we think about imprisonment.

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For many, COVID-19 related lockdowns have evoked – largely inaccurate – comparisons with incarceration in prison. Chris Barker writes that while the analogy is limited, such thinking should encourage us to examine our own attitudes to punishment in America and what custodial sentences seek to achieve.  

This story has two parts. The first part is about the effects of social isolation on the American public during the COVID-19 lockdown. Loneliness, we are […]

May 23rd, 2020|Chris Barker, COVID-19, Justice and Domestic Affairs|1 Comment|
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How social science helped end the death penalty in Colorado

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Last month, Colorado became the latest US state to abolish the death penalty. Hollis A. Whitson writes on how the move has been the culmination of years of work from abolitionists and social scientists who built a convincing base of evidence on the racial and geographic disparities of the death penalty in Colorado.

On March 23, 2020, Colorado became the […]

May 7th, 2020|Hollis Whitson, Justice and Domestic Affairs|0 Comments|
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    Consent decrees can reduce the number of police-related killings, but only when used alongside court-appointed monitoring.

Consent decrees can reduce the number of police-related killings, but only when used alongside court-appointed monitoring.

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Consent decrees – agreements for reform between police departments and the government – are one way to reform police forces which engage in patterns of misconduct. Using national data covering over 900 police departments, Li Sian Goh assesses whether consent decrees are effective, finding that their use – alongside court-appointed monitoring – was linked to a 29 percent reduction […]

March 18th, 2020|Justice and Domestic Affairs, Li Sian Goh|2 Comments|
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    Why more diverse courts may be better for civil liberties in times of war

Why more diverse courts may be better for civil liberties in times of war

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In times of war, courts tend to conform to the government’s agenda. But in new research, Rebecca Reid, Susanne Schorpp, and Susan Johnson find that this pattern is less pronounced for diverse panels of judges. Using data on men and women judges’ decision-making on US appellate courts in search and seizure cases during the War on Terror, they determine […]

February 17th, 2020|Justice and Domestic Affairs, Rebecca Reid, Susan Johnson|0 Comments|
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    The Trump administration’s attempts to reduce Roger Stone’s sentence shows how easy it is to manipulate punishment in federal courts.

The Trump administration’s attempts to reduce Roger Stone’s sentence shows how easy it is to manipulate punishment in federal courts.

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This week President Trump placed his thumb on the scales in the sentencing of his past associate Roger Stone Jr, who had been convicted of obstructing justice, lying to Congress and threatening a witness with bodily harm, last November. Toni Locy writes that Trump’s pressure, which led to the resignation of four prosecutors involved in the case, shows the […]

February 14th, 2020|Justice and Domestic Affairs, Toni Locy|0 Comments|
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    Book Review: Shadows of Doubt: Stereotypes, Crime, and the Pursuit of Justice by Brendan O’Flaherty and Rajiv Sethi

Book Review: Shadows of Doubt: Stereotypes, Crime, and the Pursuit of Justice by Brendan O’Flaherty and Rajiv Sethi

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In Shadows of Doubt: Stereotypes, Crime, and the Pursuit of Justice, Brendan O’Flaherty and Rajiv Sethi explore the role that stereotypes play in interactions across all elements of the US criminal justice system. This is a gracefully written, analytically precise and hopeful book, writes Abu Turab Rizvi, that will be of particular use to students and scholars of critical race and […]

February 9th, 2020|Abu Turab Rizvi, Book Reviews, Justice and Domestic Affairs|0 Comments|
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    How pretrial detention time reinforces racial inequalities in the criminal justice system.

How pretrial detention time reinforces racial inequalities in the criminal justice system.

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Research has shown that detention before trials contributes to broader patterns of inequality in the criminal justice system. In new research, Brandon P. Martinez, Nick Petersen, and Marisa Omori look at how pretrial detention length contributes to this inequality. Their analysis of pretrial detention patterns in Miami-Dade County, Florida, finds that Black people are more likely to […]

January 16th, 2020|Brandon P. Martinez, Justice and Domestic Affairs, Marisa Omori, Nick Petersen|0 Comments|
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    Book Review: In the Shadow of Justice: Postwar Liberalism and the Remaking of Political Philosophy by Katrina Forrester

Book Review: In the Shadow of Justice: Postwar Liberalism and the Remaking of Political Philosophy by Katrina Forrester

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In In the Shadow of Justice: Postwar Liberalism and the Remaking of Political Philosophy, Katrina Forrester explores how John Rawls’s justice theory became the dominant way of thinking about institutions and individuals in the second half of the twentieth century. This important work sheds light on the conceptual roots of modern political thought while at the same time disclosing its limits, […]

December 1st, 2019|Book Reviews, Justice and Domestic Affairs, Rahel Süß|0 Comments|
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    Donald Trump has criticized Latino judges, but they are some of the most conservative jurists on the federal bench

Donald Trump has criticized Latino judges, but they are some of the most conservative jurists on the federal bench

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During his 2016 election campaign and thereafter, Donald Trump criticized Latino judges, a distinct break from previous administrations which have increased diversity in the federal judiciary. But Latino judges may be beneficial to Trump’s Republican agenda. In new research, Scott Hofer and Jason Casellas look at the ideology of Democratic and Republican-appointed judges, finding that Latino judges from both […]

October 11th, 2019|Jason Casellas, Justice and Domestic Affairs, Scott Hofer|1 Comment|
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    Donald Trump’s new refugee admissions cap is a record low, and a departure for a Republican president.

Donald Trump’s new refugee admissions cap is a record low, and a departure for a Republican president.

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President Trump recently announced a dramatic fall in the cap for US refugee admissions. Shyam K. Sriram puts this policy change in context, commenting that while since 1980, the ceiling for refugee admissions has varied, it fell below 50,000 for the first time in 2018. Refugee admissions, he finds, have never been as low as they are now under […]

October 2nd, 2019|Justice and Domestic Affairs, Shyam K. Sriram|0 Comments|
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