Examine historical and structural injustices that drive racially discriminatory practices and outcomes in the criminal legal system. Explore the system’s racially discriminatory approach to surveillance, street detention, arrest, charging, pretrial detention, trial, sentencing, and probation. Consider how constitutional “rights” expand the discretion of state actors to exert unaccountable power. Critically examine narratives within the criminal legal system and law school curriculum that legitimize a mass incarceration crisis that targets communities of color and undermines public safety.

This course meets with Prof. Meyn's undergraduate Legal Studies course of the same name. With respect to Law students in the course, he anticipates assigning 3-4 writing assignments. These assignments will require law students to conduct independent research. For example, the first few weeks of the course examines conceptions of public safety between the 1600s and the present. Prof. Meyn plans to ask law students to study historical newspapers and other relevant historical texts to further illuminate or contest the texts and ideas discussed in class about what public safety has meant at different times in this country’s history. Where undergraduates take three exams that test their understanding of the presented material, JD students will be expected to understand the material presented, and thus expected through writing assignments to deepen our understanding of course concepts through the presentation of findings from their own research into historical documents and scholarly texts.