CRIME &

PUNISHMENT
GOVERNMENT 3121

JOSEPH MARGULIES
FALL 2021

SYLLABUS & CLASS

ORGANIZATION

This is a class about the carceral state. You may not have heard this term
before, though you have almost certainly seen or felt its operation. Like other
expressions meant to describe governance in the United States— “the administrative
state,” “the national security state,” “the bureaucratic state”—the carceral state
provides a way to organize, distribute, and justify power in American society. Unlike
these other models, however, the carceral state uses the criminal justice system to
achieve its goals.

In many ways, the operation of the carceral state is taken for granted, which
frequently allows it to escape close scrutiny. But we will examine it in great detail,
with a particular focus on how it came about, how it sustains itself, the role it plays
in society, and how and why it may be changing. As befits our moment in history, we
will also pay a great deal of attention to the role of policing in the carceral state. We
will look at the history of policing in both the North and South, trace its
development from the mid-19th century to the present day, and discuss the current
debates about abolition. We will also discuss the contested role of policing during a
time of increasing violent crime rates.

This class is also about mass incarceration. You may have heard this term,
and may have heard some of the statistics that often accompany its use, including
for example the number of people under some form of custodial supervision in the
United States, the overrepresentation of people of color in this pool, and the
percentage of imprisoned people worldwide who are locked up in this country.
Nowadays, many people have decided mass incarceration is a serious problem.

A question worth asking, however, is whether the prescriptions put forward

to “fix” mass incarceration have any chance of succeeding. One of the many
problems with these “solutions” is that they have badly misdiagnosed the problem.
As you will discover in this course, mass incarceration is merely a symptom
of something else—something much more significant—and solutions
that do not attend to this underlying reality are almost certain to fail.
Through a focused and extended look at the American criminal justice system, we
will try to figure out what that “something else” might be.

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GENERAL:

1. Office Hours:
Wednesdays 3pm-5pm in my office in 216 White Hall. Masks will be
mandatory.

2. Course Requirements & Academic Expectations:

Attendance and preparation are mandatory.

All students must abide by the Cornell University Code of Academic

Integrity. “Absolute integrity is expected of every Cornell student in all academic
undertakings.” Students unfamiliar with or uncertain about specific attributes of
the code should review it here.

All students must avoid plagiarism. “Plagiarism is the unacknowledged use of

the words or ideas of others.” If you are referring to the ideas of someone else or you
are quoting another’s writing, be sure to cite them properly. If you have any
questions about that, both the TAs and I are happy to suggest how and when
another’s work should be cited.

3. Grades:
The grade will be based on:

a. Class Participation (10%); and

b. Either three short (7 page) papers or one substantial (25-30 page)

research paper (90%). There will not be a final exam.

i. Option 1: Three Short Papers

The students who choose this option will write three short papers, based on a
list of questions the TAs and I will generate and distribute approximately a week
before they are due. The purpose of the exercise is to encourage deeper engagement
with the material, whether it be some of the historical antecedents to mass
incarceration, a puzzle about policing, the war on the drugs, etc.

The short papers are due at 5:00pm on: September 27, 2021;
November 1, 2021; and December 6, 2021. All papers must be submitted
to your TA via email. There will be no extensions absent extraordinary
circumstances. Each day of unexcused failure to submit a paper will
incur a single-letter grade penalty. That is, an A- paper will get a B- if it is
one day late, a C- if it is two days late, etc. A paper is late if the date
stamp of your email is later than 5:00pm on the due date. Each short paper
will be worth 30% of your grade.
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 Option 2: Research Paper

Because the material on criminal justice and the carceral state is so rich and
varied, I encourage students looking for a challenge to undertake a more significant
examination of some aspect of the criminal justice system. You may pick virtually
any topic, even if we did not cover it in class. The difference is that I will expect a
deeper engagement with the research and more original reflection about its
significance.

This choice, however, presents a certain risk. Some may neglect to finish a
short paper on time, and therefore opt for the major research paper not by choice
but by necessity. To prevent this, and to insure that everyone has assignments that
must be completed throughout the term, completion of the research paper will be
divided into three segments. By September 27, 2021, students completing a
research paper must submit a detailed outline and proposed
bibliography. By November 1, 2021, they must submit a first draft. By
December 6, 2021, they must submit the final draft.

As with the short papers, the outline and proposed bibliography and the two
drafts will each be worth 30% of your grade. As with the short papers, all three
assignments must be submitted via email to your TA no later than 5:00
pm on the due date. There will be no extensions absent extraordinary
circumstances. Late assignments will be penalized to the same degree,
and lateness will be measured in the same way, as with the short papers.

The grading rubric for this class is as follows:

A+ 99-100 (FWIW, in all my years teaching this

class, I have only given this grade once)
A 92-98
A- 90-91
B+ 89
B 82-88
B- 80-81
C+ 79
C 72-78
C- 70-71
D+ 69
D 62-68
D- 60-61

4. Book: Required
To minimize costs for students, I have pared back the list of required books to one.
But we will be reading selections from a number of excellent books, and I encourage
anyone who is interested to read them in their entirety.

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David M. Oshinsky, Worse than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim
Crow Justice (Free Press Paperbacks)

ASIDE FROM WORSE THAN SLAVERY, ALL ASSIGNMENTS WILL BE

PROVIDED TO YOU, EITHER BY A LINK IN THE SYLLABUS OR ON
CANVASS.

READINGS:

Much of the writing about the criminal justice system is over-simplified. This happens
for a number of reasons, not all of them nefarious. Other literature in the field may
have reflected best practices at the time it was written but has since been rejected.
Naturally, you should not assume that I agree with all the material that I assign.

I. BLOCK ONE: INTRODUCTION & FRAMING

a. Class One: Thursday, August 26, 2021: Introduction, Requirements,

and Class Organization: Some Themes

The first class introduces several themes to which we will return

throughout the semester. One is that criminal justice history and policy is
almost certainly more complicated than you imagine. You may have a
narrative in your head about how we got where we are and where that
place may be. I encourage you to keep an open mind. A second theme is
the allure of demonization. Demonization is extraordinarily seductive,
and I encourage you to think about the work it does in criminal justice.

i. Joseph Margulies, “My Resolution for 2018: Less Piety, More

Complexity,” Verdict, Jan. 8, 2018, available at:
https://verdict.justia.com/2018/01/08/resolution-2018-less-
pietycomplexity.

ii. Joseph Margulies, “Who Cares?” Verdict, Jan. 23, 2017, available
at: https://verdict.justia.com/2017/01/23/who-cares.

iii. Joseph Margulies, “Religion, Insurrection, and Social

Forgiveness,” Journal of Law and Religion, Canopy Forum,
January 22, 2021, available at:
https://canopyforum.org/2021/01/22/religion-insurrection-
and-social-forgiveness/.

b. Class Two: Tuesday, August 31, 2021: Thinking About Criminal

Justice

In the second class, we read two extremely important texts that will help
frame our discussion throughout the term. The first is a famous law review
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 article that articulates two very different policy orientations in criminal
justice. As you will see, U.S. criminal justice policy opted for one of those
two orientations; the second reading discusses some of the consequences of
that fateful choice.

i. Herbert Packer, “Two Models of the Criminal Process,”

University of Pennsylvania Law Review. Vol. 113, No. 1 (Nov.
1964), pp. 1-24. NB: I am only assigning pp. 1-24 of this article,
but I strongly encourage you to peruse the remainder.

ii. Bruce Western, Punishment & Inequality in America (Russell

Sage Foundation 2006), pp. 1-33.

c. Class Three: Thursday, September 2, 2021: Some Ways of Thinking

About Crime and Those Who Commit It: Social Constructions,
Symbolic Politics and Implicit Bias

Social scientists think about deviance, crime and criminality in very

different ways. These three readings introduce us to frameworks used by
a political scientist (Edelman), psychologists (Eberhardt et al.) and
sociologists (Goode & Ben-Yehuda).

i. Murray Edelman, The Symbolic Uses of Politics (Urbana:

University of Illinois Press 1964), Chapters 1-2

ii. Jennifer Eberhardt, et al., “Seeing Black: Race, Crime, and

Visual Processing,” Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology. 2004. Vol. 87, no. 6, 876-893

iii. Erich Goode & Nachman Ben-Yehuda, “Moral Panics: Culture,

Politics, and Social Construction,” 20 Annual Review of
Sociology. 1994. Vol. 20, 149

II. BLOCK TWO: CRIMINALIZING RACE IN HISTORY

The second block begins our discussion of criminal justice in U.S. history and
makes plain that in many respects, the past is still present. Khalil Gibran
Muhammad’s book is brilliant. Simply because of time constraints, we will
only read a selection, but I strongly encourage you to read it all. Oshinsky’s
book is the best and most accessible account of the southern convict labor
system.

a. Class Four: Tuesday, September 7, 2021: Criminalizing Race in

History, Part 1

i. THE FARM: LIFE INSIDE ANGOLA PRISON, Part 1 (in class)

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 ii. Khalil Gibran Muhammad, The Condemnation of Blackness:
Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America
(Harvard University Press 2010), Introduction, Chapters 1-2

iii. David Oshinsky, Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the
Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice (Free Press 1997), pp. 1-106

b. Class Five: Thursday, September 9, 2021: Criminalizing Race in

History, Part 2

i. THE FARM: LIFE INSIDE ANGOLA PRISON, Part 2 (in class)

ii. Oshinsky, Worse Than Slavery, pp. 109-248

III. BLOCK THREE: POLICING AND “LAW AND ORDER”

And now we begin our discussion of policing, starting with the slave patrols.
I think Hadden’s book is very good and well worth reading in its entirety,
though we will read only selections. Balto’s book is dense but extremely well-
researched and engaging. Every page is valuable.

a. Class Six: Tuesday, September 14, 2021: Overview and Preview

Hadden, Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the

Carolinas (Harvard Univ. Press 2001), pp. 1-32; 51-61, 105-136

b. Class Seven: Thursday, September 16, 2021: The Arc of Policing, Part
One: From Slave Patrols to the Klan and Vagrancy Statutes

i. Hadden, Slave Patrols, pp. 198-220

ii. Carl V. Harris, “Reforms in Government Control of Negroes in

Birmingham, Alabama, 1890-1920,” Journal of Southern History
38 (1972), 567-600

c. Class Eight: Tuesday, September 21, 2021: The Arc of Policing, Part
Two: From London to New York, the South Comes North, and
What Is Old is New Again

i. Gary Potter, “The History of Policing in the United States,” Parts

1-6, available at: https://plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/history-
policing-united-states-part-1

ii. Simon Balto, Occupied Territory: Policing Black Chicago: From

Red Summer to Black Power (University of North Carolina Press
2019), pp. 13-55

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 iii. Jeffrey Adler, “Less Crime, More Punishment: Violence, Race,
and Criminal Justice in Early Twentieth-Century America,”
Journal of American History, June 2015, pp. 34-46

d. Class Nine: Thursday, September 23, 2021: The Arc of Policing, Part
Three: Policing the Dangerous Classes; From Vagrancy to the
Precursors to Stop and Frisk

The selections from Goluboff and Balto are exceedingly important and I
encourage you to read them with particular care. Vagrancy statutes, the
subject of Goluboff’s book, were the bread and butter of urban
enforcement for decades during the Jim Crow Era in both the North and
South; the chapter from Balto’s book shows how policing in Chicago in
the decades immediately after WWII foreshadowed many of the policing
strategies that would define urban law enforcement nationwide in the
second half of the 20th century. The book by Denton and Massey is a
classic on the creation of the urban ghetto, and provides an important
reminder that policing always takes shape within an environment shaped
by economic and political forces.

i. Risa Goluboff, Vagrant Nation: Police Power, Constitutional

Change, and the Making of the 1960s (Oxford Univ. Press 2016),
pp. 1-27

ii. Balto, Occupied Territory, Chapter 4

iii. Douglas Massey & Nancy Denton, American Apartheid:

Segregation and the Making of the Underclass (Harvard
University Press 1993), Chapters 2 & 3

**** Monday @ 5:00pm, September 27, 2021: FIRST PAPER DUE (OR,
FOR THOSE COMPLETING A RESEARCH PAPER, DUE DATE FOR A
DETAILED OUTLINE AND PROPOSED BIBLIOGRAPHY) ****

e. Class Ten: Tuesday, September 28, 2021: The Rise of “Law &
Order”: More Complicated Than You Think

In this class, we take a detour from our focus on policing to introduce

the logic of the war on crime that began in the late sixties and continued
without interruption through roughly the end of the 20 th century.
Forman’s book, which won the Pulitzer Prize, is especially good.

i. James Q. Wilson, Thinking About Crime (2013 ed.), Chapters 3

&7

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 ii. Katherine Beckett, Making Crime Pay: Law and Order in
Contemporary American Politics (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1997), selections

iii. James Forman, Jr., Locking Up Our Own: Crime and

Punishment in Black America (MacMillan 2017), Introduction,
Chapters 1 & 2

f. Class Eleven: Thursday, September 30, 2021: From Broken

Windows and Order Maintenance to Stop and Frisk

“Broken Windows” and “Just Take Away Their Guns” certainly rank as
two of the most influential articles ever written in U.S. criminal justice
policy. But I have chosen my words carefully; influential doesn’t make
them good or right or well-reasoned, nor does it mean their influence
was free from unintended consequences. As you read them, think not
just about what they say, but what they omit and what they take for
granted and therefore leave unsaid.

i. George L. Kelling & James Q. Wilson, “Broken Windows: The

Police and Neighborhood Safety,” The Atlantic, March 1982,
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/03/broke
nwindows/304465/

ii. George L. Kelling, “Reclaiming the Subway,” City Journal,

Winter 1991, https://www.city-journal.org/html/reclaiming-
subway-12770.html

iii. James Q. Wilson, “Just Take Away Their Guns,” The New York
Times Magazine, March 20, 1994,
https://www.nytimes.com/1994/03/20/magazine/just-take-
away-their-guns.html

g. Class Twelve: Tuesday, October 5, 2021: A Closer Look at Police

Discretion and the New York Stop and Frisk Program

i. Babe Howell, Broken Lives from Broken Windows: The Hidden

Costs of Aggressive Order Maintenance Policing, 33 N.Y.U. Rev.
L. Soc. Change 271 (2009)

ii. Charles R. Epp et al., Pulled Over: How Police Stops Define Race
and Citizenship (University of Chicago Press 2014), Preface,
Chapters 1-2

h. Class Thirteen: Thursday, October 7, 2021: Precision Policing and

the Antidote to Stop and Frisk

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 i. William J. Bratton and Jon Murad, “Precision Policing,” City
Journal, Summer 2018, https://www.city-
journal.org/html/precision-policing-16033.html

ii. Joseph Margulies, Thanks for Everything (Now Get Out): Can
We Restore Neighborhoods without Destroying Them? (Yale
University Press 2021), Chapters 2, 5-6

IV. BLOCK FOUR: THE WAR ON DRUGS

a. Class Fourteen: Thursday, October 14, 2021: The War on Drugs, Part
1: The Traditional Story

i. Doris Marie Provine, Unequal Under Law: Race in

the War on Drugs (University of Chicago Press
2007), Chapters 2-3

ii. Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in

the Age of Colorblindness (Free Press 2010), Chapter 2

b. Class Fifteen: Tuesday, October 19, 2021: The War on Drugs, Part 2:
It’s More Complicated Than You Think

i. James Forman, Locking Up Our Own, Chapter 5

ii. John Pfaff, Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration
and How to Achieve Reform (Basic Books 2017), selections

c. Class Sixteen: Thursday, October 21, 2021: The War on Drugs, Part
3: Misdemeanor Enforcement

The crisis of misdemeanor enforcement is bigger than the war on drugs,

but I include it in this block because in many jurisdictions, more people
are stopped by the police for possession of a small amount of marijuana
than for any other offense. In other words, the misdemeanor that is most
aggressively policed is a drug offense.

i. Johnny Perez, “Violence is the Law of the Land: The Truly

Corrosive Problem of Rikers,” New York Daily News, Apr. 9,
2017, available at:
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/corrosive-problem-
rikersisland-article-1.3035659

ii. Christopher T. Lowenkamp, et al., “The Hidden Costs of Pretrial

Detention,” The Laura and John Arnold Foundation, November

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 2013, available at: ljaf_report_hidden-costs_fnl.ashx.pdf
(ncsc.org)

iii. Ram Subramanian, et al., “Incarceration’s Front Door: The Misuse

of Jails in America,” VERA Institute of Justice, July 29, 2015,
available at:
https://www.vera.org/downloads/publications/incarcerations-
front-door-report_02.pdf

iv. Issa Kohler-Hausmann, “Managerial Justice and Mass

Misdemeanors,” Stanford Law Journal,
http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=
5920& context=fss_papers

d. Class Seventeen: Tuesday, October 26, 2021: The Economics of the

Carceral State

Like the material on misdemeanor enforcement, the material on the

economics of the carceral state bears on much more than the war on
drugs. I include it in this block because misdemeanor enforcement of
drug cases leads to the overuse of fines and fees to shift the cost for the
carceral state from middle class taxpayers to the poor.

i. Liliana Segura, “With 2.3 Million People Incarcerated in the US,

Prisons Are Big Business,” The Nation, Oct. 1, 2013,
https://www.thenation.com/article/prison-profiteers/

ii. Tanvi Misra, “The Economics of Prison Boomtowns,” Citylab,

May 2, 2017, available at:
https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/05/theeconomics-of-
prison-boomtowns/524364/

iii. Matthew Shaer, “How Cities Make Money by Fining the Poor,”
New York Times Magazine, Jan. 9, 2019, available at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/08/magazine/cities-fine-
poorjail.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Ho
mepage

iv. Nick Pinto, “The Bail Trap,” New York Times Magazine, Aug. 13,
2015, available at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/magazine/the-
bailtrap.html?module=inline

v. Lauren-Brooke Eisen, “Charging Inmates Perpetuates Mass

Incarceration,” Brennan Center for Justice (2015), available at:
https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/blog/Chargin
g_Inmates_Mass_Incarceration.pdf

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V. BLOCK FIVE: VIOLENCE

a. Class Eighteen: Thursday, October 28, 2021: How Should the

Criminal Justice System Respond to Violence? Part 1

i.Frederick Rivara et al., “The Effects of Violence on Health,”

Health Affairs, v. 38 n. 10, available at:
https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2019.00480

ii. Dylan Jackson et al., “New Evidence of the Nexus between

Neighborhood Violence, Perceptions of Danger, and Child
Health,” Health Affairs, v. 38 n. 5, available at:
https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2018.05127

iii. Aaron Chalfin and John MacDonald, “We don’t know why
violent crime is up. But we know there’s more than one cause.”
Washington Post, Jul. 9, 2021, available at:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/we-dont-know-why-
violent-crime-is-up-but-we-know-theres-more-than-one-
cause/2021/07/09/467dd25c-df9a-11eb-ae31-
6b7c5c34f0d6_story.html

**** Monday @ 5:00pm, November 1, 2021: SECOND PAPER DUE (OR,

FOR THOSE COMPLETING A RESEARCH PAPER, DUE DATE FOR A
FIRST DRAFT) ****

b. Class Nineteen: Tuesday, November 2, 2021: How Should the

Criminal Justice System Respond to Violence? Part 2

i. Ashley Nellis, “Still Life: America’s Increasing Use of Life and

Long Term Sentences,” Sentencing Project, May 3, 2017, available
at: https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/still-life-
americas-increasing-use-life-long-term-sentences/

ii. Hope Reese, “What Should We Do About Our Aging Prison

Population,” Daily, July 17, 2019, available at:
https://daily.jstor.org/what-should-we-do-about-our-aging-
prison-population/

iii. Daniel Adams, “I Killed My Wife. Now I Want to Prevent

Domestic Violence,” The Marshall Project, October 3, 2019,
available at: https://www.themarshallproject.org/2019/10/03/i-
killed-my-wife-now-i-want-to-help-prevent-domestic-violence

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 c. Class Twenty: Thursday, November 4, 2021: How Should the
Criminal Justice System Respond to Violence? Part 2

i. Danielle Sered, “Accounting for Violence: How to Increase Safety

and Break Our Reliance on Mass Incarceration,” VERA Institute
of Justice, 2017, available at:
https://www.vera.org/downloads/publications/accounting-for-
violence.pdf

ii. Bill Keller, “Is Prison the Answer to Violence?” The Marshall
Project, Feb. 16, 2017, available at:
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2017/02/16/is-prison-the-
answer-to-violence

d. Class Twenty-One: Tuesday, November 9, 2021: How Should the

Criminal Justice System Respond to Violence, Part 3

Joseph Margulies and Lucy Lang, “Prosecutors and Responses to

Violence,” Institute for Innovation in Prosecution, November
2019, available at:
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5c4fbee5697a9849dae88
a23/t/5de5728dcceb6a637f13c5cd/1575318158124/ES_Prosecut
ors_Violence.pdf

VI. BLOCK SIX: REFORM?

a. Class Twenty-Two: Thursday, November 11, 2021: Criminal Justice

Reform, Part 1: Reentry, Felon Disenfranchisement, and
Collateral Consequences

i. Lottie Joiner, “When Twisted Justice Stops Prisoners from

Starting Over,” USA Today (Jun. 19, 2017), available at:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/policing/spotlight/20
17/06/20/when-twisted-justice-stops-prisoners-starting-
over/397197001/

ii. Jean Chung, Felony Disenfranchisement: A Primer (Washington,

D.C.: The Sentencing Project 2013), available at:
http://sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/fd_Felony% 20
Disenfranchisement%20Primer.pdf

iii. Rebecca Vallas and Sharon Dietrich, “One Strike and You’re Out:
How We Can Eliminate Barriers to Economic Security and

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 Mobility for People with Criminal Records,” Center for American
Progress (December 2014), available at:
https://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/12/VallasCriminalRecordsReport.pdf

iv. Please skim “Legislative Update, State Reforms Reducing

Collateral Consequences for People with Criminal Records: 2011-
2012 Legislative Round-Up,” (Washington, D.C.: The Sentencing
Project 2012), available at:
http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc/State%20Collateral%20
Consequences%20Legislative%20Roundup%20Sept%202012%20
(1).pdf

b. Class Twenty-Three: Tuesday, November 16, 2021: Criminal Justice

Reform, Part 2: The State of Play

i. Marc Mauer, “Long-Term Sentences: Time to Reconsider the

Scale of Punishment,” UMKC Law Review, vol. 87, iss. 1, pp. 113-
131, 2018

ii. James Austin, et al., “Ending Mass Incarceration: Charting a

New Justice Reinvestment,” April 2013,
http://sentencingproject.org/doc/Charting%20a%20New%20J
ustice%20Reinvestment%20FINAL.pdf

c. Class Twenty-Four: Thursday, November 18, 2021: Criminal Justice

Reform, Part 3: A Way Forward?

i. Joseph Margulies, “The Limits of Criminal Justice Reform,”

Boston Review, Nov. 17, 2015,
http://bostonreview.net/us/joseph-marguliescriminal-justice-
transformation

ii. Roger Lancaster, “The Carceral Problem is Getting Worse,”

Jacobin, Dec. 2018, available at:
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/12/criminal-justicereform-
first-step-act

iii. Van Jones and Jessica Jackson, “10 Reasons to Celebrate the
First Step Act,” CNN, Dec. 21, 2018, available at:
https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/21/opinions/ten-reasons-to-
celebratefirst-step-act-jones-and-jackson/index.html

d. Class Twenty-Five: Tuesday, November 23, 2021: Reform or

Abolition

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 i. Angela Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete (Seven Stories Press 2011),
Chapter 6

ii. Paul Butler, “Obama’s ‘Defund the Police’ Comments Showcase a

Radical Cynicism,” Washington Post, December 6, 2020,
available at:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/12/06/obama
s-defund-police-comments-showcase-radical-cynicism/

iii. Review the Website for 8Can’tWait, available at:

https://8cantwait.org/. In addition, do a quick search for the
expression, “8Can’tWait,” and read some of the coverage the
campaign has generated.

iv. Mariame Kaba, “Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police,” The
New York Times, June 12, 2020, available at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-
abolish-defund-police.html

v. Olivia Murray, “Why 8 Won’t Work: The Failings of the 8 Can’t

Wait Campaign and the Obstacle Police Reform Efforts Pose to
Police Abolition,” Harv. Civ. Rts. & Civ. Lib. Law Rev., June 17,
2020, available at: https://harvardcrcl.org/why-8-wont-work/

VII. BLOCK SEVEN: WRAPPING UP

a. Class Twenty-Six: Tuesday, November 30, 2021: VISITING

LECTURE: SANDRA BABCOCK, CLINICAL PROFESSOR OF
LAW, CORNELL UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL: REFLECTIONS
ON WOMEN AND THE DEATH PENALTY IN THE UNITED
STATES AND ABROAD

Reading TBD

b. Class Twenty-Seven: Thursday, December 2, 2021: Wrapping Up

Reading TBD

**** MONDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2021: THIRD PAPER DUE (OR, FOR

THOSE COMPLETING A RESEARCH PAPER, DUE DATE FOR FINAL
DRAFT) *****

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