Rights Race And Reform

Innovative new study mapping African American and Francophone black intellectual collaborations over human rights and citizenship from 1919 to 1963.

In 1962, a 15-year-old Arizona boy named Gerald Gault may or may not have made a lewd phone call to a neighbor. Gerald was arrested, prosecuted, removed from his parents’ custody, and sent to a juvenile prison, all without legal representation. Gerald’s mother’s outrage at the treatment of her son eventually propelled the case to the United States Supreme Court. With its sweeping 1967 decision in In re Gault, the Court revolutionized the American juvenile court system by finding that children charged with delinquency have a constitutional right to counsel. This anthology, which commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of the Gault decision, blends, across its three parts, legal and historical analyses, oral history, and personal narrative to provide an overview of modern Supreme Court juvenile justice jurisprudence, the advocates and organizations that defend children in juvenile court, the role these lawyers have played in the fight for justice for accused children, and the contemporary challenges facing juvenile defenders and their clients. The authors are leading juvenile justice reformers, advocates, and scholars, all of whom have been deeply involved in shaping modern juvenile justice policy and practice and most of whom have represented children in juvenile court. This book is for everyone concerned about justice in America. The personal narratives about children in the system will intrigue students and academics, engage lay individuals who are interested in children’s rights, and guide professionals, legislators, and other policymakers involved in juvenile justice reform and criminology.

In this original study of six notable reformers, Alison Parker skillfully illuminates the connections between the gradual transformation of reform strategies over the course of the nineteenth century and the political ideas of the reformers themselves. Parker argues that American women's political thought evolved from an emphasis on reform through moral suasion and local control into an endorsement of expanded federal power and a strong central state. This book reveals Fanny Wright, Sarah Grimké, Angelina Grimké Weld, Frances Watkins Harper, Frances Willard, and Mary Church Terrell to be political thinkers who were engaged in re-conceptualizing the relationship between the state and its citizens. Collectively and individually, black women made a significant contribution to the shift toward an activist central state by strongly supporting a federal government with expanded authority to protect and enforce civil rights. Offering profiles of two black reformers, Parker explores the complex role that race played in the political thought and strategies in both black and white women reformers. Paying particular attention to the ways in which women's ideas about the state and citizenship factored into their struggles for racial and sexual equality, Parker illuminates the wide-ranging and creative ways in which they engaged in politics. For scholars interested in nineteenth-century women, race, or reform in American history, this significant study offers a fresh take on these vital topics.

The Dark Side of Reform: Exploring the Impact of Public Policy on Racial Equity contains nine chapters on the development of social policies with the potential to advance racial equity. In addition to studying these policies and their implications, the chapters in this volume demonstrate how lessons from the past can be used to inform the direction of current discussions. At the heart of these conversations are concerns about whether Black people, in particular, will receive the full benefit of transformative laws that may emerge in the coming years. The volume also offers recommendations on implementing policies that address the unique concerns of structurally disadvantaged communities with particular emphasis on Black and Latinx people.

Dr. Charles Hamilton Houston was an outstanding Harvard-trained Supreme Court lawyer for the NAACP. As Dean of Howard University Law School, he mentored future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. As architect of the Brown v. Board of Education case, he is often called the man who killed "Jim Crow." This unsung African-American hero also transformed American law in labor, criminal justice, and the First Amendment.

"The 2020 murder of George Floyd rocked nearly every aspect of American life and brought issues of police brutality to the forefront of public discourse. In the wake of his death and under extreme public pressure, many politicians, police chiefs, and court officials acknowledged the existence of systemic inequality in the fields of policing and criminal justice. However, with few exceptions, one actor within the justice system remained painfully silent: prosecutors. Progressive Prosecution both argues that this group should be at the forefront of calls for criminal justice reform and provides a guidebook for how this can be achieved. To date, little has been written that offers real guidance to District Attorneys and their staffs to help them shape a new culture within their offices dedicated to race-conscious practices and even-handed approaches. And even less has been written to educate a broader audience about the importance of a race-sensitive, community-based prosecution function in making real change in the criminal justice system and moving toward real justice. Progressive Prosecution offers both through a curated collection of chapters written by criminal justice experts and practicing District Attorneys focused on those components of prosecution policy and practice that deserve and demand radical rethinking. The book puts forth a radical new vision of prosecution: prosecutors must redefine the future of the criminal justice system"--

Adolescence is a distinct, yet transient, period of development between childhood and adulthood characterized by increased experimentation and risk-taking, a tendency to discount long-term consequences, and heightened sensitivity to peers and other social influences. A key function of adolescence is developing an integrated sense of self, including individualization, separation from parents, and personal identity. Experimentation and novelty-seeking behavior, such as alcohol and drug use, unsafe sex, and reckless driving, are thought to serve a number of adaptive functions despite their risks. Research indicates that for most youth, the period of risky experimentation does not extend beyond adolescence, ceasing as identity becomes settled with maturity. Much adolescent involvement in criminal activity is part of the normal developmental process of identity formation and most adolescents will mature out of these tendencies. Evidence of significant changes in brain structure and function during adolescence strongly suggests that these cognitive tendencies characteristic of adolescents are associated with biological immaturity of the brain and with an imbalance among developing brain systems. This imbalance model implies dual systems: one involved in cognitive and behavioral control and one involved in socio-emotional processes. Accordingly adolescents lack mature capacity for self-regulations because the brain system that influences pleasure-seeking and emotional reactivity develops more rapidly than the brain system that supports self-control. This knowledge of adolescent development has underscored important differences between adults and adolescents with direct bearing on the design and operation of the justice system, raising doubts about the core assumptions driving the criminalization of juvenile justice policy in the late decades of the 20th century. It was in this context that the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) asked the National Research Council to convene a committee to conduct a study of juvenile justice reform. The goal of Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental Approach was to review recent advances in behavioral and neuroscience research and draw out the implications of this knowledge for juvenile justice reform, to assess the new generation of reform activities occurring in the United States, and to assess the performance of OJJDP in carrying out its statutory mission as well as its potential role in supporting scientifically based reform efforts.

In this timely reevaluation of an infamous Supreme Court decision, David E. Bernstein provides a compelling survey of the history and background of Lochner v. New York. This 1905 decision invalidated state laws limiting work hours and became the leading case contending that novel economic regulations were unconstitutional. Sure to be controversial, Rehabilitating Lochner argues that the decision was well grounded in precedent—and that modern constitutional jurisprudence owes at least as much to the limited-government ideas of Lochner proponents as to the more expansive vision of its Progressive opponents. Tracing the influence of this decision through subsequent battles over segregation laws, sex discrimination, civil liberties, and more, Rehabilitating Lochner argues not only that the court acted reasonably in Lochner, but that Lochner and like-minded cases have been widely misunderstood and unfairly maligned ever since.

Named one of the most important nonfiction books of the 21st century by Entertainment Weekly‚ Slate‚ Chronicle of Higher Education‚ Literary Hub, Book Riot‚ and Zora A tenth-anniversary edition of the iconic bestseller—"one of the most influential books of the past 20 years," according to the Chronicle of Higher Education—with a new preface by the author "It is in no small part thanks to Alexander's account that civil rights organizations such as Black Lives Matter have focused so much of their energy on the criminal justice system." —Adam Shatz, London Review of Books Seldom does a book have the impact of Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow. Since it was first published in 2010, it has been cited in judicial decisions and has been adopted in campus-wide and community-wide reads; it helped inspire the creation of the Marshall Project and the new $100 million Art for Justice Fund; it has been the winner of numerous prizes, including the prestigious NAACP Image Award; and it has spent nearly 250 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Most important of all, it has spawned a whole generation of criminal justice reform activists and organizations motivated by Michelle Alexander's unforgettable argument that "we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it." As the Birmingham News proclaimed, it is "undoubtedly the most important book published in this century about the U.S." Now, ten years after it was first published, The New Press is proud to issue a tenth-anniversary edition with a new preface by Michelle Alexander that discusses the impact the book has had and the state of the criminal justice reform movement today.

Introduction -- Carnival -- The Vulgar Republic -- Jim Crow's Genuine Audience -- Black Song -- Meet the Hutchinsons -- Love Crimes -- The Middle-Class Moment -- Culture Wars -- Black America -- Conclusion: Musical without End